Civ stats of KOTD

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I was pleasantly surprised by the success Indians have had in KOTD.
Also, and perhaps not unrelated, castle-age CA seem to be viable :partying_face:

Sadly, and unsurprisingly, Incas still aren’t doing too hot.
If Aztecs and Mayans are muchmuchmuch better than Incas in this setting (1v1 should be the Inca’s strong suite, with their main selling point being that they can ‘‘Counter’’ everything), I have little hope of seeing Inca’s played in the near future, except in games with random civs and tournaments where Aztecs and Mayans have both been either banned or already picked earlier.

1 Like
2

Be wary of the civ win rates though. Its a small pool of games and we have only had a couple underdogs winning. Most likely the victories were not due to civ, but due to skill difference.

Incas were played for example by MbL against TheViper. Viper wins that 7 out of 10 times with both of them playing random. Perhaps 5 out of 10 if MbL picks both civilizations (his and Vipers).

3

I was mostly looking at pick rates actually.

Indians were picked quite a lot. (63% pick+ban rate)
They also looked good in the games where I saw them play.

The fact that Inca’s got picked+banned only 20% of matches (in a system with a 50% pick+ban average overal) tells me enough.
You’re free to think that I give the pro’s too much credit.

4

i agree with you.
the pool of games is a bit small to see outstanding winrates of single civs.

the pick and ban rates on the other hand already give some information.

some civs are banned in as good as every draft and immediately picked if not, especially britains, vikings mayans and chinese.

other civs are not seen at all, neither this tournament nor the last ones. i miss to see goths, persians, burmese, magyars, slavs, teutons, bohemians and some others.

it will have a reason why son civs are seen in all drafts and some are absent…

5

With 39 civs it’s not surprising we don’t see all the civs every time.

It’s indeed a bit surprising that Magyars is picked so rarely. I would have expected more than a 33% perticipation of that civ specifically.

Some civs are just no good arabia civs so… Just expected with only 1 map in the pool we won’t have that much diversity.

And that there are some so extremely strong civs on that map isn’t a real upset. It was so for very long and if devs don’t decide to nerf these civs it will stay like this.

Interestingly Vikings after the last change have seen way less participation and draft priority.
I didn’t thought removing thumb ring would have such a big impact on the civ.

But it could also just be the map. Vikings like to boom behind their archer play and with the new map you just can’t be as greedy as you used to, so the Viking “meta” play has been nerfed indirectly.

6

With six global bans per match in KotD so far, it’s hard to say that the group stage strategies would continue to dominate in tryhard civ-picker games. I think that’s a bigger issue than the small pool of matches. Same as it’s hard to say exactly how good Magyars would have been in RBW5, because they were permabanned for most of the tourney.

7

Why would you get surprised by the indian pick rate? Did you believe the forumites in this place with their constant whining of Indians being “weak”?
Indians almost cannot be weak, their eco bonus is just too good for that. They can handle all the traditional cav & archer civs very, very well. And can still make a scrap vs infantry/meso civs due to the eco bonus.

The only interesting question is why weren’t they picked that much in earlier tournaments? I’d say no particualr reason, it was just the aura of being weak, perception and that the meta was locked between just a few civs and nobody dared to “experiment” with Indians.

Inca’s are doing fine and have done very well last few tournaments, the only meso civ actually being played, the rest commonly banned (except in EW where Incas > Mayans). Just another civ being underrated and people blowing the TR nerf out of proportion and overreacting. Inca’s shouldn’t even be picked once if it was true they’re a bottom five civ like so many people claim.

I still want to get rid of the rubbish team bonus so a small buff is welcome :slight_smile:

3 Likes
8

Well the fact one civ is permabanned usually speaks for itself for how good a civ is.

Indians are benefitting from basically two things in kotd4:

  • Aztecs and Mayans being often banned
  • CA being extremely good on KOTD arabia, since they are the only real indians military option that can be played in most match-up. In addition indians have good match-up versus other CA civs (tatars, huns, mongols) that are prominent in the tournament.

And this should make people on this forum who rush judgments and complains understand that few changes on map scripts and on the meta can really swing how civs perform.

1 Like
9

Maybe people finally stop laughing at me when I say I like korean and vietnamese castle age cav archers

10

Yeah but we’ve had KOTD tournaments before. And there’s no change for Indians or CA.

11

I am not convinced about that story how strong cav archers would be.
I’ve seen both cav archers winning and losing. One birllant example of this was the game Hera vs. JorDan as Italians vs Huns. Even without the GC Hera managed to beat cav archer / hussar with arb/hussar. (I think one of the reasons was that he managed to pick of a lot of the cav archer backline in the battles, so jordans cav archer numbers were crumbling and he had to replace them)
But this clearly shows that cav archers aren’t as strong as sometimes told. Especially if their mobility is heavily restricted. If you can’t run with that ball through the opponent eco and idle everything they aren’t that great anymore. So the counter strat against this is a) have your own threatening army (with siege) b) restrict the mobility: make walls and castles so they can’t just run through and idle everything (it can even be helpful to make walls in between your expansion so even if they break in, they can only idle a part of your eco.)
If you follow this two simple rules cav archers become way less of a problem as you took away their most important advantage: The mobility. And if it comes to a big fight in the middle of the map you can usually hold with just spamming hussars or skirms as meatshield against the cav archers. As long as you don’t just throw away but inflict losses to the opponent also you can have an equal fight.
Ofc there are some ca you don’t wanna mess with like magyars, tatars, turks, mangudai or kipchak. But the most cav archers actually don’t look as threatening anymore if they can’t use their mobility.

Also let’s don’t forget that cav archers need a lot of upgrades and are weak without them. It takes a while until they built up their critical mass which can be used to get ahead ecowise and set up a defence. And I actually wonder if it would be a good idea at this stage to already build stone walls before the cav archer player bares to move out. You want to be on stone then anyways cause you want TCs and Castles. So why don’t use it to protect your expansion against the next step from your opponent to expect: Raiding.

So in all conclusion I don’t think that CA are as strong as been told. I also can’t see it in the stats. The only CA civ that seems to have good results is mongols. But Mangudai is indeed also a different story - and I think the hunting bonus plays an important factor there also.

1 Like
12

Last KOTD was in 2020 before CA buff that reduced their attack delay, and KOTD map changes for any edition.

13

Winrate barely matter with that low sample size if it isn’t too high or low. At least we see many Cav archer play with Huns, Tatars, Indians. And Tatars have one of the best pick rate with 50:50 winrate.

It’s funny that Cav archer play was almost never seen in KOTD3, but now pros suddenly using cav archer even with Indians. The only buff cav archer get is reducing frame delay 0.1 s and that’s it. It is one of the example that even pro players aren’t perfect for what is the best way to play. The year ago, there were many rants in this forum that cav archer really weak and need to buff just simply because pros don’t use often and it should be weak.

But Cav archers are actually mostly buffed unit line after AOC. It’s gold cost decreased to 60gold from 70 gold. Most of good UUs are cav archer type and it means they are unstoppable when massed with proper upgrade. If it is necessary to increase base accuracy of Cav archer as someone insists, I think it would be good if the unit cost itself increase to 65 or 70 gold again. Then it is easier to transition but more difficult to maintain mass cav archer in late game.

1 Like
14

Its just the fix on cav archers, extra p.armor on light cav, nerfed palisade wall and wide open Kotd-4 map. They were always super popular on hybrid map tournaments like RBW series and Hidden cup. Only in ranked, they weren’t good before ranked Arabia switched to a very open map. They were doing worse against drush-fc archer civs.

1 Like
15

I haven’t seen much complaining about Indians win rates in general, they stay above average because they counter the extremely popular heavy cavalry civs. The complaint is that they’re a civ designed around camels, without knights at all, and their camels are not #1, but somewhere around #4 or #5, while being the most expensive to upgrade. I agree that they are carried by their strong economy, not their units or tech tree, and that is IMO poor design that results in them being very bland.

I have to disagree about their meso civ matchups. Aztecs, Mayans and Incas all beat Indians a majority of the time, and are 3/4 of the worst matchups for Indians. Camels in general are useless here, Eagles beat Archers, Skirms, Light Cav and Camels, and you can’t always survive until Imperial for hand cannons. Interestingly the 4th worst civ for Indians to face is Saracens, which has superior camels (even 1v1), with cheaper upgrades, and is the only other civ that lacks Cavalier.

16

Every single thing you mentioned is subjective at best. At the end of they day, Indians aren’t going to change anytime soon. There’s no reason to.

17

Well the stats here:

https://www.ageofstatistics.com/cohort_rm_solo_open.html#
https://www.ageofstatistics.com/cohort_rm_solo_open_pro.html#

Show that the general assesment “Indians beat cav civs and lose to mesos” holds in the stats.
Interestingly Indians also seem to be solid against archer civs. Funnily they have >50 % winrate against civs like britons or vikings aswell.
In KOTD Indians have 72 % winrate.

I don’t know, but maybe Indians are indeed OP now? I don’t know what causes this, but I remember some time ago I also stated that I think the civ isn’t probably figured out completely. That time Indians were performing about average.

But I neither have played with or against indians after this much so I don’t know what exactly has changed in the gameplay that causes them to be stronger. I think it’s just that players now “understand” that civ better.

I can’t exactly remember why, but maybe I seen players making misplays with that civ all the time and stated that it maybe isn’t figured out yet. But maybe the reason why the civ is so strong now has completely different reasons.

I think we should observe indians a bit. Most likely the pick rate on the ladder will raise in the next patches and we will have a better understanding what exactly happened there, If the winrates stay that high it probably needs some tweaking.

1 Like
18

There’s nothing subjective about it. Indians objectively have one of the strongest economies with a villager discount, gold bonus, and sometimes a fishing bonus as well. They are one of the top booming civs. I doubt anyone is debating this, so it’s easy to address first at a high level.

Objectively Indian camels in the late game are worse than Saracens’ when facing most enemy units (including heavy cavalry). If you consider unit cost then Berbers and Byzantines also have better camels than Indians. That is not even considering upgrade costs, which is a generous way of looking at it since Imperial Camel costs 1800 resources (about 15-16 camels you could otherwise afford, and in fact its not even worth getting the upgrade unless you plan on making nearly 100 camels).

Malians are situational, and I’d lean toward them being behind Indians in most cases, although they are cheaper to upgrade and Farimba allows them to raid better. This one is a little subjective, that is why I said #4 or #5. Imperial Camels are certainly not in the top 3 unless the game is camels vs buildings (unlikely).

Even in Castle Age, where Indians still have full armor upgrades, this changes very little. Saracens with +10 HP are better than Indians with +1 Pierce Armor when facing enemy cavalry. Berbers (even with 15% discount) and Byzantines (who have full attack upgrades in Castle Age) are both more efficient than Indians. Malians are completely generic so they fall off the list for Castle Age.

As for win rate stats, thanks for the supporting links @casusincorrabil. I used that same site, but the specific data set I referenced was open maps 1v1 , >1200 Elo, no civ pick (any other data set skews stats toward 50% win rate as discussed in another thread).

https://www.ageofstatistics.com/cohort_rm_solo_open_rm1civ.html#

In this data Indians show 46% win rate against Mayans, 47% against Incas, 48% against Saracens and 49% against Aztecs. These are their worst 4 matchups. Tbh I’m not really opposed to Indians having a sub-50% win rate against the 3 civs with no cavalry, I was just refuting the claim they do fine against meso, objectively they do not. My opinion is that Indians should perform better against Saracens, its actually shocking that they lose this one considering the differences in economy. That says to me that Saracens versatility and tech tree is doing a lot, while Indians limited options and weaker camels negate their eco advantage (this sentence is subjective, but the win rate is not).

I hope that Indians see a change soon. Not because they need a buff, but because they need an identity.

19

I haven’t seen much complaining about Indians win rates in general, they stay above average because they counter the extremely popular heavy cavalry civs. The complaint is that they’re a civ designed around camels, without knights at all, and their camels are not #1, but somewhere around #4 or #5, while being the most expensive to upgrade. I agree that they are carried by their strong economy, not their units or tech tree, and that is IMO poor design that results in them being very bland.

This is all subjective. The reason they don’t have clear #1 camels is precisely because of their eco. They don’t need to have the best hands down best camels.
I don’t really have an opinion on the meso issue.

20

Well indians are not the only eco civ tbf, look at Chinese, Franks, Aztecs (in fact all the permabanned civs are basically eco civs…)

Chinese - carried by their strong economy because of discounts
Franks - carried by their strong economy because free farm, berries and bloodline
Aztecs - carried by their +3 vill capacity (well subjective on this one)

I think the removal of Knights are a good gimmick for a civ already, it does not feel too bland to play (you can open xbows/CA/scouts anyway) unlike Franks etc (franks xbow anyone?)