When I play alone during the week i am excited by what the game has become. But then on Wednesdays (we call it AOE wednesday) i play with my four player group every week and the game suddenly feels so bad. Its all walls and fast imp and mass bombards and fire lancers and wonder race!!! This is horrible compared to what the game is in 1v1 or 2v2!!
Edit: even with Feudal Rush Council Hall my first longbows hit the other side of the map when the opponent hits castle age! Thats ridiculous.
100% de acuerdo.
Just gotta back out from maps like Hill & Dale. Only French can occasionally rush on such a map.
While I agree that the massive maps have a lot of problems, it is quite possible to feudal rush. In fact I’ve found that to be my most successful strategy in 3 and 4v4. You just need to send out your villager super early (As in at or before you start feudal) to build proxy, as well as an extra scout to escort. Can’t just use base council hall for production.
^ what he said.
I play vs AI mostly and rush the past 200 games. 2,3,4 enemy; size doesn’t seem to affect my build order and strategy. I always build my production forward so most of the distance is traveled by that 1 villager instead of every military unit. Once the forward base is setup the map size is negligible.
Some maps are worse than others I guess. Black forest feels far because you spawn so near the border and so opposite each other. Boulder bay feels like it takes me longer because of how spread out the spawns are and having to walk around the lake. Altai everyone is very close together.
I do wish the ages were a bit slower tho. There should be time for combat in each age. If I’m rushing feudal military and opponent rushes age 3, it’s almost impossible to put a ram on their base before they age up @ 9 minutes. They’ll be weak and unprepared once I do, but it already forces me to think about minimizing my time or battles spent in feudal.
I think part of what makes 4v4 frustrating and interesting is you can’t rush every enemy at the same time (by yourself), so that buffer of players acts like distance to a rusher. Even if you rush down 1 enemy, others could be aging up undeterred and producing superior units before you get a chance to inflict major damage. So 4v4 does take longer and tends to be later aged for those reasons. Coordinated 4 player rushes would probably make you feel fine.
Edit: Actually it does remind me of a thought I had. 4v4 maps actually feel like the easiest for me to rush AI on because they always try to skirmish villagers around the time I rush. On a larger map they end up being so far away that it’s impossible for them to get back in time to save themselves. 2v2 maps are easier to react on but snipes can still happen even then.
I wish there was a feature similar to Warcraft 3’s scroll of town portal. They must have foreseen this problem and put that item and lore into their game for this very reason. It’s the perfect solution to give you a chance to defend against a rush/snipe without encouraging you to camp and turtle. There’s nothing like that in AoE. Of course there’s nothing like that in history either.
But yea, travel time and age duration feel disproportionate. Late game feels way too rushable and powerful. An age should last like 500 years with a handful of sieges inbetween. Imperial age feels more like industrial age with how relatively cheap everything is when you have 100 villagers.
Couldn’t agree more!
I just logged on to post this, I would say that the 3v3 map size should also be reduced significantly as well, the 2v2 slightly.
I like the big maps. Please do not make them smaller.
Wonder costs have already doubled should be fine. Bombards should make much less damage. Stone walls should be stronger.
Haz que los mapas sean más pequeños para las partidas por equipos estándar y haz mapas enormes para el Team Deathmatch.
El jugador medio de este juego probablemente preferirĂa su propia escalera para sus enormes partidas de 45m-2h.
In ranked games the size should be reduced, in custom games it would be nice to add larger maps.
I dont agree , maps are really small compared than in aoe2 . even in 4v4
EXACTLY . well said!
20 chars.
+1, finally somebody noticed it. Please reduce the map sizes for team games before it is completely dead. 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 map sizes are too big and the games become long n boring for no reason.
Yes. Maps shouldn’t be smaller.
The suggested compromise of @Adribird90 seems good for me in order to satisfy people who like the big maps and the other who don’t.