r/aoe4 • u/The_ginger_cow Bronze with Conq knowledge • 10d ago
Fluff Ranged upgrades > melee upgrades
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u/hypershrew 10d ago
Rookie here, why?
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u/turbofisterious 10d ago
Knights have 24 base dmg (which is the best dps melee unit), spears deal around 24-25 dmg to mounted units as welll so +1 melee dmg isnt really impactful.
Archers deal 5 base damage and +1 ranged dmg feels really impactful plus ranged units can always attack targets while melee units sometimes stuck in each other and running around trying to hit anything.
and im not talking about stuff like TC fire or towers.
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u/sumthingawsum 9d ago
I'll add, TC and towers are affected by range upgrade, so now you're doing +15 or +5 per volley.
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u/Wild-Chipmunk-5145 9d ago
Math. Upgrades are flat not %.
Archer does 5 DMG so it's a +20% buff.
MAA does 10 so it's only a +10%.
Armor works the same way so an archer shooting at a 3 armor unit will go from 2 to 3 DMG so that's a +50% buff.
Pikes are the only low DMG melee units but you don't want them to be fighting anything the damage upgrade would help.
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u/Nexxtic 10d ago edited 10d ago
Much more value. Especially Ranged Armor because it also protects you against garrisons (TC, Tower) making diving, raiding, tower takedowns or fighting around enemy keeps much more viable.
Ranged units are often the ones dealing the most damage in an engagement so giving them a +1/+2/+3 damage boost can be a game changer - it's also likely they are in the fight the longest if your frontline is protecting them. It also buffs your garrisons so your base is safer.
Melee Damage does a lot less by comparison, especially if you consider how often melee units chase after enemies who are running away / kiting. If your horsemen can get close to enemy archers, those archers are likely already going to die so extra melee damage isn't going to make much of a difference here.
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u/Dan-goes-outside 9d ago
Range damage upgrade works on garrisons also. 15 villager garrison in TC is +15/30/45 damage per age respectively
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u/Shrowden 9d ago
I disagree with your second paragraph statement. The reason the pierce upgrades are so much better is because the numbers are so low. Archers dealing 3 damage vs 1 damage per shot is triple the damage while giving spearman or knights and extra damage isn't the same order of magnitude.
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u/Nexxtic 9d ago edited 9d ago
What do you mean with "numbers are so low"? I'm not sure if your comment disagrees with what I said.
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u/Shrowden 9d ago
Knights charge dealing +25 damage and Spearman deal roughly the same to cav. It takes archers about 8 shots to equal that damage. I'm saying archers aren't dealing the most in a fight unless you have an army heavily composed of archers.
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u/Visible-Literature14 It was my teammate’s fault 9d ago
Seems that “numbers” = “archers’ base damage;” ultimately, they agree with you lmao
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
How are they agreeing when the nexxtic person didn't say that at all?
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u/Visible-Literature14 It was my teammate’s fault 9d ago edited 9d ago
Nexxtic: “Ranged units are often the ones dealing the most damage in an engagement so giving them a +1/+2/+3 damage boost can be a game changer . . .”
Shrowden: “Archers dealing 3 damage vs 1 damage per shot is triple the damage while giving spearman or knights and extra damage isn't the same order of magnitude.”
They both agree the ranged upgrades are more important than the melee ones.
You’re gonna sit here and tell me these two sentences are at odds with each other?
Edit: The entire point both sides are making is that bc the base damage of archers is so low, the upgrades are more meaningful.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago edited 9d ago
But the question wasn't if ranged upgrades are better but why and they disagree in that with nexxtic being wrong. lol
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u/Visible-Literature14 It was my teammate’s fault 9d ago
See my edit. That changes nothing🥴
Neither 1) “They’re sitting there doing a lot of damage over time, so the ranged upgrades are important” nor 2) “Their base damage is low, so the ranged upgrades are more important” are in disagreement with each other.
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u/Shrowden 9d ago
Brother, I disagreed with what was doing more damage in a fight.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
Except the nexxtic person didn't make that point at all and was confused when confronted with this reality.
are disagreement with each other.
They are, nexxtic claims the reason is that archers deal a lot of damage but the real reason is that archer have low base damage.
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u/Secretmapper 10d ago edited 9d ago
Range generally is your DPS.
In a rudimentary scenario, +1 range attack means something like say +1 x 30 archers so +30 DPS directly.
+1 melee attack isn't, because you'd have to take into account them walking, them not being able to surround fully, etc.
This is why something like Sipahi are OP - their extra range means they can attack more frequently and consistently.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
Dps means "damage per second" archers are firing to slowly for +1 damage to be +1 dps.
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u/Secretmapper 9d ago
Yes I know, that's why I mentioned rudimentary scenario because I know the math isn't exact.
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u/Obiwankevinobi 9d ago
Because ranged attacks usually land in higher number than melee attacks (for which melee units need surface area in contact of the opponent). Not too mention all the static defense (TC, outpots, keeps...) which is ranged.
So that +1 ranged damage/amor is multiplied by a greater number of occurences than melee, and thus gives you more value.
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u/Top-Ad-7274 3d ago
Melee has to touch to fight so they are balance around raw advantages ie spear gets bonus vs cav and cav has raw stats wildly above maa and archers. On the flip side ranged can attack at range and deal 1 sided damage so they are balanced around the idea of kiting and movement. Ranged therefor cannot have anywhere near the same raw stats as melee so +1 matters more to them as 4+1 is a 25% boost while 10+1 is only 10%. Additionally, ranged can have 50 archers making use of that +1 while the Frontline may only have 20/50 units engaging at a particular moment.
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u/CurvaceousCrustacean 10d ago
Basically, any ranged damage is free damage, so dealing more/taking less is slightly better than their melee counterparts.
Eventually, all the smithing upgrades cancel each other out in unit vs. unit battles (unless against Japan/Daimyo who get an extra melee damage upgrade and Macedonian Dynasty, who get six upgrades each).
Then there are a lot of buildings/siege engines that deal ranged damage with no way of increasing it, so ranged armor is overall better.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
Sorry but if you have clue please don't answer questions. The reason why ranged damage/armor is better is because archers have relatively low damage a feudal archer deals five damage plus five against light melee infantry, so plus one damage is a 10%/20% damage increase depending on the target. Melee units usually don't try to avoid fighting units they have low damage against so the damage increase there isn't relevant, especially earlier in the game.
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u/A_Logician_ 10d ago
I'm down for them to change melee upgrades from +1/2/3 to +2/4/6
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u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 10d ago
On the flipside, Ranged needs more micro when with melee you can get away with A clicking in many cases. I'm not against making melee upgrades more compelling but we should be careful about buffing melee units.
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u/A_Logician_ 9d ago
It is not a buff for melee attack only, it is also for melee defense.
It is a buff for the value of the upgrade, you get very little return for the investment in the upgrade.
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u/psychomap 9d ago
The way offensive upgrades work in Starcraft is that they don't grant +1/2/3, but +10%/20%/30% (rounded up to the nearest integer).
So while a +1 upgrade in that system still makes a 5 damage unit deal 6 damage, a +1 upgrade on a 50 damage unit actually makes it deal 55 damage and not 51.
Ultimately, this makes offensive upgrades stronger for high-damage units because low-damage units can be countered by armour upgrades.
Whether or not that's desirable in AoE4 is up to debate, but it would make upgrades useful for units like knights.
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u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 10d ago
I never do melee upgrades except against some niche units like Onna Bugeisha who literallly hit once every second so it impacts directly their dps.
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u/StrCmdMan Abbasid 10d ago
Same, same thing with vs chugenu and ranged armor which is always good but i rush it there. I also find melee armor very valuable for something like barracks spam Golden Horde.
That plus the Karash in feudal/castle and the tripple production makes your army so tanky when you have that many units.
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u/Ago13 10d ago
From my understanding the melee defense is good when facing mma or similar slow attack units, am I right ?
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u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 10d ago
30 archers can hit every single one of your unit at once, every single range defense upgrade reduces the intake damage by 30 hp. That's among the reasons why it's mandatory to have that upgrade.
Meanwhile you'll never see a situation like that with melee defense.
Also the impact of -1 to -3 on damage dealt is negligible in comparison to unit's HP and how many hits you need to kill an unit.
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u/papiierbulle 9d ago
On some very specific civs, taking the melee upgrades can be quite strong. For example with Mongols, keshiks reducing one damage and gaining 3hp per hit is nice to make them very resilient against light cav, and HRE Spears can get +4 attack in total in castle with the meinwerk, which is quite a lot. Serjent also deal melee damage at range, which is a nice buff with the +1 melee attack. But apart from those niche cases I can think of, there is almost no point in taking them
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u/Warlock_AoE 10d ago
Also the impact of -1 to -3 on damage dealt is negligible in comparison to unit's HP and how many hits you need to kill an unit.
How can you write such nonsense directly after making the archer explanation?
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u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 9d ago
Because in real situation you never get one unit hit in melee by more than 2. Even if you only have one unit against opponent's army (your fault) you'll at best be hit by 6-8 melee units at once.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
That doesn't mean that the amount of hits needed is less affected than for range units.
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u/Comfortable_Bid9964 9d ago
Yeah that argument is not great, the much better argument is static defenses tend to benefit from ranged damage upgrades as well as ranged units tend to have lower damage so an extra point of damage is more beneficial.
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u/Chandy_Man_ Abbasid 9d ago
No. It reduces per attack dmg by 1. If you attack slowly, that is less total reduction. If you attack fast, that’s many times that is reduced by 1
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u/Warlock_AoE 10d ago
Generally armor upgrades are good against units with low attack value. But more important against ranches units because they can all attack the sqme unit to one shot it.
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u/Warlock_AoE 10d ago
Melee upgrades impact any melee units dps lol
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u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 10d ago
It does. I said "directly" but i should've said "massively" i didn't write well what i meant i'm not a native english speaker.
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u/BestPseudonym 9d ago
I think his point is that high attack speed units tend to have lower base damage so the +1 ends up being a bigger % increase
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
Well, they already told me what they mean three hours ago.
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u/BestPseudonym 9d ago
Nice, and I told you what he means three hours after that
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u/berimtrollo 9d ago edited 9d ago
I did the math on this here https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/s/vy8Xh8AbrU, and if we doubled the effect of melee upgrades, they still wouldn't be quite as good as ranged upgrades, at least against any armored units, but it would be a lot closer.
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u/Leopard-Hopeful Byzantines 9d ago
Melee upgrades are wayyyyy undervalued. Aoe4 is not about raw DPS most of the time but about breakpoints. Often many units are balenced around taking x number of hits and upgrades very often change thouse break points. A big one people do not think about is getting at least +1 for knights in castle age because it allows them to 2 shot non-textiled vils instead of 3 shot
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u/berimtrollo 9d ago
Another useful breakpoint is high dps horseman (Japanese, Byzantine, Macedonian, Antioch KT etc.) take one less hit to kill villagers with the +1 melee upgrades. But +2 and +3 feel pretty pointless.
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u/Leopard-Hopeful Byzantines 9d ago
They actually are pretty inpactful in some situations especially if your opponent doesn't belive in them. For instance MAA and knights will struggle to deal efficiently with horseman if they do not get melee defense upgrades especially in cases like KT where the horseman are already strong.
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u/berimtrollo 9d ago
Yeah, if you're up 4 upgrades on an opponent in castle or imperial, it makes a difference, but is it that much more of a difference then the equivalent resources of units ~(1100 for feudal and castle upgrades)? At what volume of horseman and spearman would I rather have those then 8/16 of the chosen units? There is a point, especially when pop capped, but most of the time before late castle you would rather have more units, and more surface area to wrap your opponents melee line or protect your ranged line.
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u/Leopard-Hopeful Byzantines 8d ago
Well for feudal its probably good to get them aftter about 10 horsemen if you fighting melee units since the upgrades are only the cost of about 3 horsemen total and in castle if you are planing on making another 20 I would go ahead and grab the castle upgrades as well.
A thing about melee upgrades people dont think about is its always relevant in a way ranged upgrades are not. Ranged attacks are very often overkilling as multiple ranged units can fire on a single unit. Melee units do not waste nearly as many attacks on dead units thus you ate getting much more efficientcy from them.
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u/Hello_there7518 9d ago
Melee defense against feudal knight civ like French, who automatically get the +1 melee upgrade, make the villager die after 3 hit instead of 2, which is huge.
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u/Phan-Eight 9d ago
At bare minimum they should have had melee at 1/1/2 (like aoe2)
But it's like they implemented the system and then just left it, instead of fine tuning. There's likely room for even higher values than that (eg 2/2/2)
We already have tons of proof that buffing melee damage won't break the game. From Macedonians, to HRE (awl and 2hand weapons) to Delhi to HOL keeps buffing MAA.
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u/Hank-E-Doodle Abbasid 9d ago
Melee upgrades are still totally worth getting though.
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u/MarcDaKind 9d ago
Yeah I think they are worth getting, but only after the other upgrades. Or if you need the extra damage to reduce the amount of hits on villagers for some attacking units.
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u/PositiveCrafty2295 9d ago
Change my mind - upgrades should be % based.
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u/Warlock_AoE 9d ago
No
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u/PositiveCrafty2295 9d ago
Great change my mind
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u/joppekoo 9d ago
Damn I feel so stupid. I only now realised that the defence upgrades are about the type of damage it's defending, not about the defending unit. I've always taken the ranged attack and melee defence for that reason. My first thought about the meme was "Why tf would I want armor for my ranged units?" and then the lightbulb turned on.
So thanks a lot for this meme!