Why long-range siege units need tweaking and nerfs?

There must be many friends who watched the N4C, and it can be said that the whole process was very exciting. There are a lot of classic matches, many of which are extreme overturns and repeated tug-of-war. The balance of the latest version, Patch 11963, is very good, the overall environment of the game has been improving for a few months, but after watching the N4C game, I found that the problem with the siege weapon units is still very large.

As you can see, Abbas and the Mongols are extremely fond of training large numbers of infantry because the infantry can manufacture siege weapons. Mangonel can deal a lot of damage to ranged units, you only need to produce enough infantry protection to quickly consume the ranged units left by the opponent’s feudal age. This combination is almost unmatched in frontal battles, all you can do is generate a lot of Springald to destroy the opponent’s siege weapons and stop the infantry siege group from advancing.

I’m not saying I hate this kind of tactical play.

But this does expose a huge problem, that is, the siege weapons are consumed, and whoever wins in the Springald shoot-to-shoot phase has the qualifications to attack.

This situation is acceptable in AOE3 as there are few defensive buildings and no wartime repairs. But in AOE4, you will hoard a lot of siege units, because you need him whether you are attacking or defending, and it is much better than the crossbowman.

  1. Crossbowmen and archers will be killed by riders heavily, but siege units have high HP and can be repaired.

  2. Crossbowmen and archers only need to attack certain types of units to have considerable damage, but siege weapons can’t lose resources as long as they shoot ammunition into the crowd.

  3. Crossbowmen and archers cannot demolish buildings, which is the specialty of siege weapons.

The only disadvantage of siege weapons is that they are very slow, but this disadvantage does not exist for Mongolia and Abbas

So I think the survivability of long-range siege weapons should be greatly weakened.

I think this will have many benefits.

  1. From a historical point of view, long-range siege weapons should not have such a high HP value and can withstand so many attacks.

  2. Step archers and crossbowmen will have a more dominant position (a slight increase in France and England, a small weakening for Mongolia and Abbas)

  3. The feudal war will be more enjoyable to watch. If the siege is fragile, the attacker will not be frightened by a Mangonel who is repaired by the villagers but can exchange effectively. Players need to think more carefully about FC’s tactics

  4. The embarrassing state of China can be adjusted, (currently due to the siege weapons being too powerful in the late stage and too weak in the early stage), the power of Zhuge Nu will be stronger

  5. HRE will not have such an overwhelming advantage because of the 3 relics.

  6. In the late stage of TG, there will be no pure siege weapon clusters.

So my suggestion is to reduce the HP of ranged siege weapons (-30%)

springald HP 200 ->140 attack 30+90 → 30+50(vs siges)

Mangonel HP 240 → 160

Trebuchet HP 400 → 300

Bombard HP 400 ->300 attack 170+340->140+400(vs buliding)

Culverin HP 480 ->360 attack 85+200->85+100(vs sieges)

Due to the long attack distance of long-range siege, I believe that even if I weaken the siege’s HP, siege weapons still have a strong suppressive force on long-range units. The main idea is to increase the damage of melee units against siege weapons.

Other ideas like strengthening torches and reducing ranged armor on siege weapons. I think it’s good to have a similar effect.
What do you think?

4 Likes

Yes and no to your first point.

You have a very important decision on some maps to go siege or Knights.

Early Castle Age can still opt to go knights instead of siege and have both raiding potential and siege counter potential for an army.

Also. A keep puts a stop to all Siege advancement short of trebuchets and rams. So Siege actually becomes very map dependent.

Until you hit Imperial Age which none of the game I watched today in NC4 hit does siege hit a sort of stalemate on some maps and alternative win cons are necessary to force someone to attack. So you better hope you have the map advantage and have properly prepared come this time.

Also I watched the pros today lose large amounts of resources trying to utilize siege to absolutely no effect.

Survive capacity of siege is determined by Keeps and out of range of this with springalds and a proper unit comp that prevents the enemy from being able to target the back line that in many cases has to move to the front line to get in range and then move to back as the army moves forward. Its very similar to a Longbow, Pikeman dance vs Knights and Archers. Each player vying for better positioning as they whittle the other players units.

Problem with siege is when their isn’t room on the map to maneuverer. In which case you’re likely playing a map that has a very different siege strategy and must be taken into account.

2 Likes

I don’t think China sucks after this last patch, but with that said…yes, I totally agree about siege and have been saying this for months now: anti-unit siege weapons need to be high risk/high reward. That’s how it always was in AoE games until Relic decided to turn them into Tiger tanks. In Aoe2, even five longswordsmen (AoE2’s equivalent of AoE4’s M@A, for those who haven’t played) could instantly one-shot a mangonel if they got into range of it. Mangonel shots could be fairly easily dodged (no homing missiles), and careless mango shots could kill your own soldiers via friendly fire. Aoe4? You need a small army of M@A to clumsily load up a slow, delayed torch animation that has an attack rate almost twice as slow as its regular sword attack all while dodging guided missiles that somehow do no damage to friendly units whatsoever.

The only siege unit that should be truly “tanky” is the ram, since it must be in melee range to attack and literally cannot attack units at all (it’s also been directly or indirectly nerfed like five times since release by now as well).

I think your HP suggestions are excellent except perhaps trebs. Despite the recent buff to treb area damage, they’re still anti-building specialists that are wildly inaccurate against units. Still, I might be saying that because, like everyone else, I’ve just grown accustomed to AoE4 siege units having obscenely high HP lol.

Needless to say, the fast and cheap repair rate of siege also needs to be fixed ASAP. It’s time to end Age of Siege.

3 Likes

In fact, when Springald’s previous attack was 60+20, RAM was very good against Keep.
When changing to 30+90, the situation becomes this - you always need a lot of Springald to protect your siege units. I think if you can not only rely on Springald to counter siege units, Rider, M@A can also consume opponent’s siege units at a certain good exchange ratio, you will not need so many Springald, and will not train a lot of Mangonel.

Perhaps the Springald unit itself needs more tweaking. Mangonel’s best positioning is also to kill long-range unit clusters, and should not be too comprehensive.

I think relic needs to do more about siege units, my opinion is to adjust the HP.