Hidden Cup 4, The Viper has chosen to lose

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hello,
During Hidden Cup 4, I beleive that The Viper has chosen to lose.
Hera is a great player, with the highest elo but during the last match between the Viper and Hera in semi final, we clearly see that the Viper choose to lose.
To prove my point:
Firstly he didn’t steal the rihno with no reason. The rihno is in front of his scout, on the good side to bring it back to his tc.

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Secondly he didn’t wall his wood camp. It was quite easy to finish the wall. And he knew what was coming. He have seen during the past minute scouts in his base. The dock was probably build in case of an bowman attack. With demo ship he can wreak bowman army. We can beleive that he didn’t wall the wood camp to make a trap. With a demo ship in the dock he can kill or damage all scouts who came but he didn’t do it. The Viper always react very quickly. Attack is economy is always hard because he react very quickly and during this game he was slower than Dault or 1200 elo.
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After the viper reacted, he can’t ignore where was the army of Hera but the viper looks away and don’t protect villagers at the mining camp.
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It was very easy to procect the four villagers by building 2 walls… but he didn’t do it. Why? He played thousands of games and look like he played totally drunk. To defend him we could say that he planed to hide villager in a house in case of an attack but he didn’t have one close to the gold.
Do you know what happen next?
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Hera came back to the wood line. And the viper did nothing to prevent another attack. Like it can’t happen again. Two tile of wall can protect the entire wood line. But the Viper din’t build them. Like a noob, you can come through a hole in his wall few times before he discover the hole. But here, he didn’t try to defend. T90 looked a bit confused but didn’t say a word on this weird reaction. He checked in the dock if there is a surprise for hera because there is no reason of a beavour like this if it’s not a trap…
Then, he destroy a wall who can prevent army go around his berry. And didn’t try to protect his villager to the berries:
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What could happen if there 8 scouts around few villagers? He can easily asked them to hide in the house. But he didn’t do it before it was too late to protect them all.
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What could the viper do ? Try to fight with his villagers to kill at least pikemans? Hide them? He did nothing. He could use the 4 villagers at 3tiles away of the fight but no he prefer to ignore that. During all that the viper has no army somewhere else to manage. He didn’t manage his economy and we can see that with all the idles vill.
Why should the Viper has choosen to lose?
I beleive that he did that because if it’s always the same winner there is no competition. It’s not interesting a game where it’s always the same winner. To have more money in the game, to win in interest he has to loose.
Sorry for my English
Best regards
Please verify what I said and perhaps save this post because he will be probably delete.
PS (Sorry for my langage and lack of respect)

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Viper is only human, bro.
He will lose some times.

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4

Go and whine at aoezone. They care about the pros.

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5

Conspiracy!! Anyways what you are claiming looks pretty offensive to me. I don’t think you like viper much…

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I will not judge what people choose what to do with their free time, but… OMG!

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7

I had the same thought when I watched the games live. He had such a strong start and it appeared that he was throwing toward the end. So, it isn’t a crazy theory.

That being said, Viper posted a note after the games explaining he had become upset upon suddenly understanding the home map rules. Given the top level of players in the match, even a small mental distraction could be enough to swing the final games.

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If you continue to be aggressive like that and call everybody with a different opinion stupid I wouldn’t wonder if you get banned soon. You should really improve your communication.

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9

The viper chose not to lame the rhino because he didn’t think it was worth the loss of scout hp and/or the risk of the gamble not paying off with how much quick food was on the map.

someone else do the rest, I’m too lazy for AOEspiracy theories.

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10

It’s easy to spot mistakes like these when watching (and especially rewatching) a game. High level players are focusing on like 5-6 things at the same time, so yes, even they will make various mistakes in the process.

The only questionable decision is not laming the rhino, but like, maybe he just wanted to be nice and not lame. The rest just look like mistakes that are easy to make while you’re focusing on a bunch of stuff at the same time.

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Why would he do that?

I don’t buy that at all. This was the biggest price pool in this game since the I think two big promotion tournaments they did back when the original game was new. Or maybe just one of those two was bigger than this. This is not a tournament you throw “so the next one will have a bigger price pool”. What’s more: Viper actually has lost more tournaments recently. If he was losing games intentionally to drum up interest and price money, this is the one he would have wanted to win to cash the payoff for that. This is exactly the one tournament you would really want to win if you were running a scheme like that.

The only financial reason you throw a game like this I can think off is because you’re getting paid more than the first place price by an illegal betting syndicate that offered people great odds on Viper winning the tournament and can now make millions if he loses instead. And as far as I know illegal high stakes Aoe2 gambling rings that bribe top players aren’t a thing. And even in sports where it does happen, it’s usually second tier competitors that get bought, there are too many eyes watching the top dogs.

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12

I feel that very strange because after the HC he play normaly. For example on this game : The Madness of Nomad! | 4v4 ft. JorDan, TaToH, at 9:44.
From the point where the army go out of the fog of war that he didn’t expect. He has taken 1,3 secondes to put the first foundation of the quick wall. 2,5 secondes to finish the front line and 5,5 secondes to finish the backside.

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He succeed to wall his villager when he saw scouts at 6 tiles of his vil that very impressive but usual for the viper and all top players. And during HC at more than 12 tiles he didn’t had time.

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I imagine that the pressure is affecting even top level players, even the Viper himself. I dont think there is anything suspicious about making mistakes while under pressure. :slight_smile:

I saw that nomad game. I think he reacted so fast there because he had pretty much nothing else to focus on, it was a team game, and thanks to Lyx he was pretty much out of the big picture.

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I just watched the moment pointed out by OP and he has a point, it is really hard to believe this is semi finals gameplay. Not walling his base when he knew he would get scout rushed was definitely one of the biggest blunders of the tournament.

First, anyone sane would have walled the woodline when they see scouts coming. I guess Viper thought he would have time to hop into houses, but that is an insanely risky bet to take for the last match of a Bo7, and I don’t see what taking the risk would even bring, 15 wood saved ?

Then he loses a villager and STILL doesn’t wall the woodline, allowing the scouts to come back later. So it is clearly not a problem with attention/micro, it’s a deliberate choice.

On top of that, he builds this absurd mining camp right in front of the scouts, with no walls, no house anywhere close. One villager survives miraculously, yet Viper still does not change his strategy and continues to rely on houses which ends up costing him the game 1 min later.

Compare Hera’s base with Viper. Hera has a tower near the wood, a spearman near the berries. Viper has nothing, no walls, no barracks to produce spears, less scouts than his opponent, and it’s quickly clear that micro alone will not save villagers from the scouts indefinitely.

Then the resignation was a bit early imo. Sure, from the caster’s point of view it’s clear that he’s massively behind at this point, but you would have expected that he puts a bit more of a fight for the last game of a major tournament.

I don’t think Viper intentionally lost but if you showed me just this gameplay I would have said red is a beginner player who discovers you can get rushed in Feudal Age and tilts out. My guess is that Viper must have had something in mind but hard to guess what.

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I think this thread is an affront to gamesmanship and I refuse to interact with it more than I currently have. I think it’s a very bad call to assert that any of the top players would choose to lose for any reason let alone a convoluted one.

Viper’s already said his piece on the tournament (which I fully agreed with, and practically headlined before it was written) and we should leave it at that.

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it is obvious, Viper have bought assets from Tempo, so Hera wins, Tempos assets rises, Viper earns more money than winning the tournament (?)

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17

You must be high on something to think like that

Cmon lets bury this thread already

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You put a lot of thought and work in your post. Bravo! However your conclusion is terrible. TheViper was tilted and played a bit below his normal level maybe. He had 0 incentive to lose.

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Thanks for the “insightful” comment. Really adds a lot to this discussion. Keep up the good work mate.

I think this is the best take on the thread perhaps. I think the AoE2 community is just too small for conspiracy theory kind of things.

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Thanks! Im not giving up fighting against the ignorance of the naive

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Dude what are you even on about, there was no conspiracy here, Viper obviously didn’t throw any of his games on purpose mate