This topic I like to use to discuss about one of the biggest tournament this year.
Two weeks have passed and I must say I really like it. A lot of great fights and because of the opened map the fight already start in feudal age instead of going for the fast castle.
But after many games I watched on live stream, I must say it is always the same, same tactics, same units that was used, same civ because they are best at this map and so on. I miss a bit of the rotation, some unexpected on both sight. And of course more versatility. I miss castle units, because no one go for a fast castle… Too risky, so no Conqs, Arambai, Mangudai or some other great UU.
And the strange thing I don’t understand yet is, why no one pick Persians or Teutons.
Yes Persians have a great economy and the starting Ressource helps a lot for militia or fast feudal.
Teutons have amazing Knights that have more resistance to be converted by monks and really cheap food production.
And of course there are some more great civ like Japanese, Ethiopians or Vietnamese that got less used. I know the 15 best civ got picked still its really strange in my opinion because I don’t feel Teutons or Persians are weaker civ.
Yeah and no one used the CA in this open map. As you said those games are just like copies all do the same, start with scouts into knights or archers into xbows or m@a…well actually they have the right of doing this, since this open map is not good for going fast castle , so you will not see UU else in late game, and for castle units as i said until now no one used the CA except MBL and Viper and both of them were mongols because we know why and we did many posts about the problems of the CA.
I found from the DE civs no one used the Tatars or bulgarians, but we saw many games with Lithuanians.
It’s not only about CA. Yes they have the right to play with best unit and civ to win. It’s always the same map, so it’s always the same meta. That’s the Probleme.
I wish they would add some more bans like for the civ that was played too often, to give other Civ a chance or add some random mods to make games unexpected or more exciting.
Or what would be really funny, if the enemy chose the civ you have to play with or at least to put in the draft.
Although both have good scouts into knights options they aren’t exatcly the typical arabia civs. Persians used to be played a lot on arabia before the faster dark age tc (which was added with the release of DE) was removed again. I personally didn’t get it to begin with (I think they were only op in hybrid maps and are still very strong there so they could have removed the wood bonus at the start or something instead of dark age tc) but that’s another topic. It’s just that people aren’t using them anymore on 1v1 arabia. Probably because ultimately their gameplay is rather defensive and the open kotd arabia doesn’t favor that style. They are quite a versatile civ but that versatile only comes in in late game.
Teutons also have quite some weaknesses on open maps starting from mid feudal age, namely bad archers, then no husbandry and in imp even no light cav. This means at some point you usually switch to infantry and siege which also doesn’t fit the open map style of kotd.
Generally, archer civs seem to be less used because of increased use of scouts and skirms. Japanese were popular on previous kotd editions because of maa into towers but you see less towers nowadays. From these 3 we could see vietnamese used most often probably because they have the best (long-term) eco among them and a knight switch makes more sense compared to the other two.
But the tournament is far from over and most matchups heavily favored one player so let’s see how it continues.
Ez fix: random civ tournaments. Of course for this one it’s too late, but you can watch Ornlu’s Big Nomad Cup for a recent event with these settings. I don’t know if enough people feel like you for other organizers to consider a random civ tournament but it might be worth including that in your feedback.
I think it is really I interesting that Vikings are the second most popular Civ (after Aztecs) seen in 94% in drafts (either as pick or ban).
At the same time -> they have a bad winrate of 33% (from 18 games played with them).
Why are they so popular?
I mean, yes, they are a decent Arabia civ. But why are they seen more often then all the other top tier Arabia civs?
And why do they seem to underperform?
From all civ, Vikings have the strongest economy. But not sure if the open Arabia map is good with Vikings. They lack on mobility and missing Bloodlines.
And honestly the games Vikings lose, the player of the civ did many things wrong.
But Aztecs that suppose to be a candidate for the strongest civ, underperform. Even on aoestats it looks like they are far away from OP.
No, Aztecs are indeed extremely good at pro level.
The reason they underperform for the average player is because they are difficult to play.
For example their eco bonus leads to vills dropping of food less often. This makes it much more difficult to continuesly produce vills in the dark age if you don’t have the apm and focus to drop off food just in time…
Well, I think there are many varieties in civ drafts and strategies
ofc, players pick civs that suit for Open arabia and some civs (Aztecs, Mayans, and Chinese) are always picked/banned. But their are plenty of “unique” pick for many players.
I count the draft statistics and 21/35 civs are drafted at least more than 5 times. Isn’t it enough for civ varieties? many pros say that now the game is more balanced than any time of the game and everyone has different opinion in which civs are best.
Of course standard Archer or Knight play is dominant play style. There are still some guys trying FC and so called Hoang style Seige/Monk push. See Dracken vs Nicov in R32. And everyone has different playstyle even though they go same strategy, and it is beauty of AoE2.
Teutons are a solid civ but not the best civ for open Arabia. But Teutons are top-tier civ (probably the best civ) in Arena. If you want to see Teutons more you can see Arena Tournament (Actually not that often because Teutons are usually banned).
Persians are also solid civ but I think players don’t pick them because Franks and Lithuanians are stronger in Arabia as Cavarly civ. But Persians have eco bonus in hybrid map and they should be picked if four lakes/Cross maps are played in Tournament. You can see many Persians picks in RBW because lake map (cross) is within the map pool.
Drafting a civ isn’t as important as picking a civ. An unplayed civ doesn’t determine the outcome of a series. 18/35 civs have been played 5 or more times. That’s only half which isn’t that great. There’s a pretty big disparity in that 5 civs have been played more than 20 times.
But we are stuck in the present, with only Archer or Scout rushes in the first half of any game, and then Crossbows or Knights only for the second half of any game,
the game where each player’s fate will be completely decided before players even reach Imperial, if not far earlier, as is much more common.
this is what happens when you have truly aggressive maps. from what i have seen, the new Arabia is very popular and even the pros seem to prefer it over the old Arabia. Seeing as you like to throw The Vipers word everywhere, even he has said, on stream, that he prefers the newer style KotD3 and new Arabia over Old Arabia. short of a complete change and going to a slower style maps (which i don’t see happening, the fanbase clearly loves playing arabia more then any other map) you aren’t going to see as much unique unit usage/late game play.
Aggressive maps ending the game early? who would have thought! it adds excitement to the game, what exactly is wrong with that? or do you want to go back to the boring old wall up and do nothing the first 25 minutes of the game?
the meta doesn’t match what you want it to be? well start your own tournament complete with late game oriented maps. i for one, welcome the faster pace.
33% winrate over the course of 18 games is not indicative of anything. Simply not enough data to make a conclusion. All we know is that they are deemed strong by pro players.
I’ll tell you what I want
I want agressive games that also last long
And that is only possible if civs get more diverged, if civ bonuses(specifically millitary bonuses) UUs and UTs take on a much bigger role, while also being balanced. If these take on a bigger role, then the current trend of generic-unit-snowballs snowballing in every game will be overshadowed by back and forth maneuvers based on the respective civ’s bonuses and strengths.
Half the UUs and UTs being hardly even viable, and most of the other half being just minor adjustments to an already more spammable generic unit/existing generic tech will never give us the best of both worlds.
No, you don’t understand, it’s not about tournament settings, it’s about the civ(MILLITARY) bonuses, UUs and UTs
This is why I campaign for all UUs and UTs to be made viable, if not above viable, and for millitary bonuses(and not eco bonuses, because if each civ got a different version of what is basically a wood bonus these bonuseswill all cancel out!) to be made much more prominent, for this very purpose, because I want to see back-and-forth (i.e. aggressive as well as long lasting) games
You dont want aoe2 to be aoe2. You want aoe2 to be more like aoe3. Good news. Aoe3 is coming out. I prefer my aoe2 to be more like aoe2. I accept AoE2 for what it is, yeah the civs aren’t that different from each other; yeah, civs tend to rely on 2-3 strategies only, and games can end quickly. i’m okay with all that. and apparently so are plenty of others.
Also you have no proof that drastically different civs leads to longer games, or that your idea will offset snowballs. you are making completely unsubstantiated and vague claims with no evidence to back it up. which is hilarious considering you made this comment a little bit ago.
If what you say is the truth, that widely different civs with widely different bonuses will lead to longer games, that are also aggressive throughout (and not just macro into aggression), please provide the proof, complete with sources. or is your plan to completely gut the early game of any semblance of power, and put all the bonuses castle age and beyond, thus forcing the game to go into late game artificially?
So basically you want something this game has never been. Thanks but ill take my aoe2 being aoe2 over being something radically different.
Also ill ask you something you never answered in the past. With civs being more unique unit/unique tech centric how do you balance a civ with elephant unique units against civs with units like the shotel and karambit?
how do you balance civs with heavy cavalry unique units against civs with archer unique units?
I don’t think that’s really possible in AoE 2, not consistently at least. An open map promotes a more aggressive approach, but at the same time if you fail to do enough damage to your opponent, your eco will be lagging behind compared to theirs. As such, their counterattack will likely put you at a significant disadvantage. That is, games tend to end earlier with open maps. I really don’t see how you could change that in AoE 2.
you see the same thing in other popular RTS games too, like SC/SC2 and WC3.
go for an earlier aggressive approach that sacrifices eco and you fail to do damage to your opponent? guess what, now he has an economic advantage over you, and can ride that to victory.
short of completely redesigning the game, like he wants too (More UU/UT centric with Big Civ bonuses), its literally not possible. and i don’t know how many people would be happy with the idea of completely overhauling the entire civ design on something that might not even work
