After DE came out we otinouusly had a tendendency to faster paced game modes. It all started with increasing the base speed of the ranked to 1.7 x. Then we had Empire Wars, 9 vills start and general changes to maps and balance that lead to faster paced games. Lately this tendendency has even reached the Buildorders and we now have super fast feudal uptimes to get the initiative as soon as possible.
Especially the faster game modes often lead to a very slim meta development, as every deviation from that executionally perfect playstyle would often be very easy to punish, as the economies are so tightly fitted to the optimized buildorders for them. Also, especially with the view on empire wars, the element of “buildig up your own base” was eliminated as you already started with one preset for you.
Due to the very high pace in the beginning of the game, the games tend to be very short and snowbally aswell, often decided already in feudal age. Which means, especially for players that aren’t on the very top level, that on most open maps the game coucln’t even develop to it’s beuatiful lategame diversity in most of the games.
So what are the principles for me to build up this concept?
A) opening variety: trush, archers, CA, militia rush, knights, trash ALL shall be viable agressive openers
B) defensive openers should be possible, but dependent on the maps that suit them
C) scouting what the opponent does is a key factor, knowing what he opens shall help a lot with your own strats, adapting will be revarded
D) Buildorders will also be revarded, but they are set to be way shorter than with the current rankeds
E) You build up almost the entirety of your base and need to balance this with your military openers
F) Games shall not be as snowbally as currently. This is probably more a wish than a plannable feature
G) Civs identities shall be kept as far as possible, but balanced at the same time
The general concept
the Game starts in Castle Age
the Players start with a TC, a house close to the Boar, a lumber camp, 8 vills (4 under the TC with a sheep, 2 standing in between the TC and the lumber camp and 2 on the lumber camp), a scout and a Barracks. The Barracks is perfectly aligned into the direction to the opponent TC. SO players know in what direcion to go, but they don’t know the opponent map yet
these techs are already researched: Town Watch, Light Cavalry and Pikeman. NO OTHER UPGRADES you would normally get when just starting from castle age. It’s especially crucial they don’t start with any eco bonusses. Cause it’s intended this is a tradeoff decision to take, when to get them.
starting ressources: 50-150 Wood (perfect spot need to be found. the more wood the less strong militia rushes will be in comparison to knights, archers and CA). 250 Food (to have enough for a 3 militia rush), 100 Gold and 150-200 Stone
The players start with 1(under TC)+3(besides TC)+2(outside) sheep, 6 berry bushes, a single boar and 2-3 deer
The idea is to give the players the opportunity to make a militia rush right away when starting the game. Ofc they are still unuprgaded militai, so you either have to pay for the upgrades aswell or have paid for a dark age unit just to get something out so early. For archers or knights you would need to collect wood to make the building and a gold mining camp, also putting some vills there to get enough gold. So these rushes will be delayed in comparison to a militia rush. You can make a light cav rush if you don’t want to pay for a mining camp at that stage.
On the other hand it’s necessary that pikeman is already researched as otherwise on tendencially open maps this mode would immediately turn into a knight rush feast. As Knights need basically no upgrades and all other units do to be viable in early castle age. So you need to have at least something along with your knights to deal with the pikes OR have scouted the opponent opener and know he has no eco for high enough pike numbers left. If the free pikeman upgrade turns out to be too restrictive for cav openers there could be a compensation like free bloodlines in return. But I’m pretty sure we won’t get away without the free pikeman upgrade.
Free town watch is give to give more initiative early on to scout the opponent as you will just see more of your own map. Pushing the deer shal be an option, but not the general approach here.
ANd ofc free light cav to allow for a “quasi” scout opener, especially for civs like magyars and turks who have specific bonusses to them. When no free light cav, there would be basically no incentive to make that play. But I personally would like to see a bit more stable variety there than just knights and camels.
The game mode should give a quite high incentive to open CA as CA would have high enough damage output even without upgrades to threaten enemy vills from range. Possibly even be a threat to knights before they get the armor upgrades + bloodlines. This is imo kinda balanced by the fact that after that initial rush advantage CA should fall of a bit as they would need a lot of costly upgrades like thumb ring and bloodlines.
Civ Balance
This ofc is a huge topic on it’s own. I have already some ideas in mind how this could be approached. But for now I think it’s already enough content in the base concept to talk about.
Good grief, imagine playing against Bulgarians on 8 vills CA and no more than 5 minutes in you got a bunch of Longswords chewing at your lumber camp…
Civ Balances would be crucial indeed.
Archers especially sound like they’ll be tough to balance, since a big part of the Crossbow strategy is to mass them up on Feudal before you upgrade. The Cavalry player is going to have a huge advantage right off the bat.
Overall competitive AoE players are pretty resistant to change, especially on starts (remember the last time they changed Arabia treelines? It was a whole thing), but I’d be willing to try it out, personally.
Even faster. But it’s intentional that some civs will have very strong openers they basically have to go for. With the high diversity of stuff available, there will be all the options against these openers available. You just need to find a way to overcome the initial tech disadvantage.
Whilst I agree that with Bulgarians LS it’s probably the most extreme, more dangerous are probably civs like malians and malay as their militia would already have 3 PA to begin with, without any investment to be made. Both civs have strong eco aswell behind that. Also dangerous: Sicilians and Koreans with their trushes. Cause at this stage there is like no “easy” counter against militia and guard towers.
And ofc that’s some imortant aspect for the balance, to make sure these openers are viable but not overpowerded. That’s why I personally tried to make scouting the opponent a crucial part of that game mode, as the plan is to give enough tools to deal with that stuff when you expect it. Like preparing already stone walls against militia rushes, going for CA. And against trushes already preparing siege and/or looking for ways to expand your eco. And this kind of counterplay ofc also allows the opponent to go for different openings if he scouts your counter-opening and hasn’t already committed too much into his “best” opening choice.
This more focus on scouting would then allow to give more initial starting wood which would allow to go more easily into Knights, Archers or CA to counter the expected militia rushes from the mentioned strong infantry civs, either directly or by counterraiding. That at least is the idea I had in mind to balance the top infantry civs, to make the counter play easier as long as you scout it properly.
What I am actually more concerned about are the eco bonusses. Like if you have Dravidians or Ethiopians.
What do they get at the start? Shall Dravidians get 400 W + 80 F + 45 G? And Ethiopians 360 F + 290 G? (as the free pikeman upgrade needs to be compensated aswell) That would possibly so overpowered with only 8 vills start, that all the civs with basically no eco bonus could be overrun with ease early on. Ofc in terms of Ethiopians they would be hold back a little cause they wouldn’t have wood in the beginning to make more production buildings.But we’re still talking about 650 res these 8 starting vills would need almost 4 minutes to collect for all the other civs that don’t have that kind of eco bonus.
One more reason why I gave the free pikeman upgrade. Pikes synergize very well with foot archer openings. And as you already start with a barracks you could just open with a few pikes and then add the archers later. Also the archer line is by far the best counter to the pikemen, so i can see acher openings just to counter a pike + militia rush. But i agree, that the archer opener on it’s own looks a bit sad there, especially with the crossbow upgrade being more espensive now. I can see reducing that upgrade cost by 50 % for that game mode to make it more intereting to go for archers.
Casue it’s such a new game mode, these interactions aren’t well predictable rn, so it would need probably a lot of testing to find the right balance there. Fortunatley thanks to our statistic freaks we now have tools to analyze how the openings compare to each other and we could adjust the balance according to the stats quite easily.
Not sure about that. I mean free pikeman upgrade is huge against cav. But the cav player doesn’t necesarily have to open cav. They could open militia or range to first deal with the pikes, before they come in with their cavalry.
Depending of if you speak about ladder play or pros. A lot of pros love to experiment with new game modes. And i think there are also some high ranked casuals who do. But there is ofc this big bulk of arabia only players in the higher elo range who are very resistant to any changes.
But that’s ok to me. I don’t even want to change ranked arabia. It’s just an idea for a new type of game mode that tries to satisfy a lot of different perceptions of the game, like having a fast start but ttrying to keep as much diversity and building up your own base. It’s not about changing anything, just an idea for that kind of faster pced game mode a lot of people seemingly looking for, but still haven’t found one that satisfies the expectations.
Balance
As you mentioned it we could possibly start to talk about the civ balance.
For me most important is that all civs should be kinda viable in semi-open maps. And I would like to preserve the civs identities as much as possible. Consistancy isn’t as important to me, if I’m honest, cause I don’t even think it’s possible to balance with a consistant approach. The civ bonusses are just way too different imo.
That means for me like Chinese still should get +3 vills. But as we start with 250 F and they aren’t housed in the beginning, already having enough vills to sustain production. They will end up with basically the full 3 vill advantage. But on the flipside with having no extra food in the bank chinese can’t make anything but vills far some time, giving the opponent early agression time to deal damage to their eco.
The mentioned Dravidians and Ethiopians could start with already some extra ressources, but probably way less than they would get from the two age-ups in a game starting from dark age. Maybwe 50 % of the numbers mentioned above would be suitable for them.
Mongols and Goths could start with a little extra food to fit their early agression style. Also compensation for the reduced hunt on the map.
Byzantines could either start with an additional vill + 25 F or just +75 F (free town watch), aswell as Spanish start with +60 G (3 free techs) and Turks with +150 F +50 G (free light cav).. Or we also could cut these down by 50 %, esecially the turks, as their extra armor for light cav is already a nice bonus to make use of anyways.
Interesting are also civs like Malay and Bengalis who effectively should start with extra vills. For bengalis I would cut them down to 2, as they come with no downside. Malay could get +3 vills but also start with -150 F. I think this would be a “elegant” way to balance out malay as this way they couldn’t make a super powerful milita rush right from the getgo, aslo preserving their “identity” of having bad ressources after an age-up. Both civs would be housed initially and therefore had to start with loom, reducing the vill advantage by 1.
This settings isn’t friendly for militia rush. Militia rush is useless when opponent has town watch, 250 hp palisades and light cav to start with. And when you have 250 food at the start with 4-6 on food, if you queue up 3 militias, you can barely keep up villager production. You’d most likely end up taking a bigger hit on your own economy as compared to doing damage on theirs, especially since the game starts in castle age.
That probably might be the most optimal strategy. You can either kill vills or prevent them from moving around freely, force spearman production, also guard relics.
CA openings are good when game is played for a longer duration in feudal age. CA needs a big timing advantage or a lot of upgrades to be threatening. This mode isn’t going to change any of that. They’re still going to have poor accuracy, huge frame delay, low value for their cost in the early game. Balancing with CA is very difficult as well. If you accidentally overbuff, we would return to the pre-HD days of Huns CA being the only meta.
I don’t know what’s your goal - to make milita rush more common, imo its better to do some combination of these - decrease dark age hp of palisade walls, increase build/repair time of palisades, decrease cost of barracks or start in dark age with a barracks and a militia, decrease base cost of militias, increase base speed of militia line, increase base attack of militias to 5, make loom more expensive or split it into two upgrades one in dark, one in feudal, add more GAIA food area to control like fishes on land, like in some of the delicious maps. This will reward militia production more often.
To make a castle age based fast paced mode, you need to give a bit more villagers, more food, gold and wood at the start but 1 tc, 1 barrack, 1 blacksmith, 1 market and no stone (something like 20 villagers - 8 farmers, 5 lumberjacks, 3 gold miners, 4 idle, 400w, 400f, 200g, 0s). Build time of tc should be more while that of military buildings should be less. Then, the players can choose to either go for attack right away or buy stone add tc, defend and then attack later.
A) You try to discourage me.
But what if my motivation isn’t based on need of positive feedback?
B) You try to bring more weight to your own opinion by generalizing it. Try to make others believe you’re representative for the majority.
That’s kinda sadge and desperate.
In general I don’t think we should work with rethoric figures like this here, cause they don’t have any constructive impact.
You still can do a lot with the militias. At least buying some time, but also just make the opening awkward for the opponent. The mentioned 250 HP walls you can’t bring up before the militia rush arrives. you only can wall your wood. But then you are fixed on whatever amount of villagers you have then on this camp. And you will need to repair. The light cav might be strong, but the militia rusher can (and should) bring his own light cav to the fight aswell to help out, so the 2 light cav negate each other. And it’s also possible and possibly even likely we won’t see a 3 militia rush, but instead 2 militia + pike exactly to have something to deal with the light cav.
With that rush you can possibly deny or pressure imprtant base development like a gold mining camp or mill, making it hard for the opponent to put out the units he wanted to go for. Also you force an early loom. The issue I see with the militia is that it’s possible that the timing isn’t enough and when the stronger castle age units are out they will die very easily.
It’s tight, no question. We possibly can talk about increasing these ressources, possibly making it viable to get the MAA upgrade aswell. Would possibly be more balanced then as there are civs that would be able to do that and had a huge advantage therefor.
We could also talk about the option to reduce the sheep numbers, so pressuring the berries early on can deal a lot of eco damage to the opponent.
I just wanted to give enough res to make a nice milita rush early on, not eough to spam knights directly (a small knight rush is ok, but if it’s too much, there would be no point in making the militia, as you would be forced to prepare for that knight mass when it’s comming.
Wouldn’t be too fast with this prediction. Knights are really strong in this setting and they beat light cav very convincingly.
I don’t agree with your CA analyzis. It’s very complicated why CA are currently lackluster, one of it is the way we design our bases which gives CA very littlle opportunity to idle the eco.
And CA aren’t buffed in the mode. I just think they will be much better there than in the current arabia meta. Because they are kinda cheap on the eco (no food), have high enough base attack to kill vills, are mobile and have range. So if you manage to keep them alive they can do a lot for you with little investment. And that’s the ky part cause when you want to make CA your main army force you will need to pay for a lot of costly upgrades.
I literally explained in the opening post what I try to achieve???
That’s a different approach. And I disagree. I think it’s absolutely possible to make a kinda low eco castle age start that still is kinda fast paced as from the very beginning you have rush options.
And as I told, it’s very important to me that the players still build up their own bases, this is only possible with low vill numbers. I went for 8 vills as it is a reasonable number to make your first “decision” on eco distributtion. Also it’s the normal starting number + 5 which means the civs that get vill bonusses are usually housed and you also need to make houses right away like you have on a standard start. Keeping as much from the standard start as possible.
Increasing Food and Gold a bit is possible, just in a way you can have always enough ressources for the basic rushes. But not more. It’s actually kinda important for the game mode that there are enough res for the basic rush but then it becomes tight. This leads to a natural transition phase after the initial agression the EW settings (or similar) are cirtically missing.
Again looks like a completely different game mode, actually very similar to EW. And we all know what happened to EW. I actually tried to fix the mistakes made in the EW settings. Why you argue we “need” yet another basically Empire Wars mode?
And that’s exaclly what it doesn’t. It skips the feudal and castle age timings play. But NOT buildorders, scouting, adaption and buidling up your own base. And this is what differs it from these other faster modes like the mentioned EW.
But with town watch done, you can see the militia from quite some distance and wall the berries quite comfortably without any panic. Its not the same as 2 militias suddenly appearing at the berries in the dark age.
Once wood and berries are quickwalled, not much to do. Its going to take forever to break, the defender doesn’t even have to stay focused.
yes it can potentially force the defender to delay 2nd tc, but they can take the stragglers, get a stable and add light cavs or 1 knight. Since they’re doing army later, their eco would relatively be better and the light cav or knight they made can get much more value than the militias you made.
Repairing palisades is negligible cost and super fast. The amount of idle time is quite negligible compared to the expense of spending 180 food that early. And if you delay the militia production, like you’ve mentioned it yourself, you’d lose them to strong castle age units.
Its more of a problem related to food gathering rate, speed and other stats of militia line. Maybe Bulgarians could do some damage by making 2 longswords. Militia themselves are quite weak. Unless opponent has a reason to move farther from base like a pack of deer or shore fish far from tc, its very difficult to get enough value from them.
Like you’ve mentioned, they’d need gold. Attacking with the first knight could be effective but by the time you have enough eco to start producing knights, opponent will do monks, have tc. Knights will be the option eventually for cavalry civs but not early in the game. With light cavs you don’t have that problem and you get a lot of vision.
Yes that’s the same thing as not playing long feudal age. Ideally you’d never play a long feudal age game when its easy to wall and have a tight base with enough resources for 25-30 mins. Long feudal age is typical when you have the legacy generations, just one or two very thin and small wood lines nearby, once that’s done the rest of the wood is 20+ tiles away, all mines are forward and downhill.
Once you battle for a long time in feudal age, you will already have bloodlines and other feudal upgrades, multiple ranges and a much bigger economy. Opponent’s base will be quite large and open to raids. So it would be good value to do thumb ring, ballistics, husbandry and bodkin.
yes it might be better than current Arabia meta but not by much. They’re still going to be matchup dependent and situational.
Its possible to have low villager, low resources start but its not going to be fast paced. Its going to be faster than the typical 3 villager dark age or 9 villager start but attacks are pretty much going to start after 15 mins of game time as usual. For the cost of castle age military units, you need an economy of a certain size. Very early knights or siege is going to be a high risk high reward style play - very dependent on micro and luck factors.
because it skips the first 5-6 mins of Arabia EW, while extra resources, no walls and fewer vills than EW means you have more decisions involved.
Its confusing actually. Militia rushes, tower rushes, fast paced game are even less feasible on low resources, low villager castle age starts with town watch. So it’s not very clear which one you want more. The only goal you’ll achieve is less snowbally games because there’s no castle age timing advantage and most of the players will add town centers, monastery and play passive until they have a sizeable eco. Many other things like build orders, scouting, military vs eco balance will be there as they’re universally true under any competitive setting.
Great to see picking just one sentence of my post on trying to take it out of context.
It does skip dark age and feudal age, which are half of the ages. I dont think you can argue different.
Historically we got RM and DM as the two main ways to play this game (yeah, i know we always had more game modes).
RM was really starting at the start and going through all phases. That is why people enjoy RM.
DM is all about fully upgraded armies. It skips upgrading everything and instantly go to late game battles. That is why people enjoy DM.
At least that is a very short summary of how i see these game modes.
Then EW was introduced because people said dark age is too repetitive and you cant really fight battles. Dark age is mainly a slow build up to the real battles that occur from feudal age. So their was kinda some demand for EW.
I havent seen much demand of skipping dark age and feudal age. I also dont really get that point at all. It will only remove parts of RM instead of adding more depth.
You can already see that RM is by far the most popular mode. DM and EW are much less popular. Personally i dont see many benefits of you suggested castle age start game mode over the already existing game modes.
If anything should be changed, then it is lowering the number of vills on EW. I havent played it in a while, but i thought you start with 27 vills. That is a lot and lets you easily FC from that point. If you lower the number, then that is harder. I wouldnt mind to even go down to 15 vills or something like that. That would be an extreme change, so that is probably not likely to happen. Even going down to 21 will already change the flow of EW significantly.
I think making these kind of these to an existing game mode will be better then adding another game mode. I. The end you can already select you starting age. So you will be able to start castle age EW games. That would already plays quite similar to your suggested game mode.
What contex? 11
You literally threw out 3 very short sentences one more shallow and dismissive than the other. 11
If you get into a discussion like that you have to take the punchback.
And don’t play the victim now, that’s pathetic.
And I won’t even begin with your double standard here, as you failed to give any feedback to the content I gave, yet you demand from me to? And again: which contexc? You didn’t said anything. As you implied the proposed game mode would skip more than EW or DM. Which is just obviously wrong. So what is the context? That you lie to the people who read it? And this actually even supports my interptretation, that your post is actually inherently off-topic and you only want to have that standoff between us.
You can have that. But take the punchbacks like a man and don’t play the victim.
Why are you talking about that? EW is a different game mode.
Changing little things wouldn’t generally change the playstyle.
The mode propose is inherently different to EW, as it is only skipping times of the game where no stuff happens anyways. No decisions are taken, usually no significant battles.
EW starts with a lot of decisions already taken for you, including a base already built.
And witht he eco you have there, you have so much, that the typical “rush” isn’t a play anymore, you have to use compositions already. There is alos no timing where the “dust settles” after the initial rushes and depending on the outcome you have to make a decision what your next steps are.
So how do you even come to the idea to compare these 2 modes? They are entirely different.
??? EW was introduced as a tournament game mode as the Red Bull guys wanted to have faster paced games, as it fits their brand better. It was partially a marketing gig.
Only than a very vocal group of players wanted the same mode in a ranked. Partially also driven by the Hype memb put on it. And it turned out that EW wasn’t very well designed and only lead to compelling games whilst the meta wasn’t developed.
And I try to don’t make the mistakes that are made there. The mode I propose only skips like 7 mins of game where usually nothing happens anyways. Yes it takes away the timing battle. But tbh, this has become a “hunt for the better timing” anyways. Meaning it isn’t a “decision” to take anymore, it only leads to more snowbally games in it’s current state. So I don’t see why we need that, as it doesn’t offers any diversity in gameplay anymore. Meaning you can just remove it, nobody will really notice it as “missing” as it isn’t a real decision to take anymore.
Omg. Are you really telling here that for you it makes no difference to start with 8 or 27 vills? And no difference if you start with only lumber camp and barracks or a fully built base?
EW starts fully developed in mid feudal. The mode I propose starts intenionally with a low eco in Castle Age. But enough res to make a basic rush.
Maybe you should start thining about what makes this different to EW.
And you should mabye think about why I proposed exactly this and not yet another Empire Wars type of mode. Maybe cause I’ve looked into EW and seen that this high eco start makes the games super snowbally and repetitive? And tried to find a way that fixes that?
But I’m not that eager to tell i would exactly know how it will turn out. I only can try to explain what’s the intention behind it. One important part is that as I told, I want to keep the “build up your own base” part whilst giving fast rush options and finally also enable games that maybe only last like 20 minutes to see all the variety the game has to offer. With keeping the decision making, as opposed to DM almost all techs are still to be researched and you only start with enough res for a basic rush, not a military swarm.
When you can’t see these differneces, you maybe shouldn’t discuss here. Cause tbh if you can’t see them, you’re probably missing a lot of basics of the game.
I think you put a bit too much emphasis on town watch here. Ofc it helps, but it’s actually more important for the scout to be able to go forward fast and scout the opponent. And otherwise around that’s a bit easier to defend is actually intended. Cause in this game mode villager kills early on are super tough to overcome. Having this bit more of LOS helps keeping them alive. The idle time and strategical advantages of denying ressources, making the game awkward for the opponent are imo already a way underappreciated value you can get from early rushes.I think without town watch the games would be too often decided by early vill kills and I try to reduce this. I still expect this game mode to have a rather high percentage of very short games. But that’s the idea behind it, the remaining games which make it over the 5-6 minute mark after the initial rush should be quite compelling. Plus the games which are decided that early should be easily detectable, so it’s easy to just call it then and don’ waste time in a slow macro snowball. If I’d ask to expect how many games will end that fast from my personal experience I would say with town watch about 20-25 % and without probably about 40 %.
If the militia rush turns out to be too weak we can still discuss about a free MAA upgrade. That’s not an issue. An issue would be if in 50% of the milita/maa rushes you can kill 1-2 villagers cause with that low vill start this would be super hard to compensate.
You might be right with the amount of res that are available under the TC. We could possibly talk about reducing the amount of starting sheep and stragglers, so idling villagers and denying res with the early rush would have more impact. I prefer this over the inconsistancy of possible vill kills.
Imo you put a bit too much emphasis on the milita opening. It’s 1 of 5 or 6 options you have there. The big advantage of it is the timing, dsirupting the other BO that you can do. And then the opponent has also first do deal with the infantry rush (you probably want to mix in at least one pikeman). Giving you time to prepare your defence against whatever the opponent does.
I would be a bit more cautious in predictions how the balance between the individual openers will be.
I think Knights will be a solid opener. But it’s clear with the easy availability of pikes you need to check whether you can go only Knights or need to mix in some other stuff to deal with the pikes.
I don’t think monks will be a common opener as they can’t really put pressure on the opponent and only help to defend against knights. Maybe as a transition when the opponent already has commited to Knights, but even then he would probaly mix in a few light cav to deal with the monks.
Again you’re very eager with your predictions. I would first try it. And then there would be always the option to specifically target certain openers, make them more competitive. As I said, it’s the goal of the mode that all or most of the openers are competitive. I’m 100 % sure there will be some that fall off, but they can be targeted specifically with either different starting res or free upgrades. But it’s really hard to predict as we don’t have played this mode yet. I personally think CA will probably one of the best openers here, as they are great for herassing and you can keep them alive for a long time. You don’t need to invest much either, 5 CA without any upgrades can already do a lot. ANd you can transition into anything then as you haven’t commited a lot there. And that’s the huge difference to the current ranked. Cause there you usually have commited to something else and even if it’s something that helps for the transition into CA, you still are often better in just sticking with what you have already commited to.
Maybe semi-fast. The res are also a bit higher than normal, The issue with the most “fast paced” modes is that they are super snwobally and super executional. And I wanted to have a game mode that is more about decision making and very importantly has this phase after the initial openers where the dust settles and the transiton to a mid-game is happening. For me this is very important, probably the most important phase, cause it allows the players to bring their personal playstyles to the table
Ok maybe it’s what you would like to see as a game mode, EW starting in Castle Age.
And you’re absolutely free to promote this. But as you pointed out that’s a huge difference to my concept with a lower vill count. I see no reason why we can’t discuss the different options side by side. But if you don’t mind, I would like to have the 8 vill start like it is designed.
As you talked about decisions taken, that’s one of the lots of differences, with the 8 vill start you still have baiscally all decisions to take yourself still whilst with the high vill count in EW and a built-up base many are already taken for you. And I think this is one of the major issues with EW, but that’s just my personal opinion.
So please stop trying to bring me into changing it to a Castle Age EW start. I very consciously chose to NOT do that. And I lenghtly explained why I prefer a start with lower vill count (but in castle age instead of feudal).
I tried to find a compromise. Is it so hard to understand when I list all the different principles? A game mode that skips the most “boring” 7 minutes of the game whilst keeping all the decision making. Also hopefully leading into more games that actually use all the strategical variety the game has to offer (as to be honest most of the current ladder arabia games actually end before they reach a lategame. So the hope is, that with possibly same lenght of a game we see way more of the game, esepcially on the more open maps and not only early and parts of the midgame before it’s already decided.
I think it’s very important for a game mode to find a compromise, because if you only push one of the principles you will only attract playerrs with that perception and then the games on the mode become boring as there is no diversity.
And I don’t want to make that mistake.
Speking about ressources, I think the optimal spot is 350 F, 150 G, 50 W and 200 S. That allows for 3 MAA + Pikeman rush even for civs that don’t have any bonusses. Archer and Cavalry rushes are delayed because of the lack of wood, but there are otherwise enough ressources to keep up production even if you have to put a lot on wood initially to rush a range or stable.
Seems like we got someone who only likes his own opinion and dislike everything else.
Therefore there is no reason for me to continu discussing this useless suggestion more.
Are you talking about yourself? Cause as far as I can see you’re very fast in being (passive-) agressive on any occasion somebody is promoting something you don’t like.
And additionally you don’t even bother giving any explantion for your “opinions”, they are often very shallow yet most of the time actually would need some explanation as they imo most of the time actually look like your missing basic game knowledge to see they won’t work out.
Yet you often formulate your personal opinions as they would be representative for the majority and deny this for any other perspective than your own.
For me it looks like a very desperat attempt to gain some power here.
Therefore also seemingly your obsession with conformity, bringing people on your side.
But it’s completely wasted. Devs don’t take this forum serious anyways. I shared this idea here cause I find it interesting to think about stuff like this. Like balance threads or civ ideas. And you should leave your thought that any of your toxic sidebattles about influence would have any impact on what devs do either.
The most what will probably come from this thread is a small streamer getting inspired to make his own special mode to make his little tourney a bit more special. But they probably won’t use this mode but instead possibly design their own anyways.
I still don’t get why there are still so many toxic people seeking for influence here, it’s completely wasted time. Devs literally don’t care.
We could use the forum to just talk about stuff we’re interested in, instead it has become a absurd battleground about some imaginary influence which just isn’t there.
The setting itself is quite interesting but my view about the feasibility of certain strategies like maa/miltia opener or CA is not because of this setting but rather the units themselves. Militia line is super slow and super food intensive. CA’s base stats are poor. To make these strategies more popular this might not be the ideal setting. No wall mod, cracked terrain, gaia food control areas, far and forward woodlines, reduced building hp - these are things which can make militia rush, CA play, towers more viable.
no I don’t. But I’m saying if you’re goal is to have a mode where fight begins quite early while also having a balance in terms of possible openers, something with more starting food gold and more villagers would work better. Your setting is good but its still going to be slow in terms of when military aggression would begin, and limit feasibility of certain opening strategies. And if your goal is to make those strategies more viable, its better to do it through game mods, map scripts rather than this setting.
Sounds like it could be interesting. (Though I don’t know when I’d ever play it, unless they introduce a matchmaking queue with lots of different games modes mixed together). Some suggestions:
You should also start with LongSwords researched. That’s the only way the militia rush is gonna be viable, and it’s actually pretty interesting if it is viable.
no I don’t. But I’m saying if you’re goal is to have a mode where fight begins quite early while also having a balance in terms of possible openers, something with more starting food gold and more villagers would work better. Your setting is good but its still going to be slow in terms of when military aggression would begin, and limit feasibility of certain opening strategies. And if your goal is to make those strategies more viable, its better to do it through game mods, map scripts rather than this setting.