[Ranked] Random Civ Checkbox Should be 50% chance when votes are equal

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Civ Pick, Random Disabled Wins when votes are 50/50

Currently, when playing ranked, when 50% or more of the players disable the random civilization checkbox, random civilizations is disabled. Always.

I’d like to suggest to change this to simply being 50% of the time too…
Why should no-random-civs always, 100% of the time, ‘win’ when the two parties are equally divided.

Even ‘worse’ in 1v1

This is especially noticable in 1v1.
If a specific person doesn’t want to play random civ but the other doesn’t want to play against someone who always plays the same single civ, shouldn’t it be fair if random civs was… also random?

I think it should just be 50/50 who gets what they want, seems a lot more fair to me.

I’d love to know what others think! :slight_smile:

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I think it’s good they way it is. I usually play random civ, but sometime I want to train a certain opening or strat. Especially among newer players it’s quite common to get comfortable with one civ at first

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I agree that that makes sense, but does that have to mean that you’re taking away the choice of the other person? To me it sounds like if you want to play a certain strat you can select that civ and do that 50% of the time.

I don’t have stats to back this up, but most lower level players disable the checkbox anyway, so I don’t think they’ll actually experience 50/50 either. (Not that that is a ‘real’ fix for the issue you’re addressing ofc).

But I think it’d only be fair, like with map favoriting, that it’s 50/50 if you both have different opinions

Edit: Tried to delete and repost as “reply” but I’m not allowed to post the same post ‘again’.

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I dont think the comparison with the map choice fits perfectly. You only play on one map, but it’s totally possible for one player to pick a civ and the other to play random

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Now think of this in reverse. If a specific person wants to play a specific civ and doesn’t choose random civ, will it be fair to him to give him random civs? Imagine being in the lower leagues and randomly getting Chinese/Gurjaras.

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Whilst you’re right, it’s not forced like the other way around, it’s 50/50 and on top of that the non conventional civs are ‘only’ 20% (if we’re broad) of the total civs. So it’s 50% + 20% (So 10% total of getting randomed into those civs)

I can also reverse that argument. What if someone plays one single civ all the time, (i.e. Hoang, pro player that just plays (played) Celts) and that person’s ELO is completely inflated by the civ choice, isn’t it unfair he can force his ‘OP’ strat & civ on the opponent without the opponent being able to do anything about it at all…

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Fair enough, but even if the comparison isn’t 1=1. Don’t you agree that someone being able to force his choice on somebody else isn’t fair either?

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Think about it this way. Currently, You can select random civ if you want to, so he’s not forcing specific civ on you. But with your suggestion, he can’t select specific civ even if he wants to so your system is forcing random civ on him.

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You’re correct. But it’s not the point I’m trying to make.
It’s not about if I get random civ or not, it’s about the opponent being able to always pick civ.
This results in the opponent (potentially) having a strategy ready (and even be VERY VERY good with that one strategy to a point where it is simply unfair).

The problem simply is that there is nothing the other player can do if I disable it, and as soon as one of the two players (or more for team games) are unable to do anything about something, that seems unfair to me.

There’s probably other solutions to this ‘problem’, but this is the one that makes most sense to me.

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when player A picks civ he isn’t forcing his choice on the opponent. picking a civ is his choice. the opponent can still go random.

one could argue that picking a civ is part of the strategy, just as picking a build order is

i think the line is a bit blurry here, since this is a pre-game choice, but i dont think this change would be popular

the elo isn’t inflated. it’s just his elo for this strategy. it means he gets even matchups

he is still at the same elo as you (usually), so it means that he needs this strategy to be as good as you

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I don’t like the idea. Let people play the civs they want.
What I had suggested is that civ pickers lost more points when lose and earn less points when win againgst a random civ player.
This way you reward random civ players… and it is balanced because by logic, a player who use always withthe same civ have more chance to win vs a play that go random

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That makes more sense to me as it encourages and rewards random civ players.

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that just means that they will go to a lower elo, so they will win more games and lose fewer. I don’t see how this helps

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So I guess you like the idea of more people resigning after 5min. Great idea. /s

Why are so many oblivious to the fact that you can’t force people to play something they don’t want to?

You need to incentivize the alternative. Not punish the thing you don’t like.

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Yeah, this was my immediate thought. Interesting idea though.

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^^

It reminds me of Magic The Gathering where everyone tries to force people not to play control even though control is crucial to the game’s makeup.

I don’t find it very fun to force people into playing something they don’t want to play or aren’t very good at so their confidence is lowered and they just leave.

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Why? Low Elo pickers will play mostly with others low elo pickers… It means randoms will play mostly with other randoms… That’s exactly what is discussing here

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I mean, of course not. I don’t like it at all. But there’s also a lot of people who like to not play against pre-mades (or solo players on 1v1) that one-trick strats but there’s nothing to be done about it currently.
You have to play them or just resign after 5 mins yourself I guess…

I just wanted to open a discussion and see what people think, it’s not like I’m oblivious to it.

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The big issue that has not been stressed enough is that some people (like me sometimes) want to play against a random civ.
Seeing the same civs again and again can get a little boring.

But I don’t think shoving it into the ranked ladder as the OP suggests is a good idea. (Perhaps in team games it is.)

To me the best solution would be to cannibalise the ‘quick play’ ladder and replace it with random civ Arabia. (Ranked. With the ELO & ELO changes hidden by default.)
That should -hopefully- be different enough from the 1v1 ladder that it doesn’t undermine it too badly.
Later the devs could build on this. Perhaps let us play with experimental balance patches, or set up meme matches like 1v1 vikings black forest, or include actual hyperrandom.

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Yes! This indeed is another big issue I forgot to add…
It’s the constant meta civs on maps that just make it a lot less fun to play.

I’m not sure if it should be in a different queue and take elo in to account if it is not gained or lost.
Or, if you mean it is gained or lost, it should probably not be hidden.