Let’s keep them that way then.
Usable only on a map which has less than 7% of play rate.
Perfect balance.
It’s not the only map they are usable on, stop lieing. They are solid on closed maps as well. In order to make them better on open maps though, they have to lose some of that closed map potential.
Some can obviously just ne straight buffed. Like Spanish.
I’m surprised at the lack of teutons use honestly.
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The sum of the closed map play rate doesn’t even amount to 15%.
You can question win rate, but not play rate.
However all ok, don’t buff, keep things like that, Mayans Aztecs and Chinese reign must not end.
Did I say that?
Guess I didn’t.
As a matter of a fact I’ve long advocated for nerfs to top civs so maybe stop spreading false news.
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Seriously stop that.
I’m not spreading anything at all. I’m merely complaining that some civs are really, really bad in the most played (by a HUGE margin) map ever. Where are the lies and the false news?
Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but come on, lying now? I don’t know you, I don’t know what you wrote in the past. I’m just saying this tournament that features the most played map clearly show something about the current state of balance of the civs. Maybe you disagree, maybe not, but stop with this attitude.
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Right here you claim I want these civs left as is.
Right here you use the example I gave to assume they only matter in 7% of maps, and that I’m fine with that
Right here you’re acting like I want top civs left alone to reign Supreme
So yeah. Sure seems like you’re lieing and spreading false information to me.
Right now you’re rhe one who comes across with the attitude as you exaggerate other peoples claims (at best exaggerate that is) to change what was said (buffing most these civs is problematic because of their strengths on other maps) and changing it into (let’s leave these civs alone and keep top civs top.
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No.
I said, ok then let’s keep the current state.
Where did I say “clearly YOU think that…”.
I don’t know what to say, you said Arena, according to the stats Arena has 6,7% play rate. Other closed maps are so low they barely reach 1% play rate in 1v1.
Again with the “I”. If buffing them on Arabia would break them on Arena and other closed maps, the logical consequence is mantain the actual state. Which means the three top civs will remain top civs. What’s wrong with that assumption?
You made something personal out of something that was a mere rant of mine, not directed at you but at the current state of game balance. Honestly I don’t know what to say. Okay then, let’s pretend this didn’t happen and have a good day.
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Some of the civs you mentioned are great on water and hibrid maps.
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My question is: since the most played map is Arabia, and the other maps are barely played in comparison, expecially water maps, it’s something good for the game balance to have those civs that excel in only limited maps and are really bad in the most played one?
Judging from the current state of the game after more than 20 years, yes, but I find it sad honestly, I wish they could at least receive a defensive buff, something to help them to get to the late game.
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It’s actually more about the newest versions of arabia.
I don’t know why this changed, but formerly devs said they wanted do design civs in a way all of them have reasonable winrates in Arabia. That implies that Arabia must be the most “balanced” and “versatile” map of all, as there are several “one trick” civs.
Now they changed Arabia and made it a strategically restrictive map. The consequence is naturally that a lot of civ that already had quite a hard time before as the map was slightly agressive and correctly classified as an quite “open map” (though it never was the most open map, especially with the high amount of woodlines that could be use tactically everywhere).
I just don’t understand that why devs made this decision, it won’t go in my head. We had such a great map basically every civ and strat was viable to some extend. And we just destroyed it. We made the best, most versatile and gameplay diverse map a restrictive one. For absolutely no reason.
The civ balance was fine. Now we have like 5-10 civs that are basically unplayable competitively at this map anymore cause they are too “slow”. And on the map we formerly said we want to fix balance on.
That makes absolutely no sense at all.
BTW we don’t have any “versatile” map in the current mappool. Sadge.
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Did you check it correctly? Viper used Teutons and won successfully.
Water map play rate is so low. But it played fairly frequently in competitive tournament. I watch northern isle played in RBW. Many hybrid maps are on the pool in hidden cup.
Arena is also part of Aoe2 and play rate is lower than Arabia but still significant amount of people play it.
It’s sad that some people said balance should be exclusively based on Arabia. AND arguing that some maps (water map, closed map) shouldn’t be in the map pool because they are unbalanced.
Arabia is mostly played map and balance should be focused more on that. Don’t arguing with that. But other maps are also part of Aoe2. All civs should be equally good on Arabia and completely unbalanced in other map is true mean of diversity/ balance?
Also pro’s pick rate shouldn’t be only criteria for civ strength. Their pick rate is not just determined by true strength of civs. Why Indians suddenly pick so often in this tournament? Only buff they got from last year was light cav PA in castle age. But I don’t see train many light cav in castle age. It means pro’s pick rate is determined by also trend and some civs can have lot of potential and “undiscovered”
Also some civs cannot be picked frequently without making overpowered. Teutons lacking mobility with lacking husbandry and don’t preferred over other knight civ. You can’t make them pick often without make them overpower or just destroy their identity (giving husbandry).
You’re right I rechecked the site and now I see Teutons picked once.
The data was updated after I wrote because even Poles had 0 games and now they have 3.
To me pro pick rate is just indicative that in a competitive environment some civs are much more stronger than others on Arabia, now one can argue that average player can win with Burmese or lose with Aztecs regardless of the civ’s power. It would be fair but imho also a way to dodge the issue.
On the other hand we have something similar (reversed civs) with water maps, where 3-4 civs totally dominate the others, so where are actually the balanced maps?
Now if the map play rate was even this wouldn’t be a problem, albeit still a limiting choice, but as the play rate is heavily skewed towards some specific maps this is in my opinion not healty for the game.
Then again if the game is alive after 20+ years maybe my opinion is just trash and we can just keep things this way.
¯\(ツ)/¯
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Not exclusively ofc. But it’s important to have one map every civ is a viable choice. Just for random pick. If Arabia now is so restrictive that we need to pick civs so we don’'t get a civ loss, we lost that important factor of the game.
I basically only play random civ on arabia cause i know in all other maps there are just some civs that are unplayable. And currently Arabia is very close to that state. I just pray I don’t get civs like burmese, spanish, turks, goths or malay.
It’s was always important for the game that all civs were viable at this map.
I think this is a valid opinion. If you want to play random civ most maps just can give you really unfavourable matchups. It’s most likely one of the main reasons we had like 80% playrate of arabia at higher elos. Cause at this stage you most of the time play random civ. And you don’t want to have a civ disadvantage only because you want some different gameplay and not the same civ matchups all the time.
As I said Arabia was always the map most players could agree on playing on. It just offered everything for everybody. So I don’t understand why some players decided they must classify that map and drag it into a direction, to reduce the great diversity we had there. It’s not understandable to me, why there arlways are these splitting forces that destroy the great diversity we achieved. And why these splitting forces have that great success with their narrative of division.
I don’t want to pick a side. Yes I am more the “defensive” type of player. But I want to battle with everybody, I want a map where I can fight with an offensively minded player and noone has a clear advantage. I also sometimes want to play agressive myself without bein in a disadvantage then. That’s the diversity I enjoy. And I want a map where I can play random civ without having a huge disadvantage just because I got a bad civ for that map.
And this Map always was Arabia to me. I don’t understand why anybody decided that it’s no time to destroy that great map. It was so enjoyable that map didn’t favored anything too much so every playstyle, every civ, every stratgy was viable. It was the incarnation of plurality in aoe2.
play rate is just show popularity of each map. But all maps can be played and part of aoe2.
Keep in mind that Arabia is not “criteria” of classic Aoe2 from the original design. It is just user’s choice and preference. Treating plenty of other map trash is even more unhealthy for the game. Players also enjoyed Arena, Nomad, Black Forest from pre-DE. Diverse map setting is one of the Aoe2’s strength.
Players can enjoy other map and those maps are less balanced than Arabia but should not be completely unbalanced.
I think civ balance in Arabia is quite good these days, just need nerf for Top3 water civs to more civ viable in water map, and Down of the Duke civs are too strong on closed map and they can get nerf on those map s and get compensate buffs for open map.
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Guys, there are 75 THOUSANDS bucks on the line, ofc they are going to tryhard right from the civ draft. It doesn’t mean the underplayed civs are not viable, it’s just that they don’t fit the expectations of the players well enough for such high stakes. I think we critically don’t know a bunch of said expectations, because let’s be honest if someone predicted one month before the start that people would pick and play say, Vietnamese over Ethiopians consistently they would have been laughed at.
May I add there is definitely a fashion effect / old habits sticking around? Aztecs have got two big nerfs to their two main bonuses, and Chinese are weak to the laming meta going on right now, not to mention that more openness and not being too good with m@a.
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I just updated my stats. They didn’t changed substantially.
Still 68 % of who reaches castle age first wins.
Interestingly the duration of the game has actually further decreased in the finals. And also the time spent in castle age and imp. Normally with higher class density you would expect games to last longer.
But this can have multiple reasons. First ofc statsitical things. But I also seen players resigning earlier than previously. We have seen less “snowball” games than in the group phase. Maybe the players have learnt to read the situation of the game better, so they know when there is no comeback potential if the opponent has both military and eco advantage.
At least this is my observation, the finals games were just better to watch cause there was less of this dull slow controlled snowball of a lead as players resigned earlier.
Still I miss comebacks. I miss greed vs agression games that go back and forth. Its all full meta play, as most strategies are just not viable and some are just predominant. You need to play in a specific way to have a chance… I just miss variety.
This reddit thread supports your claim while providing arguments about different types of feudal aggression
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Great to see everyone agrees to not differentiate between correlation and causation nor look at other factors
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This is actually my main takeaway. I like the work that umdeuter put in this. I also thought about making this kind of stuff myself, but I then figured out that you can’t translate the concept of “situational best strategic decisions” in a statistical pattern. In the reddit post we see a lot of “winning strats” adding TCs shortly after reaching castle age.
The thing I observed was that this wasn’t anything that lead to the win but rather to secure a win. And on the opposite side if a player was already behind and tried to be greedy with eco this often was just the nail in the coffin. I literally also saw couples of games that actually were even and one of the players decided to add TCs right away, the other one actually made military first and then transitioned into TCs just 1-2 minutes later (which is most likely in the table shown as castle age strat adding tcs, but it actually isn’t). Usually this lead to the player delaying the TCs a bit later winning.
But then there is indeed Viper who plays very differently than all the other pros. I think this only showcases what a genius he is. He just understands the game on a completely different level than anybody else imo. But let’s don’t forget, he was almost out cause in the qualification match he tried to play his old, greedy approach. He omitted that and then dominated in very unique fashion. And one of the main reasons of this is that he actually is the one single player that isn’t relying on walls. He just gets an early advantage because he doesn’t walls up. But the other players just can’t play without walls like him, that opens him ressources the others just don’t have to their disposal - naturally he can play strats the others just can’t go for.
But overall that guy “Umdeuter” made a good job with his Interpretation even though the stats he posted can easily be misinterpreted, as they don’t show the situational circumstances of the strategic decisions the players made.
But some of his conclusions seem a bit off to me. Like reducing the xbow powerspike. Imo the knight powerspike is still much bigger and the main reason we see more xbow play currently is because of more feudal play and therefore more leftover archers.
As you can see, late feudal is dominated by range plays, so no wonder we also see a lot of xbows in castle. That has nothing to do with the xbow powerspike but just that ranges dominate feudal warfare. At least that’s my interpretation.
But I am very glad he came to the same conclusion as me regarding the Castle Age Powerspike. And I also think this was the main reason all the time why there were these complains about “turtling” or “walls op” or whatever. Not because the defences were too strong, but because the castle age powerspike came to hard and too fast so the feudal agression didn’t had enough time to pay off.
And imo the devs should have tried to adjust this instead changing walls and arabia to make it more “agressive”.
(And btw, in some thread ago I prognosed that we would see even more druhs/maa plays with these changes. Maybe not all of my assesments leading to this conclusion were correct, but imo this was predictable as much as we see the same amount of walls (except for viper).
Imo it’s just the wrong lever to adjust the game to be higher paced. These things are just to relevant for the strategic balance of the game. If we want more feudal play without destroying the strategic diversity we just need to reduce the castle age powerspike a bit. Then feudal agression has more time to pay off.
If devs would have done this instead of the last patch we would enjoy highly paced games from feudal but with the strategic diversity we enjoyed in the tournaments before.)
The author still hasn’t addressed that “Reaching Castle Age first” is correlated with “harming your opponent more”. They seem to be assuming that doing damage = going up later (because you buy army), but actually in KotD it seems doing damage = going up earlier (because you damage eco or force a costly response like Spears).
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