My friends,
Battering rams were common in feudal age, but disappeared after imperial age. However, the expensive fragile Bombard and low damage Trebuchet don’t always fit the battlefield. We need a battering ram to break through the defense quickly when we need time. After a long time of playing AOE4 and comparing it to AOE2, I finally find an important reason why Battering Ram is very weak in the late game in AOE4 (after 30min).
The following are personal opinions：
Compared to other siege weapons, Battering Ram’s performance data is well, (40 damage/second, only 1 population occupancy, cost 250 wood) but using infantry to build in real time is difficult to achieve in late game, which makes it extremely rare. Battering Ram becomes unusable because you need a bunch of infantry not fighting to build Battering Ram. This not only reduces the combat population at the front, but also drains the player’s energy to command the infantry to build Battering Ram.
But if the siege shop can produce Battering Ram, this situation will be greatly improved
Hopefully officials will add a tech that allows Siege Workshop to train Battering Ram.
What do you think?
An even bigger issue with ram is pathing. Often it doesn’t follow attack command (attack another building instead of target), goes around instead of taking straight path. Pathing and command are the things that makes ranged anti building siege a superior choice to ram.
Honestly, I miss the “Capped Ram” from Aoe2, especially the metal ram’s head it had.
Since in Age IV there is no evolution of siege weapons, nor to elite or veteran version (which is good because they are not people, they are machines), a ram-headed version was not considered.
In fact, I think they should at least give the battering ram some buff, something like a technology “metal head” to make it do 40% more damage and be not only more effective, but visually more “cool”.
I mean, there’s already precedent for techs that visually change the weapons of units, like HRE " Two-handed Weapons, or HRE “Dual maces”, Delhi Sultanate " Honed Blades", or the naval techs that add a cannon to some ships.
There is a tech that buffs rams/trebs late game (+30% damage), and one that buffs mangonels (faster reload), and one that makes all siege move faster. I am not sure they are good enough though.
I think the game overall needs a bit more to help accelerate it to a close if Imperial age is reached, or give more comeback potential. (I think I will create a thread on this topic soon)
I am not sure what exactly that should look like, but one idea is Imperial techs that buff siege, like something that makes mangonels have more damage and aoe like they used to. Maybe also a tech that makes rams faster and do a lot more damage to buildings.
Siege needs to remain fragile though to avoid another siege fest meta.
Dude, you can obviously see that Bombard is strong, but pushes slowly due to high population occupancy and vulnerability, especially with units like Culverin.
Without siege weapons, attacks are often costly.
The Battering rams currently have good late-game performance data (with full tech bonuses). But its numbers are hard to come by.
In AOE2, you can use Siege Workshop to continuously produce rams to use them as shields (draw fire) and gradually destroy the opposing defensive structures. However, in AOE4, it is too difficult to continuously build Battering rams, often unable to carry out continuous attrition war.