As someone who only played arena for thousands of hours before DE, the weird tc spawns are extremely annoying for me. Has it always been this bad??
I just played a game where my spawn was Middle of the bottom half of the map exactly where you first look for me. But my opponent wasn’t in the mirrored position at the top of the map, then I looked in the right side of the top half, he is not there either. Then I looked at the right side he is not there either… it became feudal, I scouted like 70% of the map still didn’t find him. I finally get attacked by MAA. It turns out he spawned in the CENTRE OF THE MAP ON THE FAR RIGHT SIDE… I spent so much APM on scouting the entire map before feudal and still didn’t have any scouting info on him. How is that spawn not an unfair advantage?
Does anyone have comments on this? I find it extremely annoying when my opponents TC is in a weird location
Well, arabia is sometimes mirrored, sometimes no. Yeah, map can be a handicap or a difficulty. I guess it add a little bit of salt ro the equation
My thoughts are that it sounds like great Age of Empires gaming to me! The beauty of the game is that you’re dealt a hand and you have to roll with it. Sometimes the cards are stacked against you, sometimes against your opponent, sometimes balanced. Just roll with the punches, I say, and let the better player, or sometimes the more fortunate player, win. Adjust your strategy, send more scout units out, etc. to help overcome the above unforeseen and unpredictable hurdles.
Being imperfect helps the game feel a bit more like you’re in an organic, medieval world rather than some perfectly engineered man-made mirror world that was crafted precisely for you, some gamer sitting at your desk. The board game “Risk” isn’t a perfect mirror down the middle, and player placement varies from game to game. Most would think that’s a good thing.
Plus, how do you know your enemy knew exactly where to look for you? Maybe they lucked out with their scouting, or used better scouting techniques than you. Based on their TC placement, how would they know to go exactly to your location? Granted, you’ve played thousands more hours than me on Arena, so maybe that’s the norm.
Regardless, the day AoE has non-randomized, perfectly predictable maps and TC placements is the day I stop playing it. I’m not a big fan of games that are so predictable you do the exact same thing every time. You’ve played thousands of hours on Arena, I think it would be awesome that it threw you off your game; threw something at you that you weren’t accustomed to for a nice change.
I think while placing might change some factors it certainly doesn’t to the extent you are implying, sheep and boar can have far more of an impact (took me a full minute to find my STARTING sheep, or having a starting boar behind such a big forest that almost guarantees the death of a lure without loom)
Resource positioning in general imo is more impactful than your bad luck on not finding the enemy. Welcome to non chocolate box maps. I personally hate arena due to almost inevitable trash wars and potenial for extremely protracted games(had a ranked game last over 2hrs),it’s the only map i ban.
I’d say it’s important actually that you can’t know where your enemy is before you scout him out, otherwise you could just send your scout straight to the most probable spot you know your opponent spawns in and try to lame his ■■■■ right off the bat. Sounds really stupid. The hide and seek part of the early game really is fun and it’s sad when you play games like CnC Generals or the kind, you always know where your enemy is, or atleast the specific spots where they can be and no other. Of course, the games so different from aoe anyways. Both have their strong points.
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You mean welcome to the chocolate box maps 11.
Arena is the only map I ban aswell. I find it quite boring
chocolate box means “pretty in a conventional or idealized way.” OP wants the maps to be chocolate box ie symetrical(like arena), whereas we have something else in the other maps