In previous game iterations the main problem with picking civs is that the opponent would see what you were going for and attempt to counter with an appropriate civ rather than any particular civ that they main or like - so random became commonplace to circumvent this behaviour - I believe that this is no longer an issue and I believe that now that civs are hidden in ranked and have the ability to be hidden in lobbies that it’s wonderful players have the option to main civs now without worrying that the opponent will simply choose a civ that heavily counters it without them already having chosen such a civ in the first place.
teamgames have no unit balance. civ-picking + position-picking ruined the game because the only way to compete with the best civ combos is to mirror the strategy. the game has no unit balance. land-only maps have no counterplay (especially xbows+knights)
the only thing keeping things balanced was that civs had limited tech trees, and you had to trade some power if you wanted versatility. when aoe2 stops being a RTS and becomes about making 1 unit for the whole game, you don’t care about tech trees or versatility. you just pick the civ that makes that 1 unit most efficiently, and then play mirrors every game. it doesn’t matter if those hyper-efficient civs are missing some options, because the ranked maps are so shallow that you never need more than 1 option as long as you can guarantee that you spawn in front or back
Would you say that removing mirror from the game, placing team games with 3-4 players on a team into random civ only, and removing the placement of which side you spawn on being random instead of controlled by the player would help to fix that in ranked modes?
there should be both civ-picking and random-civ queues. there’s no reason not to have both, as long as players can queue for both at once. position-picking has been a complete disaster. it should just be turned off except for very special maps where different positions have completely different environments (these aren’t even in the ranked pool)
having a civ-picking queue is good for newer players (if they want to use it) because 40 civs is an overwhelming number. the problem is at higher ratings where some civ combos have no counterplay (because aoe2 has no unit balance), and therefore every game is the same
Civ-picking in conjunction with position picking is terrible for gameplay balance. If you choose a civ to boom from pocket you should run the risk of having to fight as a flank like a coin flip. It would allow versatile civs to use their flexibility as flank or pocket.
That being said if there were two modes with one being random civ + random position, I would take that over the position picking mode every day of the week.
I have to agree on this with OP. Directly disagreeing with @Hvscarl 's argument I would sat that the lack of position picking was terrible for gameplay balance. It only allowed versatile civs to be effective. I see that what they wanted was some chaos through random civs and positions. So the question comes down to whether someone enjoys chaos or order more. I feel a fine balance of the two is good. When I play with friends, we play with the random civ option. When I queue for ranked game, I select the civs because random people on the internet is chaotic enough.
And checking the all random button when you queue is already a good enough balance between the two. If you happen to queue against someone who also want random civs, then both of you can enjoy it.
I dont think this was the main reason why people went for random. Pick civ was pretty common in the past, since some civs were just OP. Now the balance is much better, so having a bad civ isnt that worse compared to back in the days. That is for me reason why it is changed from pick civ to random civ. Random civ allow for more diverse strategy. Pick civ will result in only picking the best civs, randon civ will make sure all civs will be played. So random civ makes the meta less stale, since you have to improvise a bit for some civs.
This isnt a new DE feature. We already had this feature in previous gens. So nothing changed with DE. This feature was mainly used for tournament games at Voobly. There werent really many non tournament games with this feature.
Given most of your threads, this is impossible, even if you are clearly wrong
You assume too much about my opinions being unchangeable.
As for previous iterations, I never played on voobly, I say starting from age of kings, age of conqs and then skipping years to play on HD edition. That leading into DE is what has sculpted my opinion.
Random civs actually started to become a thing quite late into the game’s history, it was a trend started by some pro players (TheViper mainly, I believe) during an era where most high level games were Hun/Mongol wars, where this type of variety was very welcome since there were only a few top tier civs compared to what we have now.
Because AoC’s balance was set in stone for so many years, random civ became a way to keep the game fresh, I agree that this is no longer necessary now that we have a much higher number of viable and competitive civs alongside hidden pick options in lobbies and ranked alike.
Some people are just set in their ways, there’s no doubt that playing random civs is still cool and good for those that prefer to play that way, but civ picking definitely has a place and shouldn’t go anywhere.
