Many people enjoy playing random civ for variety, but it is a huge disadvantage when playing ranked because your opponent could be picking a metaciv for that map. I suggest adding a new civ option:
random-mirror
It would act in the following way: If your opponent’s civ pick is random-mirror or random, you and your opponent both get a random civ as if you both picked random. If your opponent picks a specific civ you mirror his pick.
That way, you get the fun of playing random civ without putting yourself at a disadvantage.
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This sounds great. I’d use nothing but random-mirror if I could get random civ fun whenever my opponent didn’t pick a civ but got to play their OP civ in a mirror match if they picked it.
i hate mirror matches, i would hate this option, since i prefer to pick a faction (regardless of whether it is metaciv) and then my opponent would just mirror whatever i have… sorry i think thats hard B O R I N G
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Hey there,
I just want to share an idea for ranked, which should be an easy to implement QoL-change.
I’m not sure if someone already came up with this, I just want to make sure it gets some attention 
In the civ selection for ranked games make a box, which can be ticked and is labeled “random mirror”.
If both players (or all players for team games) have it enabled the following game will be a random mirror - otherwise both (or all^^) players will just get the civ’s they picked.
There are a lot of people who really enjoyed the diversity of playing random mirrors in the past, but going for random right now is a big disadvantage, because the other player could just pick his civ.
My solution basically just offers players an option to agree on a random mirror if all players want to play that - and if someone rather picks his civ the game will be played with picked civs and everything is fair as well.
So basically if people don’t like random mirror, nothing will change for them, but people who do like it get the option to play it if they meet someone who does so as well.
In my thoughts everyone should be happy this way (maybe except for people who want to force random mirror on everyone^^) and I also think it should be pretty easy to implement.
Thanks for reading 
EDIT: I originally made a new post since I didnt know about this one - but adding it here is obviously good 
I think my version is a bit better, because it doesnt force players to play a mirror of it’s no random mirror, but they can still have their civ choice, if it’s not random for both.
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I saw an idea in an AoEZone post by that I rather like (thanks to asdf for the suggestion). Since most games of Aoe2 were played using random civs, it would be nice to consider adding a “Prefer Random” option or checkbox when picking civs. I have a couple of ideas for how the system could work (at least for 1v1s).
Option 1:
- All players both pick a civ and choose whether or not to select the “Prefer Random” option.
- If both players prefer random, then the players get random civs.
- If one of the players doesn’t prefer random, then the players use the civs they picked.
And if random civs are used, the players would need to be informed of this before starting the match, so they know they won’t end up using their selected civ.
Option 2:
- Before picking any civs, both players have an option of “Prefer Random” or “Pick Civ” (could be toggle-able while waiting during matchmaking, so there isn’t any wait time after being matched).
- If both players pick “Prefer Random”, then they go straight to the game.
- If either player picks “Pick Civ”, then they go to the civ select screen, as is done currently.
The selection system could also be inverted, where random civs are used if either player selects the option, rather than both players.
This feature would keep everyone in the same matchmaking pool (rather than splitting it among, say people playing random civs and others playing pick civ). And it address the issue where players are wary of picking random civ, because they don’t want to get a bad civilization matchup against someone who picked a civ explicitly.
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Right now I think this is what DE needs. Random/Mirror or prefer random would give the game more variety.
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