Can the stale Knight/Archer TG meta be diversified?

In ranked mod only the last proposition is possible, but even then not always.

Number 1 is definitely possible, the only maps where knights + crossbows are meta in the current map pool are arabia and golden pit, so if you queue up stacking with another guy you can ban both and even if you queue up solo and you ban arabia you have definitely very high chances of playing non kts/xbows maps. In next map pool then, it’s likely that arabia is going to be the only open land maps so you can easily ban it if you don’t like the meta.

Number 2 is what I would change to actually improve TGs on open land maps, by giving a majority option to disallow position picking or even better with ranked lobbies to give players the option to play how they most like.

Obviously any civs with ridiculously OP units would need nerfing in other ways. The other solution would be to either make castles cheaper or give all civs a Krepost-like building so that UU’s aren’t so prohibitive in Castle age. This could be a team game only change, since 1v1 games don’t suffer as much from the same stale meta.

Ironic because the meta is stale and boring because of civ and position picker…

It’s more ironic that you pick civs yourself and only select random as a backup…

I don’t? You don’t know anything about me, I only play random, no matter if i go ranked, quickplay or lobbies. I think the only solution is to force random civ on ranked. That would bring back a little bit of skill ceiling after it this game was dumbed down to build orders and meta civs.

The only way you could possibly know if people pick civs is if you pick civ and go random. Otherwise you’re just guessing that the other players picked civs, you can’t know for sure.

Full random turns to random with random civ option. I go full random and when it jumps to random I know. Also even when not. What a coincidence that they have 2 knight-pocket civs and 2 archer flanks…
Yeah, skirms with more melee and pikes with more pierce. Halbs are already broken on closed maps like BF.

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Ah ok, I didn’t know that’s what full random was.

Maybe instead of making other units more viable, they just need to nerf crossbow and knights? Slow down their creation speed or make them more expensive.

Everyone loves to think kts/xbow must be nerfed but doing so is kinda asking for 1v1 to devolve into trash unit spamfests.

Just for team games only, not 1v1. Nobody ever goes trash units in team games so I doubt a small nerf would change that. And even the idea of trash units is honestly actually refreshing after so many years of the same old knights xbow meta.

But you don’t nerf units for tgs while not touching them for 1v1 (if that’s what you’re implying). The basic balance should be equal across different game settings. Otherwise you’ll create a huge mess of a game. That’s why imo there is nothing to be done about knight archer meta in tgs on open maps (apart from stuff like position picking maybe).

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Just nerf them across the board then. Xbow and knights are pretty common meta in 1v1 anyway

I don’t think anything can or should unseat the ranged + melee gold unit combo. But I think knight/archer is kind of stale. I think some of this is an issue with the maps where team games are played, more map variety would result in less repetitive strategies. Also if people played random civ we would see more unique strategies.

I’m not sure if any of you watched the ‘Two Pools’ tournament but it was really fun to see team games with new strategies.

I think everybody was reliefed when we saw new strats popping up. Lyx is a hero in this regard.

2v2 is a bit different as you don’t usually have flank/pocket positions. Also in the two pools tournament the pros picked their civs (and opponent pool), therefore they were forced to adapt and sometimes they adapted with unique strats. It’s not replicable for standard TGs.
At least it showed there is a potential in the game. The question is how it can be enabled.
Still in two pools many of the strats developed from an adaptation of what lyx begun. One player sacrificed himself to enable the other one to dominate. Ofc this is a good thing it’s possible, but TGs in general should be more about working together rather than individually. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definetely a nice and refreshing strat. But if this becomes meta it would be even worse than current meta, cause in the current meta you at least work as a team.
Ofc reality is, in 3v3 and 4v4 lyx play isn’t as strong, it’s actually quite bad strat. Is it possible to make playing lyx in TGs with positions more viable?
And then we have the problem that only very few players can play the lyx. Maybe if it was a stronger strat on TGs with positions more players would be encouraged to embrace their inner lyx, but it’s questionable. You need to be at a certain niveau to do the lyx effectively, I doubt anybody below 1600 (1v1) can play the lyx. It’s just the truth, you need really good macro skills and understanding of the game, otherwise you most likely damage yourself more than the opponents.

So how do you make balance changes that impact team games of units only? Does the game engine even allow such stuff?

Okay, how would you nerf xbows and knights in a way without making them useless?

Just one example how archers could be adjusted. Spears are just too hard-countered by archers currently.
Unfortunately this wouldn’t be enough to make the spear line more viable in TGs.

Except thats not going to stop the knight vs xbow meta.

This thread is about TGs. And yeah I already said that’s not enought to make spears more viable in TGs.

But it’s absolutely true that that bonus damage is a part of why we have that stale tg meta. Yet alone removing/reducing that bonus can’t change that meta. I agree.
It needs several changes. So ofc if your argument is always “this single change can’t solve it” you are right. But this doesn’t invalidate that it needs several changes together to diversify the meta.

Please don’t play this deflection game. Yes you can rightfully state that it isn’t enough. But that’s actually only an argument that there must be done MORE, not LESS.