r/aoe4•
CamelGangGang

A simple proposal to make Abbasid's military wing more competitive

Discussion

Issue:

As most will be aware, despite Abbasids theoretically having 24 possible paths for reaching imperial age, in practice only two of these are ever used: Eco/Culture/Military (1v1 standard), and Eco/Culture/Trade (in larger team games).

Fundamentally, the problem with military wing is that in the feudal age, +15% infantry hp is non-competitive with eco wing's virtual +75 f/min generated, which even for a feudal all-in, is likely to provide a stronger army, and in castle age culture wing's -30% tech cost (and sometimes medical centres) is much more relevant than +15% hp for inf and +3 melee armor for camel riders.

Proposal:

Move Camel support to castle age and boot camp back to imperial age (the +15% hp is not *that* relevant until you're at pop cap anyway...), and replace camel rider shields with a new feudal tech that reduces the cost of stables, barracks and archery ranges by -50%. (Possibly siege workshops as well, but I don't think that's needed)

Benefits:

One of the major issues with trying to do feudal aggression with Abbasids is that Mongols, Delhi, and China have an inherent boost to production from their various unique features that allow faster production from just 1 military building, and French/English have a head start with their feudal landmarks. (Rus/HRE are more-or-less on an even playing field, but have a bit better economies in feudal age). Halving the cost of military buildings is a powerful boost to Abbasid's ability to get military on the field, being similar to Delhi's scholar-production.

If you don't want to go for a full feudal play, -50% cost to stables/barracks/archery ranges may be an attractive option compared to culture wing's -30% technology cost in castle age, where I often find myself wanting to quickly deploy a lot of military buildings.

Finally, there is a pleasing level of symmetry that each of eco/culture/military wings would have their feudal age technology give a cost reduction to an applicable category (for the full symmetry, Abbasid's -33% trader cost would need to be moved from its base bonuses to the trade wing, and have the +30% gold or +25% bonus res of a selectable type be moved to the base bonuses, but I think the current set-up is very nice as it is). Additionally, there is some nice synergy between a tech that reduces building costs and Abbasid's civilization focus on building buildings.

Posted May 4, 2022, 2:00 AM UTC

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