I agree, I too would prefer to pick maps instead of the map pool
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This. Every civ has a counter. Just be thankful that you are playing against a very predictable civ and strategy so you have plenty of time to prepare the counter.
You are not mistaken, the problem is quite bigger than just civ picking, itās just a symptoms of a ādiseaseā named: lack of authority by the developers.
For years we - the community - had the control over the game, we had/were a community back then, we were actually communicating before each match, organizing it, it was a social interaction, beyond just playing the game. And in this format norms and rules naturally appear, thatās the nature of the human society to ensure stability and order.
These days the power is in the hands on the development team, they eliminated the community sense of the game (the queue system replaces the human interaction), which is reasonable yet once you take away the social dimension of the game you also strip it from its value and norms. There was a cultural-moral gap which the development team wasnāt brave enough to fill, they didnāt lead the community, they rather just possess the control over it.
Instead of setting and guiding a certain behavior they chose to satisfy the common player, avoiding meaningful decisions. imagine an elementary school where the head master had a student as his counselor. Since the big bulk of players is mostly made of ānoobsā and new players, they chose to attent the popular demand and accept civ picking as the default playstyle of the game.
Itās very common in a progressive enviorment, pop culture tends to be corruptive and this is not an exception.
So it IS a development problem, unlike you mention. And not the only one, since itās just one symptom of many. The same reason they dont address the absurd inflation in the TG Ranked Ladder, same goes for map design Aka Arabia madness, and much more.
Dont feel like youāre a hater once you critisize the company that develops the game youāre playing, you have the right to do so, youāve been paying bunch of money and most likely willing to pay even more, itās your right to demand a better treatment to your beloved game.
Thank you for reading <3
2 Likes
TLDR
your ācore fansā =/= whats good for the game, get over it. they are neither the majority nor the most clued up for what is best for the game
case in point: they were happy to play with 5 ābalanced civsā and the rest imbalanced. no other proof is needed. move along
I used to play on Voobly for a while as well, basically really got into the game during that time. Iāve enjoyed playing a lot of games with both random civs and picking civs.
On DE Iām picking civs that I like to play and feel comfortable playing with but I always switch on the ārandom-civ-option-buttonā (or whatever itās called 11) and I appreciate people who like to play random civ matchups as well.
For a long time Iāve been of the opinion that itās fine if people want to pick their civs on DE. But by now I feel like a lot of players are kind of abusing certain strats that they play over and over again - and they get away with it. They just disable the ārandom-civ-option-buttonā and can be 100% sure to get the civ of their choice. On the other hand, people who want to have a random civ matchup donāt have that luxury. Thatās not fair in my opinion.
My suggestion:
Make the ārandom-civ-option-buttonā give a 50% probability per player to get a random civ matchup.
If both have the button switched on, there will be a 100% probability - as it is nowadays.
If one has the button switched on, there will be a 50% probability. so players who want to pick civs and players who want to play a random matchup are treated equally.
If neither player has the button switched on, there will be a 0% probability - as it is nowadays.
6 Likes
Have to say that I am also one of the many people who have posted here that disagree with what the author is saying. Civ picking is fine and is not a major issue.
On the majority of maps there is not such a big advantage with civ picking compared to random (there are plenty of statistics websites that can show you relative win rates). And if you prefer to play random civ you can anyway also have a civ picked as well as the random button just to stop you getting rage filled in case opponent doesnāt want to play random.
A large fraction of the player base enjoys to play as random every time, which is great. But as already mentioned, a lot of people are not familiar with the specifics of what every civ can do in a given situation. And it can be pretty annoying realising after the game has finished that you could have used a certain tech or unit that would have changed everything. At the higher levels this is much less common since people are experienced with almost every civ. But for sure I can understand why some people would not want to go random every game.
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You remind me of some people Iāve played with for the last years. They had the same fixation with playing with random civilizations. They made the same claims as you: that itās more fair, more fun, and that it makes you learn.
Iāll tackle the last statement. Let people decide if they want to become better. Thatās not YOUR call. I mean, playing with random civilizations doesnāt even make you learn more, but even if it did, this is my response.
If youāre too afraid to play against people who have mastered a civilization, they itās you who has to become better. Your concept of āfairnessā is based on impoverishing the rest of the players. If this: āThere are many more reasons why the community back then was very outspoken about that rule, and enforced it harshly. IF you picked a civ, in most cases you would just get kicked out of the lobby.ā is true, then it shows how immture and cowardly this rule is.
I donāt quote this just to criticize the abbreviations. I think this paragraph shows that you are stuck. āfcā, āmaaā, āarcā; this kind of shortness of language leads to a shortage of thought. Thatās the reason you shun the possibility of growing fond of one or two civilizations. Not being able to become familiar with something is a limit.
3 Likes
It was there only to prevent aztec war every game, to add variety in the game 
Let the player pick will for sure help to masterise one civ, but in tournament you will not play only 1 civ, so itās important to know a variety of gameplay and civ if you want to be a good player which can react himself good and not making a bo perfectly which is not the way to be good.
1 Like
The option to pick a civ is vital to the game:
(1) If you learn (or re-learn) the game, it is obviously better to first stick to one (or a very small number of) civ(s), and then to gradually expand the knowledge of the game. The key to learning is practice, that means repetition.
(2) A player should have the opportunity to practice whatever civ/opening/strat he or she wants to get better at.
(3) On maps other than Arabia forcing random civs would lead to quite a bit frustration: Aztecs on Islands, for instance, no matter whether you or the opponent gets the civ: Winning against this feels hollow, losing as this feels like a pointless exercise as well.
That said, I do understand the necessity for random civ in lobby games where you cannot hide the civ selection and the map is always Arabia. But forcing random civ has to place in ranked. Position picking in team games is a slightly different story, though.
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Just a quick digression. Iāve read often that Aztecs on Islands is a terrible choice. Why? Donāt Aztecs create all military faster? doesnāt that include warships?
You donāt have Galleon, which makes it impossible to compete on Water in Imperial. You donāt have Cannon Galleon either, so itās impossible to take out shoreline castles from sea.
That means if you do not completely wipe out the opponent in castle age, you have lost.
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They have one of the top 3 worst navies in the game. Cumans is another one, and I think maybe Huns?
are u sure Ethio is more picked than mayans?
also I dont understand why ppl can withstand same civ everygameā¦picking Vietnamese, Persians sometimes wont kill them
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The thing is if one team has one or more of these civs and a few other good ones, the game naturally becomes too favorable for that team. In HD, the nomad map was still unbalanced, so thereās a chance that a player with a good civ can still get a mediocre start because of not having resources around. But not the case with DE nomad which is more balanced.
This is something that the community has done by complaining a lot about other alternatives and keeping some of these civs like Franks, Britons, Ethiopians, Mayans unchecked. A year ago I think there was still Indians, Khmer in the mix atleast for pocket. But anyways, for Arabia and other standard open maps, there needs to be a feature which can give a random pocket civ for the pockets and flank civ for the flanks. Otherwise you might end up getting a teuton flank with byzantines pocket which is just so much worse than other way around. And also as far as I remember, in voobly you could never predict whose flank or pocket. Many times I have ended up as flank with colors 3, 4 or 6 and as pocket with colors 1, 7, 8.
Tbh, in lobby people just kept changing their civs by seeing opponent civs on a lot of non-arabia TGs and there was also hosts who used to explicitly mention āall random otherwise kickā. So lets say in a lobby 2 players picked Franks-BritonsIn DE, thereās no host or civ pick moderator to ensure that everyone is going random. Here if one team picks random, other teams crosses out the optional random and picks civs that becomes naturally unfavorable again. And at last, the matchmaking was done by a host manytimesā¦top 2 players split, bottom 2 players split and so on. In DE sometimes you get bizzare matchmaking 3k player with a 1.2k and 2k player vs 2 2.2k players and a 1.8k player and so onā¦Hosts used to set rating limits in their lobby in voobly.
Why do they pick/ban Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs, Franks, Tatars, Vikings etc in tournaments? For them, ranked doesnāt matter, they play seriously in tournaments. But many top players like Capoch, Dragonstar pick civ with the optional random too.
You donāt but many people stop playing because of that. People play when they got like 2-3 hours spare time. If queue time is 15-20 mins and then some guy gets disconnected, this will make many players quit or play even less often.
You can always play Megarandom or create a lobby in DE and play unranked and enforce random on players like voobly. Then you will continue to get creative gameplay
This is a very good idea. I hope there are enough players to fulfill both queues without much wait times.
Overall your recommendation to go all random is very good as long as the 5-6 meta civs for a map is automatically banned for all the players in that game.
4 Likes
I think it depends how long the game lasts.
Lacking canon galleon makes it hard to destroy castles and towers. Lacking one of galleon / bracer is also annoying late game, but at least you ger FU FFships and strong monks to convert ships.
Their eco is also subpaar, as carry capacity mainly impacts farms, which is weaker on map with fish.
Aztecs should still be better than e.g. Spanish until they reach imperial. So as long as you want to invade the enemy island early and not draw out the game until late, you should be fine with Aztecs against quite a few civs. But they are obviously not a good civ.
it seems many Mayan mains dropped the civ over the last year.
I have no problem playing the same 6 civs every game. Some of my friend play the same aoe civ every game, the same diablo class and the same moba champion every time. I donāt see the problemā¦
I donāt see the problem. Many people go to lobbies because they want the game to be played by their rules. If they want Arabia only, or a no Franks game, or a all random civ on random map pool, or a viking mirror BF game, it is their call. They just need to make it clear in the lobby description.
If we had ranked lobbies, most people would probably be happy.
This is a good idea.
I think the solution to this problem could be:
1). Change the civ screen so thatās itās like the map ban screen, except you can have an infinite number of bans. E.g. You could go random except Bengalis, Celts, Goths, Koreans etc.
Or the more restrictive option of:
2). Changing the civ screen so that the only options are Random Cavalry civ, Archer Civ, Cav Archer Civ, Siege Civ, Infantry civ, Full random etc. Unranked games can still civ pick.
Or alternatively, my preferred option:
3). Only enforce the completely Random Civ rule for team games.
What do you mean by this? Random civ only happens in 1v1 when both players agree to it. Why whould you want to change this?
Sorry, I didnāt explain this very well. I meant 1v1 would stay the same as it is now, but civ picking would not be possible in team games.
But that would be horrible. Random civs in teamgames is extremly unbalanced, mostly because meso civs just make horrible pockets.
I would not want to play meso pocket against franks pocket (or even something like Vietnamese pocket), nor would i want to get a cheap and meaningless win vs an inka pocket.
Team games are by definition unbalanced because the skill level of team mates is never equal.