Standardize games to 30 minutes

[HasanIchess]

In the Wololo tournament there were four games that exceeded 40 minutes and one game that exceeded 34 minutes, in general the game time is fine, but some small changes can improve the game time around 30 minutes

Distinctive Buildings

In late game it feels unfeasible to go to win for distinctive buildings, that is why the games are finished by whoever loses more villagers
Proposal: Modifies that distinctive buildings, to be repaired with stone (except Mongols) in late game, must trade the stone if it is not available

Sacred places
I only saw Delih win by Sacred places, in the tournament, Capoch did not manage to win, by Sacred places, by five seconds
Proposal: Make the loss of Sacred places pause the ten minute counter but don’t reset it, the first to run out of time wins (if you consider 10 minutes too short set it to 13 minutes)
Note: Not similar to coh, in coh it is enough to take two out of three places

This is how it would look in the viewer tool

keep and walls
Keep has a very high DPS since its attack speed is less than a second so it doubles its damage
Proposal: Decrease its stats in Castle age and return it to Imperial age with a technology
Proposal: Consider the HP of walls and palisades and their build time (siege has been heavily nerfed)

Walls and keeps need to be nerfed HARD

We must do an analysis with data not personal bias. [imagen] [imagen] A barracks has 1500 hp and takes 30 seconds but a 15 wooden palisade takes 12 seconds and has the same amount of hp (1500) [imagen] [imagen] A keep has 5000 hp and takes 180 seconds but a 45 stone palisade takes 60 seconds and has 2x3500, totaling 7000 hp There is the problem, please developers balance both the Hp and the time to produce walls and palisades

Walls and keeps need to be nerfed HARD

more than 12 horsemen take 30 seconds to destroy a section of the palisade [imagen] The attack time (on torch) is 2 seconds, so the damage is halved from 13 to 6.5 per second which is his dps [imagen] [imagen] It is estimated that 11 horsemen take 21 seconds to destroy a section of the palisade!!

[HasanIchess]

also team games extend a lot

[HighPingLord]

Terms:
Distinctive building = Landmark
Distinctive place = Sacred site

[TsudaTumiko]

What’s the problem with the long games? This is age of empires not StarCraft.

[TheConqueror753]

@HighPingLord

Distinctive building = Landmark

Oh, is it landmark? I thought it was wonder, but I haven’t played that much AoE4. Also don’t care about watching the vid.

[HasanIchess]

50 minutes is overkill

[Raviusd]

context: RB selected seed for games to be short.
So “even” 30min games - is artificial.

@HasanIchess

50 minutes is overkill

The pace of the game is OK - IMHO.
It was fun game overall, but waiting 1-2 minutes, while units travel through the map? why?

---

my suggestion: speed up ingame timer.

[EricGonzalezM]

@TsudaTumiko

What’s the problem with the long games? This is age of empires not StarCraft.

Exactly.

All these suggestions to further move the focus towards eSports are extremely bad takes. AoE has never been a fast-paced RTS and only AoE 4 has tried to rush games.

Longer matches in AoE are normal. Changing one of the defining characteristics of a game is like telling your significant other “I’d love you more if you had green eyes”.

[Raviusd]

@EricGonzalezM

Longer matches in AoE are normal

if they interesting - yes. But if they is exhausting and a lot of match is finished cause wood is limited. It’s boring.

Example:
If you hit imperial age at 20-25min.
and you play 35-40 minutes in age4 until you run out of wood.
What’s good about it?

Or another example:
play 1vs1 on gigantic (4x4 map) - every game will be 90+ minutes. What’s good about it?

That’s what we are talking about. It’s the same question as “how large maps should be”, “How many resources on the maps”. etc.

For me it’s valid questions.

also for me pace - is Ok, but if devs speed up ingame timer +30% would be even better. All events will be e little bit faster.

[EricGonzalezM]

@Raviusd

but if devs speed up ingame timer +30% would be even better. All events will be e little bit faster.

Disagree. I have tried again and again to like StarCraft. Unit responsiveness is great and all, but it’s just too fast and chaotic for my liking. I don’t enjoy playing because I’m always so busy trying to keep up. It feels like it plays in fast forward. It’s the same difference of taking a leisurely drive on a Sunday or being late and running all red lights. The latter is not enjoyable at all for me.

That’s why I always come back to the AoE franchise, the cadence is just right. If you “speed it up 30%” you will lose a significant portion of players, especially the oldest, most loyal ones. You may get some new ones from SC and such, but if that’s your kind of game, there are better RTS out there.

[Raviusd]

@EricGonzalezM

Disagree

how you disagree? If sc2 speed is like x2 with different pace?
(sc2 did the same trick, they speedup game in 2015(?) )
aoe2 speed up twice x1.5 before DE and x1.7 on DE.

To real compare - there is setting in some mods(may be advanced or another one) which speed up ingame timer x1.5 etc.

General feeling and pace of the game will be the same.

@EricGonzalezM

If you “speed it up 30%” you will lose a significant portion of players

nobody in aoe2 noticed or comlained. x1.5 → x1.7 =+~13%
It’s the most hidden change, that people wont even notice, cause buildorders + timings will be the same.

PS As another advantage of 30% - one played 2 games in the day, but now he can play 3 games. What reflects on queues.

[Raviusd]

Actually, I have another idea:
allow rams to be build in siege workshops, for faster clearing buildings.
and you can pre-build(!) it if you at 200 pop-limit.

trebs and bombards are costly + easily sniped.

[GoldenArmorX]

Personally, I like that matches last longer (Or at least 3rd age in ranked games), as you can use “Everything” of a civ’s repertoire, including unique 4th age units or unique techs that make your army stronger. Many times I prefer play 3vs3 or 2vs2 because these games do tend to reach 4th age, and 1vs1 when I tried to improve my rush abilities.

In Age2, something that bothers me in ranked is that almost all the games end in Feudal or three and four minutes from advanced to Castle Age; and because unique units are only unlocked in Castles, the fights end up being “generic archers vs generic archers” or “generic crossbowmen + catapults” vs the same.

In Aoe4 there are civs with unique 2nd age units, and even “early units”, which gives more variety to the matter. On the other hand, I also appreciate that the knight has the utility that he supposedly had in the “Middle Ages”, now it is understood why heavy cavalry was so feared at that time.

Of course, if I agree with something, it is that the time to destroy some cities, especially to persecute villagers and prevent them from rebuilding, can be monumental. I would suggest, also to give some civs more variety in their combos, give each civ some unique shock troops or mercenaries, and that these have as a base characteristic greater damage to buildings, or bonus against villagers, or earn money when they kill villagers They would be interesting mechanics. And such troops exist (Almogavar, Free company, Routiers, Condottieri, Gentlemen reivers, Akinci, etc). Of course, this could change the entire mechanics of the game too much and many things would have to be rethought, but hey, it happened when Age3 invented its 5th age, and in age 2 the Hussar and the Halberdier appeared.

[HasanIchess]

@GoldenArmorX

Personally, I like that matches last longer (Or at least 3rd age in ranked games), as you can use “Everything” of a civ’s repertoire, including unique 4th age units or unique techs that make your army stronger. Many times I prefer play 3vs3 or 2vs2 because these games do tend to reach 4th age, and 1vs1 when I tried to improve my rush abilities.

The changes are minimal so they won’t affect the length of average Elo matches and team matches will still be long.

[HasanIchess]

Not a single map in Wololo was a closed one, because the vast majority enjoy watching and playing open maps that don’t last so long, but as I already mentioned those small changes will not affect the average Elo, they will continue to last as long as they usually last

[Wabbee]

What if we cut the resource amounts scattered near player bases and around the map by like 40%…i mean farms not costing wood to reseed is also a major game time extension. I think if theres less resources, theres less need for 130 villagers. If villager count meta was like 70-90, then armies would be larger, but reinforcements wouldnt be constantly reinforcing frontlines…

Reduce the amount of available resources, and youll reduce game time…? Perhaps? Once an army is wiped out, and theres no more resources to reinforce, surely the gg will happen?

[HasanIchess]

Thank you for contributing, I trust you will analyze our proposals and make the best decision

[BlackEagle3114]

@EricGonzalezM

All these suggestions to further move the focus towards eSports are extremely bad takes. AoE has never been a fast-paced RTS and only AoE 4 has tried to rush games.

AoE 1 is a fast pace RTS like SC

Keeping AoE 4 slow wont help Viper beat MarineLord

[Franknezu11]

aoe 2 which used ti be considerated as an slow paced one is faster than aoe 4

[Tomo3p14]

As Beasty sad - its just map pool impact. As I remember, medium time of map was around 24. On previous map pool it would be +10m easy.
Sound even faster, than I would like