Yeah V&V2 just doubled down on V&V’s mistakes
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Coin at sea is obtained from fishing whales in AOE3.
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Oh yeah! I forgot about that.
For AoE2, I hope they just use the shipwreck for certain RMS maps. If it would make sense for the time period, historically
Yes, in AoE 3 fishing boats collect whale coins because it symbolizes the hunt for whales to collect whale blubber for candle and candlestick oil and later to grease machines during the industrial revolution… in AoE 2 shipwrecks could be used for some maps where there were naval battles, both in AoE 2 and Chronicles…
New patch brings yet more contrived, mirror-world, unnatural, human-bulldozed and -landscaped “arena” maps designed for computer game players in 2025 sitting behind their computer screen rather than some natural landscape in medieval times. Very immersive.
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“Added 8 new random maps”
(… that I will probably rarely, if ever, play. Gotta cater to the eSports and Ranked players every time, of course!)
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“Added 13 re-imagined Ensemble Studios maps”
(… 13 more arenas, on top of the 8 above. The 40 or 50 arenas that already existed before the patch weren’t enough)
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“Added 1 new special map”
(… Just what I was hoping for. 1 more arena map for good measure. Icing on the patch cake! 
)
By skimming the above maps and going from memory of what was in the game already, I’ve deduced one secret to making good maps for eSports and Ranked is to try and make sure the map has a crater or a doughnut feature in the middle, or make it a cracker with a strip of tasty cheese (resources) right down the middle or around the perimeter. (Chef’s kiss! 
)
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At least there should be more real world or naturalistic map options.
Since AOM almost all random map options had been perfectly symmetric arenas. And that design bleeds back into AOE2 too.
Thankfully AOE2 still enjoyed “real world maps” or some more classic random map generations. Because it was developed before the ranked pvp and esports persona took over the entire RTS community.
If I just want to launch some casual game and explore where the enemies are (instead of simply knowing it by drawing a diagonal or a diameter), I could do it in AOE2, but it’s very hard in later games. Heck even the “unknown” and “historical maps” in AOE3 are symmetric. It now has a map for almost every place in the world (except south Africa) and they are all symmetric
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Yes, the maps are good… although I regret that they don’t do the same with AoE 3 or that they add more DLC maps in Retold and AoE 4…
Of course, I always loved the maps of the other AoEs, but it’s true that they always were and are symmetrical (in AoE 3 all the maps are from the real world, but they are always symmetrical), but that must be because since the civs are already asymmetrical, they didn’t want to break the balance and for the civs to have more or less an equal start… in AoE 1 and 2 it’s the other way around, symmetrical civs but more random maps (with the exception of the real world ones in AoE 2)…
At least having that option is always better than not.
But they invested all their resources into the pvp focus.
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Of course, now it’s all PvP and the maps are less fun…
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this is really off-topic for this thread
Not really. The thread is about how to move on from the apparent V&V travesty. My posts about mirror world arenas stemmed from the following suggestion as an idea for how to move on from V&V. It would help me a lot because I bought V&V, but don’t play campaigns. I didn’t realize at the time of purchasing V&V that skirmish/random maps wouldn’t see any new map goodies or cool, natural, organic maps to play on:
Conversations in the real world are organic and fluid. Much like how I wish AoE2 maps were more organic and natural.
There is graphical content in the DLC, though, in a sense… pulling from the game assets that you never see in random maps
Map worlds look natural and organic in V&V in part from the hidden graphical content/assets they pull from you never see in random maps. And the V&V maps also don’t look like mirror world arenas
I’m asking for some visual inspiration to be taken from V&V to make more natural and beautiful random maps. I/we(?) paid for V&V. Why restrict the map work to campaigns I never play. It never used to work this way with AoE2 and AoE3 DLCs/expansion packs long ago, pretty sure
Just because you don’t think this will help you move on from V&V doesn’t mean I feel the same as you or my opinion is less valid than any others in this thread.
You thought my post was off-topic? Report it to moderators for them to independently decide like the forum guidelines say to do
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