“Play rate” is based on per-player in the team. Obviously all the 4-8 players are not going to play Franks. “pick” shows how often Franks is picked. For 1v1 pick/play are identical except the few mirror matches.
You’re averaging across all maps and thinking “oh its all the same” Revisit the distribution chart link you sent Insights - 1v1 Random Map | 1200+ - aoestats. Check for 1v1 and teamgames. In 1v1 civs are more tightly bound to the average and thereby with low variance while in team games, they’re scattered a lot and have high variance. And this difference in variance is higher when you start looking every map individually. When you turn “Arabia only”, you’ll see a lot of large drifts in civ positions. It just means that collectively a lot of civs are being played in tg but only a few per map. What’s different about 1v1 is Franks and Mongols are played on almost all settings. That gives the impression that 1v1 is more civ biased but average pick variance is lower.
If that’s very confusing let me explain it better this way - Lets say I’m playing 1v1 Arabia, Arena and Nomad. I’m going to come across Franks on Arabia more often, Turks on Arena more often and Spanish on Nomad more often. But I’m still going to find opponents with Tatars, Berbers or Byzantines and several others at about the same frequency. Whereas if I’m playing TG, I’ll almost always see Spanish on Nomad, Franks on Arabia and never see plenty of civs.
It will never be possible to truly balance civs for team games because there are so many different possible team civ combinations and matchups in 4v4. Balancing a civ vs. one civ will.always have a knock on effect on how it stacks up against others. Add the team bonuses into the equation and it’s there’s even more complication. The Devs can’t just sit there and figure out all the thousands of possible combinations of 4x civs and see how the stack up against each other.
Balancing team games based on 1v1 is not perfect but it’s still way fairer than vice versa: if 1v1 game balance was based on team games. And while 1v1 and team games have their differences, they share more in common than you think.
Even in that very chart linked, franks have a pick rate of around 11%. Pretty high, sure, but not ridiculously so.
This is what you originally said, and that’s what the whole conversation is about.
Show me where it shows 65%. Please link a screenshot, if you can.
And it’ll never be possible to balance 1v1 because they are a lot of different map types, skill levels, and unit types.
Nobody balances like this, even for 1v1s. Even 1v1s have 43*42= 1806 combinations. Nobody has time yo evaluate these one after the other.
Bro, since you don’t play team games, just leave the balance of team games to people who play team games.
If you don’t care about team games, why should I care about 1v1s? We are over 40% of the community, and we have our own voice.
All I am asking you to do is to stop pretending that 1v1s give you some deep understanding into all modes of gameplay with this game. That is just not true. 1v1 players understand 1v1 games. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, there is some overlap of basic knowledge which is same with 1v1s and team games. But that’s different.
Same argument applies to team games, except it’s even harder. Still much easier 1v1 than balancing based on team games. Nowhere near as many variables when you balance 1v1.
If you actually read my posts, you would have seen that I clearly stated I play team games sometimes. If I never played TG I never would have realised that the decision making is more streamlined, army comps are single gold unit + siege, trash units aren’t a thing and games are more predictable based on flank / pocket positions.
I care about team games in so far I don’t want 1v1 to be ruined by team game players moaning about something being OP and needing a global nerf on their niche late game setting on prison maps.
Never claimed to be a team expert. But 1v1 knowledge is more useful and transferrable to other game modes than team only knowledge. This is seen clearly by the fact that the top 1v1 players in the world overall are the best team game players. And the best Arabia players also win the Arena tournaments etc. More proof that 1v1 Arabia is the ultimate test of skill.
You are making an incorrect assumption. Viper has played a ton of team games, not just 1v1s. This holds true for all GL players. You know what, show me a set of players (just one could be an outlier) who were top in 1v1s, but rarely played team games, and suddenly transferred their knowledge over. In contrast, I can point out people like Barles and Lyx who aren’t great at 1v1s, but are absolute monsters in team games. Team Suomi and Team China are known for being exceptionally strong, despite none of their players being top 1v1s. Sure, there have been one upset this year. But that’s more because of all the new maps rather than team game play itself, imo.
Then just make a post about that. Why are you claiming that team game only players don’t understand balance?
If your issue is balance, I have a much better post about that here.
No, 1v1 open map could be the ultimate test of skill. You’d get the same result if you banned arabia and replaced it with runestones. I’ll go a step further and say that the only true advantage 1v1 arabia players have is in terms of multitasking and APM.
But I find this kinda pointless, since you have no control group. There is no comparison, it’s arabia vs arena. That’s totally pointless.
I’d say that if nomad 1v1s were more popular, especically land nomad and nomad, that would be the ultimate test of skill by far. Arabia wouldn’t even be close.
No, my bias is not like yours, because I’m not saying that balance decisions should be based on team game play the way you are saying they should be based on 1v1 play. I recognize that different games are, well, different and no one set of play settings should be more important than others.
Are you disagreeing with the point that team game players go for simpler single gold unit + siege army compositions? Or the point that there’s no need to transition into trash units? Or the point that infantry is a losing play / extremely rarely seen? Or that team Arabia games are fairly predictable based on the civs and their flank / pocket positions on the map? I have enough team game experience to know these things are almost always true.
Yes, I can disagree with all of this because I regularly play games that contradict your assumptions here. Sometimes you get rushed early, as flank or pocket, especially at higher elos, and you need to defend with trash units. Sometimes you need to transition into trash units in the late game if you are under pressure and can’t trade, or were late setting up trade with your team. Spearman-line and unique infantry units are not rare at all! If you are talking about militia-line well champs are rare in 1v1s too.
And saying that “team Arabia games are fairly predictable based on the civs and their flank / pocket positions on the map” is basically just saying that there is a meta. Every map and civ has a meta, there’s nothing especially bad about that. Being creative and breaking the meta is a great way to catch opponents off guard.
Friend, all you’ve done here is show again that you don’t have a lot of experience in team games. I get it, you haven’t seen a lot of different situations and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean all games are like the ones you play.
Most Arabia maps you can’t FC, whereas Runestones you can FC every game 100% of the time, so it does play out differently. Not a technicality at all; they are different maps.
Barles is not great at 1v1s, you sure about that? Dude is 2.6k - 2.7k. And Lyx’s style in team games is not really a good example of solid team play. It’s exciting and extremely high risk with a ton of all in / no eco feudal plays like towers etc. which can win or lose the game. He’s often stuck in feudal age while opponents are all castle or imp. Has it worked before? Sure, but is it a repeatable strategy which works consistently enough to be deemed a solid play and worth taking the risk in high stakes tournaments?
And I can compare Arabia vs Arena. Why is Viper and the other top ranked players on Arabia able to consistently beat Arena specialists like Jon Slow?
My point is that there are other maps. Quoting from aoe2 wiki:
Runestones is a map very similar to the old version of Arabia, where woodlines were bigger and it was easier to build. The only notable difference is that there is always a Relic in the middle, surrounded by rocks.
There are other open for which you need as much skill, if not more than arabia. A consistant player of megarandom and the two nomad maps will always be better than an arabia player in terms of strategy, knowledge, macro, and micro.
You haven’t watched enough lyx then I guess. Also, there’s nothing wrong with that strat if it consistantly brings them victory.
Before I answer the question about Barles, I asked you one a while ago. Care to answer?
With barles though, you’d have to show that he started with 1v1s and that is how he got good at team games for you to have a point.Maybe he was a team game player who channeled that into 1v1s to get to the top. Maybe he played both and got good. I’m going to look into his past.
Yeah you’re right, it’s very hard to quantify because most top 1v1 players also play team games and vice versa. However, I think if you asked them which ranked ladder they play more for fun and which one they take more seriously and competitively, it’s pretty clear what most of them would pick.
True, pro players do value 1v1s more. I think that has more to do with the things surrounding the game as much as the game itself. There is just way more money in 1v1s and the ladder is more friendly to 1v1 games at the highest levels. Look at redbull wololo, or memb’s 1v1 tournaments. Also, you get to keep all the money from 1v1s, whereas you need to share it in team games.
This is not overwatch 2, dota, or one of those games with millions of dollars to throw around, so, 1v1s will always be more popular for pros.Not that there is anything wrong with that, I’m just pointing out the circumstances.
It doesn’t show, you can calculate it yourself. 16k+ games where Franks were picked, 25k games overall played in Arabia means ~16/25 * 100 = ~64% games on Arabia had a Franks player. Anyways that was not the point. Civ bias and congestion is higher amongst tg players and there’s a bias against units which are very strong but niche late imperial age units.
That’s reasonably small and each civ matchup will have multiple occurences just within a couple of months of 1v1. In team games its going to be P(43, n) and n is 4, 6 or 8. Which means its atleast a 1000 times more possible number of permutations while number of team games played is the same or lower. With that and the civ pick congestion you could have a million games played and still most civ permutations will never be observed.
Its totally different from what OP is saying. We’ve seen a lot of players repeatedly comment that Bengalis or Dravidians are good because they have Elephant archers or that houfnice is broken, pre-Hindustani Imperial camels are broken, Khmer elephants are broken and so on. All of which stem from a TG bias. 1v1 wise those units have their limitations and are very difficult to use. Any civ having bonus on trash units, monks will have lesser impact on TG players while civs having bonus on knight-line or archer-line or a gunpowder uu will have a lot more impact.
All OP is trying to say is that TG players should be aware of this potential bias they might have and think about it when they make some balance suggestion.
And franks are not even number 1. The fall, if you chart is, is similar to 1v1s anyway.
As I said, nobody balances like this. From another one of my posts:
There are a few main types of issues, from what I have observed.
1. Either the civ is extremely vulnerable to one particular strategy, or is really strong with one strategy
2. A unit of the civ is too weak/too strong
3. The civ’s economy is too weak/too strong
4. The civ has a hole in its tech tree, which leaves a vulnerability during all/many stages of the game
This is how you usually balance things. You don’t go, “Oh, new civs, Romans. Let’s start with Aztecs vs Romans, Bengalis vs Romans, etc, etc”. You only have to be careful about unique units and special cases.
It doesn’t matter how many civs there are, this is always how you do it. This is also true for team games. Without co-ordination, team games actually resemble 1v1 games a LOT. Vice-versa isn’t true. So, at least for lower levels, 1v1 balance will actually help with team game balance. If you want to get deeper into this, we can. However, this isn’t as complicated and incalculable a problem as you are making it out to be.
And many of those were broken. To be clear, Hindustani imperial camel complaints were not a team game only issue. That was frank pickers whining as usual. Houfnice are still far too strong.
But there are two main points. 1. You don’t take every team game player’s opinion into consideration, same as you don’t take every 1v1 player’s opinion into consideration. 2. The game should be balanced for team games. That’s not a TG “bias”, same as balancing for 1v1s is not a 1v1 “bias”. You are phrasing it as though it’s a bad thing, which is what I have an issue with.
For the third time, my friend, you are putting words in OP’s mouth. I’ve hashed out my issues with OP, and I think we understand each other, so I don’t want to recap everything. But the following are direct quotes:
But if you never play 1v1 on typical maps like Arabia, you are simply not qualified to be saying what is or isn’t balanced in the game, because you don’t have enough in-game experience to judge.
I’m just saying your opinion and knowledge is very niche and most of the unfair situations you are complaining about is because team games are always unfair by their very nature
This is not “just be aware of your bias”. This is “shut up, you don’t know the game”. You are just reframing everything that has been said in the post.
Yes but it gives some useful insights. A civ doing extremely well against a couple of civs is fine but not quite when it does extremely well against almost all.
Its mainly just 2. and 3. but how would you measure “too weak/too strong”.
That’s where the 1v1 winrate distribution chart for each civ against the rest, winrate across different game lengths etc turns out useful. You just have one other opponent. If you’re stomping at all phases of the game or if you have a sudden bump in winrate at some point in the game it can indicate a broken eco or a broken unit.
None of those were broken. Elephant units are all very niche and thats why they’re getting a rework and Ballistas got multiple buffs.
pre-Hindustani, meaning Indian Camels. Those were perfectly balanced and fit the rest of the old Indians well.
Again a TG bias. Its a damn expensive upgrade, gives a lower benefit than Torsion engines which is cheaper and applicable to multiple units and takes 150+ seconds. Of course these factors are of much lower importance for boom into halb-houfnice TG games.
The game has to be severely reworked to make TG balance meaningful for overall civ balance. Like if you play Arabia TG whether you want to go for Knights or something else as a pocket should be a non-obvious decision. At that point a balance suggestion for TG would be a good balance suggestion overall.
Otherwise late game or niche units and civs based on them will keep getting nerfed to the ground and harder to use.
Again, a 1v1 bias. You can end games in castle age, so this doesn’t matter to you. So?
This is the main issue I have. You care about 1v1s, which is fine, but you don’t care about team game balance. So, why should I care about your opinion on team game balance?
Also, it objectively gives bigger benefit that torsion engines. Houfnices almost hard counter skirms, they have more HP, more pierce armour, more damage, more splash damage(not area necessarily), and move faster with their UT. Houfnices are so much stronger it is not even funny.
That is fine, for 1v1s. You don’t get to have everything. Just accept that. Those civs can get buffed in other ways without affecting team game balance.
I have no idea what you mean by this. Team game balance is an integral part of overall civ balance, and game balance. I will remind you again, over 40% of games are team games. There is no balance without team game balance. That is just a fact.
Also, team games are balanced pretty well anyway. Team games are way better balanced, as one civ can cover another civ’s weakness, if played well. This is what, for example, takes Dravidians and Bengalis from bottom tier civs to at least mediocre in arabia/bf/arena games.
Honestly, I don’t think there is a point to this because you don’t respect team games and team game balance. So, I don’t care about your opinion about this specific issue. We can talk about things if you wish.
I’ll answer the rest of the points too, but as I said, I don’t think there’s much of a point now.
Maybe, I have no idea because I haven’t played those.
I don’t think I disagree with this. However, this does not account for units that can be too strong in team games. As a hypothetical example, let’s say I make a unit called the chad villager. It has infinite health, infinite damage, it cannot be converted, and has instant teleportation. However, it costs 10,000 food and 10,000 gold. This unit won’t ever be a problem in 1v1s. So? Is this fine? This is not broken by your metric, is it?
1v1s can never indicate when a unit is broken in team games. And units being broken in team games is an issue. I think you just need to accept that point.
I guess you hard took a case of disagreement as disrespect, so its hard to discuss anything further. You’ve put it yourself that team games are way better balanced and it could have come without several units getting overly nerfed and becoming nearly unusable.
I do care about team game balance based on civ economies and unit usability across different stages of the game. Its possible to bring generic balance changes like the Gurjara mill bonus.
It doesn’t. P.armor is not that important on a siege unit. Houfnice are better because of the speed bonus from the other UT but otherwise Ethiopian canons have a larger blast radius than Houfnice. And that’s bad because the civ has a unique way of playing and houfnice fits right into it.
Late game post trade situation is not a proper way to balance. It has an aspect of nearly infinite resources which competitive gaming normally doesn’t. Plenty of nerf calls have been made based on such situations and those nerfs also have a bias against post-legacy civs and units. Houfnice, Khmer uu, Leitis, Coustillier have all been complained against but not Mangudais, celt siege, korean towers, turk canons etc. Not that I’m saying the latter have to be nerfed, but the former fit their respective civs and were equally important.
To be clear, I think the core issue is a difference in priorities. That’s okay, I am totally cool with you about that. However, that means we can’t ever agree. If we had a disagreement about facts, we could have discussed and came to a conclusion. However, you can’t do that when we care about different things.
It’s not even different things, since I want balance in team games AND 1v1s. It’s you who don’t want balance in team games. In a sense, I am actively accommodating for what you want.
Again, I don’t agree at all. Considering how strong bohemian halbs are, arbs should be the actual counter here. But that doesn’t work, mostly due to houfnice. Imagine if houfnice had lesser pierce armour. That would force them to use their UU, for once. Skirms, a unit which should be great against the bohemian comp, can’t take on houfnice because of their pierce armor.
Houfnice need 1 shot to kill an SO. An SO needs 2 shots to kill a houfnice. A BBC (including ethiopian ones) need 2 shots to kill an SO. An SO will kill them in 1 shot. This is when you keep them still, so the speed thing doesn’t apply.
If this doesn’t change your mind, I don’t know what will.
Except this is not a purely competitive game. This is not starcraft. If it was, I would be out of here.
I will stand by this forever, the game should be balanced for post-imp trade situations. And barring a few civs and a few units, it is. So, this isn’t even an issue.
Maybe that’s because some of those were an issue in team games, while others weren’t. “Equally important” is totally meaningless. Question is, is this balanced for 1v1s, AND, for team games. Team game players, including me, don’t think that korean towers, turk cannons or mangudais are a problem in team games. If you think they are an issue in 1v1s, feel free to complain about them.
Its a unit has 3 more range than Arbalesters and blast damage. You can’t use Arbs as a counter. Its ok to have an extra p.armor but that’s not the main value. Natural way to kill Bohemians is through raids and forcing army to split.
Amazing, wow. But who micros 1 houfnice against 1 SO in games where those 2 units are made?
Why would you need balance for casual games? I assumed you were talking about balance for competitive team games.
why exactly Mangudai, Mongol or Celt siege, turk canons aren’t an issue in post-imp trade situations?
