I am new to the ranked “scene”, and AOE tournaments ecosystem (as a viewer) though long time fan of the game itself. After playing 3 days on ranked, I wonder if it will include some “civ banning” feature in future seasons, as many tournaments do.
For one, it is a little bit one dimensional to meet only French (I don’t know, seems to be picked very frequently). On the other hand, such a system would incentivize / reward people getting to know multiple civs. At the moment, it feels like players mastering a single civ / build order have advantage on certain levels.
1 Like
What would be the point of doing this if it didn’t give you an advantage?
Why not learn a civ/build order yourself instead of posting about removing that advantage from other players?
2 Likes
Actually my initial motivation to write this was, that I feel that would be the more “rewarding” way to get a higher rank, but somehow it also feels boring and not the right way. I don’t know why I feel this way, but somehow in a strategy game, I would expect players with flexibility and bigger variations would have advantage over players who execute one thing well.
At the end, one has to accept it as is (or stop playing). At the moment though, I feel the game might benefit from some of the mechanisms used in tournaments, since those were introduced to add layers of strategy.
Right now, you have absolutely no idea which civ someone will pick until the loading screen, so you have no way to react. Except that experience from ca. 10 games shows that French has 80% to be picked. It’s ok at the end, and one can use as an advantage…
Having a ban system would require from players to learn at least two civs. I don’t know why, but I think overall that would be a better game.
Well, I do not advocate that players have to play 6 civilizations or more, I am more of the school of 3 civs at most and that there are specialist players who get the best out of each civilization.
In AoE2 you can understand it why there is more symmetry, but the civs here are more asymmetric and your idea would make a person who enjoys a civ unable to play it ranked vs another player, a bad game experience. For the pre-game strategy there are already tournaments.
1 Like
Ay, por favor no, es difícil, pero tu idea no es una buena solución. Necesitas más experiencia con los retos de la escena competitiva. Al principio, jugaba sólo con Delhi, pero ahora sólo con los mongoles. No quiero jugar otra civ. No tengo tiempo para aprender civs rápidamente.
I think queue dodging is better than civ ban. In civ ban people will try to ban civs that are good at maps forcing other players to play civs that they don’t want to play ruining fun for others.
Punishing for queue dodging will encourage players to play their civ all maps. Forcing them to play where they don’t have advantage.
Your opponent has no way to react to your civ pick either, this goes both ways, so I don’t think there’s a problem.
When you choose a civ for a map, you have to consider your openings against every matchup, and your opponent has to do the same, banning a civ which, in a lot of cases, may be a direct counter to your pre-chosen opening/strategy for the given map will end up having a negative impact in two ways:
- Your opponent may have a bad experience because the only civ they know (or know well) is no longer an option.
- You become blind to whatever matchup you decide to ban, giving yourself blind spots in your skill level.
This works in tournaments and pro games because players are usually playing matches in sets, not single maps, if we were playing Bo3 and Bo5 maps in ranked, this would make sense.
1 Like
I see, good points.
All together, I probably just have to accept somehow that learning one civ quite good is ok. I don’t know why I am hesitating to go for that.
Somehow through the asymmetry, most of us have civs the suit the play style better. For me, it was the Abbasid from the beginning (before it was cool 
). Somehow with those civs everything fells natural, like with other civs (for me Chinese, Delhi), it’s a struggle everytime. Somehow I have the feeling, I need to master those and play with random civ… But it is not the efficient way to earn some ranks