Ladder win rate v.s. Pro tier list [season 8]

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Intro : We all love tierlist. Pro players often share their thoughts on the relative strength of civilization matchups. However, pro players (<0.04% of total player base, with ELO way above 2000) plays the game very differently from casual players. (Understanding of the game, available strategy, execution, multitasking, micro and macro management etc). Therefore their tierlist may not reflect how the civilization strength is for general population.

Conq4+ = Semi-pro players (ELO>1600) is only 0.3% of total player base
Conq = Top ladder players (ELO=1400~1600) is 1% of total player base
Diamond = high ladder players (ELO=1200~1400) is about 10%
Platinum = mid ladder players (ELO=1000~1200) is about 20%
Gold = mid ladder players (ELO=700~1000) is about 30%
Silver = low ladder players (ELO=500~700) is about 20%
Under Bronze is about 15%

This is data from aoe4world.com and tierlist from some pro players. I am sharing some of my discoveries and my personal explanations and intepretations, from a mid-high ladder player’s point of view.

1til silver
1til silver1205Ă—953 327 KB

Win rate til silver league (low ladder)

2from gold
2from gold1173Ă—959 348 KB

Win rate from gold league (low ladder)

3from platinum
3from platinum1195Ă—947 341 KB

Win rate from platinum league (mid ladder)

4from diamond
4from diamond1202Ă—953 331 KB

Win rate from diamond league (mid ladder)

5from conq1
5from conq11169Ă—944 315 KB

Win rate from conqueror league (high ladder)

6from conq4
6from conq41185Ă—956 270 KB

Win rate from conqueror IV (top ladder)

from pro beasty
from pro beasty1446Ă—829 71 KB

Tierlist of beasty

from pro corvinus
from pro corvinus991Ă—522 323 KB

Tierlist of corvinus

from pro marinlord
from pro marinlord1041Ă—672 285 KB

Tierlist of MarineLord

from pro valdimar
from pro valdimar1904Ă—554 78.1 KB

Tierlist of Valdimar

Major discoveries : good ladder civ but bad pro civ

OOTD : THE TOP CIV(about 53% win rate across all ladder) except >conq4
OTT : top in high-top ladder (>51% in plat, gold ; 53~54% in conq)
JD : good in mid ladder (>51% except in >conq1)

Explanation : OOTD units are tougher so opponents often misjudge the engagement thinking they were ahead in numbers and lost the battle. In mid-high ladder people often micro not that well and throw units here and there. This may benefits OOTD. Same thing for JD, which makes JD level up very fast.

Good ladder civ and good pro civ

AYY : top in every league
BYZ : top in mid ladder and top in pro (except 46% >conq4, top ladder league)

Explanation : In ladder, one-TC civ tends to be stronger as macroing >2TC is hard. Ayyubids eco wing provides an instant advantage without needing particular macro skills, into camel lancers are maybe hard to deal with in ladder. Byzantine is also good 1TC aggression civilization with fast transition to castle age.

Bad ladder civ but good pro civ
ABB : bad to mid except >conq4
ENG : mid to bad in all tier
HRE : mid to bad except >conq4

Explanation : in pro league, abbasid 3TC or English king-2TC are strong options. But in ladder, booming with multiple TC is less dominating due to macro skills. And also English is a “beginner-friendly” civ as they always have significantly higher pick rates, can drag down the win rate due to the loses provided by the players weaker in skills.
For HRE, I cannot think of an explanation why they don’t dominate in ladder. Pro players often strike a balance between feudal aggression and unpredictably transition to castle age. Maybe casual players either are going too all-in in feudal and get fought back or too naked-fast-castle strategy and died to aggression.

Bad ladder civ but decent pro civ
CHI : terrible in all ladder except > conq4
DEL : mid in all tier
MAL : terrible in all tier
MON : mid in all tier

Explanation : Chinese is difficult for lower-skilled players and are not very popular.
Can’t explain why delhi wasn’t better in ladder. They are good aggro civ. Maybe people need time to adapt to new meta (dome of faith build).
Malians are difficult civ to make decisions. Different units comp, eco-management, and pit mines are vulnerable when ladder players can’t defend as well as pros do.

Other findings
In semi pro league (conq4) several win rates change.
Zhuxi(57%) and Ottoman(53%) becomes dominating.
HRE(52%) and OOTD(44%) win rate swaps contrarily to mid-high ladders.
RUS(55.6%) becomes decent while they are underperforming (48%) elsewhere.
Abbasid (53.3%) starts dominating.

Surprisingly, while being the ladder-tier closest to pros, the win rate of byzantines (46.7%) and english (46.4%) reflect that they are terrible civs while they are S-tier pro civs.

Explanation : people of this league are welcome to share their thoughts.

Conclusion :
OOTD is surprisingly dominating the ladder even until conq1.
HRE is surprisingly underperforming on ladder while S tier in pro players point of view.
The higher the rating, the stronger is abbasid. This reflects the macro skill in win rates.

4 Likes
2

Ladder statistics are misleading a bit even when the sample size is large. It doesnt differentiate when a lower rank is matched with a higher rank.

Also for the pro level tournament ranking, civs are map specific so of course means they sre only picked on maps they’re optimal and that explains why OOTD is ranked low since there isn’t a map where Ootd would stand out above the rest. Meanwhile civs that are very good on certain maps or versatile enough to be optimally played on multiple maps are gonna be higher on the pro list.

3

OOTD is hugely underrated. People have this misconception that all of their units because they cost double they should have exactly double the stats and they consider the units weak because they don’t. The units would be incredibly broken if that were the case.

All OOTD units have a built in production bonus because despite being as good as 2 regular units they train in much less time than 2 regular units.
Gilded villagers have a 28% eco bonus however taking into account slower train time it equates to just over 11% per villager, this makes 2tc very viable. Vills also get +30% HP, 28% faster build speed, more damage and more torch damage as well as +40 carry capacity like HRE so you are much less vulnerable to things like tower rush. If going 2tc it is also safer due to emergency repairs ability.

Any FC play is easier due to cheaper emplacements, emergency repairs and better villagers. The usefulness and value provided by burgrave also means you don’t need to FC and go regnitz for relics every time like HRE so you can go 2tc then go burgrave for example.

4

Well, this post will be helpful to get a summary of how things were before Seasn 8 ended.

In a week, with Season 9, things are gonna change so much that the winrate of several civs will be unrecognizable forever… or at least for 2 weeks until another patch balance the new broken combos.

5

Ottomans sucks. Vizier points sucks. Jans sucks.I foresaw this.

6

You should make some AoM screenshots to go along with this observation.