That’s a different scenario to what I did, as that’s Imperial in the scenario editor, but I just created it to have a go. I didn’t get the same result as you, so I’d be interested to see a video of what you did. Are you manually getting the crossbows to always attack the lowest HP knight? I admit I’m not skilled enough to do that against knights. I can do it against elephants, but the knights just move about too fast for me to constantly click that accurately.
I still don’t understand what people are talking about with melee unit pathing - I can’t see any problems with what the knights do in my video above. When I control the crossbows, the knights behave worse under the AI’s control, with some knights not attacking, contrary to the claim earlier in this thread that they perform better under the AI’s control.
The micro on the archers in your video is just terrible to watch. Scenarios with that kind of micro are just useless. That micro seems even worse then just no micro at all. That seems to me the reason why you will get other results.
There are just enough examples for bad melee patching in pro games.
In your video the archers are not crowded into one very stacked pack where knights can only attack a few of them at once. Also the archers don’t constantly move backwards and just stop for like 0.5 sec to shoot one knight after another and then continue moving.
Thats what messes up melee pathfinding - the constant movement of the archers meaning that their individual targets which they want to attack are moving after each shot which they then again and again try to reach while clumping into other knights making a big mess.
That might not happen all the time but I saw examples of it.
That is not true.
In low elo games they usually go for Knights because it is easier to handle and you need to micro to win.
Even in higher elo, it is not that easy. You can micro with Archer but the enemy can micro with Mangonal.
Archer needs to mass, cav not directly. Archer are easier to counter, cavalry not. They can run away against pikes and not every civ has CR. Knights are not designed to counter Archer, it is situational and it is OK how it is. The pathfinding sounds unfair but it makes the games more balance I think.
And honestly top tier civ are not Archer civ except Mayans but that is more because of El Dorado Eagles, so I’m not worry about that Archer are OP.
Is this a joke? You really think that bad melee pathfinding is some sort of balance measure? Have you even seen an actual AOE2 tournament? In Voobly melee pathfinding was almost perfect and you never had anyone complaning about the balance between archers and knights. Nowadays archers are clearly better because melee units cant engage properly in battle. This a serious problem in the game, and not something worth discussing if its a balance change at all. The game doesnt work the way it should, and many people feels that the devs have spent more time fixing things that arent half as important as this that affects half of the units in the game.
I have experienced this. Cavalry units are wider and keep bumping on each other… and they take too long to switch their attack to a target that’s closer to them. What’s more, because of how formation works, archers that were in the outer line may suddenly move through the rest of archers and end up on the other side. The cavalry just goes crazy and barely manages to hit the archers. Very frustrating
I wasn’t controlling the archers in my video, but if you look at how many archers are being attacked at any point in time, there are nonetheless only a pretty small proportion of them being attacked.
If I control the archers myself, and keep moving back and hitting the stop key, the archers still get destroyed because they spread their fire across multiple knights instead of all targeting the same knight. As far as I can see, the only way to win would be to target a specific knight each time, but I’m not good enough at mouse moving and clicking to go rapidly back and forth like that to alternate between moving and attacking a single knight, so I’d still be interested to see what NIK0LAI did (or someone else who is able to win that scenario with 70% of the crossbows still alive).
Pathing is Indeed messed up, last nigth the enemy cavaliers (spanish) we’re oblitarated by my jap arbalesters (arround 10/15 more arbs than cavs) cause they we’re bumpin like kids in a bouncy castle
If I control the archers myself, and keep moving back and hitting the stop key, the archers still get destroyed because they spread their fire across multiple knights instead of all targeting the same knight.
Stop micro becomes usefull when the combined damageoutput is capable of killing multiple units at once.
I’m not good enough at mouse moving and clicking to go rapidly back and forth like that to alternate between moving and attacking a single knight
What’s hard about that?
At least put the archers in close formation so they attack together. And please don’t record your video from space.
Not sure what you mean? I don’t have the skill to do it. I have other skills, for example I set a world record in a driving game last night, but if someone else can’t drive as fast as me I don’t tell them that’s not hard.
trust me its a known issue and they are working on it.
though i fully expect some nerfs for civs when they do fix pathing. https://aoestats.io/stats/RM_1v1/1250-1650
goths, franks, and huns are all top tier civs atm despite pathing. can you imagine how strong they would be with pathing fixed?
Iirc Huns and Franks were about as good on Voobly (and the Voobly data are way more solid as there are 3 years worth of matches to back them up) so I don’t think it would be necessary to do that.
well they are all sitting at 53% or higher winrates DESPITE current pathing. i don’t know if tehy will be nerfed, but numbers would suggest as pathing gets better, they will get better.
Sorry but very bad argument. 30 xbows is waaaaay easier to get and way faster than 15 knights. (Also easier to make 50 arba vs 35 cavaliers).
Archers should be nerfed, maybe only until they fix this pathing. Or at least change the way 20 xbows can stack in a single tile, which makes pathing for melee units even more painful.
The problem here is not the amount of matches to use the stats of DE. The problem is those stats are seriously unbalanced compared to the voobly ones. Why? Because people in DE picks civs all the time. In voobly people only from low levels actually play with civ picking. 90% of the games there are random civ, so the data is more reliable since all civs have somewhat same numbers of matches. Not to mention in voobly 70% of the games are arabia 1vs1 or 4vs4 which is ideal for balancing.
Meanwhile in AOE2DE stats you can check that all the civs with good win rates are the top civs picked, meanwhile the civs with low win rates are the less picked. So obviously if i play Franks, which is a knight civ, 200 times i will get better with them and get a better win rate than playing idk vietnamese which is an archer civ but is picked less because the map pool doesnt favor it. Also since the matchmaking is going to change to have a random civ option, and also people will play mostly their favorite maps, the data right now is going to suffer a lot of changes.
In other words, pathfinding is irrelevant for the win rates, and it has to be fixed asap because the melee civs are suffering right now.
Look if you are going cav you need to be raiding. If he gets an xbow deathball you need to add mangonel and then use ur knights to chase him when he runs. You cannot just pure knights if he gets ahead of you. Knights are very playable, just not how you think. Im 2.3k in tg and 1.5k in 1v1, im not an expert, but i know how to play.
source for this? i highly doubt everyone just randomed in voobly. from what i remember, i remember a bunch of hun vs hun wars. occasionally throwing in Aztecs and Mayans if you wanted to do something different. water maps were auto Vikings pick, at least until forgotten, and then we saw a little more diversity.
team games aren’t even used for balancing. but if you want just arabia, this is overall. https://aoestats.io/map/arabia/RM_1v1
overall - franks, huns, goths are all in the top 5. with over 68,000 games analyzed just since the last patch.
Mongols, Ethiopians, Magyars and Vikings are all top 10 pick rate, and all are sub 50% winrate.
numbers say otherwise about melee civs suffering. i do agree pathing needs to be fixed, but don’t sit there and pretend goths and franks and teutons aren’t dominant top tier civs atm.
source for this? i highly doubt everyone just randomed in voobly. from what i remember, i remember a bunch of hun vs hun wars. occasionally throwing in Aztecs and Mayans if you wanted to do something different. water maps were auto Vikings pick, at least until forgotten, and then we saw a little more diversity.
For 1v1 on voobly:
Since WK ( which was the relevant time frame for the stats site) people relevant for balancing stats played mostly random civ with a few mirror pickers. And the games were 90 % arabia, some arena and the odd guy playing Nomad, full random, Migration or whatnot.
Everything before that has zero relevance here.
Also you cant just put “highest level” and data from 1250-1650 in the same sentence.
And in the very end maps play a big role. Of course on hideout, Arena, 4 Lakes even Acropolis archer civs arent as good as on Arabia.
What do we see players picking on Arabia in tournaments? What do they say when u ask them about the best civs?
-Aztecs
-Chinese
-Britons
-Vikings
-Mayans
Maybe Huns. But then again Huns mostly due to the strong castle age with cheap CA.