AoE 4 balance between infantry cav and archers compare to AoE 2

[vinigarcia87]

Hello guys!

I not a Aoe 4 player, but I'm watching the games on redbull wololo.

I notice many infantry units being used but not sure how they compare to pikes and swordsman on Aoe 2.
So my question is:
are the units good balanced on Aoe 2?
infantry are more useful or is the same as Aoe 2?
Archers are too overpower?
Cavs are dominant?

If is better balanced than aoe 2, what they did better?

Thanks!

 

[LowEloNobody]

It's just a completely different unit role.
MAA is the counter to archers, so you need specialized xbow to kill MAA, but Archers soft-counter Xbow
You can't really compare the "balance" of the different unit types across games because the units themselves are different in function than AoE2

 

[Zeev]

AOE 4 is more of hard counters, you can't really make only one unit type and expect to win. That is something I like about it, you can't just make 50 crossbowmen or arbalest and destroy everything.

 

[kalpit00]

From my severe lack of knowledge of aoe4, I believe this system of "hard counters" in Aoe4 is "balanced" because aoeIV does not have other factors, notably arrows missing moving targets (aka micro in aoe2) and no hill bonuses.

from what I understand, aoe4 battles are more about positioning of units, and mixing and matching a bunch of different counters. It is very hard for us aoe2 people who haven't played enough aoeIV to judge battles, but it can be seen that infantry do play a significantly better role in aoeIV battles because they don't die to Cavs and Archers as easily.

In aoe2, champion line is supposed to counter trash units. However, they are extremely hard countered by xbows or CAs or any other ranged unit. Even skirms in enough mass can do some damage (soft counter?) to them. Knight line obviously wrecks them, same as in aoe4. What's worse is hussar - a trash unit which the champs are supposed to kill, easily wins vs champs and has better utility as raiding unit. And lastly, siege - in aoe2, scorps and onagers with good micro can kill groups of slow champs with aim ground (This is the reason why only fast infantry units which can tank some damage work - like huskarls, eagles, ghulams, etc)

In aoe4, things are different. We have something called light and hard units. Not to go too deep into all the units, but as for common units, spearmen line, horsemen (hussars), gunpowder, camels, and most notably archers (more on this in a bit) are light units. Whereas, knight line and MAA line are hard units.

Thats cool, but the interesting point is that in aoeIV, we do not have skirms. We have archers which have bonus damage vs light infantry units. Therefore, archers will kill spearmen (kind of like how skirms kill spears in aoe2) but as for MAA, which are hard infantry units, archer line will not do the bonus damage. Thus, we need crossbowmen line, which have a specific bonus damage vs hard units. Thus, the crossbowmen can kill MAA decently. One thing to note is that crossbowmen are a bit expensive than archers, so its a situational unit, where you kind of want to add them vs hard units like MAA and knights only. And to complete the triangle of units, is the Horsemen (hussars). Unlike aoe2 tho, horsemen have a huge bonus damage vs ranged units, so much that 1 on 1 they will eat the archers and crossbows. As expected, spearmen hard counter horsemen (and so heavy cavalry like knights can overwhelm due to sheer armor and hp and attack).

So TL:DR, to answer your question in aoeIV, as there is no X factor involved like hills, you have this Serjeant like MAA unit which tanks the archers, but dies to crossbow, but then enemy adds horsemen to counter crossbow, to which you usually add spears which again get countered by MAA. Simply put, without hills or other factors, straight on, MAA has guaranteed effect in a battle, be it vs spears or archers or even enemy horsemen due to good armor, with the exception that they die to crossbow (can think of as slingers), but crossbow already gets countered by horsemen.

It gets more complicated when you introduce heavy cavalry like knights and then camels and siege, but as for the triangle of counters, this is what it is, and this is why MAA find their place in aoe IV battles more often than in aoe2, where they just die easily without impacting too much

 

[Lord Bolton]

Hello guys!

I not a Aoe 4 player, but I'm watching the games on redbull wololo.

I notice many infantry units being used but not sure how they compare to pikes and swordsman on Aoe 2.
So my question is:
are the units good balanced on Aoe 2?
infantry are more useful or is the same as Aoe 2?
Archers are too overpower?
Cavs are dominant?

If is better balanced than aoe 2, what they did better?

Thanks!

generic infantry with exception to a few civs is extremely weak in aoe2. almost unusable in most circumstances and never seen unless vs meso civs at top level. Since aoe2 DE release, there is not much lag spikes/input delays, the archers can kite back and shoot at men-at-arms and completely destroy them with much ease and devs have not made any efforts to make the unitline viable as a generic gold unit is expected to be.
in 99% games, cav and archer-line is all you see and often times. Going Unique unit at pro level is considered risky for various reasons.
the main reason aoe4 core unit design feels way better is because of the rock-paper-scissors treatment of counter units. archer - spear - horsemen counter triangle and heavy - light armor balance. This is also the reason why aoe4 games force the player to go for an army composition rather than mono unit comp. It is also way harder to micro in a pitched battle in aoe4 because a lot of unit types head into the battle and only a skilled player can extract maximum value from his units. I remember daut, hera and many others state micro in aoe4 is harder because of the mixed army composition and flanking with cav is designed better in aoe4

 

[Zeev]

To add everything that was said on above. I think AOE4's balance is closer to what Sandy Petersen wanted to do with AOE2. If you listen to his interviews on Youtube, there are at least 2 really long, really good, interviews. He mentioned that when balancing AOE2, he was mostly responsible for that. He mentioned that he read some books on medieval military tactics and what he learned is that gerenally cavalry counters archers, archers counter infantry and infantry counter cavalry. AOE 4 is closer to that, but it also takes into account the fact that heavy armor was a game changer.

 

[Lokalo]

Yeah, but at same time it means you have to do AI comp pretty much every game, no? So it takes a bit from civilizations. I don't know too much about aoe4, although from watching it I would kind of like something in between, this triangle of aoe4 feels too boring to me, while in aoe2 one unit type pushes are too strong.

Also I think there might be few other important factors to talk about, which were not mentioned. Maybe I'm wrong, but watching few games of aoe4 felt like spearmen line is much faster than in aoe2, felt like they even similar speed or they had some speed increase when they near target, not sure, but one of issues why pikemen doesnt really work in castle age in aoe2, that if you don't have siege and can't push/make a real threat, knights are just running around your base and you keep chasing shadows.

Also champs can be really good and I think underestimated by many, sadly they are very expensive to tech in and become good when you can spam them, that's why I think dravidians's bonus becomes very handy with 50% discount. And yes, I think it should be somehow addressed, that hussars are bit too strong in late game, maybe champs could get extra some extra atk against scout line idk. But feels weird to be taking battles with gold units vs trash units and let's say doing just "fine", while they are also much faster and has bigger potentional for raiding and so on.

Not sure how it would change game, maybe wouldnt change early of the game til imp still, but I don't understand why champ upgrades are so costly if ppl barely use them and they are countered quite easily with hc or arbs.

 

[kalpit00]

Also champs can be really good and I think underestimated by many, sadly they are very expensive to tech in and become good when you can spam them, that's why I think dravidians's bonus becomes very handy with 50% discount

Ehh the biggest problem with champs is you think its a good decision to make them vs skirms, but thats losing move. Enemy just clicks xbows/arbs and then spends wood/gold on xbows while making for food eco and vils, but you are losing food and gold under TCs/Castle for what in return? a bit of map position.

It might seem like you are spamming and pushing, but whats happening is you are likely having horrible trades as champs die much harder to arrow fire, and enemy comes out with a ball of xbow and better food eco to then tech into hussar or some other unit. 5 minutes later you get pushed back and realize your food bank is gone, enemy is starting to raid you with light cav and your champs cant chase for ****, enemy makes 1-2 trebs and starts pushing slowly and you cant dive with your champs. Its a disaster situation, and when you compare this to cavaliers, you see why cavaliers albeit expensive are such a better unit - you can spread them around 2-3 here and there to make opponent react in multiple places, you can send some few to chase in defense, you can dive for trebs/snipe siege and you can run away from battles and manuever easily. So much utility

maybe champs could get extra some extra atk against scout line idk. But feels weird to be taking battles with gold units vs trash units and let's say doing just "fine", while they are also much faster and has bigger potentional for raiding and so on.

Underrated example but Aztecs and Burmese Champs on Arena are the only two champion units which trade effectively and kill Hussars, due to 21/20 attack each. I second this idea, give longswords +1 or +2 attack vs cavalry, or give THS/Champs +2/+3 attack vs scout line to see how this impacts them

 

[Lokalo]

It might seem like you are spamming and pushing, but whats happening is you are likely having horrible trades as champs die much harder to arrow fire, and enemy comes out with a ball of xbow and better food eco to then tech into hussar or some other unit. 5 minutes later you get pushed back and realize your food bank is gone, enemy is starting to raid you with light cav and your champs cant chase for ****, enemy makes 1-2 trebs and starts pushing slowly and you cant dive with your champs. Its a disaster situation, and when you compare this to cavaliers, you see why cavaliers albeit expensive are such a better unit - you can spread them around 2-3 here and there to make opponent react in multiple places, you can send some few to chase in defense, you can dive for trebs/snipe siege and you can run away from battles and manuever easily. So much utility

Well if you have rams, xbow/arbs become less of a threat, also sniping enemy tcs with champs feels great and if you are at like 60+ farms can spam champs easily. But sure, few cavalier while tc missing half shots and champ where tc hits most shots makes huge difference raiding.

Underrated example but Aztecs and Burmese Champs on Arena are the only two champion units which trade effectively and kill Hussars, due to 21/20 attack each. I second this idea, give longswords +1 or +2 attack vs cavalry, or give THS/Champs +2/+3 attack vs scout line to see how this impacts them

I imagine dravidian wootz steel champs can be great too. If we are talking about arena maybe is fine idk, but honestly it feels bit weird to me how expensive those techs are like druzhina. Sure is great tech, especially that it affects halbs too. But 1200 food 500gold is really a lot, especially if you just started to tech into champs, you need tons of resources to get everything, while if opponent has hc, all he needs to get is chemistry.

To get to champion line alone costs 1300 Food and 555gold not including supplies and takes 260 seconds of research time.

While cavalier is 300 food 300gold and takes 100 seconds. On top of that Paladin needs additional 1300 food and 750 gold and 170 seconds.

So in total is 1300/555 vs 1600/1050, and research time is almost same, especially if you include that you can't queue all champ techs, so you will have some idle time for sure. And cavalry is way more versatile, way easier to snipe trebs, raid etc.

Basically cost/effectiveness of cavalier and champ it just makes no sense going champs early, unless you are in closed map. Value that you get for 300/300 upgrade and mobility is amazing. Sure champs are not costly on gold, but this design makes them to be what they are, late game option, cuz its really hard to tech in, nor they have any great match-ups(?), meaning even hussars with skirms can do decent against it.

On top of it ,add that they die by castle fire easily and by that time opponents will have at least few castles around, means you need siege and usually you want rams with champs, so food amount you need to prepare ram+champ push becomes even bigger.

I might be wrong, idk, but I already won few games with dravidians where I was defending with pikemen vs knights, then going imp and getting cheap halb and dude without arbs(most cav civs) was adding skirms and I was teching into champs behind and it worked really well, even if his civ has hc, when he already sees 20 champs can be too late to switch and raiding with champs is quite nice if there is no castle around. Although it works way better with dravidians, cuz you save on halbs, then you save 50% on champ switch, so you have your champs way faster. And hc is great counter to champ, although only if you fighting in one spot if you start raiding hc is not that great and also costs quite a lot. Of course there are many factors, this was mostly on EW, where overchops and stuff happens a lot, in arena raiding with champs isn't as easy, but I still see it possible to work on many cav civs, halb+champ+rams is quite nice composition especially if you able to push from 2 sides, then outmicroing champs with arbs/hc becomes way more difficult, at least in lower elo. Also champs doesnt't cost much gold so you can spam this comp for long time.

 

[vinigarcia87]

To add everything that was said on above. I think AOE4's balance is closer to what Sandy Petersen wanted to do with AOE2. If you listen to his interviews on Youtube, there are at least 2 really long, really good, interviews. He mentioned that when balancing AOE2, he was mostly responsible for that. He mentioned that he read some books on medieval military tactics and what he learned is that gerenally cavalry counters archers, archers counter infantry and infantry counter cavalry. AOE 4 is closer to that, but it also takes into account the fact that heavy armor was a game changer.

Ok, but "cavalry counters archers, archers counter infantry and infantry counter cavalry" happens on aoe 2.
except by MAA, that don't counter cavs.
So given MAA bonus vs cavs would fix the problem? make them win vs knights or at least make 2 maa kill 1 knight?
That's where I don't understand how it works on aoe 4... the infantry (heavy infantry) is much faster? it have bonus vs heavy cavs?

 

[vinigarcia87]

Ehh the biggest problem with champs is you think its a good decision to make them vs skirms, but thats losing move. Enemy just clicks xbows/arbs and then spends wood/gold on xbows while making for food eco and vils, but you are losing food and gold under TCs/Castle for what in return? a bit of map position.

It might seem like you are spamming and pushing, but whats happening is you are likely having horrible trades as champs die much harder to arrow fire, and enemy comes out with a ball of xbow and better food eco to then tech into hussar or some other unit. 5 minutes later you get pushed back and realize your food bank is gone, enemy is starting to raid you with light cav and your champs cant chase for ****, enemy makes 1-2 trebs and starts pushing slowly and you cant dive with your champs. Its a disaster situation, and when you compare this to cavaliers, you see why cavaliers albeit expensive are such a better unit - you can spread them around 2-3 here and there to make opponent react in multiple places, you can send some few to chase in defense, you can dive for trebs/snipe siege and you can run away from battles and manuever easily. So much utility


Underrated example but Aztecs and Burmese Champs on Arena are the only two champion units which trade effectively and kill Hussars, due to 21/20 attack each. I second this idea, give longswords +1 or +2 attack vs cavalry, or give THS/Champs +2/+3 attack vs scout line to see how this impacts them

indeed... xbow costs only wood and gold feels too OP then?
'cause all strong gold units costs food and gold. But archers let you get away with strong unit AND good eco.
that seems to be a good thing to attack, change archers costs to food instead of gold. How that would play for the general balance, you think?
what are Aoe 4 archers/xbows costs compare to other units?

 

[vinigarcia87]

Well if you have rams, xbow/arbs become less of a threat, also sniping enemy tcs with champs feels great and if you are at like 60+ farms can spam champs easily. But sure, few cavalier while tc missing half shots and champ where tc hits most shots makes huge difference raiding.


I imagine dravidian wootz steel champs can be great too. If we are talking about arena maybe is fine idk, but honestly it feels bit weird to me how expensive those techs are like druzhina. Sure is great tech, especially that it affects halbs too. But 1200 food 500gold is really a lot, especially if you just started to tech into champs, you need tons of resources to get everything, while if opponent has hc, all he needs to get is chemistry.

To get to champion line alone costs 1300 Food and 555gold not including supplies and takes 260 seconds of research time.

While cavalier is 300 food 300gold and takes 100 seconds. On top of that Paladin needs additional 1300 food and 750 gold and 170 seconds.

So in total is 1300/555 vs 1600/1050, and research time is almost same, especially if you include that you can't queue all champ techs, so you will have some idle time for sure. And cavalry is way more versatile, way easier to snipe trebs, raid etc.

Basically cost/effectiveness of cavalier and champ it just makes no sense going champs early, unless you are in closed map. Value that you get for 300/300 upgrade and mobility is amazing. Sure champs are not costly on gold, but this design makes them to be what they are, late game option, cuz its really hard to tech in, nor they have any great match-ups(?), meaning even hussars with skirms can do decent against it.

On top of it ,add that they die by castle fire easily and by that time opponents will have at least few castles around, means you need siege and usually you want rams with champs, so food amount you need to prepare ram+champ push becomes even bigger.

I might be wrong, idk, but I already won few games with dravidians where I was defending with pikemen vs knights, then going imp and getting cheap halb and dude without arbs(most cav civs) was adding skirms and I was teching into champs behind and it worked really well, even if his civ has hc, when he already sees 20 champs can be too late to switch and raiding with champs is quite nice if there is no castle around. Although it works way better with dravidians, cuz you save on halbs, then you save 50% on champ switch, so you have your champs way faster. And hc is great counter to champ, although only if you fighting in one spot if you start raiding hc is not that great and also costs quite a lot. Of course there are many factors, this was mostly on EW, where overchops and stuff happens a lot, in arena raiding with champs isn't as easy, but I still see it possible to work on many cav civs, halb+champ+rams is quite nice composition especially if you able to push from 2 sides, then outmicroing champs with arbs/hc becomes way more difficult, at least in lower elo. Also champs doesnt't cost much gold so you can spam this comp for long time.

yeah, very high cost to get champs, indeed.
there is many ways to fix that, make techs cheaper, faster. maybe make maa tech instant when you get to castle age, and swordsman instant when you get to imperial? you still have to pay for it, but it's instant tho (teching maa in feudal still takes time, just in castle that it became instant).
maybe wouldnt be fine to grant for free techs like arson or squires (I understand that they are techs not free so pikes don't became too strong for free?).

 

[Zeev]

Ok, but "cavalry counters archers, archers counter infantry and infantry counter cavalry" happens on aoe 2.
except by MAA, that don't counter cavs.
So given MAA bonus vs cavs would fix the problem? make them win vs knights or at least make 2 maa kill 1 knight?
That's where I don't understand how it works on aoe 4... the infantry (heavy infantry) is much faster? it have bonus vs heavy cavs?

Where AOE2 falls apart in that is that cavarly doesn't really counter archers that well.

MAA in AOE4 counters light units (spears, archers and horsemen). MAA doesn't have any bonus damage, they just have so high armor and hp that light units only tickle them. MAA gets countered by crossbowmen (bonus against heavy units), hand cannoneers (high dmg) and knights (high dmg, hp and armor).

 

[kalpit00]

indeed... xbow costs only wood and gold feels too OP then?
'cause all strong gold units costs food and gold. But archers let you get away with strong unit AND good eco.
that seems to be a good thing to attack, change archers costs to food instead of gold. How that would play for the general balance, you think?
what are Aoe 4 archers/xbows costs compare to other units?

no we dont want to change cost type of everything. Aoe2 balance is fine as it is, only thing is infantry is unviable in castle age. Devs have been trying to find the balance for longswords since ages, and after the recent buff of +1 melee armor, it seemed they do better vs knights, but you never want to make them vs knights anyways. And you don't want to make them vs archers either. There's your dilemma. They find their use in other situations, vs eagles or some UUs, trash wars in imp, or in certain maps where you get to the desired army comp before any huge battles take place

 

[Instinctz]

Aoe2 balance is fine as it is, only thing is infantry is unviable in castle age

short of a complete balance overhaul I don't see this ever changing, honestly.
because short of a complete overhaul, the only way to make gold infantry compete in castle age would be to buff them so much that they would be completely busted.

 

[Giuseppe551]

I think giving the swordsmen line a charge mechanic would work in theory. And I don't mean "charge their attack stat" whatever that nonsense is, I mean charge like zealots in sc2. Would help them close the gap to ranged units and is pretty easy to balance. Whether it can be added to the game is a different question entirely, probably not.

 

[uberkerl]

aoe4 MAA shouldnt really be compared to Champions, they are more like a Sarjent (and for HRE closer to an EW with their higher speed)


The aoe2 Champion line doesnt really exist in aoe4.


The counters in general are harder with the diffrence between armored units and non armored units beeing way bigger.

 

[kalpit00]

th

aoe4 MAA shouldnt really be compared to Champions, they are more like a Sarjent (and for HRE closer to an EW with their higher speed)


The aoe2 Champion line doesnt really exist in aoe4.


The counters in general are harder with the diffrence between armored units and non armored units beeing way bigger.

thats what i was saying. MAA in aoe4 are basically serjeants. And crossbow in aoe4 are basically slinger + genoese crossbow mix

 

[Instinctz]

I mean charge like zealots in sc2. Would help them close the gap to ranged units and is pretty easy to balance.

why though? they aren't supposed to be good vs archers and cavalry. and if you give them such a mechanic to close the gap and force fights, what downside do you give them to maintain that balance?

 

[Giuseppe551]

Giving them charge wouldn't necessarily make them great vs archers, it'd just make it a fair fight. It's all about how you balance it.

 

[kalpit00]

why though? they aren't supposed to be good vs archers and cavalry. and if you give them such a mechanic to close the gap and force fights, what downside do you give them to maintain that balance?

they are still weaker compared to knights/heavy cavalry in terms of sheer stats and so cost effectively trade poor enough to the point you cannot fully commit to only longswords, but a mix of pikes and longswords, which again dies to xbow or a xbow + some kt comp

I agree though, it has historically been a pain to find the right balance, because of the snowball effect. They are cheap units with supplies and with a lucky mangonel shot, things can turn. However, I still think they are a unit which lose their value from every second into the mid feudal age onwards, simply because ranged units galore over them, and scouts are just so mobile. So massing them in your base without preparing a defense vs sc-arch sounds wrong.

 

[Quesocito]

short of a complete balance overhaul I don't see this ever changing, honestly.

blindly repeating the same s**t doesnt make it true

its funny how often people admit that infantry isnt that great in aoe2, and when we are given an excellent example of how balanced infantry can be (aoe4) people just ignore it and continue with "aoe2 should be kept the same"

its both sad and frustrating.. the infantry buffs WILL eventually happen, but there's zero reason they havent happened already.. except this darn conservative community

 

[Instinctz]

its funny how often people admit that infantry isnt that great in aoe2, and when we are given an excellent example of how balanced infantry can be (aoe4) people just ignore it and continue with "aoe2 should be kept the same"

and that aoe4 infantry? would require a complete rework of how balance in aoe2 works would it not? completely changing how our trash units vs non trash units works, not to mention how you would need to rebalance various civs, bonuses, etc.

AoE4s overall balance is cav beats archer beats infantry beats cav. some civs in aoe2 lack distinct options though to use those counters effectively (Turks being the obvious one).

Good example of where this can be particularly problematic. lets take the men at arms line. let's say you buff it so it's a solid all around gold unit as is. the best answer to that in early castle age suddenly becomes archers.
what about civs that lack archers, or whose archers just aren't good? like Spanish as a good example.
now what about Malians? with their extra PA. suddenly even archers aren't a good answer.

so yes. It absolutely would require a complete overhaul.

but there's zero reason they havent happened already.. except this darn conservative community

yep. I'm conservative. i am mostly happy with balance the way it is. I don't see a need to reinvent the wheel. you want aoe4 style balance? got good news for you. that exists in aoe4. go have fun. as for aoe2? I'd rather not see the complete upheaval of the balance of the game.

 

[megalopolis]

The fundamental issue of AOE balance vs real history is the importance of formations. Infantry, especially melee and gunpowder infantry, gain so much from formations and discipline, but this cannot be represented well in-game.

I like the AOE4 approach with light vs heavy and think we could do some good with beefing up the heavier infantry units. The focus thus far has been on making them cheaper and easier to get to; I think making them more resilient and worthwhile as a long-term investment may be an option worth exploring.

I'd probably suggest adding some more HP to the militia line and increasing the cost of Supplies. For a normal civilization, IMO these units should trade very slightly disfavorably with Knights on a cost basis and have serious advantages in economic viability. Supplies should be more expensive, a real commitment in making an improved basic infantry unit more viable, as opposed to a basic requirement to go for it in the first place.

On this topic, Samurai could use +1 pierce armor. Compare the armor that their sprite has with the Obuch...you decide.