My path to disenchantment with the state of the game (and its future)

[Dungini]

Some context. Obviously, there are many different tastes and opinions regarding this game, but I must admit I’m glad to see that there are at least a few posts and comments in the same line as mine. I wanted to write this post as a vent and, as in any forum, I’m sure some will be in favor and others against. However, since this is a feeling I’ve had for a long time, I wanted to put it into words so that, at the very least, it figures somewhere as a statistic.

I am over 30 years old; I played AOE 1, 2, and AOC when they were released in the 90s (also AOEIII). I wasn’t part of the Voobly era, but I picked it up again with the HD version and later DE. I mainly played TGs, but a few months ago I started playing 1v1, reaching a top ELO of 1500, but everyday im closer to say goodbye and look for other games.

1. The Vicious Cycle of DLCs In my view, the direction that the game has taken is unsustainable. After multiple DLCs, the developers have been destroying the essential dynamic that allowed the game to become so successful in the first place (while of course also doing amazing things).

Adding new civilizations has turned into a vicious cycle of incorporating new features that, with each DLC, must surpass the standard set by the previous one. The existing civilizations and mechanics aren’t even balanced before new ones are already being introduced. It’s hard to say which type of players should be prioritized for balance, as the reality for professionals is very different from that of ELO 1000 players, even though the latter represent the majority. However, when players from all percentiles complain about the same problems, the situation is unsustainable. A reflection of this is that, today, there are still civilizations with win/loss ratios showing deviations greater than ±2% (which could be considered statistically significant, so why don’t we trully adress that and then add more things?).

2. The Loss of Simplicity and the Unit System Personally, I think they’ve done an extraordinary job with the aesthetic updates (castles, for example), with some coding problems and of course campaigns. I can also understand the goal of achieving global coverage with the pool of civilizations. However, I believe the changes incorporated—in terms of mechanics, quantity, and quality—are what cause the problems. The need to add civilizations leads to the “supposed need” to add features to differentiate each new one, which is effectively the vicious cycle I mentioned earlier.

This results in the gradual loss of the simplicity of the triangular system of units and counter-units, which impacts in the capacity to learn the game as newcomers or to play agains a huge pool of different civilizations. I believe a large part of this problem stems from unique units that are not from the castle and, for some reason unknown to me, the need to add multiple quirks to every new addition. To name a few examples (there might be better examples):

• The Goths originally had an infantry unit strong against arrows; now the Wu have the same but from the barracks (it had to be nerfed) without the need of a castle, why should I preffer Goth then? (I know there are more to it, but get the idea).

• The Spearman was infantry counter for cavalry; well, now let’s add a new Spearman that shoots fire (unbalanced again).

• Bolas Rider: American civilizations don’t have cavalry; now not only will they have it (understandable), but let’s give it pass-through damage, make it slow down units, and generate gold! Oh, and of course, it’s not a castle unit…

• The same goes for buildings: the Folwark could be seen as a subtle inclusion, but now let’s add a building that collects all resources, and oh, it can also garrison units or create pikemen… and why not skirmishers too.

3. Unbalanced Off-Meta: The Redphosphorus Case A final topic that cannot go unmentioned is how this has led to off-meta strategies that are the living example of something “unbalanced.” Redphosphorus build strategies put the opponent at a disadvantage from the start. When you play against it, there are basically two options, both usually unfavorable:

Either you DON’T know what to do and it’s an almost guaranteed loss, or you DO know what to do and it’s still very hard to execute, especially for lower ELOs, unlike other strategies that have more components that can change the outcome. Especially considering that phosphorus is hard to punish even for professional players because suddenly you have to face a unit that can fire arrows and also do melee damage because, of course, the game needed that.

Don’t get me wrong, I do agree that “off-meta” strategies are good to have and healthy for the game, RedPhosphorus its an amazing player and a really valuable contributor to the community but if the strategies e a bit unbalanced, or don’t have a decent counter, something should be done. Strategies should have a success rate as close as possible to 50%, or at least have clear ways to counter them. The charm of AoE and strategy games is that if I anticipate what the other player will do, I will gain the advantage, and in these build order, that simply doesn’t work that way (at least 95% of the time), and that’s why I feel it’s unbalanced. I will not even mention the Champi situation…

4. Data: Classic Civs and Community Activity All of this is happening while the rest of the civilizations are being left behind, not just in identity (which they have), but in tools to navigate the game. Take the Britons as an example; here is their overall Winrate across the different patches that have been released:

Lastly, I’m not even sure that continuing to release civilizations is what attracts or keeps the community alive. Below is the monthly community activity where I’ve marked the months when DLCs were released, and I don’t see an evident pattern of player permanence related to DLC launches. More like a steady base community that plays the game regardless of the DLC. It increases after a DLC launch and then comes back to the regular basis (of course DLC mean more money income, but the future of the game is what worries me).

EDIT: here I posted the wrong chart, down in the comments this was discussed, so I deleted it. Sorry.

—————————-

I’ve seen polls where people would still want more civs, to which I think that if we are going to have more civs, can we try to make them within the logic of the game? I’ve had 0 success making new people play the game, either you loved from the 90’s or you cant stand it.

Conclusion? At this point, I don’t have proposals to solve the things I’ve criticized here. Some games have pre-match ban systems for competitive play, but I can see how that wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking. As I said at the beginning, these are the things that bother me. I don’t know if they represent the majority of the community, but they are the things that, today, make me question whether or not to continue playing this game.

[Geojak92]

My main issue is that instead of giving civs a fitting unit skin but unchanged stats, like no crossbow for South America civ or no European longsword for South American civ. Instead we get completely unique units like champi.

We got too many quirks.

AOC was like chess, simple units, everyone had more or less the same access. Fair playing field. Now players have vastly different unit sets, upgrades, stats.

All this isn’t new. Imo, leitis was the start where it all went to shit

[TheTowerDefender]

@Dungini

Conclusion? At this point, I don’t have proposals to solve the things I’ve criticized here. Some games have pre-match ban systems for competitive play, but I can see how that wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking

Firstly I want to say it’s good to see someone else who agrees with me on many of the current issues in the game.

I think a reasonable solution could be adding a game mode/setting where the civ pool is restricted to vanilla DE or pre-DE civs, and the reworks to classic civs are reverted. This would tackle most of the issues you mentioned. The final step would be to then balance this limited set of civs.

@Geojak92

All this isn’t new. Imo, leitis was the start where it all went to shit

yep. I think the first signs were Leitis and Burgundians. Then Dynasties of India then went batshit crazy with dumb gimmicks.

[SirT_Efaisto]

@Dungini

1. The Vicious Cycle of DLCs

I disagree, there’s a lot of cultures still absent from the game that would make unique fun gameplay.

@Dungini

The existing civilizations and mechanics aren’t even balanced before new ones are already being introduced.

Water rework. Wu, Gurjaras, Khitans endless nerfs, for example.

@Dungini

2. The Loss of Simplicity and the Unit System

The game is still about trash spears and skirms versus crossbows and knights.

@Dungini

The need to add civilizations leads to the “supposed need” to add features to differentiate each new one, which is effectively the vicious cycle I mentioned earlier.

What’s the problem here?
Are you against Mesoamerican civs without horses? Huns without houses? Spanish super villagers that melt castles?
New civs equals new features. Unique units means breaking the rules.

@Dungini

This results in the gradual loss of the simplicity of the triangular system of units and counter-units, which impacts in the capacity to learn the game as newcomers or to play against a huge pool of different civilizations.

I love regional and unique units, but I only win if I still make regular counter units. Even Burgundians with Flemish Militia still has to make Skirmishers to complement them, for example.

@Dungini

The Goths originally had an infantry unit strong against arrows; now the Wu have the same but from the barracks (it had to be nerfed) without the need of a castle, why should I preffer Goth then? (I know there are more to it, but get the idea).

3K is an anomaly haha
Jian Swordsmen are strong to raid in Castle Age but are nothing in Imperial, they should definitely be reworked…

@Dungini

The Spearman was infantry counter for cavalry; well, now let’s add a new Spearman that shoots fire (unbalanced again).

Why you don’t like Fire Lancers?
They are more expensive than the Spear-line, so there’s always a choice to make. Also, Fire Lancers are worse against full cavalry armies (or elephants).

The strategy of Fire Lancers with Siege towers relied on a bug that’s already patched out from the game.

@Dungini

Bolas Rider: American civilizations don’t have cavalry; now not only will they have it (understandable), but let’s give it pass-through damage, make it slow down units, and generate gold! Oh, and of course, it’s not a castle unit…

Pass-trough damage is a niche feature when applied on units whose projectiles don’t have a crazy range after hitting like the Scorpion.
In the end, a non-castle unique unit is cooler than a crazy bonus to a regular unit, while being the same, don’t you think? Stats-wise it’s the same thing.
A different cost is easier to justify too.

Instead of paladins with more armor, players have been asking for Crusader Knights for Teutons (same thing, but with unique graphics), for example.

@Dungini

3. Unbalanced Off-Meta: The Redphosphorus Case A final topic that cannot go unmentioned is how this has led to off-meta strategies that are the living example of something “unbalanced.” Redphosphorus build strategies put the opponent at a disadvantage from the start.

Are you implying that non-castle unique units lend to the higher tiers of Red Phosphorus rushes?
If I read correctly from Red Phosphorus tier list, is rather mixed.

@Dungini

4. Data: Classic Civs and Community Activity All of this is happening while the rest of the civilizations are being left behind, not just in identity (which they have), but in tools to navigate the game. Take the Britons as an example

There’s a thread for that topic, Tl;dr, Britons design didn’t age well.

@TheTowerDefender

I think a reasonable solution could be adding a game mode/setting where the civ pool is restricted to vanilla DE or pre-DE civs, and the reworks to classic civs are reverted.

This could lead to a lot of people asking for a refund. If you pay for a civ, you play with it.

[TheTowerDefender]

@SirT_Efaisto

@Dungini

The need to add civilizations leads to the “supposed need” to add features to differentiate each new one, which is effectively the vicious cycle I mentioned earlier.

What’s the problem here?
Are you against Mesoamerican civs without horses? Huns without houses? Spanish super villagers that melt castles?
New civs equals new features. Unique units means breaking the rules

none of the examples you mention are what he means by “adding features”:

Meso without horses is a simple case of “everyone has the same basic tech tree, then each civ misses some units/upgrades”. in the case of meso civs, that’s all cav units.

Huns without houses, is another case of “something missing from the tech tree, in this case replaced by something free”. eg frank’s HP bonus instead of bloodlines

Spanish supremacy tech is also just a stat tweak for a unit. How is that different from Loom or a unique tech like garland wars?

when we mean new features, we mean new game mechanics like auras, armor ignoring, armor shredding, shwarma rider magic shield, lingering damage, experience gain, temporary buffs etc

@SirT_Efaisto

3K is an anomaly

nah, 3K is just the tip of a shit-iceberg.

@SirT_Efaisto

There’s a thread for that topic, Tl;dr, Britons design didn’t age well.

There’s a thread for that topic, Tl;dr, Britons are well designed, but have become irrelevant due to powercreep.

@SirT_Efaisto

@TheTowerDefender

I think a reasonable solution could be adding a game mode/setting where the civ pool is restricted to vanilla DE or pre-DE civs, and the reworks to classic civs are reverted.

This could lead to a lot of people asking for a refund. If you pay for a civ, you play with it.

what?!? How would an alternative queue mean that? everyone who wants to play with the new civs still could.

[Dungini]

I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but you are consistently taking my words out of context—even @TheTowerdefender pointed this out.

@TheTowerDefender

none of the examples you mention are what he means by “adding features”

Perhaps u missunderstood what I said or I wasnt clear enough. For example:

@SirT_Efaisto

there’s a lot of cultures still absent from the game that would make unique fun gameplay

I said that I understand that, so is not necessarily the amount of civs per se, but the things they come up with them.

@Dungini

I can also understand the goal of achieving global coverage with the pool of civilizations. However, I believe the changes incorporated—in terms of mechanics, quantity, and quality—are what cause the problems.

Regarding the “need” of adding new features, once again, either you are trolling or didn’t pay enough attention.

@SirT_Efaisto

What’s the problem here?
Are you against Mesoamerican civs without horses?

I litterally said that changes are acceptable. You are missing the point, is not about CHANGING things, its about how, how many, what things are they adding and how are they impacting the core of the game.

@Dungini

Bolas Rider: American civilizations don’t have cavalry; now not only will they have it (understandable), but

Is not about meso civ having cav units, is about a single unit having pass-through damage, but also slowing units down and ALSO generating gold while at it, you can’t argue that was the logic behind UU in the original civs…

Once again, you’re misinterpreting my words

@SirT_Efaisto

Why you don’t like Fire Lancers?

@Dungini

To name a few examples (there might be better examples):

It’s the mix of things that converge in the Fire Lancer (which was just an example that came to my mind): it’s a unique unit, but not from the castle, and not all civilizations have them and on top of that, they shoot a projectile with special stats, so it’s not just simple infantry. They didn’t stop at adding an infantry unit with mixed bennefits, they had to go further and add more gymmicky things. And by the way, this follows the trend of all new units being released overpowered only to be nerfed later—a dynamic that isn’t healthy for the game.

Next example:

@SirT_Efaisto

Pass-trough damage is a niche feature when applied on units whose projectiles don’t have a crazy range after hitting like the Scorpion.

On Bolas Riders, again, add a “CA” unit with passthrough damage (a mechanic already existing indeed), thats understandable, but why it also has to have a charge attack dynamic, why it must generate gold once it kills, why it has bonus against KT, Camels, and why not, also rams…

All of this in just one unit, one civ, one DLC, either you want to reach 75 civilizations or you keep a smaller number of civs with more dynamics introduced in each DLC, but can’t have both (IMO).

Moving to off-meta strats:

@SirT_Efaisto

Are you implying that non-castle unique units lend to the higher tiers of Red Phosphorus rushes?

The topic of Castle UUs vs UU from other buildings is literally in a different section of my post; I even numbered them. So no, I’m not ‘implying’ that. In fact, the strongest RedPhosphorus strategies use Castle UUs, not units from other buildings… so I don’t understand how you interpreted that from my post.

The RP or off-meta section of my post points to a example of imbalance that isn’t being fixed, but is actually worsening over time with each update/DLC. Personally, I believe the way to address that situation is by looking at the use/abuse of the Market, but that would be a topic for another thread. Once again, i think nerfing every unit they release is a symptom of a problem, a patch, not a sollution to the core problem. The main takeaway here is “The charm of AoE and strategy games is that if I anticipate what the other player will do, I will gain the advantage, and in these build order, that simply doesn’t work that way”.

Lastly, on britons situation, they were just one example, im glad that theres already a post about them, but I could quote more civs on this same scenario.

I don’t mean to sound unfriendly, but I feel comments like yours can derail the message I’m trying to convey. It’s important not to extrapolate every single remark just to try to point out errors or things like that. Try to keep with the general idea.

[TheLiberator236]

@Dungini

1. The Vicious Cycle of DLCs In my view, the direction that the game has taken is unsustainable. After multiple DLCs, the developers have been destroying the essential dynamic that allowed the game to become so successful in the first place (while of course also doing amazing things).

More than making the game client an All-Cluttered Frankestein Monster Mess with 60 civs, Antiquity Stuff, Heroes and so on and so for!

[TommoChocolate]

@Dungini

On Bolas Riders, again, add a “CA” unit with passthrough damage (a mechanic already existing indeed), thats understandable, but why it also has to have a charge attack dynamic, why it must generate gold once it kills, why it has bonus against KT, Camels, and why not, also rams…

The current devs seem to throw in every idea they have in a completely unselective way, leading to bloated designs like this. They do this both at the level of individual units (as well as bolas riders, another good example is urumi swordsmen) and at the level of civs (Khitans being the most overloaded, in my opinion).

With bolas riders specifically, my impression from playing Mapuche campaign (I haven’t used them in skirmish/multiplayer at all) is that the pass-through damage is quite impactful – it affects how you use the unit, especially since it’s fast so you can position it to try to maximise the extra damage. But the charge/snare attack and gold generation are comparatively irrelevant. So my preference to streamline this design would be to keep the pass-through damage and remove the other two mechanics.

I think the original devs would have done this – they seem to have been very deliberately selective with which mechanics they included and which they discarded – but the current devs don’t have the same mindset, unfortunately.

[TheTowerDefender]

@TommoChocolate

I think the original devs would have done this – they seem to have been very deliberately selective with which mechanics they included and which they discarded – but the current devs don’t have the same mindset, unfortunately.

the current devs seem to be using a scattershot approach. or stealing someone else’s metaphor “stringing enough C’s and hoping that will somehow become an A”

[AlphaCreator727]

@Dungini

A reflection of this is that, today, there are still civilizations with win/loss ratios showing deviations greater than ±2%

To be honest, I think the balance in MP 1v1 games is pretty good right now. Sure, there are a few outliers, but nothing too extreme or impossible to address. It seems like the devs are already working on it — we as players just tend to want those balance changes to happen faster.

@Dungini

This results in the gradual loss of the simplicity of the triangular system of units and counter-units

The new naval rework is intended to be a triangular system

@Dungini

unique units that are not from the castle

So, an UU can have some quirks as long as belong to the Castle?

Remember than Goths and Huns have UT that allow them to train their UU outside the castle for faster trianing.

@Dungini

Unbalanced Off-Meta: The Redphosphorus Case

This strategy works mainly because the meta game is stale right now. That’s why a lot of people complain — they’re being forced to play outside their comfort zone. It’s not necessarily because the strategy is broken, but because it’s unexpected and wasn’t really taken into account from a balance perspective since it wasn’t a thing in the first place. Portuguese, Bohemians, and Bengalis are probably the biggest examples of this.

@Dungini

Britons

47% Win rate is not bad at all for a game with more than 50 civilizations.

@Dungini

Lastly, I’m not even sure that continuing to release civilizations is what attracts or keeps the community alive

Maybe not for the MP community, but certainly for the SP community. In the end, though, what really matters is the sales performance of each DLC.

[Estevao9543]

I imagine that unnecessary bloat in the design is the problem to most of people, and not exactly the addition of more civs. So we should have some rules for this, such as:

(1) Limiting unique mechanics to UUs;
(2) Limiting each civ to a maximum of 2 UUs, with the second one being either a naval or regional unit;
(3) Under no circumstances stacking mechanics on a single unit.

Perhaps they are too radical or (probably) too late, but I imagine that in this more parsimonious way, there will always be mechanics available to future civs, and it won’t be an unpleasant surprise to the players to have to learn how new units work with each DLC.

But what do you all think?

[Skadidesu]

@Dungini

and I don’t see an evident pattern of player permanence related to DLC launches:

Those are the AoE1DE numbers not AoE2DE numbers. You didn’t notice how small they were?

https://steamdb.info/app/813780/charts/

AoE2De actually gained players this month.

@Dungini

The Goths originally had an infantry unit strong against arrows;

It is impossible to avoid having multiple units being similar if you have that many units in the game.

You can’t at the same time want all OG units to stay unique and then also not want new units to have gimmicks.

@Dungini

The Spearman was infantry counter for cavalry; well, now let’s add a new Spearman that shoots fire (unbalanced again).

It is based on a type of unit that was used like this a lot irl. There is a huge number of different swordsman units but that’s totally fine?

Isn’t the Kamayuk also not just a better Spearman?

@Dungini

pass-through damage, make it slow down units, and generate gold!

They don’t have Bracer though which holds them back a lot.

@Dungini

and oh, it can also garrison units or create pikemen… and why not skirmishers too.

Those are each civ bonuses for different civilisations. Gurjaras can also garrison villagers in houses, pretty much the same bonus.

@Dungini

Some games have pre-match ban systems for competitive play, but I can see how that wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking.

I could see that work in AoE2 too, especially in Team Games.

Bans would also give the developers valuable data about what civs need to be improved. Not just because they are too strong but also because people just don’t enjoy playing against them.

Though that could lead to conflicts in none pre made teams if one person wants to ban purely based on civ performance and another one wants to just ban the 3 Kingdoms for not fitting into AoE2.

[Dungini]

@Skadidesu

You didn’t notice how small they were?

Thanks for pointing that out! It didn’t catch my attention because the graph shows differences rather than net/absolute totals. I’ll edit the original post to remove that data.

Regardless, my original question remains, whether if it’s truly the inclusion of new civilizations that attracts people; perhaps DLCs focused on reworks, balancing, and campaigns could achieve the same effect (without the negative effects that Im pointing out, based on my opinion of course 11). In any case, this point in the post is meant as a question.

In this chart (actually II DE this time, haha), there was a more active community after the release of Chronicles: Battle of Greece (BG) than after Three Kingdoms. So, DLC increase the amount of players, which is logic, but are those players there because of new civs? and even more important here (for what I would like to know), how many of those are new players and how many of them stay as stable players?

It’s logical (as someone else mentioned) that DLCs are a revenue source, which is understandable as a business model. However, I’m not sure the current form and content allow for sustainable long-term development, as it seems there is a core community that remains steady regardless of the spikes and dips following a DLC launch.

Either way, I think this might be a broader/different topic than what I was trying to cover in the original post.

Next:

@Skadidesu

It is impossible to avoid having multiple units being similar if you have that many units in the game.

You can’t at the same time want all OG units to stay unique and then also not want new units to have gimmicks

Well, in fact, that is precisely one of the problems I’m raising.

Personally, I would prefer not to have so many new units and would rather see subtle differences between UUs, focusing on small details. However, I understand that this opinion could very likely be a reflection of a small minority of players, so my actual frustration is directed at why there have to be so many new units with multiple ‘gimmicky’ abilities at the same time, released with each DLC. Hows the game going to look and play out after 5 more DLC like these?

@Skadidesu

It is based on a type of unit that was used like this a lot irl. There is a huge number of different swordsman units but that’s totally fine?

Isn’t the Kamayuk also not just a better Spearman?

The game’s historical accuracy is definitely a topic for another thread, as the examples of what’s ‘real’ vs. ‘fake’ could go on forever (I do know such troop existed, and personally, the more historically accurate a game is, the better, but I preffer simplicity on the mechanics and better ballance than absolute realism, thats why I didnt had problems with seeing meso civ champions or arbalesters for example). But the point of my original post is that when units drift away from the ‘triangular’ balance system, it leads to the problems I mentioned—multiple quirks for the same non-Castle UU, all included in a single DLC that also added a dozen similar changes.

If they want to aim for realism by not giving Meso-civs Champions, but rather a unit that represents them. Personally, I would have preferred a unit that is identical to the Militia line stats —essentially an aesthetic change—but friendly to the game’s balance and dynamics (and to new players, which is a key point of my concern).

By the way, Kamayuk is a UU from the castle, which is exactly what Im rooting for, those are fine, like longbowmen are a higher range archer-line troop, I adressed that on the original post, kind of limiting the UU to castles and thus representing part of the identity of the civ.

The next comments ill adressed them as one:

@Skadidesu

@Dungini

it can also garrison units or create pikemen… and why not skirmishers too.

Those are each civ bonuses for different civilisations. Gurjaras can also garrison villagers in houses, pretty much the same bonus.

@Skadidesu

@Dungini

pass-through damage, make it slow down units, and generate gold!

They don’t have Bracer though which holds them back a lot.

Again, Khmer* can garrison villagers in houses, but those houses do not research eco techs, nor do they allow the creation of not only one, but two different trash units—which usually require two different buildings to be produced. Why do they have to pump so many things into a single modification? Of course, there will be balance issues afterward. Only the fact that the settlement allows the drop-off of all resources and its a 3x3 square building is a substantial change by itself, but they added the garrison, the unit creation, the healing capabilities.

Bolas not having Bracer is a balance thing. I’m not addressing “overpoweredness” with that example, as there are simpler-working UUs that are more OP than Bolas and I’m not arguing that point. My issue is the amount of things a player (specially new or not pro players) must consider while playing against them—and the other 50+ civilizations!

I absolutely agree with all of what u said here:

@Skadidesu

I could see that work in AoE2 too, especially in Team Games.

Bans would also give the developers valuable data about what civs need to be improved. Not just because they are too strong but also because people just don’t enjoy playing against them.

Though that could lead to conflicts in none pre made teams if one person wants to ban purely based on civ performance and another one wants to just ban the 3 Kingdoms for not fitting into AoE2.

[GermanAttorney8]

Agree on priorities bug fixes and issues over content release

Although, come on, I think an age of 30 should not impact your ability to learn new stuff as much 11

[Skadidesu]

@Dungini

However, I’m not sure the current form and content allow for sustainable long-term development, as it seems there is a core community that remains steady regardless of the spikes and dips following a DLC launch.

I did notice that AoE2DE gets a lot smaller spike each time a DLC releases compared to all the other games in the franchise. It seems like they have problems marketing the DLC to most players.

@Dungini

I would prefer not to have so many new units and would rather see subtle differences between UUs, focusing on small details.

But wouldn’t that mean copying existing UUs or generic units?

The worst kind of UU in my opinion is the one that is just a slightly different version of a generic unit that is also available to the civ. Why build the UU version of the Knight/Crossbow/Longsword if I can just train that unit, which often has a civ bonus too. Like why train Longbows when I have the longest range Crossbows.

This is something I like more about most new civs. They try to give the UUs unique roles that are not filled by generic units, or push the generic units into a different direction. It’s rare for a new civ to give a bonus to a generic to make it feel more similar to the UU nowadays, the Tupi being an exception.

I do agree that some of the gimmicks/features are a little too much. I think the Bolas should be more about slow down and not have the pass through. That should honestly be limited to Slingers to make them feel more interesting and unique.

@Dungini

But the point of my original post is that when units drift away from the ‘triangular’ balance system

AoE2 doesn’t have a clear rock paper scissors system like other games in the franchise.

AoE is not Cavalry > Archer > Infantry, like you would expect. The Crossbow is surprisingly decent against Knights but the Long Swordsman is surprisingly mediocre. The Spearman and Skirmisher are counter units outside of the main core “power” units since they are very weak against anything but the one unit type they are supposed to counter.

The idea behind units like the Firelancer is to give the Milita Line an actual role. Also just not make every civ build like the same 5 core units.

@Dungini

I would have preferred a unit that is identical to the Militia line stats —essentially an aesthetic change—but friendly to the game’s balance and dynamics (and to new players, which is a key point of my concern).

I’m a big supported of regional skins. That could also reduce the demand for regional units. I feel like many peoples main reason why they like regional units is because the generic ones look so out of place.

@Dungini

like longbowmen are a higher range archer-line troop

I mentioned earlier that this is one of the worst UUs in my opinion. The Britons already have the Archer line with the biggest range so the Longbowman doesn’t really offer much.

If their Crossbows had normal range then the Longbow would be a lot more interesting. I honestly think that is a good example for a UU that should be moved from the Castle to the Archery range where it should just replace the Crossbow line. It is sad that most Briton players will just build Crossbows and ignore their UU. Why even play any specific civ if you just want to use generic units anyway.

@GermanAttorney8

Although, come on, I think an age of 30 should not impact your ability to learn new stuff as much 11

That is something I can really not understand. We get like 1-2 DLC per year so you have 6-12 months to learn the new civs. It’s not like a monthly thing where you constantly have to keep up to date.

[Dungini]

@AlphaCreator727

To be honest, I think the balance in MP 1v1 games is pretty good right now.

I simply cannot agree with this. We haven’t even moved past the Khitan issues and we’re already overwhelmed by ‘champi rushes’ and multiple civs with Phosphorus builds, all while normalizing Romans having a +54% win rate… There might have been worse eras, perhaps, but I think we are far from ‘pretty good.’ In any case what I’m trying to emphasize is that this seems to be the standard dynamic with every DLC (overpowered units, months of upcomming nerfs and problems), and thats not healthy for the game future.

@AlphaCreator727

The new naval rework is intended to be a triangular system

Yes, perfectly fine IMO, the way the game should be adressed. I menitoned that the devs have done good things aswell, one of those being the naval rework.

@AlphaCreator727

So, an UU can have some quirks as long as belong to the Castle?

Remember than Goths and Huns have UT that allow them to train their UU outside the castle for faster trianing.

Yeah 11… thats kinda the idea of UU from castles, longbowmen its an archer with more range but thats it, thats why we have Unique units. And yes, both Goths and Huns can do that, but only after building a castle and researching the unique technology—and it’s still the same unit… They can’t do it before that, and they can’t create other unique units with multiple special abilities… it’s not the same thing.

@AlphaCreator727

That’s why a lot of people complain — they’re being forced to play outside their comfort zone. It’s not necessarily because the strategy is broken

People are forced to play outside their comfort zone, I agree and thats why I said off-meta strategies are healthy for the game. That being said, thay particular stratey is indeed broken and heres a few examples why:

1. As the vast mayority of players arent pro, at a generic level of play, you aren’t capable to foresight if your opponent will use that opening (unlike Vinchester playing against Viper using Portuguese for example).
2. IF I assume they might do it, I have to scout early, which could mean losing the chance to push deer while my opponent quietly gains an economic advantage by doing it.
3. Even if all the above happens and I see, for example, my opponent taking stone, a common suggestion is to drop a tower and go archers. By the time I get there, it might already be too late, leaving me in a position of total disadvantage.
4. If I don’t do that and go FC myself instead, but the opponent goes for a “traditional” opening, I’m once again at a disadvantage for going FC while my opponent hits me with feudal troops (remember, im not talkig pro level here, so if i used to se bengalies i could asume they were going to phosphoru rush)
5. Even with perfect scouting and decision-making, it’s only then possible to try and have an even match, eventually, but it doesn’t guarantee a win. (Perfect scouting and decision-making are not typical traits of 1000 ELO players btw).
6. On the other hand (due to market abuse, in my opinion), the other player can afford the build order and even lose villagers during its execution—it’s a very “forgiving” opening—to reach a winning position where they only need to focus on spamming the UU and attacking, since they don’t even need villagers at that point.
7. The mere fact that a professional has won 85% or more of their games using this strategy (king of the desert), even when it was obvious they would do it, should show you that something is wrong with it.

I stick to my original prhasing, and I strongly belive that this should be adressed through the market exploit. But then again, Phosphoru build orders are not the main issue of this thread:

@Dungini

The charm of AoE and strategy games is that if I anticipate what the other player will do, I will gain the advantage, and in these build order, that simply doesn’t work that way (at least 95% of the time), and that’s why I feel it’s unbalanced.

On balance u said:

@AlphaCreator727

47% Win rate is not bad at all for a game with more than 50 civilizations.

But it actually is… As an example, if we look at the data from aoestats, the 1v1 database includes over 1,000,000 games. For a universe of 53 civilizations, a formal statistical analysis shows that the deviation should not exceed ±1%; therefore, a 47% win rate is undoubtedly outside the range of what should be considered acceptable and not randomness effects.

One could argue that it is impossible for every single civilization to stay within the statistically acceptable margin (I understand that), but that raises the point I tried to show of how or why a civilization has remained unbalanced since 2024, and why don’t they adress those issues instead of adding more unbalanced things to the game. And mind you, this is just one example—the same applies to those sitting both well above and well below that threshold, which is precisely the issue I am trying to bring to the table.

Lastly, on:

@AlphaCreator727

Maybe not for the MP community, but certainly for the SP community. In the end, though, what really matters is the sales performance of each DLC.

Absolutely, must of what I’ve said is for the MP part of the game. More civilizations and campaings like chronicles are exceptional additions to the game. No doubt on that regard.

[Dungini]

@GermanAttorney8

Although, come on, I think an age of 30 should not impact your ability to learn new stuff as much 11

11, perhaps I’m not having the best 30’s out of the possibilities!

But for real now, I am trying to approach this issue not just from my own perspective, but from that of many others. Not everyone has the time to read through patch notes or watch videos about every new ability, nor do they play frequently enough to face all these new elements and learn them by heart.

Keep in mind that the bulk of the community consists of 1000 ELO players—people who might only play on weekends or after work or school. If the number of changes in each patch jumps from 3 or 5 to over 35 new things, staying updated becomes significantly harder.

And this is is especially true for new players. It’s one thing for players like us, who only need to learn the latest updates, but for a newcomer to learn everything from scratch—especially when new mechanics deviate from the game’s original core logic—it becomes a real uphill battle! Wont somebody please think of the childrens! 11

[Amianto3279]

As mostly a singleplayer gamer, personally I like variety, the lack of customizations for civs was the weak spot of the game. However, I agree that new units should always fit in precise categories to avoid confusion in multiplayer games and keep the rock paper scissors system consistent. Only the special unit should have a degree of gimmicks

[REITERPALLASCH]

Yeah, the devs have stated before that the singleplayer campaign players VASTLY outnumber the multiplayer players

[polymath]

As a SP-exclusive player, I think the game is doing fine. I have no major complaints, other then lack of reginal skins, but apparently we are getting there… very slowly. But they added those (hardly necessary) garrison flags, we can assume more cosmetics are coming down the line.