I show you with facts and not opinions like you about the supposed domain of the cavalry.
The fact is that a 240 resources unit is the second most killed unit in the game. Even if they were more dominant, the proposed solution would not necessarily be the best.
The fact is that spearmen got better in the game and can temporarily trap cavalry with their passive if that cavalry tries to charge you and also the spearman needs 8 hits (like in AoE3) to finish off a knight.
The fact is that it’s easier to make walls and defensive structures in AoE4 than in AoE3 (because of the map types and no outpost limitation), as well as you can manually repair those walls and stone walls STOP cavalry and infantry (they can’t siege stone walls)
The fact is that innovation is not always the best option (AoE3’s Homecity was very controversial and alienated many players, although some of us liked it).
The fact is that playing AoE4 is not the same as AoE2, since there are multiple obvious differences, even if it has part of its essence.
The fact is that this game rewards macro more than micro than in other AoEs. The question is whether the player population wants changes in this regard or not.
The fact is that the goal of a game is to increase your numbers and your vision is not necessarily the line to follow to do so.
The fact is that what is most in demand is more content and adding more quality of life elements, apart from fixing past bugs.
I hope it is clear to you and @Carry_Potter_woll the difference between opinions (the game must be X to improve or a mechanic X must be incorporated to improve or there is an alleged problem X without demonstrating) and facts (reflect verifiable realities).
simply backing a valid criticism with evidence that its not unsolvable, and since you asked, i do believe there’s no major reason in engine or elsewhere, besides developer rigidity, to not put this into official patch
There’s a difference between something being able to be done, and something being solvable.
Now, we’ve seen various technical improvements in Season 5 that I honestly thought weren’t coming. So I’m a lot less cagey (post-S5) about this kind of stuff that I would’ve otherwise been. The devs are capable of significant, performant, technical changes. We have literal, recent evidence of that.
I haven’t seen a single person say “I know for a fact the developers can’t increase zoom out”.
I have seen people - often when asked to provide a potential justification - give a possible answer as to why they haven’t. So I don’t really have time for “people who say Relic can’t do X”, because that seems to be as much of a strawman as critics of Age IV sometimes find themselves subject to.
To me, as a developer, it’s very simple. If the camera could be extended, and this had no knock-on on the game’s technical performance across all the hardware it has to support (bearing in mind S5 came with unintended complications on low-end hardware that a bunch of people have been reporting, and the devs have said isn’t intended), it would be extended. Therefore, my assumption is there is a reason it hasn’t been.
I don’t know the reason, but that’s what I assume. The fact that there’s a single, often-uploaded screenshot of a livestream two Seasons ago that demonstrates that the zoom can go further is to me not evidence that this is a stable enhancement that’ll make it into the live build of the game. At least, not without further work.
EDIT
Or maybe I’m completely off-base and they want to impose a specific level of zoom for gameplay reasons. Who knows. It’d be nice if they said one way or the other. It wouldn’t stop people disagreeing with them (hahaha), but it would at least inform the arguments so we didn’t go in these endless circles
we can all agree they need some serious work on communication before anything else, yes post season polls do exist, but many things, especially more specific ones are still in the dark for all we know
That’s why you don’t have to be conformist and that the devs accept constructive and respectful criticism that we know of what Relic is capable of doing; that they are not newbies in the genre…They improved the graphics… well, now they have to add UU every season (1 or 2 more to the English, 1 or 2 to the French, 3 to the Holy Empire) and so on until each civ has 5-6 UU in front of them when the new civs come out in October…
For the Holy Roman Empire I said that it had these unique units:
Villager’s Cart (replaces the standard villager) and Prelate (Dark Age)
Contemporary to the cuirassier and lancer cavalry, they used smaller horses, for which reason they were also known as Ringerpferde (corresponding to the French Argoulets). They were originally recruited in the North German Plain, west of the Oder at the time of the ############# #################################################### of 1546/7.
The Reiter raised firearms to the status of primary weapons for cavalry, as opposed to earlier Western European heavy cavalry which primarily relied upon melee weapons. A Reiter’s main weapons were two or more pistols and a sword; most Reiters wore helmets and cuirasses and often additional armor for the arms and legs; sometimes they also carried a long cavalry firearm known as an arquebus or a carbine (although this type of horsemen soon became regarded as a separate class of cavalry—the arquebusier or in Britain as harquebusier).
Dear Adribird90, I kindly request you to keep this discussion sportsmanlike and avoid passive-aggressiveness as well was a dismissive undertone, especially against these, who probably put hours into writing their feedback in order to help the DEVs understand, what the playerbase (that’s us!!!) wishes for.
After all this is basically unpaid work, the people writing here are volunteers and should be treated as such.
The sentence “I show you with facts and not opinions like you about the supposed domain of the cavalry.” for me has a really bitter aftertaste.
Please avoid provocative actions like this in the future, which are directed at certain users or arguments you don’t like and keep it fair, especially when you don’t follow your own stated rules.
I’ll explain why:
The statistics you present in your post about how many cavalry units have died in season1-3 seems a bit out of context.
How many have survied though, how many were created?
In which elo range did this happen?
Which game mode: 1v1, 2v2, 3v4, 4v4?
And most importantly, how many cav units were created and how many survived?
How did they die? vs spears? mixed armies?
In full contact fights or while trying to raid and passing by? (I strongly doubt it was the 2nd one).
Very honestly and that is a FACT, the plain isolated number of how many cavalry units died in season1-3 in OVERALL matches of any setup, in ANY situation THROUGHOUT THE matches, does not offer support for speculation about the effectiveness of raids and the ability of spearmen to catch these units, in FACT, it does not stand in any statistical correlation.
Please provide numbers, which DIRECTLY DISPLAY the effectiveness of raids and the ability of spearmen to CATCH cavalry which is PASSING BY while trying to avoid a full contact fight, instead wanting to snipe villagers and just run through town and cause chaos while avoiding full on fights.
The number you brought up while claming to validate your argument of cav being balanced, I can only interpret as a try to shut down a user’s attempt in trying to show up a weakness of the game (title of this thread: “What should aoe IV improve”?), in a way of rediculing that person with a random number.
Which is my opinion, not a fact.
Back to topic:
“The fact is that a 240 resources unit is the second most killed unit in the game. Even if they were more dominant, the proposed solution would not necessarily be the best.”
Ok, let’s try and understand what this means in context.
As many of us have already complained, cav is being massproduced, especially in team matches and is dictating the momentum of the game in the majority of matches.
It is only logical, that these expensive and powerful units will also be used in full contact fights and eventually die. Or die under tc fire while raiding.
The cost of a unit and the flat amount of a unit dying in matches, does not say ANYTHING about the ability and strength of raiding.
I keep my opinion:
This game needs needs a snare mechanic to balance cav and archers and this is again, my opinion.
Cav is pretty much unstoppable when running through town and the only thing you can do is body block them which is very problematic IMO.
In my theory, this can not (!) be discussed about through numbers or statistics, it is a very subjective thing to discuss about.
And many responses of the fans image my my opinion that cav raids are indeed very hurtful to the fun of the game and overwhelming right now, because you can not STOP the cav.
As you brought up another number:
“The fact is that spearmen got better in the game and can temporarily trap cavalry with their passive if that cavalry tries to charge you and also the spearman needs 8 hits (like in AoE3) to finish off a knight.”
It only temporarily traps the cav if you command it to stand ground and it has a setup animation time!!!
Why in hell would a cav unit voluntarily run into a spearman?
In aoe3 (since you compared the two), it is enough to hit ONE unit of the bypassing cav mass, to slow
the WHOLE FORMATION of them down and FORCE them into a FULL CONTACT fight.
In aoe4 only the ones being stunned (which is a very hard thing to pull off, especially since this game is extremely macro instensive compared to aoe3!) are stopped for the moment.
The ones on the side and in the back and keep going and then spearmen are now busy.
Also in an ongoing fight, the brace is not practical anymore, whereas snare is consistent throughout.
I would honestly be surprised if we had a poll and the marjority of people were happy with the state of the game regarding cavalry, micro mechanics, state of the fighting game and cav dictating (especially team) matches.
I guess I should just open a poll in this thread in the coming days, when I have the time.
First avoid the abuse of capital letters in the post. So that a conversation does not get heated, the first thing is that you have a calm language, something that is usually lacking in many threads.
As you are seeing, it is an image of the ranked games in general from season 1 to 3.
When you answer what interests you in my post (ignore the relative ease of the turtle with walls and defensive structures in general and that this stops the cavalry), I can add little more.
It is a fact that cavalry raids effectively, as it is an important function of the unit (your opinion is that it is too effective/you don’t like it and you obviate some of my facts about walls regarding AoE3) just as it is a fact that, between larger maps (team games) and open, cavalry has large travel as in any AoE (especially in teams). The cavalry plays an important role in the raids, if it is excessively dominant it would have already been complained and the games would have been analyzed.
If you are right in what you say (and you must demonstrate or have a majority support you to review) it only happens in 3vs3+, it is a problem where the map could incur more than the unit itself, since in 1vs1 the professionals and technical players have not reported complaints.
I am not going to continue discussing this, the most normal thing is to prove that his affirmations with statistics and with a majority consensus.
And if I have been rude, it was not my intention, but to be clear to differentiate one thing from the other.
Alrighty then, I’ll try and find a better way to mark keywords instead of using capital letters.
Probably just the “Strong”-function will do, since I can not color single words as I’d do on paper to improve readibility in a long text.
If it came off as offensive, I wanna apologize for that.
“When you answer what interests you in my post (ignore the relative ease of the turtle with walls and defensive structures in general and that this stops the cavalry), I can add little more.”
In aoe3 originally walls gave sightrange as well, plus they were also very durable.
In aoe4 you can destroy them fairly quickly with cheap units.
Towncenters had a big bonus multiplier vs cav.
On top of that, there was a homecity-shipment which increased towncenter-fire-damage significantly.
While using a whole shipment for that, was a big choice, which weakened your boom/military significantly and was meant to help defend all in rushes.
In aoe4, knights already in age2 (especially with +1 ranged armor) are super resistent to arrowfire.
In age3 it just becomes worse, they completely ignore tc fire almost and can not be snared when running through your town.
Additionally, in aoe3 you could build buildings in a way to function as a wall.
I am not saying to want this back. Actually aoe4 went the right way here! If you wanna wall, you should have to invest in a wall.
Still, especially with civs like british (hello manor houses) or dutch (hello tanky banks), you could very easily wall off your weak spot and basically force raids to happen between your tc and wall of buildings.
Training a batch of 5 pikes into this pit was a death sentence for cavalry.
Not to mention the shipment of 8 pikes for dutch.
Devastating.
Also, in aoe3 from age3 on you didn’t only have snare, but super potent fast moving ranged anti cav with hard-hitting attacks with bonus damage against cav.
Some civs like Indians even had access to Zamburak in age2, which is a super fragile but super hard hitting extra fast moving anti cav. Going cav vs them in age2 was a task which required another level convidence.
None of similar counterplay exists in aoe4.
Heavy cav in aoe4 always chooses when to enter and when to leave a fight.
If you have a quick hand, you don’t suffer any losses to your heavy cav.
In aoe3 you could of course choose when to enter a fight, but not when to leave.
Because leaving meant taking calculated losses and your units being slowed down and receiving major damage while trying to escape.
Often times it was just better to let the whole (front row) fight until death and pull the health backline back only.
I wish for a similar mechanic in aoe4.
" just as it is a fact that, between larger maps (team games) and open, cavalry has large travel as in any AoE (especially in teams)"
100% agree!
Since other units have less moving speed than cav, this is another huge advantage for cav.
In teamgames cavalry can close the gap very quickly.
Your mate is in danger? Ok run there and help.
Enemy has sent his squads to the middle of the map?
Ok, just run through his town and slaugther anything, since his production is slow/pop reached/production line in front and cav can not be stopped!
With stopped I don’t necessarily mean killed, but also just cut off their pathway/blocked/scared off.
In aoe3 you wouldn’t wanna run through/by 10 pikes with 10 hussairs to reach vills in the backline. That’s basically suicide. You would always have to run carefully around and not make any contact.
Right before the pikes catch up, you’d have to make sure to start moving already.
And the pikes in aoe3 are fast dude…
In aoe4 your cav can choose the fight. Which is perfectly fine, but again, cav shouldn’t be able to leave an unfarouble fight without facing significant losses after going full-contact.
“The cavalry plays an important role in the raids, if it is excessively dominant it would have already been complained and the games would have been analyzed.”
“If you are right in what you say (and you must demonstrate or have a majority support you to review) it only happens in 3vs3+, it is a problem where the map could incur more than the unit itself, since in 1vs1 the professionals and technical players have not reported complaints.”
Lots of players actually complain about this destroying their fun in games, especially team games.
These links I found in 1 minute of research.
Top players like Beastyqt, one of the leading pros on tournament level both in 1v1 and 2v2 has stated this in his videos. Edit, I found the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I91N6IJjZM&ab_channel=BeastyqtSC2 19:50 and on is the interesting part I’ll try and find the videos again, give me some time please.
He explained, how broken op (early) heavy cav is in 2v2 matches in aoe4 and how it dominates the current tournaments.
That most of the teams made sure to constantly pick Rus for early knights, since it completely dominates the team matches due to a fast hard hitting and tanky unit with almost no counterplay, especially in age2.
As far as I remember, he discussed the same point as I do.
The cav player always dictates when and for how long fights happen and that there is no real counterplay.
Imo that is the biggest alarming sign that you can receive as a balance-feedback.
If not believe the top level players who are directly stating it, then who to listen to?
“I am not going to continue discussing this, the most normal thing is to prove that his affirmations with statistics and with a majority consensus.”
You don’t have to discuss this further or agree with other people’s opinions.
After all, opinions are subjective and valid in their own sense.
“And if I have been rude, it was not my intention, but to be clear to differentiate one thing from the other.”
Noted.
Further, I kindly want to encourage you to not declare things people on this forum say to be just opinion and/or wrong facts, just because they can’t find the right link for backup information in that same moment.
Instead it would be nice of you, to politely ask them and give them a chance for backup proof instead, before declaring their point as invalid and a wrong fact.
Edit:
I found the video of Beastyqt, 19:50 onwards is the interesting part
Quote:
“The meta of the last team tournament has been heavy heavy on the cavalry civs” sums it up.
He said exactly this.
23:30 onwards
“The royal bloodlines knights will just destroy everything. And even if you have spears, it’ so hard to catch up to them because they can just moe down the walls and run around because the maps are bigger”.
I guess this should be more than enough evidence to point out the problem.
dude the poster proves what I said that the actual most created ones is archer and cav. archer dominace proved by the “most created unit stats”. cav dominace proved because the numbers of kills and the number of spear. why spear? you may say. As I said spear are too weak to hold strong high fire and are not cost efficient as other aoe which @Carry_Potter_woll told you that detail so you have to make more spear and you got the kills number higher for that reason even if those sucks as I mentioned because the no snare mechanic.
aoe 3 homecity was the abolutely best feature. It could go with aoe 4 with a simple summon x unit/building which can allow more interestinggameplay with mods.
Aoe 4 is not aoe 2 but takes a lot of reference to the point is refered as aoe 2.2 or any other similar.
Aoe is an macro game focused but thta doesnt mean fight has to be pasive all the time. aoe 2 is the prime example of this which ironically is one of the feature that aoe 4 dont copy because terrain bonus dont exist. As you said macro reward so much that defensive strat becomes more rewarded than being active during early-early mid phase
The goal of it may not necessary line with my vision but tell me: the game worked with its own? if its not my one, which one you suggest.
content in the civs, sp, mods. there a list of it in the beginning which is something didnt happened in other aoe
there a difference between fact and opinion but you took to the discussion the prove of my saying so thanks.
I’m not going to comment further on the subject here as we’ve missed the point of the thread (by the way, you’ve said the wrong things about AoE3 DE). If you want to discuss something, you have my PM.
hi I haven’t read all of the convo. something about cav dominance and team games broken. i do find some team games broken but not for these reasons. all civ and unit choice are fine with balance and depend on skill and decision making . the thing i find broken is when conq 3 faces a plat2/3. there is literally no chance. they should be a stop in match making. conq plus don’t face plat. people using beastqt vid for example. ill use him too. if he faces me and two other plat he still wins or even other conq 3 players. there is no point. other games ive played like fifa and cod mw all have some sort of skill based match making. even chess dot com has match making on elo. we have elo but i get put up with conq quite a lot. however the lobby also gets stopped because of queue dodge. but some games happen. sometimes in my team. and they Carrie the win on either side. the end point im making is make it so there at least a chance. plat vs diamond ok. plat vs conq no point
I’m really sorry to stretch this out further.
You don’t have to react to my last post and to the tons of links and evidence, that you asked for.
Though I can’t tolerate this public accusation against me, having said “wrong things” without base.
This is not very sportsmanlike dude, just accusing me of it without base/proof and closing the discussion.
Oh, for the bonus, my bad!
I confused that with the outposts.
They indeed got a multiplier of 1.5X against cav in aoe3 and aoe3DE.
I also clearly remember the tc doing tons of damage to hussairs age2 as well, especially with CM card.
Just checked the walls:
Walls in TAD had 3000hp, in DE 1500.
In aoe4 pallisade walls have 1250hp and 50 ranged resist.
An element costs 7wood in aoe4 (initial 15w) and in aoe3 TAD/DE 5 wood, so its cheaper in aoe3.
Plus the walls in aoe3 could be upgraded later and didn’t have to be replaced by stonewalls.
As I understand it, it’s easier to wall in aoe3, especially on maps like Deccan.
And again, when cav breaks through, you can block and snare them, in aoe4 they’ll run past your units.
I was right on the wall being more durable and cheap in aoe3 then pallisade wall in aoe4 afterall.
“the units are produced earlier and have better siege”
do you mean aoe3 or aoe4 ?
Please quote my words/sentences when you mention them, so I can more easily address the points.
Pikes have acceptionally high siege damage relative to their price in aoe3 (de) and that’s the point.
They not only destroy cav and punish them when they are passing by/try to retreat, but are also a serious threat early game already for an all in.
Send 8 pikes and train 5 skirms early age2 with dutch and see the enemy panic at his base.
This does not work for aoe4.
There he’d just laugh and go for raids while his town is safe, just has to be a bit careful with vills vs archers.
But the buildings are safe.
Edit:
just calculated for age1 spearmen (not hardened), needing 10 hits to take down a knight.
hardened spearmen need 8 hits as you said, same as in aoe3.
Whereas in aoe3 the hussair can not escape once the pike hits him. Hell get snared and quickly focused down by other pikes before he can run.
Leaving fights should snare the units and receive 25% bonus damage from the back.
Also, AOEIV really needs micro gameplay.
Macro is too boring in this game.
People want action and adventure with a decent macro.
Look at DOTA, LOL, Starcraft, CSGO, Warzone, Valorant, AOE2 etc
These successful games focus on action
People love action, it keeps the game fun.
AOEIV is full of the macro.
People do this in their work or school…
We want action to get out of the box and relax with packed heat.
This is why AOEIV needs to focus more action intensive gameplay.
Action games get the most player base.
So improve everything that is related to action and get those players back.
Hello, there are lots of beautiful ideas. Mine probably repeat I just wish to leave the quantity in some way:
Team surrender. The team should have a surrender vote. A player in a team must not be able to solo surrender and leave the game unpunished. This will allow the team to come to decision to stop the game, and will try to stop single player abandoning the game early. This targets 4v4 games where this is quite often.
Player who disconnects gains penalty. Penalty system can be anything: penalty points, low priority queue, cool off time (temporary multiplayer suspension), etc. Disconnecting from games has to have penalty. With this and point one we get more complete team experience. When in queue the player must be aware that the game can last up to 90 minutes (depending on game type) and they have to commit to this time.
This is a must, the penalty has to be increasing as per usual multiplayer standards.
When rage quit, connectivity issues the player gets penalty and is stopped from playing further games. This can be balanced with good and bad points which will reward less penalties to well behaved players (since bug and errors do occur).
And as often mentioned, reconnect system. Short term instabilities have to be amortized with wait time and kick vote (the in-game players decide not to wait anymore).
