And according to some of his guidelines the Dark Age has become a Puzzle over time, not a “game” anymore.
The Issue: In high-level play, the first 5-8 minutes (Dark Age) are almost entirely solved. There is no uncertainty. Players execute a memorized list of moves. The blog notes that when a game loses uncertainty, it becomes a puzzle.
The Fix: Introduce more procedural randomness earlier in the game. Some things that may work to force “prediction” and adaptation:
The issue is how the game has developed, dark age is just an almost obsolete relict. Only there to let people come slowly into “game mode”.
We can’t just ovverride the real meta development of the game because of some idealistic thoughts. More interesting Dark Age might have had been anoption with the release of HD edition, but now it’s too late to do such a massive change to an established meta just because of idealism.
Maybe there would have been the chance of an interesting dark age some time ago, but as the state is currently even on dark age heavy maps, it’s terribly repetitive and offer almost no tactical variation. Forcing this into the game right now would only lead to dissapointment.
Ofc there is always the option to creat game modes and/or maps that feature dark age - and there are already some of them in the game. But unless we figure out something amazing there I don’t want to bring it in the core game.
A major issue with random threats in the early game is how strongly early advantages snowball over time, see the devastating effect of losing a few villagers. It’s not like a grand strategy game in which you have all the time to bounce back from an unexpected downturn, and balance is much less of an issue (that country is much stronger, let’s form a coalition to even the odds).
As units are on the individual level, there also is no way of making a “statistical disaster”. Got the plague in a grand strategy and half the population and army dies ? Easy, number goes down. Now, how to pick which individual unit dies among the ones you have ? Using random numbers would be even worse given the randomness, a 50% chance of death over 4 units means 1/16 chance of all 4 dieing and an equal chance of them all surviving, how does it feel when the result is very unbalanced relative to your opponent ?
AoE3 used to have varying starting resources but they removed it in AoE3DE for a reason.
AoE2 used to have a lot more wolves that used to be more aggressive but they also removed that for a reason.
The solution that the developers came up with was Empire Wars but the community didn’t like it as much. Maybe because it skips too much. So the best solution could be an Empire Wars light, like 6-9 villager start for everyone (TC +5 population). This would reduce the early game by more then a minute. That doesn’t sound much but if you play many games that adds up over time.
Upcoming KOTD6 is addressing a lot of randomness on map generation. From 1 patch of 7 chickens to 4 patches of 1 deer, as well as very very far wood line and forage bush. There is also a chance of generating 7 relics instead of 5. I think Arabia and Arena should have more variety on map generation like this.
I’m happy with the classic Dark Age. Key things like the villager count shouldn’t change. I agree that Dark Age is a preparation phase for the main game. It’s a perfect transition to warm up. However, I want to point out that we should consider different animal and hunting options, and perhaps even more wild animal options.
dark age is still important, because you need to scout your opponents and wall (either full-wall or small wall). Dark age is only boring on maps where it is obvious what your opponent will do, where you know where their base is, which are either prewalled or impossible to wall.
-If you know where they are and what they will do: skipping Dark Age is fine
-If you only know where they are but not what they will do: dark age is important. look no further than red bull wololo where people would blindly open and just hope that it works. not great to play or watch
-I can’t really think of a map/mode where you know what your opponent will do, but not where they are?
-If you know neither, scouting and therefore dark age are important
skipping or shortening dark age is fine for pro-game tournaments, but it’s not a good idea for everyone else
En el aoe 3 habian recursos iniciales variables? que extraño… yo siempre recuerdo que los recursos ya estaban establecidos desde un inicio, como holanda con los cajones de oro
Dark Age has been sculpted to be a ho-hum rote memorization of clicks age, simply using the best meta eSport players show everyone on YouTube.
From herdable deer, to one-shot boar magnetic attraction, to perfectly conveniently placed sheep/geese, gold, and stone, to meaningless towers/defenses, to a significant lack of tech to research, to slowed resource collection, to nearby gold piles that seemingly last forever, and some other things, Dark Age is just a preprogrammed button-click race to see who can get out of it the quickest
Dark age is intentionally slow. Sandy Peterson said the intent was to make players invest into their own town and feel a sense of ownership. Dark age allows you to plan your town, plan how to approach the civ match up, adjust based on the map you see. I dont see any need to make it any different.
I don’t understand this line of reasoning. There’s an optimal way to do Dark Age for what you want to achieve, which means there’s a set of optimal actions you should take… like in every scenario imaginable. But it’s not like you just input memorised stuff and then the optimal thing happens. you have to make sure to place your buildings in optimal spots and plan ahead what to do next. You need to know your map before knowing how you should wall. And so on…
Maybe you could make the point that Dark Age is mostly an RPM check? Still no though… how you design your base has a huge impact for example.
You design your base on-the-fly amongst the rapid memorized clicks.
Map launches → Queue ‘x’ vills → Build ‘x’ houses → Assign ‘x’ vills to food –> Assign ‘x’ vills to wood, ‘x’ to gold, etc. → Attract and kill boar #1 → Get some deer → Build lumbercamp → Build mill → Attract and kill boar #2 → Age up when have ‘x’ number of villys, etc. Pretty basic, standard, repeatable, memorized, non-random stuff that probably all players memorize and use high APM to get the preset list of memorized clicks done ASAP… especially with how all maps are very eSport-friendly and predictable for early game. Each player has a unique path they follow… do you age up after 18 vills, or 22, etc… but it’s pretty routine. Nothing out of the ordinary happens. The random wolves are even less in DE, I’m pretty sure.
Obviously, every map has different layout and you adjust. I’m more referring to the macro events that each player does in Dark Age, which are highly predictable, imo. Even the game teaches you a sequence of clicks for getting out of Dark Age ASAP, with the Art of War vids