Ageing up is too fast

[GT]

Does anyone else find the ageing up too fast?
You can get to age two in like 5min of starting the game.

This allows armoured units pretty early (despite some who have armoured units in age 1).
So this ultimately makes the archers pretty useless early on in the game as they do such reduced damage to the armoured units.

It would be nice to be able to have medium armour (with research into heavy armour in age 3/4) which would make crossbowman do more damage to medium armour and archers still have decent damage to them. Races like English even with their longbowmen suck bad against anything age 2 and above, which makes their whole speciality useless pretty early on.

Would love to see another tier of armour to increase the longevity of the archers.

Archer Crossbow Canoneers
No armour = 100% 125% 150%
Medium Armour = 75% 100% 125%
Heavy Armour = 50% 75% 100%

[FloosWorld]

Originally posted by GT:

Does anyone else find the ageing up too fast?
You can get to age two in like 5min of starting the game.

Nah, it's fine. Imo, quite similar to AoE 2 where you have to divide the ingame time by 1.7 and get a similar result.

[Bubs]

I think it's way too early, and it can be done as little as 3 minutes (to start the landmark). Makes me wonder what the point of starting age 1 is. Just remove it.

I also think the armored units are rediculous at age 1 or 2, because if you didn't throw away getting age 3 before 8 minutes by building 3x more non-hard hitting units than the 'rushers' have in armored, then you just die or get set back so far that you might as well have had the army.

Even if you live, it's because they sent a force once. All they have to do is send another and you have no army to counter at all.

I have a feeling it's just me not knowing the counters, but when there is only horsemen, archers, spearmen and bad towers, you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult to know.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

There are trade-offs, though.

Age up ASAP and that means you put workers on building the landmark rather than continuing to harvest resources (unless playing Abbasids, who age up without needing the labor force to do so). And you put a bunch of resources, too, into building the landmark obviously. That can have a snowballing effect on things, there.

Further, it depends what landmark you got up and what other benefits there were to aging up in itself. Aging up ASAP means more is *available*, but do you have the resources to do much of any of it for the X number of minutes right after aging up? But again, what landmark? One that helps pump out longbows in a hurry might be great... one that functions as a defensive structure might be great IF placed usefully... one that just unlocks a few techs might be a problem.

Also, don't underestimate archers... they can still be quite useful later on. As in, oh, your opponent rushed to get 10 gunpowder infantry units? Ha, a larger group of archers is going to chew them up and at lower cost overall cost.

Aging up is a bit fast in AoE4, but archers, especially upgraded archers, can still be a nasty shock to a player who overconfidently spams a blob of just 1 unit type... hand-cannons, but also Jannisaries, can take a surprising amount of damage from archers.

[Bubs]

jannisaries are something special....

[Rem]

Originally posted by Bubs:

I think it's way too early, and it can be done as little as 3 minutes (to start the landmark). Makes me wonder what the point of starting age 1 is. Just remove it.

The point of Age 1 is too have a 2 minute room to explore the map AND make a strategy. The way you mange your first 10 villagers is very important and can be very different whether you are planning to go fast castle, mass a feudal army, or any other strategy.

Originally posted by Bubs:

I also think the armored units are rediculous at age 1 or 2, because if you didn't throw away getting age 3 before 8 minutes by building 3x more non-hard hitting units than the 'rushers' have in armored, then you just die or get set back so far that you might as well have had the army.

Even if you live, it's because they sent a force once. All they have to do is send another and you have no army to counter at all.

I have a feeling it's just me not knowing the counters, but when there is only horsemen, archers, spearmen and bad towers, you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult to know.

I used to get frustrated by this but then something clicked and I realized it isnt that much of a big deal. Armored units, specially knights, are super expensive and you can easily get a bigger number of feudal army that can beat them with almost the same cost.

Fun fact is that in the wololo tournament, French lost most of the time to feudal armies ( like this match). Its more about training your timing and practicing against armored units to see their limits.

Originally posted by GT:

Would love to see another tier of armour to increase the longevity of the archers.

technically this is what the blacksmith is for. The first ranged armor you can get in feudal makes a massive difference (and thats why 90% of the time everyone gets it as soon as they age up). Light cavalry with just 1 or 2 ranged armor become a menace against a sheer archer army.

[againer]

No, speed of ageing up is fine.

[Fenix]

Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Antpile]

Originally posted by GT:

Does anyone else find the ageing up too fast?
You can get to age two in like 5min of starting the game.

This allows armoured units pretty early (despite some who have armoured units in age 1).
So this ultimately makes the archers pretty useless early on in the game as they do such reduced damage to the armoured units.

It would be nice to be able to have medium armour (with research into heavy armour in age 3/4) which would make crossbowman do more damage to medium armour and archers still have decent damage to them. Races like English even with their longbowmen suck bad against anything age 2 and above, which makes their whole speciality useless pretty early on.

Would love to see another tier of armour to increase the longevity of the archers.

Archer Crossbow Canoneers
No armour = 100% 125% 150%
Medium Armour = 75% 100% 125%
Heavy Armour = 50% 75% 100%

Only a few factions get armored units in age 2. They are very expensive that early as well. Men at arms, for example, can still be beaten with just archers. Sure, the archers don't do much damage to them, but they don't cost gold and far less food. They are still faster than the MAA. They can just wear them down.

MAA don't hard counter anything. So if you go archers to whittle away at his MAA, and say he goes longbows to support his MAA and pick off your archers, then you add in horsemen. MAA aren't going to do a very good job at keeping those horses off his archers, and his army is SO much more expensive than yours if he's building both MAA AND longbows. Now he needs tons of food, wood, and more gold than you'd normally be mining in age 2. Your army requires only 2 resources.

So now maybe he adds in spears to stop your horses. Fine by you. Now he's making spears instead of MAA, which is exactly what you wanted in the first place, right?

It only becomes a big problem if you get stuck in age 2 for too long and your opponent manages to build up a large force of them.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

for personal tastes, i think going into next age tier is going way to fast which make early stuff pretty obsolete...
But thats a general issue with games that forces too much on MP.
Everything has to go fast.... fast win, fast battles etc...
most People don't want to spend 1 hour on a single match
alot of people want maximal 15-25 minutes to spend on a single match.

I wish a modern empire earth :3

[Gronmor]

You should get to Age 2 as quickly as possible anyway! It's not like you can make an Archery in Age 1 anyway!

And if they get to Age 3 really fast, you can expect they don't have many units, so maybe you can surprise them, if you have units yourself.

I'll agree to one thing though; it's true that Light archery units get very useless very fast, being countered by too many things. But then, y'know, just make something else!

[Despiser]

Originally posted by GT:

Does anyone else find the ageing up too fast?
You can get to age two in like 5min of starting the game.

This allows armoured units pretty early (despite some who have armoured units in age 1).
So this ultimately makes the archers pretty useless early on in the game as they do such reduced damage to the armoured units.

It would be nice to be able to have medium armour (with research into heavy armour in age 3/4) which would make crossbowman do more damage to medium armour and archers still have decent damage to them. Races like English even with their longbowmen suck bad against anything age 2 and above, which makes their whole speciality useless pretty early on.

Would love to see another tier of armour to increase the longevity of the archers.

Archer Crossbow Canoneers
No armour = 100% 125% 150%
Medium Armour = 75% 100% 125%
Heavy Armour = 50% 75% 100%

Yes, ridiculously so as to hardly be called an age

[Many-Named]

this is a competitive RTS not a 4x. If you're looking for epic games that literally takes ages to finish, and god knows I love those too, try civ or humankind or even Dom5 (three ages)

And 5 min is waay too long to age up, try more like 3-4 min,

[Lotor13]

Originally posted by GT:

Does anyone else find the ageing up too fast?
You can get to age two in like 5min of starting the game.

It is not too fast, You can not do many things in Age 1 anyway

This is reason, why Age of Empires 2 DE received the "Empire Wars" mod, when the Age 1 is completely skipped

[Matahari]

For archers to be more useful in castle i think flaming arrows should be a tech upgrade in castle age.

[invikari_TTV]

Seems like you are new to the game.
Spend some more time with playing, your skills will improve