LetswaveaBook

There was an AoE4 tournament and the finals are on youtube. The game does not seem to be like my taste.

Hey CJ, you know, This is an OG gangsta gaming community from Grove Streat. What's up with OG Loc, is he still rappin'?

I think it is not because people hated them, unit pushing was the culprit. If you put your archers in box formation, they would move fairly smoothly, and units without a formation had path-finding issues. Not only is the path finding superior, also the fact that units can stack has been disadvantageous to archers. In A24, when the front row of skirmishers attacked the archers, the ones behind needed to path around their allies to find a spot from which they could shoot. In A24 you would never get all your skirmishers shooting at the enemy in a smooth motion. First of all, no matter how creative the solution is, archers seem to suffer from a material disadvantage in their stats. I think A24 mainly had good archers because turn rates made pathfinding awkward. Sometimes if you have the material disadvantage, there is not much you can do except getting better material. I ran some tests in the scenario editor with 10 basic pikes+10 basic skirms against 10 advanced spears+10 basic skrims, the side with the pikes won. If you do the same test with a weaker ranged unit, the advanced units get the win (which they deserve). Also the attack-ground(or attack group) would be a nice feature, but it does not solve the pike issue. All pike factions do have access to skirmishers and archers of some kind. Anyway, this is not about AoE4, whereas the OP wanted to talk about AoE4.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone should have said something, and since he didn't say it, I will say it. In delenda est, you can place farmsteads and storehouses in neutral territory and they don't give extra territory, so you wont have that problem. I think being able to place farmsteads outside your territory might make the game more interesting. However that feature does no solve a the other issues mentioned in this tread.

Spear cav also underperforms against swordsmen, infantry javelins and slingers.

Also if you attack a deer it runs away. If you attack it once and then press halt, your unit will not kill the deer and allow the deer to run towards the CC or farmstead.

I wanted to upload some more replays. In the first one I saw Aslan was Seleucids and estimated that he would go for an early p2 and turn to cavalry archers. He went to p2 with mostly women, no barracks at 72 population and 4 stables to create cavalry archers. That plan was ruined because I had two stables and paid him a visit before he was able to get going. So that highlights the weakness of that particular strategy of Aslan. Thereafter we played a game on Hyrcanian Shores and that had some cavalry commitment of me and Aslan as well. We were on the same team, but we ran into Alre's spear mercenary cavalry which proved to be efficient. I struggled in that game as I was badly hit by alre for an unlucky moment, shortly after recovering I run out of wood in my territory and migrated some units to the shores to build a dock for some wood collection. In the end I had 170 women as Persians. Cavalry arches vs. Jav Cav.zip Hyrcanian shores.zip

Oh, this is hardly any news. All melee units deal double damage compared to CS, the odd exception being the spear infantry who also has 10% faster attack rate. Melee champion infantry see their HP doubled and +3 armor compared to CS(for 275% total durability). Champion spear cavalry see their HP increased by 15/8-th and get +4 armor (for 286% total durability). While sword cavalry have a preferable armor typing to begin with, they see their HP increased by 15/8-th and and +4 hack armor and +5 pierce armor. I don't see why the oddity of +5 pierce armor is needed to begin with. Finally, spear cavalry has been disappointing for me. I would say they score a 4/10 against infantry and a 6/10 against cavarly. Spear cav narrowly get the job done against other cavalry but spear cav seriously disappoint against infantry if you factor in costs (and lack of gathering for CS). However I have seen post of @BreakfastBurrito_007 that lead me to think that some player consider (champion) spear cavalry very useful and OP. So I would be careful with buffing them. Spear cavalry has a DPS of 5.6 (9.8 against cavalry), sword cavalry has a DPS of 8.66 and javelin cavalry has a DPS of 14.4, which seems to indicate to me that the 1.75x advantage the spear cavalry has against other cavalry gets wasted by its low base damage. Anyway, comparing the units that are not directly related to this topic can preferably be discussed somewhere else.

The units should be equal, so the result should be decided by randomness and should be equally likely to go either way. I ran some test and I believe this is the case. If you place on units, let them fight and then press "reset" to rerun it, the same situation will be simulated exactly the same. Moving around the units a little means that a new situation is simulated. So if you try different positions you would get different results. The units should be equal. The Mauryas do not have stronger jav cav, but due to their ability to use to worker elephant for efficient hunting, they can afford more than any. So Mauryas can do an unique strategy with a common unit. The idea is not to streamline all faction, but rather to give them unique and interesting options. That has the result that not all options are balanced perfectly. Anyway, you are free to have your own opinion on whether streamlining or diversity is the better option.

We should indeed really find the real life pierce damage value of an Javelin! Our current value seems not good for gameplay IMHO.

Uhm, Uhm... Uhm, Uhm, I uploaded another youtube video highlighting a different build with Carthaginian mercenary strategies than my previous videos. In the previous videos I showed a build that has significant limitations. I should really stop using the word "uhm". uhm, lets upload it anyway and try to work on that in another video. If I were too picky, I would never get to upload anything.

I played a game against Dakeyras who played as Mauryas and he showed some good cavalry play. He showed that Mauryas have potential to deal some blows to the opponent. In the end, I defended well and he had probably to many archers (it might have been better to recruit spearman instead), which I think was what cost him the game. With the Briton hero, the Mauryan archers suffer from a serious speed disadvantage, so that makes them extra bad in this situation. I played as Britons, who are in my view probably one of the best factions to resist Mauryas. Against Sparta I think the strategy has a better chance. I think that for the Maurya player playing in this style is the best you can do as Mauryas in 1v1s and it probably can give better results on another day. Maur vs Brit.zip

Undoubtedly if the women and infantry would gather hunt faster that could open a lot of new strategies, which some people might even consider dirty(cavalry) strategies. However it is a valid question none the less. There are 3 options and scouting would come at high cost. Rushing and naked booming are the risky ones. You could chose the safest of the 3 options, playing defensive or decide to bear the high costs of scouting. Also in serious games, I like to do something that is in between all of those options, making a few cavalry to enjoy nearby hunt and recruiting some infantry before the first barracks. If you have nearby hunt, that is a very convenient way to make a few (mounted) soldiers without letting your development suffer. If you run out of livestock, the cavalry go idle. Even if livestock arrives later, then the cavalry stay idle until you command them to. sometimes its get messy when the opponent enters your base with a minor cavalry force. Even though it takes only a few seconds to sort things out with the current tools at our disposal, my minutes have only 60 seconds and every moment there are at least two and sometimes more things I want to do at the same moment. When playing a competitive game, I am a busy man and don't like to see any precious seconds being wasted.

The answer of that question depends on whether the units allow different strategies. If there are different types of units that function very similar, there is no need to have them. For example, I suggested a butcher unit, which can be useful for using corrals. The butcher unit would be a little cheaper and possible automatically search for nearby livestock. If you want to use camel archers as ptolemies and want to use corrals. Then the current situation is that with double clicking the camels, you select both the camels for militairy and the ones for gathering, which is annoying.

If you are planning to do a livestream, please announce them on the forum.

You did a test with a spearman, not with a pikeman. It is true that the spearman wins. Without all upgrades, the pikeman(the one with 10 armor) also wins, but if the Mauryan player has the +10% HP upgrade and the final attack upgrade the sword cavalry should win. Even if both the spear cav and the mauryan sword cav have all upgrades, the spear cavalry loses. However it is unlikely that in a 1v1 someone researches all upgrades and without the final hack armor, the sword cavalry has the advantage. Anyway, I accept that it is a though to beat spartans with Mauryans after 10 minutes.

I would dislike to make them super uncomfortable to use to use. If you want them to have short range, why not let it be a melee unit. In 1v1s, you will feel the costs of the cavalry which shows its limitations. I conjecture that in a team game, when the pocket player requires more time to build his cavalry army because of the extra expenses, the players at the flank will feel that. So that might give the false impression that the expenses are bearable and the cavalry player is doing well, because his absense is not directly felt by himself. I still think most cavalry is fairly balanced by its cost. Iberian and Roman cavalry is obviously not well balanced, though Roman cavalry is not a top treat in 1v1s.

That is untrue according to me. There are really strategies which some faction struggle to deal with. So you could still play to the best of your abilities and be defeated by a similar skilled player. I think for Macedonians it is difficult to deal with a Briton player that opens with a stable (or two). Also mysticjim casted a game where I used a mercenary strategy in a Macedonian mirror against dakeyras and he could not win, despite not playing bad.

If the Iberian player plays well, I think all of these strategies do not work in a 1v1, except the one with Ptolemies. If you have any evidence to show the contrary, I would be happy to see it.

Booming=turtling. Lets assume that you play a 1v1 and are not the Ptolemies, which are even more OP than Iberians. So if you have cheaper javelineers at the start(which are the strongest CS ranged infantry), then it is very difficult for the opponent to outboom you. Neither does aggressive play help, since there are to much javelineers. So basically many factions are left without any way of preventing Iberians from taking an advantage (That is 1). In p3, they can deal a quick and hard blow with javelineers due to their strong boom and javelineers being the best CS ranged unit. That is the 2nd reason why it is difficult to take them on. So how about dragging out the game, does that work? With Indibil they can really fast recruit new soldiers after you lose them, so the Iberian player can very easily send a new wave of units towards you. They also have stronger swordsmen (both CS and champion), which are also cheaper with Indibil. With Indibil garrisoned in the CC, he can't be taken out.. So that is 3 reasons. Do sneaky strategies work against them? Because of the walls you can't really kill all their farmers easily neither is it easy to take out the starting CC with a sneaky attack. Seleucids, Persians and Mauryas can try to wear them out with horse archers or chariot archers, but only seluecids have decent chance of surviving against the push that the Iberian player after reaching p3. So that would be my 4th reason. Barely any strategy seems really possible against Iberians, assuming equal skill of course. That is my take on it.

I was thinking about giving the unit the similar potential as the Briton chariot against most units, with the fire cav retaining a specialty against siege and buildings. I also ran tests with the chariot, which gets beaten by cataphract(8hp remaining) and the roman consular body gaurd also defeats it(22 HP remaining). Also if we compare the chariot and other cavalry, we see that the main oddity is a DPS of 28.8, which is far higher than most other units. I also think that Iberians are OP without their champion cavalry.

I am not sure about this, but I feel that once you get 21 years of experience you will realize that these numbers are just in-game numbers and they aren't related to reality. The numbers probably have been chosen such that they make the game feel nice, such as addressing the complaints on the forums about the game being too slow.

I agree with many points that mysticjim made, except the assumption that you are 14 or 15. There is no reason why I would assume that you couldn't be 16 years old. Lets put that aside. Also, I always thought about tournaments as investments. T90 has hosted several high prizepool Age of Empires 2 tournaments. He is a professional streamer and gains popularity for hosting the tournament and also his audience indirectly pays for whatever prize money he puts into it. Also Microsoft, the publisher of Age of Empires 2 and other companies put prize money into it. Currently if you would host a tournament with a prizepool, that would just mean donating money to Vali (without further return) and he might appreciate that. If you want to make 0ad more popular, I think it is more fruitful to create an environment where excellent 0ad youtube (or other media) content can be created.

Mauryan sword cav are so strong, they can win against the pikemen/spear cav that are supposed to counter them. Skiritai are far from being champions and they can only gather at half the speed. The skiritai are stronger than the mauryan sword cavalry in a 1v1 though. If chariots die to short ranged infantry, that is not their fault. That can only be caused by neglecting micro. This is neither true. An Indian elephant can take on up to 10 skirmishers on its own and is as resistant as 10 spearman. The point is that the elephants can't take on 40 skirmishers. However I have to admit that defending against an early p3 push can be difficult as Mauryans against Spartans.