Hello! First I just want to say that this is remaster has been absolutely amazing and totally blew my initial expectations out of the water.
Because it’s amazing, I’ve been playing it a lot, including skirmish, and I have noted that it seems that team positions is always on. That is, if players 1-4 are on a team (or more specifically the colors that default to those players), players 1 and 4 are always on the flank and players 2 and 3 are always in the pocket. This isn’t necessarily a huge deal, especially since the colors are customizable (though this isn’t always ideal for clear communication in multiplayer), but I was wondering if it would be possible to get a team positions option to either let you pick position or to have it randomized (because it can be fun to be able to pick color without having to also pick position as a result). Or perhaps the option is there and I just missed it? Certainly possible!
On a related note, I think it would be a good idea to add team together as an option as well (i.e., do the team members always start grouped together or are the players just randomly scattered). I guess that wouldn’t really work for maps like jotunheim where the teams being together is kind of the point, or at least the generation would be kind of weird, but it could be a fun way to mix things up for most maps.
The way AoE2: DE does it is a pretty simple and intuitive option, if not a perfect one.
Instead of 1v1s being locked into player 1 (blue) vs player 2 (red), one player can choose any odd number and player 2 can choose any even number, along with their associated colour. So you could get blue (1) v yellow (4), or green (3) v purple (5), but never red (2) v yellow (4). (Using default colour settings—different accessibility options can change the colours.)
In team games, one team is assigned to even numbers and the other team gets odd. The largest and smallest number on the team get the flank positions, and the middle player/s are pocket. So if you choose 1, 3, 5 vs 2, 6, 8, players 1, 5, 2, & 8 would be their respective teams’ flanks, and 3 & 6 would be pocket.
The disadvantage of this is it ties your colour to your position. You can never be a blue or red pocket, and you can’t be a green or yellow flank in 4v4s.
The advantages are:
In 1v1s you have some choice over your colour
In team games you haven’t changed accessibility settings, so you can communicate with your team easily (“go attack red”, everyone sees the same red)
You can communicate with your team to easily and intuitively choose who is flank and who is pocket
Huh, I’m not really into competitive multiplayer, so I wasn’t yet aware you couldn’t color pick in 1v1 (I’m guessing you mean ranked). Can you color pick in ranked team games to choose a position, or is it just a matter of what slot you join into?
I think AoE2’s way of doing it is fine for ranked (though people who play ranked more would certainly have a more relevant opinion on the matter). For singleplayer games and custom multiplayer lobbies, AoE2 has the team together and team position options that I described and I think they would be good options for singleplayer and custom multiplayer lobbies in AoM as well. Maybe not for ranked though (Most certainly team together would always be on. Maybe team positions could be a vote option potentially?).
Yeah sorry, I was entirely talking about the ranked experience. I’m not actually sure about how it works in lobbies.
In AoE2 lobbies, it works the same as ranked, except that it’s possible to be colours 1–4 and 5–8, or any other mix. But still the highest and lowest number on each team is the flank, with middle numbers being pocket (if team position is enabled).
I just tested it in AoM:R in a Skirmish match. It looks like it by default works the same as aoe2 with team together and team position options. It’s not as intuitive though because your player number does not change like it does in aoe2 (where “player 1” is always blue, “player 2” is always red, etc.). However, internally it’s obviously the same.
Here is a game where I made myself red and an ally blue. I was made the pocket.
This shows the order in which colours go in AoM, I believe:
Read it left to right, top to bottom (like a book), and players on the same team will be placed anticlockwise in the order their colour appears within the team.
I think this is, IMO, mostly a pretty good option. It would be better if it was a little more explicit, such as if player number also changed. And even better if you could go random.
Best would be if you could independently pick colour and position, where position is a number from 1 to however many are in your team. And also if both colour and position could be selected in ranked.
Excuse me, but so if I wanted to play in a 4vs4 or 3vs3 with a friend of mine and be close, how can I do it? Because we create a match and put ourselves in the first two positions by placing team1, all the other teams are random, but we are never close
So basically, if you are on the same team and have adjacent colors, you should be guaranteed to be close together. That is, using default colors, blue and red should always be together, green and light blue should always be together, etc. If you’re blue and yellow, for example, you could be together, if red is on a different team, but if red is on the same team, they will always be between you two.
Idk why some people would want AoE2 system here, having colours bound to position is an outdated system.
Just option for Team Positions would suffice as it isn’t fair that the host is always flank. However Team Together option doesn’t seem great idea due to how AoM maps are designed and how godpowers change the game. For example how could you wall and plan around holding 1vs2 if one enemy has undermine to destroy them instantly? This isn’t like AoE2/AoE4 where 1 castle keeps you safe until 4th age.
Yeah. If one of you is red, the other needs to be blue or yellow to guarantee you’ll spawn next to each other. You could be fuchsia, but only if all the colours in between are on the enemy’s team. (Or are unused.)
I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make here.
“Just” is the problem. It’s not “just”. It’s adding in a whole new UI option to provide a new UX that no Age game has ever had before. Heck, the programming of the game might not even make it easy to do from a technical perspective. If they can do it well it’s certainly the best option, as I said it was, but it’s also adding more complication compared to the much simpler AoE2 system. Plus, AoM is already using the AoE2 system, except in a more hidden way than AoE2 does it.
Do you mean having the option to turn it off? Because currently it’s always Team Together.
