I waited for this a long time. But my impression hasn’t changed.
For me Chickens are a cheap way to “forcingly address” the “deer push meta”.
But the deer push meta wasn’t the issue The issue was that scouting became less and less valueable so pushing the deer was the best you could do with the scout.
And I think that’s exactly what we should have done in the first place.
And btw a little bit for that was already done with the militia line buffs. It’s now more important to know if the opponent is rushing you. Interestingly it seems that drushes are still not that good. And MAA rushes you can scout with pushing the deer.
But it’s one way to target the issue directly. I whish there were more important buildorders with very different buildups so you would want to scout them, but for the sake of just making scouting more important one would actually be sufficient.
There could be the aspect in order to defend successfully against a drush you would need your mini walls already setp before they arrive. And there would be more investment associated with them. So Make palisades more expensive, maybe give them higher HP in compensation. This could be achieved by transferring the increased movemt speed to the dark age militia already and/or giving the militia 1 more attack.
With such changes it would be very important to have the mini walls down when the militias arrive and therefore make it very valueable to know if they come forward.
For me it’s actually important to state that I’m not against deer pushing. I want it to have a clear tradeoff. And everybody has to decide whether it’s worth the risk.
Very opposed to the intended chicken gameplay which were intended to not be pushable. But as you can see with the new gameplay footage from Phosphoru.- people will find their ways anyways.
As long as the root of the issue isn’t targeted - that scouting isn’t as valueable as it would need be - the scout will always be preferredly used to boost your eco,
Well we learned the dynamic from when deer pushing became meta. That it actually helps more the feudal buildorders, especially scouts. The reason for that is mostly the timing boost you get from pushing the deer.
And in general these kinds of effects are actually secondary. It would only be a factor that only comes into play when drushes become more common And in this case - and what needs to be incorporated in the thought - this would passively nerf the feudal rushes a bit if you wouldn’t always push the deer with the scout.
So it had a constructive rebound effect which means we would need to be careful with the changes to militia as there might be a tipping point where the meta shifts completely
But actually nobody would then push deer anymore, everybody would drush and scout.
for all except the militia rush you don’t need to get forward so early. the others it’s often even benefitial to have the scout at your base, cause you can use it to buy some time.
There would also be other ways to boost the importance of scouting.
Generally there is always the option to build “ressource hills”. Elevated locations where are some combination of food/gold/stone. And whoever gets a foothold there first has usually a huge advantage. They have to be placed randomly so you want to scout them.
This ofc doesn’t make it more important to scout your opponent and is therefore way less interactive. But with the right amount of ressource and spots to scout these can add to a dynamic gameplay and make the map playout more diverse.
There could ofc also be trade workshops which give a slow tickle of res income passively, but this forces usually to go there.
And ofc some kind of one-time event where you can pick up some ressources or - similar to AOE4 - have hunt that can be directly brought home with the scout.
Just to list a few conceptional ways to achieve making scouting the map more important.
Yeah I also get the feeling that it would be better this way instead of having cheaper militias. The times of when there was an option to make mass militia is way over and the defender usually just has more power in the mass of the Villagers. So it would help to get consistant outcomes when the militias would beat villagers 1v1.
I also still dreem of returning to 60 F / 20 G and instead of the old Supplies have a “Bloodlines” like tech for the militia line in Feudal. This together had very good synergy and would help to fix the terrible weakness of the line in the midgame.
I would redo the wild chicken graphics as junglefowl (the current graphics can stay for the herdable domestic ones), then add grouse, guinea fowl and curassow. I think that would give a suitable wild galliform bird for most of the regions the game represents.
For the vast majority of players, there is little actual reliable feedback about the benefit of certain actions. A player who always pushes their deer, when available, will have about a 50% winrate. A player who never pushes deer will also have about a 50% winrate.
For players at Elo extremes, it’s different. If DauT always pushes his deer on Arabia and it gives him a higher chance to win, then he will actually experience this difference when he plays repeatedly against the same names. But at the same time, this is often not how top players make decisions: it isn’t always about what’s good, but what’s comfortable. Just like how boar or sheep laming is viewed as “bad manners” and don’t do it in ranked games, even when players demonstrate through tournaments that they view it as increasing their chance to win.
Deer pushing has a near-100% chance of benefit. (Significantly reduced are DauT’s complaints that deer pushing is singlehandedly stressing him out and making him not want to play, because it’s a lot more consistent now.) Scouting is risky. You might not find your opponent due to an unusual generation; your opponent who is pushing deer might reach Feudal faster and find and kill your scout; or your opponent might be lazy and just playing the “meta” for their civilization without any attempt to adapt or surprise you, because they are pushing deer and have no information about you so there’s nothing for them to adapt to, and so there’s nothing for you to adapt to and the scouting information has no timely value.
Towering is probably also weaker as well (despite slight un-nerf of Feudal age towers), which is a big reason to care about early scouting.
So: for top players, scouting can have value, but it can also not pay off. And as we know from psychology, loss aversion is real: “Empirically, losses tend to be treated as if they were twice as large as an equivalent gain.” It’s natural for a player who is just trying to stream some chill games to go for the safe option in Dark Age, instead of the riskier scouting option, even if scouting might actually increase winrate.
You are essentially saying that the game should become Starcraft2, where if you don’t scout your opponent’s opening, you’re dead because you can never react in time.
Because the Militia’s task has never been to kill vills, but only to buy time. In fact, the more you make them buzz around enemy vills without ever fighting, the better.
If there wasn’t the threat of killing vills this would be useless. And btw if you look at some high end games you will notice that a lot of times militias are dancing but there’s no reaction at all from the vills. Then the rush is actually COMPLETELY WASTED.
I think you should play more isntead of jsut listening to what some people say. The RESULT of militia rushes WAS usually to delay stuff. But it’s totally different right now and in many cases they actually DO get kills and then ofc pay off. Whilst usually don’t when they can’t get any kills. A lot of changes happened after that saying got popular. And a huge impact why the saying got so popular was actually that it was “against the logic of the game” and partially not even true at that time. Ofc you always hope to get vill kills with any kind of rush. It would be absurd not to want that.
Now we entered again the stage where you try to creat alternative realities and lay stuff in my mouth I never said. I also observed that you basically all the time just take the opposing “position” and try to address the audience telling them these kind of twisted statements.
We are talking about the Balance of a game played by millions. Even thouigh I am sure devs won’t be influenced by this kind of nonsense you should be aware that your actions on a public forum like this require a minimum of responsibility and playing childish games over this is irresponsible. There are enough other topics open that aren’t over balance and other influential stuff where this would be ok. But here it’s just not the right place for that.
Well, first of all, I don’t have any problems with anyone. Over the past few months, I’ve had pleasant discussions with everyone, including you. Furthermore, I personally think that hating someone is basically a waste of energy that could be used for something better.
The only thing that has changed recently is the release of the infamous Chinese DLC, which makes me draw a line beyond which certain suggestions can no longer be ignored. Like giving a hero to all civilisations. It doesn’t matter if you or Hera suggest it, it’s the point of no return for me and, I think, for many others.
As for not having played enough, I won’t even comment.