The people who were saying that there were only m@a openings and this is a good map change do not realise how strong m@a are with generation like this one, especially as soon as the m@a player send forward one spear and one archer too 11.
Also, it isn’t true that at the highest level there were only man at arms openings, that’s simply a bullshit
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It is however true that scout openings were starting to slow down in favor of other openings, and that this change should bring back a bit more scout openings.
Scout opening at high level with the right civ was still common (chinese, franks and so on). The m@a openings plagued lower elo, that’s true, but if you refer to the higher elo it simply isn’t true
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It was more true for highest elo than lowest one where you can make a greatest variety of strategy easily even if not the best. Anyway tha maa opening is only good when almost perfect build order, else you will be too late and your maa will be absolutely useless.
That’s all forward right? In the screenshot. Anyhow, I think this is worse than voobly Arabia… these maps just look annoying to play on, feels like a chore rather than any semblance of fun. Every game I played just devolved into make few scouts, add spears, micro that ■■■■ around, hold out till castle and knights.
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Wait seriously people is defending old arabia? I can get that new arabia is not perfect, but AT LEAST you need to seriously committ military on every age to play it, instead of being able to get away with walls, TC defence and few monks or mangonels until imp almost any game.
Every semi-serious game played on that map (or slight variations like HC4 or TOC arabia) was always the same sh*t: open militias or straight archers, committ the mininum possible amount of military just to defend and be able to complete the walls, go super greedy with deer pushing, eco upgrades and up time, place TCs as soon as possible and make military just to dance in the middle of the map and take control of the only 1-2 hills available. No chance to break that strat except going YOLO, falling 30 vills behind and hope that opponent made huge mistakes.
It was boring to play, dreadful to watch and I am fairly sure an open map shouldn’t be supposed to play out like that.
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ill just keep saying the same thing over and over
there exists a number of people who love socotra, atacama etc… does it represent the majority… not by a long shot… and i think its the same with mega open arabia vs old one… it wont be such a big difference, but im sure there will be…
arena players say the same thing about any arabia… that is purely your own preference
Yeah I’d rather play voobly Arabia than this hands down. There was variety in the map, allowed for a greater range of different strategies. Now this new Arabia is basically go full YOLO every game, or die. I am having a tremendous amount of fun, laming and douching players to death, but this can’t possibly be healthy for the game
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It sounds as if I need to give the new Arabia a try. At worst, two TC booms have always been fine, and single TC play has been a Slav thing for my games. I hope to improve my walling skills though this challenge. Since people wall on Atacama all the time, I doubt it is so bad. I have not given ranked play a try, perhaps it is the time.
arabia hasn’t been an open 1v1 map for a very long time. it’s a common misconception though.
but there are much better maps that are truly open to add to 1v1
DE’s maps are just not good. they remove everything interesting about map generation and dumb the game down so that exploration is no longer needed
their previous attempts at open maps were things like crater and socotra and african clearing. whether or not you want to play maps like that is personal preference, but they don’t even qualify as random maps. RM is about exploration and adapting to geography and replayability, not removing all geography and making every game the same
Personally I find Socotra a lot of fun. Socotra is a good example of speedy, action packed game-play done well. Which is why I’m baffled that they keep fiddling around with Arabia so much. If people want super open maps with lots of aggro, just add Socotra to the rotation as a permanent map.
I’d say African clearing is pretty good fun, minus the dominance of Indian civ, but the premise of the map itself opens up a good variety of different approaches and strats.
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There is something to this critique. I remember playing Scandinavia right after installing DE, and being surprised by its shape. Perhaps both options need to be on the table.
Of course it is, and that’s not even the worse map I had
On Voobly you could have shit maps and good maps, now it’s always shit maps
No you don’t need to in feudal
- Which are part of the game
- That were severely nerfed multiple times
- That are still being used because walling is fucking important. Hera himself said he’d always find a way to wall a map, no matter how bad it is. You know? Because walling is important
- Walling that btw is still extremely easy to do if the map isn’t completely shit when it comes to woodline: you simply wall to the tc. The problem now is that in castle age it’s always siege workshop somewhere on the 20 long tiles hill in front of your opponent base
Because that’s what the best arabia civ do if you don’t count Chinese (that opens scout a whole lot of time because they want that sweet farming eco) or Franks (see above).
The thing you are missing is that you can still do that because the map has back woodline AND 1 res back. You literally can do that same thing (because with tech advantage you can clear whatever mass of feudal unit your opponent has), what changes is
- You have a goddamn giant hill ALWAYS in front of your base, which means fucking mangonel push from hill on your base so congratz, still two hills to control, just two different ones
- The all in strats shouldn’t be something that works everytime. Playing always yolo in an rts is just plain and simple dumb, no matter what, and this map buffs that playstyle. Another reason this map buffs that playstyle is that there are so many hills that sometimes you can’t even fucking place your tcs.
Wanna know something funny tho? You could play all in on old DE arabia and still win. Want a proof? There’s Hoang streaming almost every day and playing ONLY ALL IN. Wnat another proof? Viper literally going mass kts and mangonels against Hera in HC4 semifinals. He was 20 vills behind
3 (and after putting all that pressure he manged to add tcs anyway). Btw, yes, you could do something different, but you know what? The 3 best arabia civs usually plays crossbows mid game, that’s their best unit so you are gonna see that
Your opinion, i enjoyed playing and watching arabia
Yet he was played like that and it was an open map. You know why it was played like that? Because it was the best way to play it, even with all the wall nerfs.
With this change now they literally have changed the map and made it something else. We had already serengeti and atacama that were more open and played differently, we had no need for those changes. You should have the ability to decide between strategies, not being forced always into full military on arabia. It shouldn’t always be 3 stables/archery and whatever.
Btw, if people believe that there will not be anymore walls they have never seen how higher elo players have always walled even the shittiest map possible 11
I think we need time to see what really happen with meta in new arabia. In my personal experience, I have had the most interesting games in new arabia, even those I lost… I think is easier to give a counter-attack when you are in a bad situation. You said that is an agressive map, but your base is vulnerable too. In old arabia, the snowball was more deadly because the options for counter-attack were less than new arabia.
Of course walling is important, even more important now, but just require more attention
mfw every resource is forward, so you can pick berbers and ultra cheese the map by walling in every resource and laming everything 
Also, you know what’s the best part about this? Remember how everyone wanted Mayans nerfed? This map is absolutely amazing for them since they’d just put one more vills at walling and they’d be full walled anyway at the same timing because their walls are cheaper 11
No they not, I just play a game with my main gold behind… the only change I would do is give one.of the three first forest a more random placement
The script seems to be:
- three back woodline
- one back res (berries/gold/stone)
- the other res forward
- hills everywhere, especially in front of your base
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That’s right. The control map is more important.
The 3 forest in the back is the only thing I don’t like. One random should give a little more randomess
Tree lines could look something like this with 3 treelines
…,…,…,…,…,…,…random treeline…,…,…,…
Random treeline…,…,…tc…,…,…,…,…random treeline
…,…,…set treeline…,…,…,…set treeline
Map border.,.,.,?,…,…,…,.,?,.,.,.,.,
With the random treeline somewhere between the forward/ sidelines or between those points in a half circle graph