As an active player on ranked team-games 2 years prior to the Definitive edition release, I think you made a mistake setting the population to 200 for ranked matches. 200 was uncommon around a rate of 1/5 or 1/7 and usually catered to a laggy players on an older rig. Most of the the GG’s were on at least 250, but I suggest a standard 300 and people with older rigs just update there gear. There’s tons of 2nd hand stuff out there for cheap that can handle that especially if the setting are set down to minimums.
Please don’t cater to players using 15 year old rigs.
200 locks players onto gold builds and can put people in awkward positions where forward deployed armies are having to be suicided to build defensive units at home for small/medium harassment counter-attacks, but you have the eco, your just up against the limit. I don’t think thats fair because if someone rushes archers early (common) then you would naturally level up and mass skirmishers to counter them as you repel and the favor swings back to your macro play style.
With 200 pop this logical use of game counters results in massive late game failure. No one wants to kill their own units. Please just set ladder matches to 300 pop which was the common standard on HD edition from people not fearing the dreaded lag conditions that you modern framework has largely fixed.
200 pop has always been the standard for 1v1 and team game in AoE2. HD might have had more 300 pop games, but at any serious competitive level the game is always played on 200 pop.
The whole balance of the game has been designed with that setting in mind. Change the pop limit and the balance becomes completely different, more heavily favoring ranged units.
300 pop is a fun casual setting. But not suited for competitive play, as civs and gameplay start to dysfunction.
Ok maybe at 1v1 level this is true, but the random pick up matches for 2v2/3v3/4v4 Arabia or black-forest or whatever was typically 250 or 300 to make it possible for 1 player to amass an army big enough to fight more than one opponent. These matches had higher percentages of total game-play and had there own meta. So now that same lobby system is completely unranked and replaced by a que timer which is great, but I think the pop limit is set unrealistically to these matchups.
Maybe leave 1v1 at 200, 2v2 at 250 and 3v3/4v4 at 300. CPU’s can handle it now and new release is awesomely optimized. Please don’t make us conform to 1v1 standards to play ranked team-matches when everyone is used to what we’ve been doing for many years now.
I don’t believe this has anything to do with hardware capability. As TriRem* explained, the 200 population limit is a gold standard and a fixed attribute around which the game is balanced.
You need to consider it like this: 1v1 has a 200 population limit, while 2v2 has a 400 team-popualtion limit split between the two players of each team. Each team member adds 200 popualtion limit to the fold. It’s unfortunate if a team member is steam rolled early, capping your team’s possible population, but this is part and parcel of the equation around ranked.
In ranked the game is about military micro management, while your base macros from the foundation you’ve set up throughout. Increasing the popualtion limit would put off the game’s balance.
This is not true. 1v1’s I agree 200 makes sense. But what about 2v2 or 3v3. There is a much more likely chance your going to face more than 1 player at a time. The standards that were made by numerous matches made on the old lobby system showed that the majority preferred 250 or 300. This makes it possible to keep ecoing up off 3 TC’s into the late game, without limiting your unit count. Also it makes it possible for 1 player to eco up and defeat 2 gimped harasser players and save a teammate who has virtually no army, just castles and hustle.
I think if you ask around on the lobby system of 2v2/3v3/4v4 you’ll find that 200 limits the standard of game play everyone is used to with massive armies, large trade cart count, and constantly expanding villagers. Please don’t assume that just because 1v1 try-hards like 200 that the silent majority of the game playing team-games are in agreement with this.
I think even in teamgames 200 population is more than reasonable. I recently tried 8 player FFA game with 300 population limit and even DE starts breaking apart even if the players have pretty high end computers, the game just won’t function at some point anymore properly.
Also 200 pop in teamgames is more than fine to boom up and go 1v2 or even 1v3 for a while (as long as you have tech advantage). It’s all about timing windows and that won’t change even if you have more pop.
It’s basically the same concept as it is with noobs claiming “I’d beat you if you didnt rush me” - no you’re not. If you are too slow at the beginning of the game you will also be too slow in later stages. The same here: 100 pop more won’t change how games play out. If you couldn’t carry with 200 pop, you also won’t be able to do so with 300 pop.
So more pop giving players more opportunities just doesn’t work as an argument. You prefering more pop, because it’s more fun for you works as an argument. But then we could say (and that’s what we do^^): Just go and enjoy that in custom games, as the games is balanced around 200 pop and therefore it’s best to use those settings for ranked games.
It has more to do with having a large army forward deployed and needing to rebuild one at home to counter a smaller push vs your base. If you have to kill your own villagers to do this that is lame. I think army size should be 250 in 2v2’s and 300 in 3v3/4v4 just to keep room for carry players to be flexible when faced with rough situations regarding their teamates input.