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

I have the Feeling that it is quite depending what level you are on in how often people Play random civ. Im currently between 1400-1500 in 1v1 and Out of my Last 12 matches there was only one where the opponent disabled random civ.
I have to admit though that before the Last balance patch the amount of gujara and hindustani pickers were extreme high.
But what i want to say is, that at least I get alot of civ variety lately.
I also dont Like the idea of forcing people to Play Something they dont Like.
Think of it that way: a one-trick-pony-civ-picker now gets forced to Play random lets say half the time. He now will propably loose more of the random civ Games so when He gets to play His prrefered strategy again he will propably win. This leeds to a frustrating expierence for him when He plays random and for His opponent when He plays His civ since He is not playing on His actual level with His civ.
This game can sometimes be frustrating enough because of some gameplay parts Like pathing and such. Lets Not make it worse with Not being able to play what you Like.

5 Likes

I agree that random player should have an advantage in the queue, and seeing the same civs over and over again is just somehow boring. But I want to say something.

The most important question here, is why people do the civ pick? The answer is so clear, because some civs have a great advantages over others thus make your chance higher to win. The other question what does this mean? This mean there are some civs are clearly broken and unfair and have great advantages over others. What does all this mean? This mean the game’s balance is not good at all, and there are many civs need huge nerfs, especially most of DE civs and old civs like mesos, Huns, Berbers, Franks, China, etc.

As long as the balance is bad, there will not be a fair play at all, and the civ picking will remain a thing. At least if we have a good and better balance then we may have equal chance to win against each others even if people pick.

There’s more to civ picking then tryharding. A lot of people (myself included) like specific civs for their unit comp, or their strat, or their builds.
For example, I like Persian on black forest for a fish boom into war eles (where possible). Or Ethiopians on arena for 22+2 fc boom, or Malay on hideout for 19+12 fc (early feudal for upgrades and to protect from flushes).

2 Likes

I think it depends. I am more of a beginner (I played around 100 1v1 games, currently around 1100 Elo).
I almost always pick a civ and disable random, because I am trying to learn new civs as I continue playing. For a couple of games (~10) I always pick the same civ for not being thrown off by weird starts (Chinese, Mayans, …) or civs that play very differently (Cumans, Meso, Huns …).
Even though that probably slightly increases my chances of winning because I am not thrown off at the beginning of the game, I don’t do it to gain Elo, but to learn not civs. I don’t pick civs that are picked a lot around my Elo (Gujaras, Hindustanis, Britons, Franks, Lithuanians), but rather go through the list of all civs in a random manner, depending on what I want to learn next.

I think especially for beginners like myself, forcing random wouldn’t be great, because it makes learning new civs harder. Also whenever a new DLC is released, everybody wants to try figure out the new civs, and around that period of time I think players of every Elo like to pick the new civs, and probably don’t want to be hindered from trying out the new civs by players that did not buy the new DLC yet.

It would be interesting though to see how many people civ pick at which Elo, and which civs they tend to pick. I think that would also be interesting profile statistics in aoe insights etc.

4 Likes

Maybe if the civs would be balanced enough there won’t be such discussions, but as it is now if you are not picking the stronger civs on certain maps then you are basically gg.

For team games the franks, briton usage is on mars already and the balance team has done nothing to fix it properly but instead release hindustanis and gurjaras to break it more, lots of civilizations can’t be played competitively on several maps and positions which forces civ picking just to not get bengalis or incas as pkt in a map like arabia.

We wouldn’t see britons so often just by removing their team bonus or by decreasing franks economy and obviously remove hindustanis faster camel attack, small changes can fix the unfairness of going random civ, but according to many users around the game has the best balance ever…

This is not necessarily true. I like to pick civ since it ensures that I’ll get a civ that I know reasonably well. I’m far from a one-trick pony, more like a classic-civ player. I like just prefer civs from AoK (+Conquerors to a lesser degree). Mostly because they’re simply well-designed and can be played with relative ease.
From all civs that have been introduced afterwards, I actually only enjoy Magyars, Tatars (both because I like Cav-archers) and Italians (for water maps).

From my perspective, it is just frustrating to play random civ and then get… let’s say Khmer. Or Cumans. Sure, the civs can be very strong, but their boni are difficult to utilize when you’re not very familiar with them. Sure, you could play them somewhat generic, but when you don’t utilize the civ-boni properly, what’s the point of playing the civ?
One might reply: “Then just learn the civs, get better!”
Well, this game is a hobby for me. It is supposed to be fun. Not hard work. I have plenty diversity iterating through 20 civs, I just don’t wish to invest time and energy to learn another 20.

4 Likes