Bog islands, Baltic, Coastal Forest and now Fortress and Continental? Map pool was 100x better when map voting was on the forum. Hopefully we will revert back to that system soon. Or come up with an even better solution like infinite bans or a separate queue for each map type. Open Land Map queue, Closed Land Map queue, Hybrid / Water map queue etc. with 8x maps in each queue and no bans option to keep matchmaking reasonable.
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I guess it’s fairly subjective. I personally like fortress, baltic, and some other maps you listed.
At the end of the day, it’s just personal preference
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Indeed, it’s all subjective.
What I find interesting, however, is the fact that people complained before the ingame voting was established, with the argument that only a tiny minority votes in the forum, which is not representative at all. Well, it turned out that was kind of true, just not in the way people might have imagined.
But honestly, the upcoming pool looks pretty balanced 2x open, 2x closed, 1x semi-open, 1 water, 1 hybrid. It’s something for everyone.
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At least the 1v1 maps don’t have trash like Michi getting voted in.
One of the condition of “COMPETITIVE” games in AOE2 is to be able to play on various maps… Imagine a special queue for each maps, the ELO would mean nothing.
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No, the ELO would be more meaningful and accurate for your map type. Current system means Arabia haters get stomped on open maps and Arabia players get stomped on unusual start maps & funky water maps.
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I also like the maps Fortress and Baltic.
However, I do not like Bog Islands or Continental maps - and actually, the map I dislike the most is Socotra and any other type of map which forces the players to spawn very close one to another.
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the higher the elo, the lower the difference in opinions among players regarding map choice.
People don’t hate Baltic and love Arabia because some streamer gives them that idea, people love maps like Arabia because they allow both a multitude of civs and strats to be viable and thus maximize skill expression.
On maps like Baltic, specifically:
- uptime plays a huge role because water maps have a “who gets first galley out” aspect.
- water fights aren’t very strategic and are fairly snowball-y
- winning water turbo boosts your eco, and also helps you secure late game (Cannon Galleon controlling large parts of land)
- water helps you go to Imp first (fish boom)
all these factors together make Baltic not very interesting to play repeatedly, and also promote civ wins more than a map like Arabia (civs like Italians, Byzantines, Portuguese for example have a huge advantage in Feudal due to their bonuses which translates into an advantage in Imp due to the lack of comeback mechanics).
Analogous considerations to be made for maps like Fortress or Coastal Forest (Coastal Forest is actually a fairly good map the only problem is that a tower rush can deny most of the wood on the map).
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And that is why these maps are, unlike Arabia, not permanently in the map pool. And that’s fine.
That may pertain to some, but certainly not all Arabia lovers.
Just two examples from yesterday (1400+ ELO range):
- One tapped out of a Baltic match vs me after 1 minute with the usual complaints.
I checked the profile, and what do I find? Over 500 games with Mayans. - The other one tapped out of Nomad game vs me after 1 minute. Profile says 300 games with Mongols.
Sure, these are certainly people who love a multitude of civs and strats…
To me it seems the players who have the greatest aversion against maps other than Arabia are exactly these who play just this one strat on this one map…
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So your solution is a to have 1 different elo rating per map… As an additional statistic why not. But ELO must be global.
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Let’s look at the statistics. On AoEPulse, the highest ranking civ is Hindustanis with ~55% win rate. The lowest is bengalis with a 42%. All civs except 15 have less than 50% win rate.
LINK: AoE Pulse
Arena has Portugese at the top, with ~57%, lowest with tartars at ~36%, and All civs except 12 have less than 50% win rate.
Nomad has one civ that’s utterly broken. That’s spanish at 64% win rate (which will soon be nerfed). Other than that, Malians are at the top with 55% win rate, lowest is gurjaras at 35%, and 13 civs are above 50% win rate.
Four lakes was the most popular hybrid map I could find. It doesn’t have one outlier like the spanish in nomad. So, huns are the top at 61%. Vikings (!) at the bottom with 35% and 13 civs have above 50% win rates.
So, what’s the conclusion here? Firstly, it seems like arabia has the highest of the lowest win rates. That is to say, choosing random civ is the most viable in arabia. However, arabia doesn’t have substantially more above average civs than any other map. If you exclude the bottom tier unbalance, it seems like most other maps are equally viable for play with a large number of civs.
Now that being said, I do agree that water play is garbage in this otherwise great game. It has fewer options, and it snowballs way harder than it should. I hope they fix it in the future, but I don’t hold a lot of hope at the moment.
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There seems to be this myth always mentioned on this forum that Arabia is somehow this one-dimensional predictable map dominated by civ pickers, and that it’s the unusual maps, especially hybrid water maps, which are the ones where all the creative innovation and variety is coming from. I would say the opposite is true. Arabia has the highest number of strategic options available. You can start attacking in any of the four ages, you can play defensive or aggressive. You can go heavy Feudal or wall up and FC. The only thing predictable about Arabia is the start with 3 vills + town centre + the amount of resources, but the meta is evolving and with every update there are new build orders.
Meanwhile all the supposedly creative unusual maps always play out the same. Wall up + Boom (fish boom on water maps) + big imperial push with trebs at the end. Whoever walls up and booms fastest wins the game. Forget micro, just boom into bigger army + better upgrades with faster up times. But can you just appreciate that Arabia players don’t enjoy playing these slow Sim City building games? Please stop pretending non-Arabia maps are more creative or innovative. Nothing wrong with liking what you like and I get that you can’t handle being open and attacked in dark age or feudal age, but the sheer arrogance of Arabia haters is really nauseating at times.
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Arabia has the highest number of strategic options available. You can start attacking in any of the four ages, you can play defensive or aggressive. You can go heavy Feudal or wall up and FC.
This is not true at all, in the sense that this true for almost every open map. Arabia isn’t special for any of this any more than any other open map is. Also, let’s not pretend like arabia games also doesn’t go the same way in most of the games. It’s scout rush like 60%, drush, m@a rush, or archer rush, then knight spam, crossbow spam with a forward siege workshop. It has been that way for a long time now. If you have a special UU, that might the one you choose to spam.
And, the supposedly creative maps aren’t even close to playing out the same. Four lakes is an example where you contest for the 4 lakes while doing what you usually do in a map like arabia. You might also dock your opponent’s pond and try to destroy their fish eco. Or, add archers to destroy the boats. All of this could happen in feudal age.
If you want to count the total number of strategies which could happen in a map, nomad is at the top, and it isn’t even close. That’s because you don’t need fish in nomad past castle age, and depending on how close your TCs are, the meta is completely different. You can see vil fights, tower drops and tower fights, scout rush, m@a/milita/archer openings, fast castle, castle drops, transport ship drops and everything else. Now, most people just pick spanish and that’s annoying, but the fact still stands, most number of strategies over a large number of games is the highest for nomad by a country mile.
Don’t get me wrong, arabia is a great map. It is pretty versetile, and allows for some good feudal play. But arabia lovers like to pretend that it is the greatest, bestest map ever. That isn’t true. It isn’t also as terrible as some arabia haters like to pretend.
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I never made such a claim. I just pointed out my experience that players who apparently have an aversion against other maps than Arabia to such a degree that they immediately tap out of a game when another map is chosen, that these players may play Arabia not necessarily because of the strategic variety, but rather for the opposite reason. Just to be clear, I am not talking about people who simply prefer Arabia over other maps, but rather these that categorically reject virtually everything else.
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Well maybe it’s not interesting for you, but for me it is, and i find playing 3 out of 4 games on Arabia to be equally repetitive and bad, as also on Arabia there are some civs and tactics that are not viable
So yeah, Arabia will remain the Queen of Maps, but that does not prevent other maps to be enjoiable. It’s subjective
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never say i don’t like it. i sayd that if playing a match every so-often on an less known map is bad for someone, then playing thousands of game on the same map is equally bad for someone else.
like i sayd many time here, is subjective
also, if the non-arabia-map haters don’t want to play sayd map, they could simply ban it like you sayd, so no problem really
If only it was that simple. Too many long-winded maps I don’t want to play and not enough bans.
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It’s as if the FIFA ELO ranking was calculated only on home games. Because players don’t like to play away…
Or maybe sportsmen should ask not to play when it rains?
Of course not! We are talking about a COMPETITIVE mode)
I think even water maps players know deep down that water battles suck and need an urgent update and overhaul. The early developer of the game Sandy even admitted that originally Aoe2 was going to be a land only game and they only added water as an afterthought very late in its development, and it shows. Open map players would be happy to play water maps if the water mechanics were not so clunky. Seems like everything about DE has been updated; civ balances, new civs, new graphics, new campaigns,… almost everything except water, which is stuck in the 1990s. Deathly slow, historically irrelevant and stupidly unrealistic, ships bumping into each other, micro skill not really as much of a fight winner etc. Dominate water, fish boom into imperial push with trebs + cannon galleons and it’s pretty much an auto win.