As many people have noted arabia is pretty imba sometimes with one player having a much harder time to wall, potentially coupled with badly placed boar (opposite side of forest), pure forward res etc, compared to the other player having ez walling, back res, and close deer.
Something else to add to the pile is the lakes on 4 lakes. I won this game (so not a “i lost so fix this complaint”) , and conveniently the italian player (much respect for playing italy!!) had a close, easy to defend pond, while i had much more distant pond, with forests inbetween (screenshot of closest ponds)
You map also decides your strategy. So play according your map. If your map is bad, go full aggressive. If you have a good map, just fall back and boom a bit more. Good players can read the map much better and pick the right strategies more often. Scouting is an important part of the game. You need to know your own strengths and weaknesses and those of your enemy. Based on that info and thinks like civ match up you decised what strategy you want to pick.
If the opponent has an easily defensible map that’s hard to do. Of course we will never have perfect map balance unless we play on mirrored maps someday but I too feel that a lot of the standard DE maps feel like there wasn’t put enough effort in making them balanced.
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