How many Ages would an Empire Age, if Empires Aged through Ages? (AoE 4 Thread)

[Tvtyrant]

Well I can now consistently beat the AI on hardest within 25 minutes, so I'm hoping they patch the AI a bit. Currently I abuse Barbican of the Sun, running unguarded villagers into the enemy base and making it just outside their first landmark. My best win 1v1 was 4 deaths 47 kills, 22 minutes.

[Anteros]

Well I can now consistently beat the AI on hardest within 25 minutes, so I'm hoping they patch the AI a bit. Currently I abuse Barbican of the Sun, running unguarded villagers into the enemy base and making it just outside their first landmark. My best win 1v1 was 4 deaths 47 kills, 22 minutes.

Yeah, the AI is really bad. It basically doesn't play the game unless it has a much larger army than you.

Supposedly they're working on a better version, but given that they still haven't even fixed a lot of the major bugs from the beta, I wouldn't count on it any time soon.

[Tvtyrant]

Yeah, the AI is really bad. It basically doesn't play the game unless it has a much larger army than you.

Supposedly they're working on a better version, but given that they still haven't even fixed a lot of the major bugs from the beta, I wouldn't count on it any time soon.

The AI is similar to the AI from CoH 1, which only came out 13 years ago. We used to joke that the AI gets discouraged if you hurt it too many times and just pouts in its base, feels pretty similar.

[Tvtyrant]

So this might be the worst patch in gaming history? They didn't fix the major bugs like infinite resources, they made some new ones like infinite range abbasid spearmen, they nerfed the weakest faction the hardest and barely nerfed the strongest. No Springhald nerf despite it being the best unit, and they buffed China which was the third strongest faction into the atmosphere.

[VoxRationis]

Deciding not to nerf springalds seemed particularly strange. It shouldn't be difficult to reach the conclusion that a game about medieval warfare should not be dominated by mobile self-propelled artillery.

[Tvtyrant]

It does make it feel different from 2, so there is that aspect. My guess is the balance patch was based on bad interior testing from before they published the game, fixing beta problems. Like anything, the tiny number of people at one corporation tend not to understand the meta very well so internal testing for balance is worthless.

[Anteros]

I honestly don't know how springalds even made it to release in their current state. Me and my friends took one look at those and immediately decided they were the most broken thing in the entire game by far. Especially the Rus and Mongol versions that get extra range. They need to do less damage to cavalry and take more from them. They also need to take longer between firing and moving.

The only thing that took so long for the player base to realize how broken they are is that most high tier games were ending in feudal. Now that that's not a thing we have the springald meta.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually played the current patch. I gave up at how broken and unbalanced everything was a week or two ago.

The game is just poorly balanced all around. In most RTS if you correctly identify your opponent's strategy you can build a counter and win. In AOE4 your civ might just now have access to that counter. For example, say your opponent masses man at arms in feudal. If you're not a civ that has access to longbows, knights, your own man at arms, or crossbows you just lose. Some civs literally have no access to a counter for certain strats.