Remove Boar Laming with a patch?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hello everyone,
First off, a quick definition of what boar laming is. Feel free to correct or improve my definition if you think it needs to be.

Boar Laming = to take aggro of one of the opponent’s starting boars with your initial scout/eagle, and bring it back to your base. This is also known as stealing the opponent’s boar.

As many of you may be aware of, laming the opponent’s boar is something that is practically possible in Age Of Empires II, and it completely destroys the early game balance in terms of Food ressource. Instead of both players starting the game with 2 boars each, one starts with 3 boars and the other, 1 boar.

It’s not that complicated to do once you’ve practiced it a bit, and there is not much counterplay.
In other words, it further increases the imbalance that could already be there due to bad random map generation for example, and is not something that we want in general. As an example, boar laming is known for having had great impact on many of the recent big tournament’s games, and often gave the lamer such a huge advantage in the games where it was used that we can confidently say : laming actually won the games. Is that really something we want to see?

Most people consider boar laming a bad feature, and something that we would be much better off without in this game. Most top players agree that boar laming should be forbidden in tournaments. Some tournaments have already put the rule of no laming and were much better thanks to it. Most ranked game players would also prefer to see boar laming taken off the game.

So, what about just patching it off the game ? So that tournament organizers don’t have to set the rule that does not allow it and since the majority of people are not going to miss it?

Well, that was the WHY. Now, let’s think about the HOW.

How can we patch boar laming off the game?
There are several simple suggestions that have been made already here and there.

A couple of examples :

  1. Starting scouts or eagles cannot attack and take aggro of a boar in Dark Age.

  2. If they can attack the boar, it will not follow the scout for more than 5 tiles before it decides to go back to its original spot.

So, let’s see some opinions !

Would you rather see laming removed from the game or not?

If yes, do you have any suggestions how it could be removed by developpers in a new patch ?

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I legit don’t know what to say. Years ago, didn’t people wanted to ban tower rushes completely? Some pro player idk his name said something on the lines of “people don’t play the game with units anymore” - which led to some changes on how it worked (like hp and cost).

IMO, laming is an exploit so old that it became part of the game, just like house scamming, deleting enemy straggles, sniping 1hp farms, and other cheesy stuff.

Also, would you argument on removing sheep laming? It’s basically the same as stealing boars, save that you can prevent that with scouting. If the enemy catches then tho, not much you can do but kill then and lose the food.

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I know how we can solve this problem, we can add these bonuses

Aztecs: Eagle Scouts benefit from Loom
Goths: Scout Cavalry +5 attack vs wild animals
Spanish: Start with a Conquistador, not Scout Cavalry
Mongols: Rightfully start with their leader Genghis Khan, and not just some lowly Scout Cavalry

Let’s make them team bonuses too!
Let the fun begin! /s
:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Laming is part of the game and the lamer has to sacrifice half the HP of his scout (with new aggro mechanics laming needs two hits now). It’s also possible to block the boar with your own scout. So the lamer loses scout HP and all the micro was wasted. It is definitely possible to prevent laming and revenge laming is also a possibility

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nothing needs to be changed, laming is a perfectly valid strat and removing strategic gameplay is not a good thing.

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I feel like revenge laming is the more efficent. In a micro game of “catch the boar!” the dude with better micro wins, but it can simply end on a tie with people microing in the middle of the map for 3 minutes lol.

Unless you manage to snipe the enemy weak scout. Then you get a giagantic advantage on dark age scouting.

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We need this, believe me

:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
Let us not oppose change! :rofl:

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In my opinion, that is not a very strong argument. We are looking at ways to make DE better, not to stick to the old ways at all costs.

Also, we are talking about something doable every game and that actually has a huge impact on the outcome of the game. Some big tournament finals have been won through laming only.
Something like sniping 1hp farms is on a much lower level of impact.

Sheep laming has less impact and is much easier to counter. Most of the time it doesn’t take that long to find the 4 extra sheep, while you can take some time before getting to hunt your second boar : it means the opponent as a much bigger window for boar stealing than sheep stealing.
It is very rare to get the 4 extra sheep stolen. When you get some stolen it’s often just 2. So that’s less impactful than a boar.

But I do agree to some extent that sheep stealing should be prevented as well. Especially since sheep generation is so random, 1 player can have all sheep close to his TC while the other has to go look for theù 4km away. Some top level players have suggested having all 8 sheep around the TC at start instead of just 4.

Imo, this argument isn’t valid.
There are many things that were “part of the game” and that have been removed or patched already.

Yeah you lose some HP. But the reward far exceeds the risk. That is the issue.
It is possible to prevent it only if you notice it AND your own scout is around. If it was so easy to prevent it, top players would not suffer from it. Yet they still do even now, even in tournaments.

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I fail to see what is so strategic about laming a boar. At best it’s “technical”. But not much strategy is involved.

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you don’t see any strategic value in a 700 food swing minimum?

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I guess every action in a RTS game is strategic then. Cutting wood is strategic too because it gives you wood.

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Well i’ve had games where i denied 500 wood worth of straggles trees and snipped farms, and used houses scam the enemy strategy - if he is walling, building a lot of farms, if he has 10 vils on wood… All of these without any drawback on hp/micro time.
If that’s not impactful, idk what is.

Where’s the dude that can quote viper, mbl and hera from mind? Pro player opinion here could help.

Strategy gamers are kinda weird. If it benefits you, it’s strategic. If benefits your enemy, then it’s an exploit and should be fixed. Works like that in 4x, too.

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its strategic because you’re not only denying your opponent resources, you’re stealing them for yourself.

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as someone who has been on both ends, its strategic no matter what. i might not like getting lamed, but its perfectly valid.

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Eh, makes me think on how aoe3 players are overly protective of their instant training, incredibly high hp/attack and over pop limit exploits strategies.

“If was on the game for 20 years should be used” argument? Works well for laming, IMO.

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What I mean to say is, if “strategic” is such a vague word, how can the argument that laming shouldn’t be removed because it’s “strategic” have much weight?

Your argument about farms and wood is very situational, it doesn’t happen very often. Also, when it does happen, it’s already far into the game. 500 wood at 25min is nothing compared to 700 food difference at 8min.

EDIT : however, I think these much smaller exploits are un-needed exploits as well, and I have nothing against them being patched and removed.

As for the opinion of pro players, they’d have to share it themselves I guess. But I heard even MbL, the huge defender of laming, is starting to voice the opinion that it should be banned in tournaments. So it’s easy to see something is wrong with laming.

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The range where the board reset if the target is out of line or side would be slightly reduced.

I don’t know, just something that makes blocking a boar and resetting it easier, as it was on user patch. On de it is impossible to stop a boar lame by just blocking with your own scout

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And they’ve addressed laming twice in DE to my memory. Clearly if they thought its not intended, they’d have done something to prevent it.

Is this about HC3 finals? Hera kept on pushing deer for 3 games in a row even though Viper had lamed him twice already. Just get the boars after the 4th vill goes to wood.
It’s skill and micro based enough and only applies to open maps so I’d say laming is FINE.

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no one on Aftermath is allowed to complain about laming.

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No need to remove it. It is one of the early game strategies.
If you think it’s bad then why don’t you lame a boar of enemy as well?

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