Ornlu state of the civs 2023

with Goths you will still usually open with archers and more often than not still make knights in castle age. what are you talking about?

the way he phrases is isn’t great. but i agree with him that they don’t feel like something that should be in age of empires because it is not in the spirit of the game.
armour-ignoring damage i’m not a fan of because it makes armour upgrades completely useless against these units (however some armour ignoring damage existed before, like cataphract trample damage). i would prefer something like ‘ignores half the armour’
keshiks generating gold hardly affects their balance
folwarks are meh-design, but kind of balanced by encouraging the risk of placing farms further away from the TC
obuchs reducing armour is new, but it fits with the style

yes, the video is about his subjective opinion. that’s why people watch this video, to find out what his opinion is. ‘i dont like it’ isn’t an empty criticism if loads of people share that opinion, and especially with flemish revolution that seems to be the case

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Eh, maybe some people still enjoy them, but I think he nailed it. Goths were my favorite civ for years during the AoC days, but they’re the most obviously powercrept civ, and I basically have ~0 reason to pick them anymore. They just have have no optimal use case. Not a top civ on any particular map, like Spanish on Nomad or Turks on Arena, and not nearly enough of a generalist (Byz, Chinese, Incas) to be a good pick overall.

Everything I would have picked Goths for in the past, I find there’s another civ or 5 that either does it better, or does it slightly worse, but with notably fewer weaknesses and more flexibility. For early infantry aggression (Drush, M@A → Towers), I’d rather have Aztecs, Bulgarians, Japanese or Burmese. In midgame I’d rather be almost any other civ. And for an infantry-heavy lategame, there are 6-8 other champ civs I’d strongly prefer, on top of Malians, an Eagle civ, or even Hindustanis if you specifically want a “Huskarl-like” infantry unit. At most points of the game, and even most lategame situations, I’d take most of these over the Goths’ overly mythologized spam. Even Poles, while not tagged as an infantry civ, scratch the same “spam” itch I had with AoC Goths by yeeting their absurdly cost-effective cav units against the enemy. And Poles have sooo much more going for them. So against that backdrop, I don’t find Goths particularly interesting or good. Sure, you can “make them work” in an uphill battle with superior play, but if you can do that with a weak civ, you can do a lot more with a stronger civ (and it’s more fun). Now if you still find them good or flavorful, more power to you - your tastes are respectable whether or not I’d share them. But I’m expressing why, as a diehard Goth fan for years, I find they have little to offer me relative to other civs.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t watch most of his stuff. I find T90/Dave a lot more charismatic and entertaining, and SoTL brings a more pentrating analysis via the power of math nerdery and in-depth looks at mechanics and stats, with Ornlu kind of floating around in the middle. State of the Civs is a good topic for a discussion though, and he does a tolerable job of that.

Yes. I agree that there are types of bonuses/units/techs that I don’t think are the best fit for AoE2 but I don’t think this is one of them just because it was implemented in another game first. The concept of peasants taking up arms is arguably more of a medieval concept than anything to do with Ragnarok. Same thing with Gurjaras’ livestock husbandry, which isn’t exactly a Sci-Fi concept requiring Space-Age tech, despite its first implementation being in SWGB.

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Yes I know you usually use knights or archers as Goths but they are still not “”“respectable”“”, you WANT to use your infantry which is the only good thing you have, and if you are not using your siege you want to use your trash or bombards

Interesting that you’d say that, since to me it’s feels like the most un-AoE2-like thing in the game – much moreso than the single-use techs, and even slightly more than the Shrivamsha shields. (Although I don’t dislike it or think it should be removed.)

Is that really true? Maybe I’m atypical, personally I don’t care what his opinion is. That is, I find his opinions interesting because of the way he (usually) justifies them, not because he holds them.

I don’t see why how many people hold the same opinion makes any difference here.

what? if many people don’t like something that’s in the game, the devs should consider changing it. that’s why we got map stars and bans in the ranked queue, that’s why we got in-game voting

It is still normal to be afraid of the new changes that have a game that you have been playing for almost 25 years…Then you get used to it because you know it’s good for the life of the game for the new generations…

Of course, it is not that they put super revolutionary concepts…being simple concepts of entrys of the same saga or similar…for example in AoE 3 they put the promotions for the European minor civs (concept taken from Red Alert 2 and Generals) and everyone liked it…I do not see why the same cannot be applied in AoE 2?..

Its kind of hard to judge civs as complete or incomplete without taking maps and settings into account. I think this analysis is fine if Michi, Islands TG are given the same weightage and importance as Arabia or Arena 1v1. But in practice, some settings are much more popular and interesting to majority of players and appear more often in tournaments. And this tierlist of where the civs stand in terms of balance is flawed because of that. Some day if water maps, hybrid terrain and fully sealed maps become very interesting at both the casual and competitive levels and we have a King of the Baltic, King of the Isles or Regicide fortress S tier tournaments then sure this state of civs seem ok for the most part.

The argument usually goes rather different.
There are strategy games where you have lots of one-time-use stuff that you have to counter with other one time use stuff. See the shipment system in aoe3 or…ANY card game. They work around having counters to your opponents one time allin and they are great. If your opponent does not have a counter ready, the game might just end - eg one turn kills in card games.
And then there are slower strategy games, where advantages are edged out over time; you dont have any possibility to kill your opponent immediatly, your good moves might take minutes to even matter. That is, on a strategicial level, aoe2.

Now you can ofc mix the two styles, but you have to actually mix them. AoM does this…okay (imho its not a great game, but a solid one). The flemish revolution is actually taken from there, but AoM is different, because both sides have “the button” there. So you can keep one of your buttons in reserve to counter Ragnarök in AoM, adding to strategy: Do you keep one of your powers in reserve to deal with an allin that might come later on? Or do you push earlier with all you’ve got?

Including just ####### into aoe2 gives us a tricky problem: We can’t really make those buttons too strong, because the opponent does not have a button to counter with. But we don’t want to have them useless either. And thats not even talking about how different the various maps are…

I am only scratching the surface here, but there is a wider discussion about WHY single use buttons are problematic. I find it weird that so many in this thread attack ornlu for just referencing this discussion by saying “it does not feel like aoe2” instead of going in depth into to different possibilities to design and balance rts when he just wants to talk about civs in aoe2…

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Sure, but I’m not talking about whether the devs should change anything, or whether Flemish Revolution is bad. I’m only talking about Ornlu’s criticism of it.

No one is “attacking” Ornlu, and if he reads this thread, I hope he doesn’t take it that way.

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As Tommo says, this isn’t about attacking Ornlu. He’s a cool kid, but if he’s going to drop analysis videos, he’s gotta have stronger points than his feelings. …And maybe he feels like he’s said it a thousand times which is why this time he’s resigned himself to just shortening it to “i don’t like x” if that is the case, he needs to make more of an effort. Watch T90, he explains how to queue villagers and why it is important in basically every video and it’s still engaging because of the energy with which he does it. He knows that 99% of his audience has heard it before but he’s there for the 1% and doesn’t drag his feet in a way that would bore the rest of us.

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Summary

States of the civs can go backwards too

Man Bloody, i call that thread dedication ngl :rofl:

spot on review of sicilians…

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I think Incas can be ranked higher. Only team bonus is a bit lackluster.

balance wise, this tier list can be thrown out of the window immediately (seeing Dravidian on 2nd tier). However, fun wise, yes It can be somewhat correct. I do agree with him on Sicilian tho, that civ is a pile of mess that needs some serious overhaul.

Dravidians: die to 2 mangonels due to civ design
Ornlu: almost there

It’s not a strenght tier list, is a tier based on how the faction is well-tought in term of bonuses and resprcted in temrs of flavour

BBC addition helped them, and even if bad their light cav is perfectly serviceable to hunt mangonel

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