A Game of Age of Empire III Should Last No Longer Than 15 Minutes

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

I heard this in a casted game of AoE3 and if you look at how long most pro or high elo games last then it is understandable. Leaps and bounds have been achieved with the devs working with top players to balance the game. However, this mentality has resulted in the reduction of the player base. I will try to make my point.

The basic premise of this argument is that certain issues that occur in the late game (ages IV & V) are overlooked because the people who experience them are passed off as a small percentage of the player base. You can look at the leaderboard and see that if you are above 1200 ELO (1v1) then you are in the top 1400 players. The average peak monthly player count of the last 3 years is about 5500. Including the people who have left the game because of these issues, and then we can see that 1v1 and 1200 elo are not the majority of players.

The people who tend to have longer games are:

  1. Treaty players
  2. Team game players (Ranked team games run longer than ranked 1v1s)
  3. Noobs (Ranked noob games run longer than high elo ranked 1v1s)

The result of these issues are cheese strats that take twice as long to beat and make the game not fun.

Late game issues (I can’t list them all):

  1. Gattling Gun Mass
  2. Skirms with more than 20 range
  3. Mamluks with 2400HP
  4. Samurai mass burn down factories
  5. Strong CIvs with more than 100 military population (Japan, France)
  6. Heavy cannons do not have a negative multiplier against Cav
  7. Daimyo
  8. Villagers Faster Build card (Wall spammers)
  9. Malta’s buildings with too much HP
    …

There are more issues but the most common responses are to kill your opponent faster or that these are treaty problems that do matter since there are not many treaty players. None of the responses address the issue. Issues in the game should get fixed even if you don’t experience them yourself. It is easier to get a treaty or team game player to play 1v1 ranked than it is to get a noob to play 1v1 ranked. If we balance the ranked late-game experience then I believe that the player base will grow.

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  1. Gatlings are no longer an issue already got massive nerfs, culvs 1 shot them and other artillery out ranges them.
  2. So like longbow and sharpshooters? One costs wood so bad in late game the other performs poorly in direct fights.
  3. High HP and low damage, also a very expensive unit.
  4. If it is not the samurai it will be daimyo spawning mortars or something else, there are always lame strategies just be aware of them and take measures to prevent them.
  5. I’m sure they have negatives or other civs have strengths in other areas, like japan only has 1 factory, africans can train tons of natives that cost no pop etc.
  6. It has low base damage, it is the multi vs infantry and buildings that makes it effective vs them.
  7. It has been in the game for many years and is important to the civ, japan isn’t strong either so nerfing this would be too much.
  8. Walls have been nerfed considerably.
  9. Malta has lower hp buildi### than many civs due to only having extensive fortifications and team building hp to buff buildings. Malta is also like the worst civ in treaty anyway.
4

Una partida puede terminar en menos de 15 minutos pero las que tardan más son las más disfrutables para algunos.

3 Likes
5

I have to clarify I am a team game only player but I don’t like turtle or boom or play like simcity, I also want the game can be shorter.

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everything you said here is situational as is his post. gats are still really strong against low elo players. he is obviously talking about rangers and abus having too much range and damage without proper trade offs in the late game.

7

You can’t nerf something because noobs struggle against it when it is perfectly balanced, instead of whining they should better themselves.

3 Likes
8

I agree with one caveat being that something that serves no value or purpose other than abusing noobs can reasonably be nerfed specifically because it is oppressive to lower level players.

I would kinda put the samurai hand mortars into that camp. They are impossible for noobs to deal with while serving little-to-no purpose at higher levels.

I don’t mind the team artillery attack for Japan, but the samurai hand mortars are really just annoying. I barely see them, and have generally been able to deal with them when I have encountered them, but noobs basically don’t stand a chance.

It might be balanced because it isn’t strong at higher levels, but I think it crosses a line into too great of an issue at low levels.

9

I don’t know why they even added that card when people complained about samurai sieging your factories down before, I’d much rather have +15% artillery attack than the card in its current state.

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10

Morutarus didnt need the buff either

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