Starcraft races are definitely rock vs rock vs rock. Every unit has an equivilent unit in each race. You place rock paper scissors with the units. Every unit composition has an obvious counter. And watching games between pros is incredibly boring because each match, no matter what the match up is, is exactly the same. It’s so boring. And I think it’s quite obvious that the majority of AoE players don’t want to have to sweat and try as hard as they can in every single match. They just want to have fun.
It makes complete sense to have civs be good in some situations and bad in others. Some civs should be excellent in naval combat, some civs should have a semi viable navy, and some should avoid water and draw their opponents onto land and strategize to avoid the other player’s navy to dominate on land.
And with civs having their strengths and weaknesses based on landscape, and AoE4 having randomly generated maps based on a specific template, I think it would be amazing if the ranked match setup would be randomized civs and randomized template. For one, this is the best way to measure skill at the game if that’s what ranked play is for. Secondly, this would stop people from always playing their favorite civ, and this is good because if you’re only good at one civ, then you shouldn’t be on ranked. Because this is a game of civilizations, having a random civilization would result in the most intense ranked matches. I also think ranked matches should always select a template that has some amount of water on it, i think the least amount of water on a map should be the one with the Y shaped river. However there will be a ton more templates to come so theres gonna be large map pool either way. And I think this because if you get a civ that has really good ability on water, you should be able to use it. This makes sense because even on maps with mostly water, civs that arent so good on water can still be really good by easily extending quickly to the other islands, and can outplay the other player’s navy with micro to get units on their land.
Having all the civs be equal in every single situation like other RTS games makes for some very uneventful gameplay. Having it the way I described would make for some really inventive strategies and would really highlight player skill while still being really fun.
The key here is for the game to be fun, that is the most important factor because it is a video game. And the majority of AoE players like AoE how it is, and don’t want it turn into another bland esports game. The reason esports games are so bland is because they have to be for balancing. They can paint it all pretty, but essentially it’s the same thing every time. I think that’s why AoE is so popular, all the people who love the RTS genre but get sick of esports direction the others are taking because it’s boring as hell.
Regardless of how AoE4 develops, it cannot turn into any sort of esports game. If you are a fan of AoE, you should be against that idea because it will destroy the franchise. It can never be a perfect esports game like the others so it wouldn’t bring in ANY new esports players; however, it would drive away most of the playerbase. Probably the whole playerbase because I don’t think even you would enjoy what AoE would become if it tried to be in the esports scene.