This is the worst thing continually perpetuated by this community and it deserves it’s due pushback.
The unwritten rule for AOE2 lobbies that ENTIRE GAME MODES (and like 50% of any other game mode) are mandatory played with random civs is beyond ridiculous. These games typically exist outside of the normal open map/closed map RM metas and so civ choices end up having much more of an influence in something like Castle Blood Automatic, Nothings, or long real world Diplo games than in ranked matches where everything has close to a 50/50 winrate.
Many of these custom games can be lost at the civ select screen before any gameplay even takes place. So I pose this question to the community: Why do we put ourselves through this? Every nomad game is just a contest of who randomed mongols. Diplo games can be lost in an instant by getting civs without critical imperial upgrades. We’re at the point where many civs in Castle Blood Automatic are straight bunk, like the Serjeants that can’t build donjons, Keshiks that are invalidated by infinite resources, or India and Elephant Archers being a guaranteed loss.
My personal theory: It’s the concentration of players who are too unskilled or fearful to try the ranked ladder present on the lobby browser. They don’t know civ picks, and they don’t want you to have the advantage of your game knowledge, so they force random so you’re less likely to play civs you’re familiar with. I also suspect another part of this mindset involves these players counting on games where they are handed advantageous civs and other players aren’t for victories.
Posting this here in the hopes of highlighting the issue and putting a stop to it. More skilled players aren’t the bad guy for knowing what civ they want.
No one force your into playing anything in the lobby.
Why dont you just host your own lobby and put ‘Pick civ’ into the name?
Completely false. Random civ was already the way to go for many years, even before DE. It has nothing to do with being unskilled or fearful. It is even the other way around: Lower rated people are more likely civ pickers, so they can play with a civ they know, while higher rated players are much better in handling all different civ, so they have the advantage with random civ.
I like to play Random (and prefer Random only lobbies), because playing the exact same match-ups ad nauseatum isn’t really fun (Black Forest lobbies, but I suppose same would go for Arena/Nomad where certain civs are always must-picks).
But also, just host yourself lol, we aren’t ‘putting ourselves through this’. If I don’t like something about the current lobbies being hosted for a specific map or custom game, I just host it myself.
I think you’re reading way too much in it. Why would forcing random civ give anyone an advantage??
Random civ lobbies was the norm before DE when there was no matchmaking. And this was super fun. So what’s the problem if people want to keep that practice in times where you can’t be sure to get random civs in ladder? This is one of the few good aspects about lobbies (the other being able to choose map but apart from these two lobbies are in a horrible state so I don’t really see a point using them for my games).
Random civ runs the risk of giving matchups where, with 2 players of equal skill on a balanced map, you can call the result of the game before it even loads. That scares people away from random civ.
Sure but in the long run it equals out. What op was claiming that people use random civ to get a strategic advantage with better civ. And that doesn’t happen as you can’t tell who will get what civs. You might get better ones in one game and worse ones in another game.
Besides there are so many ways to pick civs already. If don’t wanna play ranked and existing lobbies are random civs just make your own lobby. Just let the people that specifically use lobbies to play random civ be and play this way.