Recently I’ve been setting up games with everything set to random and it’s been a lot of fun
You don’t know the map type or what civ you are. This adds a dynamic to your start, Is it an island, is it not, do I have a navy civ, do I rush etc etc. It’s all up in the air
Of course, sometimes oasis comes up as the random map type, and that map can be truly painful.
This really helps with learning the civs, finding ways to fight with civs less suitable to a map or just getting you in a mindset where you have to be ready to react and plan according to the situation.
I’ve found this breathes a bit of life into team games. Thoughts?
That’s basically what AoE is. You always get a different map. Random civ makes people strategise in real time more than following a meta.
Imagine if you could also not know what civs your opponent was until you scouted them to click one of their units.
there is quite a difference between random map and random map type, one random highland is going to be similar to another random highland. However, a random highland is completely different to a random islands
I’ve played with you few times already and the problem I had were… err… random teammates 
There’s really not much you can do when two of your teammates are playing SimCity. But random teammates are in almost every game.
I do like to join games that have “fun” in description because they indeed tend to be more fun. But I don’t like games with random civilization and I avoid them. That’s not because I only play overpowered civs (in fact, I played Babylonians more than everyone else combined) but because I just don’t want to play some civs as I don’t find them enjoyable.
Random map is fair because civs are balanced around their navy as well.
I’m always random in team games because I don’t think the games we have in DE at the moment are of the level that they require picking a civ. Most of the players are simply pretty bad thus it doesn’t make much sense to min-max everything. Just play and have fun.
I think I played in one of your hosts today, the one with the horrible lag where I lucked out on Shang on Oasis. Yeah, when you roll something like Shang, Roman, Persian on oasis or Minoan/Hittite/Yamato on Islands that’s nice. But if you get Palmyran on Oasis, you feel like banging your head through your screen so there’s that.
What I find the most enjoyable about these is that I get random enemies. If the map is set and the enemies have picked civs, I can pretty much see in the lobby how the game is going to play out. With enemies getting random civs you can never be quite sure what they are going to do and it also means you have to play a bit more active yourself before you know.
The downside is those games tend to end faster. I usually hold back quite a bit with my army in most 3v3, 4v4 games and just defend my allies to give everyone a nice time to play. That’s unlikely to happen in full random because I can’t be confident in being safe with a minimum army without at least some kind of clue about what my enemies are doing. So I tend to build more army to be safe and because I sacrificed some villager production to do so, I need to attack with it to not waste tons of resources on a standing army that does nothing. If the enemies are ill-equipped to handle that, they tend to just quit at that point.
I guess I should try to build an early scout or something to get around that.
Most of the people I see playing random civ are either so good they can win with any of them, or beginners who don’t understand the strengths and weaknesses anyway and try to play them all the same way.
For those of us who haven’t played AOE in 10+ years I don’t think going random is a good way to learn. Better to start out with a strong civ to learn general gameplay, then begin picking other civs you don’t know very well and keep playing them until you start to figure them out.
I think your settings could be a lot of fun when everyone in the game really knows what they’re doing, but most of us aren’t there yet. In most games there’s already a big skill difference between players, and throwing all those extra factors into it will just make the gap even wider.
Oasis is cool.
Your classic build order can be use here, maybe not enough wood for long game, but it’s fine.
Island with slow civ versus Minoan/Yamato/Hittites, etc is the problem when you play all random.
To learn civ best way is to play multiple game versus and WITH all civ, so if you pick all the time, you never progress. And never, never, never play speed2.0 on RM.
@JoonasTo said:
I think I played in one of your hosts today, the one with the horrible lag where I lucked out on Shang on Oasis. Yeah, when you roll something like Shang, Roman, Persian on oasis or Minoan/Hittite/Yamato on Islands that’s nice. But if you get Palmyran on Oasis, you feel like banging your head through your screen so there’s that.
Oh that game, I saw it was oasis, it’s the most obvious one out of the set at game start, then I saw I was on the flank, then I saw I was Palmy… I knew it was going to be painful and yes indeed it was 
I did learn something for next time though
What I find the most enjoyable about these is that I get random enemies. If the map is set and the enemies have picked civs, I can pretty much see in the lobby how the game is going to play out. With enemies getting random civs you can never be quite sure what they are going to do and it also means you have to play a bit more active yourself before you know.
I guess I should try to build an early scout or something to get around that.
With these settings I build an early scout pretty much most games
I would agree partially that playing with these settings does require players to have a decent level of competence and experience, but remember that learning isn’t linear. There is more to learning the game than civ focus on a small subset of map types. We also learn from failure and challenges you face outside the comfort zone. Also when you do win against the odds, it’s a sweet sweet feeling.
As I played this game to death 20 or so years ago, I guess I’m getting a bit jaded with the cookie cutter standard RM games this time around.
I love the Randomness, but I hate Oasis as it doesn’t usually have any interesting map features.
It’s not really a problem if you get islands and an enemy is a Minoan as in a 4v4 you just find the Minoan and tell your team to prioritise killing them.