Stealing boars shouldn't be banned- A response

I think that the problem with boar and sheep stealing is to low of a risk for a high reward. In order to fix this I think boars should consistently spawn in the back of the base and sheep should spawn closer to the TC. That way boar stealing could still be in the game but with a higher risk. It would also be less luck based and more skill based.

But there is much more risk to it. Also much more preventable than laming. I personally also often lame, and also often tower rush, and I’d say that a failed lame won’t set you back as much as a failed tower rush will. For a good tower rush you need much more scouting (where is the enemy woodline, where are his golds and stones, how far are the extra resources)… for a lame you just need to find one boar.

The thing is, it’s hard to estimate how much you damage your game with laming. There are several soft factors involved.
You lose scouting time, scout hp. You also need to fokus more on the lame, so it’s likely you eg get housed ;). If your opponent stops you, he’s ahead all this.

I mean we saw several lame attempts in HC4 and often the lamed player won, actually. I think we underestimate the soft factors, how important it is to have early scouting and scout hp. But still I agree that it is less investment than an all-in rush, for sure.
Maybe the problem isn’t laming itself but the value of food in the early to mid game. In the graph I used I gave food a value of about 1.9 wood. That’s extremely high, 1 food has almost the same value of 2 wood in the early to mid game. That’s why boars are so important to take. If food had the same value there was no need to take the boar. We players now how important the boars are and this importance is reflected in the consideration of them being our “property”.
But still, they are free ressources, spawned on the map and the fight over them is completely legitimated as the fight over all other ressources is legitimated, too. If boars were considered property they should spawn underneath the tc and don’t attack like the 4 first sheep.

And boars are actually spawning much closer in DE than in HD. I remember HD times where my boars spawned half-way to the opponent in an odd angle and I didn’t find them until castle age. In DE, boars are so close, I will always find all of them in the first minute of the game.

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I think the problem with Laming is that is not the way that devs wish the game should be played.
Of course, people create their owns strats, but I think is good to not estimulate strats that go against this “ideal” meta game, a conflict that goes progressing through each more advanced ages and have its climax in Imperial, or post-imperial.

if you get housed while you’re laming, you probably shouldn’t be laming, just work on getting a higher APM and then try again. Just to emphasize: I’m not speaking in favour of laming, I think it sucks, and the game is MUCH worse at lower elo, but I’ll elaborate on that a bit later. Just want to make the distinction that tower rushing takes a lot more investment than laming.

On lower elo’s (I mean really really low elos like 900-1100) 3 scouts is enough to completely destroy the game. Players don’t have the APM to quickwall, lose villagers and it’s gg right there. I’m helping a friend of mine to learn to quickwall because he otherwise finds many of the maps in game unplayable at his elo.

I liked Nili’s point/option of exploring changes to dark age a lot. Maybe option of regicide style starts (without the king) or something similar could be a nice way to make the dark age less snowbally.

That was a reference to mbl :wink:

And I don’t understand the point of your post, besides you confirmed my argument that it seems that early eco advantages seem to have a too big impact right now, also because of the walling nerfs.

And some Civs have eco advantages which are comparable to laming 2 boars. If laming isn’t “fair” and should be removed, why there are civs given double that advantage basically “for free”?

Many people here compare laming to taking advantage of good/bad maps, but there is a huge difference: One is skill based, the other is luck based (as nili explained).
The moment i decide to lame i have NO idea where the enemy boars are. I often dont even know where my sheep are. I toss a coin. If he has a untaken frontboar, i win. If he has two backboars, i lose.

When i have an amazing map and decide to naked FC, its a different situation. I take my decision because of information i was given. When my opponent has all forward gold and i go full feudal because of it, its the same.

Very, very weird example. You realize HC4 had a mapscript that basicially made laming impossible? HC4 was a tournament with what i would call a “soft ban” on laming. Using it as an example in favour of laming is…wrong?

No, instead they complain about bad map scripts, when a forward boar and forward mines are going to both be a result of an unfavorable map.

When you lame, you had information already to work off of. What/who you are up against, the civ they’re playing, the civ you’ve picked, and your map position. Even when you are attempting with a relative lack of scouting to lame, you are still making a decision based off the knowledge you have. Figuring out whether or not it’s worth it to you in that situation to attempt it, that’s skill.

That’s just wrong. On multiple occasions, forward boars were spotted and lamed without hesitation. What was extremely likely, however, is not what you’re claiming (that there wasn’t a good opportunity to steal boar) but rather that the player in the hot seat deferred from the option of taking the front boar even after finding said front boar early which is the vast number of cases in HC4 where laming was an option.

In the very limited number of cases where laming took place it had extremely shaky results, because the maps tended to be extremely open with a heavy emphasis on scouting and early aggression. In those situations, the effects of losing scout HP early is magnified. Which is why so many lame attempts were simply ignored; the players didn’t believe it was the optimal play in that situation.

I don’t think a reasonable person would ban or nerf something that’s not even considered proper play at the top level in situations when it’s feasible. The risk-reward for such a play at this stage of the game is heavily debatable, and while we assume the laming player to have an advantage, how much of an advantage comes from how well the player who has been lamed capitalizes on the scout war advantage and the map knowledge advantage. We’re not even talking about the serious possibility where the lame is headed off and the defender wins, leaving himself with a clear advantage in practically every regard due to the risk not paying off. We’re talking about when it works.

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Three points:
-1 Agreed that laming sucks regardless of level, because of super standardized and lean build orders being the norm, basically people always playing the same map means that even a slight difference from the usual throws people off

-2 Not agreeing that tower rush is the same as laming, because it’s a much riskier investment than sending forward your scout to the enemy base (which is not really an investment, unless you are greedy and push deer, you SHOULD send your scout forward anyway)

-3 At lower elos (by lower, I mean VERY LOW around 1000), the early game is even more easy to exploit, due to how standardized the meta has become from people always playing the same map

One interesting change that could be fun to experiment with: replace starting scout cavalry with horse.

100% behind getting rid of preferred map choices so that we don’t have 80% arabia queues.

If your start is standardized, you will not take advantage of the extra boar as well as if your adaptation is good. That’s why I said:

because it’s an accurate summary of how laming works at every level, that if you lose an extreme number of your games at lower level, it’s because you adapt poorly, and bad adaptation is more than a good enough reason, regardless of what you’re adapting to, because players at your level simply won’t make as much of an advantage and the win is more probable than a player who will fully utilize slightly faster timings. Those exceptions who play their advantage extremely well will climb the rankings.

That is 100% true. Question is, how many people get turned off by the game completely? Because I’ve been watching some recorded games, and umm… yeah, a lot of games barely make it past dark age at very low elos. And it would be good if we can keep the game fun for newer people to stick around.

Even I sometimes just disconnect my internet than play a map that I absolutely abhor.

First I think laming has less impact in low elos because they can’t snowball as good as pros.
Second only a few low elo players can actually lame and those who can are often just one-trick players. And these help the community actually to become better in adapting etc. So i’m fine with that.

All players need to understand how important the control of the ressources is and no ressource is your property, you have to fight for them. Including food. It makes me wonder why we consider the food spawns different than the other ressources. It isn’t different, all ressources are spawned at the same time and the same way.

As I said, at low elos laming is only part of the problem. There are a bunch of ways to exploit the game and pretty much get guaranteed wins at low elos. Of course these players will start losing every game once they leave that low elo bracket, but that doesnt solve the problem.

The game is extremely hard for newer players. It’s not like laming is the only reason why players are having a hard time. Really, players have hard times because build orders are hard to get consistent with, micro is a chore, macro is hours of routine practice, maximizing your use of keybinds for efficiency is a learning curve unto itself, and so on. The last thing that crosses my minds as things that are hurdles for new players is “but what if they get lamed.”

To solve that, better tools are the solution, not changing the game to support them. We could make the game more accessible, but accessibility is/should be done with caution. We can agree or disagree as to where that line should be drawn (auto-scouting reducing the penalty from bad micro, auto-reseeding reducing the penalty of bad macro) but changing the core functionality of the game for a select number of people tends to result in backlash (the Indians nerf for tg’s rolling into 1v1 play as one clear example and that was just a balance change) and I honestly think that laming is not the problem it’s propped up to be and changing that core functionality is a step too far.

Let’s start with binding the scout to 1, automatically, at the start of every game, howabout? That takes nothing away from a player who’s got their game down and would do so automatically, it’s just one less keystroke, and it’ll make it easier for new players to keep track of, and properly utilize, their scout.

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I would like to see the starting scout cav become just a horse (and a VDML for mezo civs :smiley: ?) with no attack to start with. I think that would only really upset lamers.

It’d upset literally any person who’s ever gone aggressive, ever. Having that feudal age spike to kill a walling villager and allow proper aggression is a huge part of the flush metagame right now. With a horse there is nothing you can do besides an early drush or an extremely fast scout uptime to prevent the walls.

No.

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Walls had already undergone a huuuge nerf over the time. Many maps are not even reasonably wallable, so this really wouldn’t hurt as much as you make it out to be.

I mean, to the point where you can pretty much go tower rush in arena, unironically.

I simply disagree. 20char.

and you could already trush on arena, if you didn’t see that match with jonslow and viper on arena, that game was actually a strong example of what the arena metagame was shaping up to be like when DE hit and moved the gates off the corner.

if it’s become popular again it’s a return to form not a shocking new strategy.

I think there should just be an “Empire Wars” gamemode. It would solve so much. For all players who don’t like the early game including laming, they can just pick empire wars and have a… “nice clean” war game, even if it defies itself. But OK. If they don’t like it for what reasons soever, just pick empire wars and it’s all gone.

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