TG ranked failure or success?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Hello,

Originally I wasn’t going to bother with this, because Im 99.9% certain that nothing comes out of it, but after thinking it bit more I came to conclusion that only thing I lose is my own time and nothing else so why not.

Let me introduce myself. Im 2v2 player and I only play with random teammates and I reached +1800 elo in QM like this, also reached Conqueror 1 and lost it so back to Diamond. I got over 3k games played in 2v2 and over the months I have observed matchmaking and player behavior meaning ppl who got higher tendencies to drophack / exploit and where they come from, while this later observation is completely speculative based on names so I won’t talk about it anymore.

Now to the main topic of this post regarding TG ranked. I made similar post back in the day when TG ranked was announced and after that I have learned new things regarding TG’s and related to matchmaking. Also my prediction back then was wrong only in way that the TG ranked is even more of joke than I originally imagine.

I want to give credits to devs who listened the community when TG ranked was requested and this only so I can take that credit away and say stop listening community if you’re not willing to think and do it properly. TG ranked as of rn is perfect example when devs only listen and not think makes game worse.

Before to points why TG ranked is failure, Id like to say this too. Those who enjoy TG ranked please enjoy it as much as you want, but it won’t neglect the fact that how poorly this was made.

So here is the list of problems and my observations / thoughts on the systems. Not in any form of meaningful order or anything.

  1. Premade vs solo. Currently there is no system in place that makes matches balanced between premade vs solo players those leaves many matches to become extremely one sided because the advantages of premades hold is ridiculous. If player is decently skilled and plays with premade then their account gets 200-500 positive elo boost those making playing as solo extremely frustrating and difficult.

  2. Matchmaking is dogshit. Its simple as that but further explanation is needed, I guess? Currently teams are formed based on average elo of team. So if team has 1k + 2k then the average is 1.5k those it searches players around the 1.5k elo, but this is not how to make balanced matches. Team is as strong as its weakest link. If you put 2x 1.5k and 2k +1k to same team (all solo players) most likely outcome is that 1k quits after something goes wrong those leaving 2k alone to play.

  3. In 2 I talked about average elo of team, but this actually can also be used to manipulate matchmaking. For example 2k elo player pairs with 1k elo those 2k elo losses less points and gains more than they should. This is known method used in QM by some top ranked players to get more elo. This also pairs with the #1 point I made those almost all premades at some point of time have intentionally or unintentionally used this for their advantage those making whole matchmaking complete joke.

  4. Balance. Its impossible to balance game around 1v1 and TG and all the potential civ comps. There is currently massive difference between civ comps. For example HRE paired with any civ becomes absolutely disgustingly broken in TG’s as long as the paired civ is capable of keeping opponents on their side of map and this means HRE is capable of getting castle under or around 7min mark and taking majority if not all relics and sacred sites. If HRE also goes burger paired with aachen there is essentially no stopping this. Only way to stop this would be feudal aggression, but due the mapsizes its nearly impossible to stop HRE before they hit castle with burger. There are also other broken strategies that are not just related to HRE, but other civs and their bonuses. This also makes TG’s freaking joke to play against because player has to know during loading screen that certain strategy is coming to even try stopping it and if they don’t know its 99% over for them and even then if they know if they just didn’t happen to pick right civs with highest chance of dealing with these strategies they just lose.

  5. There is no penalty for players leaving. All the competitive side is instantly thrown out of window when one or more allies can unconditionally leave the game without any form of penalty whats so ever. Out of 14 losses I got 4 or 5 of them been because ally left within first 1minute of game, so I didn’t even bother trying and left myself too. This also allows form of griefing to happen. Get teamed up someone you recognize and don’t like? Oh just leave especially if they’re higher ranked than the lobby those it hurts them more plus if player doesn’t really care about the rank its even better for them.

  6. With so many different game modes the playerbase is split so thin that getting quality matches is close to impossible and vast majority of games end up being stomp in one direction. I have played close to 50 ranked games so far (yes nolife) and 0% of them been evenly balanced or fun games.

  7. This next applies to 1v1 same way. Currently players rank can fluctuate heavily based on couple of matches. So lets take simple example just to show what I mean. Player reaches their highest ranking lets say bronze 2. After 1 game that might become bronze 1. So even if you manage to achieve higher rank it means nothing when its easily taken away by one match. This happened to me. I was conqueror and yesterday I decided to play 1 more. Well I got badluck with coinflip and ended up having ally that was doing nothing other than sitting inside his own base those left me 2v1 constantly. In the end I lost so back to Diamond 3. Then as being pissed off about this I decided to play another to get rank back and started watching stream (this is important). So when I was watching stream after 5mins in queue I realized that premade of good players entered the queue (yes from stream). I instantly decided to avoid one sided stomp so I quit the queue, but after 5-10seconds I was placed into lobby with the premade against me even tho I had cancelled the queue. Well oh well time to do the best I can in the end game was over due the skill difference between teams and my ally “running” away from aggression after having successful aggression so game was over after that. Next game was with ally that chose to complain how 4 horsemen from mongol was denying his gold while being english with 0 longbows or spears so HRE got away with FC and got all relics and game over. So with couple of bad coinflips I ended getting stomped and resulted me dropping from conqueror 1 to Diamond 2.
    This kind of system encourages player not to play especially if they reach rank they hoped to achieve. Imagine final days of season and player gets into conqueror and do they want to continue playing? Probably not because that rank is taken away from you instantly if you end up losing and even worse if its because of leaver or troll. In the end I dropped back to Dia1 because I ended up getting 1 leaver who left during loadingscreen and ally that sit inside his base doing nothing while I was getting rushed by 2 players and defended it for 4-5mins without any help.

  8. Next point is probably one of the biggest indicator that devs put 0 effort of thinking anything. Instead of having 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 ranked, they decided to put them all together. Advantage is that players elo is referenced over TG’s and tries to match more even matches but this has one of the most ridiculous downsides what one can hope. Because every mode is little bit different from each other and some rules are different. This results one of the modes having some extremely broken strategy thanks to civ comps and effectiveness civs. Now if player uses strategy like that they can easily get into top rankings while other modes are in disadvantage. Reference from other modes can be used without lumping ranked into one big pool especially considering each mode is slightly different with different sets of things to consider.

Well thats my rant. For me TG ranked has finalized my intentions of quitting and be done with game for good. I won’t quit today (ill get conqueror 3) unless something else comes up before that then I leave without hesitation and disregard my goal. Previously I always took breaks when playing other games or some other stuff, but was never actually done with game because I had hopes that AOE4 devs would improve game. (They have done from 1v1 perspective, but at same time screwed up TG’s so heavily that its not worth even playing) Someone is gonna say find premade or play 1v1. If I tell you to eat dogshit will you eat it even tho you dont like it? So yeah.

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they promised that the cost of the wonders would depend on the number of players, it is still pending, that’s why I don’t encourage TG

I requested to pay tribute units with allies, something that a very old game already had

3

Personally don’t care much with the whole solo vs premadw groups.
Personally in a TG. Teamwork should be rewarded. And that reward comes in the form of superior play due to good teamwork.
I always found it silly when solo players playing in a teamgame based game mode complain over premises.

In reality, nothing stops them for making their own premises group.

But regardless.

There is many things I’d like to see in ranked TG.

First of all is devide the brackets:
1v1
2v2
3v3
4v4

Each of these play quite differently and it kinda sucks that someone good at 2v2 who wanna have a go at 4v4 which requires a whole different approach will get punished for doing so.
Ontop of that, in reality it dosnt measure the skill appropriately.

Some people are better in 1v1 than 3v3. Some are better in 4v4 than 2v2.
Etc.

But my biggest issue with team games is Map scaleability.

While most maps are OK I’m TG.

Biggest issue are those who dosnt.

Take boulder bay as an example.

The recent nerf to the Water size is OK for 1v1.
But what also happened that the size of the water barely has any increase while the land grow as substanceially. In 4v4. The so called Bay is nothing more than a mere puddle at a remote corner of the map with very little point of contesting.

My third issue is lack of civilization Synergy.

Right now, if you wanna meta it, having Abbasid is almost obligatory to have in your team.
Going without is intentionally grieving your team from a major Advantage.

Currently only Mongols and Abbasid grants boon to fellow teammates.

Abbasid camels provides ALL friendly unit armor.
Camel support is extremely strong in combination with certain civs, such as French or HRE. Giving their heavy unit +2 melee and range armor.
What’s the result of this?
1 Abbasid camel following close to friendly Knights/MaA who already get civ specific armor bonus / anti armor bonus gets a significant advantage on the field.
Landsknecht with +2 armor and no longer gets flattened by archers and mangonels. Yes please.

Meanwhile, mongols not being as strong, the Khan can provide crucial buffs. Such as +5 armor to ALL units before diving into a line of castles ignoring the enemies defensive buildings.

Or the Kurultai providing additional 25% damage to great bombards, or english Trebuchets, you know what this does? It also significantly buffs their splash damage. Meaning the great bombards and English splinter shot becomes just as strong as Mangonels splash damage. Only different is a slightly smaller radius!

No other Civ provide benefit to teammates.

I would love to see HRE prelates provide Inspiration to friendly units.

I would love to see Ottoman Mether provide their buffs to all nearby friendly units.

Malian Toll Outpost to apply to friendly traders aswell. (Meaning if you have a Malian teammate, your traders will also generate food and gold when passing by Malian toll outpost).

Chinese Imperial official to oversee friendly buildings to boost their production.

French Arbaletier provide range armor bonus to nearby friendly units when denying Pavises.

English campfire to apply to friendly units.

For the Dheli? Tough question, they do already pseudo synergies with other civs due to their early scholars and focus on scholar play. They can really boost their teammates on feudal age if they play a bit aggresive and coordinate their scholars with the raiders.

But it’s small things like this I would love to see.

This means a teammate that gets “knocked out” early and suffers from significant setback, can still provide some crucial support boons for the fellow teammates turning the tide around.

4

We talked about the buffs or synergies in other post and I explained why its stupid. It would only introduce more factors into consideration when trying to balance things. This is something that should be completely removed if they start adding this factors into game it becomes even more unbalanced and broken.

More you add more it becomes unbalanced which is never good for the game.

Then what comes down to solo vs premade. If you want to play with premade its your choice just same way as its my choice to enjoy TG’s as solo. I enjoy slightly larger maps what 1v1 offers and I like meta in TG’s little bit more than in 1v1.

Its fine to match premades vs solo, but then it needs to be more fair than completely unfair towards solo players. Better ability to coordinate with random allies paired with some consideration how much elo is gained / lost if played favorable match also average team elo has to go because its dogshit method to pair things up. Also if there is no avg elo lobby system in place its harder to abuse to gain more elo or lose less.

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this is so true and annoying

i dont agree with this if you can make the enemy dont come to your side every civ is so powerfull

this one is also so true luckly it happened me at the normal team game

well you need a good teammate to play with or this thing will happen eventually again even if they werent pre 2 people amazingly plays good can come to you as your oppenent and you can get the bad one so you must accept that if you dont have a team mate this things happen its a coinflip and dont worry rewards you get from arent so great too just a profile pic

you can chose between them what is the problem here i dont get it

thats very good idea
and last words if you dont have a pre it will always be a coinflip i mean what are you expecting are you gonna always team up with the best man? but maybe in team games when you about fall one rank below it can give you one more last chance to stay in that rank

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Its not about one individual civ but civ comp. For example in 1v1 if HRE tries to go naked castle around 7min mark they can be punished because HRE has no army or anything so you can delay this kind of strategy, but moment you add something into mix it can become completely broken.

For example Mongol + HRE. You won’t be able to match the production of mongol because of ovoo so trying to outmass mongol and stopping HRE on bigger maps is difficult, because all kind of ram all ins and other stuff gets instantly weaker than in 1v1.

If you go horsemen yourself then you’re playing right into trap which leads to your loss, because horsemen are not that good in feudal to stop any kind of fast castle play if resources are too close to TC. Gold is essentially only option, but even then Mongol can just show up with superior horsemen numbers and stop your harass so you have only delayed your own castle, but achieved enough.

I have talked with ppl who use this strategy and they got essentially 95% or above winrate with this and I know they’re not just capable of doing one strategy but conqueror level players in 1v1 too and have said only way to stop this is to stop HRE in feudal which is insanely difficult because all aggressive options been nerffed to ground.

There are lot of other variants to boost HRE to ridiculous levels like Malians feeding them food or other aggressive type of supports. Not just that but because burger is what 5 barracks worth of production? Which is impossible to match if you go fast castle yourself. HRE easily outproduces you and all of this is thanks to aachen paired with burger.

The problem is that one mode can have massive advantage in terms of having different civ comps and strategies and map size which can increase players chances to win to such levels that its impossible to compete with them unless you play it urself.

While Im not too familiar with 3v3 or 4v4, but something like malians going mass trade in 4v4 with larger map size and ridiculous amoung of resources they get from the trade could be so broken that if your team doesn’t have malians then you automatically lose the game. This is now speculative based on the civ bonuses. But same thing can’t be said in 2v2, because its a lot easier to punish trading in 2v2 due map size is smaller and top of that the traders return less resources and how toll system works its also effected.

7

Agree with this. But the player base might be too small to facilitate so many elo groupings and therefore placement matches.

Aren’t these simply bugs? I don’t think it was intended that some civs buff others and others give nothing.

So basically most of your complaints coming down to you refusing to accept human behaviour and/or make a team with friends

You can’t punish randoms for not wanting to play. Please don’t come with the usual dumb comparison of MOBAS which don’t snowball and do actually have comeback mechanics, unlike RTS

In conclusion a very long winded post that has very simple resolutions and more importantly it’s still very early in the season when people are still getting settled

TG wasn’t a failure, it’s barely begun, and if anything needs tweaking. Please calm your knee jerk reactions. Thanks

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And your argument is stupid. “Human behavior” So you think its alright for player in competitive mode to leave immediately because they don’t want to play those leaving their ally to play 2v1 3v2 etc?`There is reason why many of the competitive games like mobs, fps etc penalize ppl who abandon the match, because if they don’t then there it cant be called competitive mode at all.

If player can unconditionally leave the game without punishment then they do it the moment something minor goes wrong and go to new one just to get the perfect game and how is this fair to other players in the match? Match is essentially over at that point when someone pulls that trigger.

It can also be used to grief others by just leaving for lols, because they didn’t like what their ally did.

RTS has plenty of comebacks, just because you don’t recognize them or know the flow of game, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Especially in TG’s.

I had plenty of games to prove this in past where my ally left for no reason and I ended up playing +60mins against other 2 players and it would’ve been easily over if my ally stayed in game. Only reason those games were lost was because I was facing 2 opponents and having to deal with all the stuff they can throw at you is extremely difficult.

Its not reaction its fact. Vast majority of these problems have existed since the launch of game and none of them were fixed or addressed when TG ranked arrived. So you really think they gonna suddenly solve the problems alongside the new problems that came with the ranked mode?

Playerbase is now even more thinner than it ever was which has resulted for me at least 30-50% longer queue time, extremely uneven matches, introduction of new broken civ comps which is less balanced game and alongside none of the existing problems were addressed.

So yeah why don’t you come up some good argument to say it was good start instead of stupid stuff

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look first of all if the mongols had such strenght they should be %100 win rate in 1v1 second you will have a team mate too you are not playing alone you can attack together to punish them where are you getting these ideas

yes thats true some civs have trade advantage and you need to find a way to defeat them like raiding their trade which civ are you playing normally

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There was already proven concept that playing mongol increased your elo and this same applies to TG’s with certain civ comps and thats not balanced at all which is the point too.

Please stop trying to sound that you know something, because you don’t. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about so try not to talk about things u dont know.

Yes I got ally too and you do understand that because map is larger than in 1v1 which plays big part on these strategies and how they work. To beat these strategies you either need to know that the strategy is gonna happen during civ pick and pick the best potential response to it which is usually something like French, but if you don’t then you’re in massive disadvantage. And this mongol / HRE comp was only one of the many examples where certain strategies become completely broken when there is introduced another civ or more civs into mix.

There is also data from aoe4 worlds proving this that there are certain strategies that are overwhelmingly broken and to beat them you either need to know exact response before it happens and paired with being in premade to properly coordinate it.

Ill take another strategy. English, Abbasid. (This was during last season). When I had no idea that this was coming winning chances were 0. When I knew it was coming chances of winning were 0.

English sends 4-6 villagers into targets base and denies gold and proxies council hall there, while abbasid makes spears either proxy or from base and proceeds to spam rams at targets base. Sound straightforward? Go cavalry / archers and destroy rams? NOPE. Not even longshot you would’ve lost the game.

Reason for this is because English builds stone walls either segment or around your base which results longbows covering every location on walls and you cant fight that with anything in feudal. Try destroy rams with spears or cavalry means just letting units to die mass longbows on walls.

Ok what about early barracks to deny english villagers? Too bad dark age spears die to villagers.

Answer to this is quite simple either play english urself and hope you’re the target which is never the case or play english and get council hall up faster and deny opponents council hall.

Another counter is to delay or stop proxied council hall, but just like I said unless you play english its not possible unless map allows you to instantly wall yourself in to buy time but it doesn’t stop this strategy because rams / spears / scouts torch palisade.

Best option is to ally go fast castle into killing both opponents vills and only effective counter without including english to mix and if you play with random ally and you tell them to go FC. Common question is “what is FC”

There is other variations of this strategy and even tho they’re considerably weaker than english/abba combo, they still extremely strong and response to them is always know before it happens. Only reason why this is so deadly strategy is because Longbows on walls in feudal is broken af. 9 tiles range with 66% dmg reduction so you cant even contest them with archers.

There is bunch of other strategies which revolve around certain civ combinations becoming completely broken because other civs bonuses.

I don’t have problems with trade booms. It was purely example of things how effective malians trade boom is just with toll bonus. Your trader doesn’t have to reach your market to return the gold, but just pass couple of outposts and trader been paid of and this is so effective in TG’s because of map size.

I play solely as China. I deal with trade same way as I deal with everything which is into FC and taking complete map control.

Seems like you don’t understand or want to understand the things going in TG’s. So why don’t you provide argument to support TG ranked and why its good state?

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i think you dont know what you are talking about you are saying english come with 5 vills and denied your gold so english player can play like that and you are going to play against that moving 5 vills across the map is a huge economic punishment and he is investing in towers you can counter tower him too there is lots of things to do in that situation some of your arguments at the top are true but you are just writing the tactic they used and malians is a trader nation so just attack their traders

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Yeah Im confident that you have no clue so Ill ask you. Do you play TG’s? Specifically 2v2? What is your QM elo if you do play(Don’t care ranked league because its joke rn)? If you play only 1v1, then Id recommend not trying to give advice to someone who has faced certain broken strategies in 2v2 and tried all possible solutions for it.

To answer your question yes you will have economic lead when English moves the vills. But ask yourself how fast do you start collecting gold? Because the vills that are sent are the first ones which means that vills arrive at your gold mine at around 1-2min mark give or take at that point your gold is denied especially if the map seed doesn’t have back gold and even then you spent time moving your own villagers to gather gold which neglects the impact of english moving the villagers so its ±0 benefit for you.

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i wasnt playing too much before the ranked tg come my elo is 966 qm ,im gold 2 at ranked but it doesnt show all the matches but it says my elo is 1048

if they come and you didnt start gathering gold then go to other gold mine and put a tower to a nice place so he cant gather it either

14

works fine for aoe2.

do not click

aoe4 funs red eyes: triggered.

15

Yeah it doesn’t, because its impossible to balance there is too many variables to consider. It would be same as saying all champions and champ comps in lol are balanced when they’re not.

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I will only say that Tg should be played on discord with friends, playing with random people will always cause frustration

17

Yeah exactly. You don’t know what you’re talking about so try not to.

And considering your elo and league you have not experienced these strategies or if you have u have not understood how strong they’re and how you lost.

And all of these strategies are not broken in 1v1 because there is no secondary civ that can completely change how that strategy works. Even when I fought beasty +szalamii which was way before I experienced other similar variations the 9min HRE imperial is so ridiculous that you cant do anything to stop it especially when swabia paired with aachen and relics is god damn busted. Its different for 1v1 because you can easily force HRE to respond, but in TG’s they dont have to.

You can check statistic for yourself. Go to Quick Match 2v2 – Civilizations – AoE4 World and see it urself. There is massive difference between certain civ comps.

Yes you start building tower at your secondary gold mine if you’re lucky its on other side so it takes longer for vills to travel there but you have to commit heavily building the tower so you will get up if its too close to first gold mine and if you don’t commit building the tower then you’re going to lose villagers because of it.

Top of that outpost requires 100 wood which takes while to gather unless you have already prepared for it. So in reality outpost on secondary gold mine is viable, but english can just completely ignore that and start gathering gold from your first mine and start proxying council hall next to your base so even if you get the gold you’re not stopping the strategy and if you don’t stop the council hall its game over for your unless your ally leaves you and go for FC into aggro or heavy all in feudal which once again relates to fact that player HAS to know its coming before the match starts. Its too late if you scout the villagers half way through the map.

Same is with many HRE strategy variations. By the time you realize what is happening from scouting its too late because you cant stop it.

Only reason why I have been able to fight back in certain situations is purely because I have known either in lobby whats going to happen or moment something looked fishy like in loading screen seeing abbasid + english or HRE + Mongol and confirming that opponents are premade.

Even if I tell my ally at first second of match whats going to happen they do not know how to react or what to do.

Like I mentioned before. Previously mongols in 1v1 proved that certain strategies are so broken that its automatically more elo to your account. It doesn’t have to be 100% winrate but these strategies are close to it especially against solo players so they climb up to 90% or higher in terms of winrates.

18

hre isnt good as you said i looked at it their winrate is low and at the higher ranks it got good but the other are so close to hre french seems so strong tho

no you got me wrong you are going to build that tower at enough distance shoot the denied gold mine after that english player is gg

if you want to win you are gonna gather the wood

what happens when is it like that can you explain how the hre+mongol is so strong for example what kind of synergy they have

19

Don’t look at civ winrate its pointless. Look at civ comp winrate

Another issue about looking it based on elo is im not sure how AOE4 worlds ranks the elo system in TG’s, because its well known fact that ppl at high elo play with lower elo players to manipulate matchmaking and they use these kind of strategies often because they’re ridiculously strong so even weaker player can execute them.

For example if there is team of 2 players one with 1k elo and one with 2k elo. How does it rank the civ comp based on elo? Is it 1.5k which is average of team or based on 1k elo or 2k elo. That I do not know.

You’re not going to blindly gather wood and try to protect yourself from all the possible threats it will cause you to lose more games. You cant prepare for everything and if you don’t have time to react on something to prevent it happening then the strategy itself is way too strong. Like I said in english / abbasid explanation. You have to know before it happens to prepare for it. Otherwise its too late and most cases what you can do to fight back is pointless due multiple factors so most important piece of countering it is your ally which has to do all the right things and abandon the target player.

The synergy is mongol being aggressive support. They got one of the best early game aggression which is form of TR, Early horses etc. Mongol doesn’t look to do any dmg other than keep both opponents busy. If you try to start countering the horsemen with spears which is normal response to them, then you’re dead because you’re not going to hit HRE with spears or do anything to mongol player as long as they control horsemen properly.

As long as mongol doesn’t throw the horsemen away they can keep posing threat on both bases and running around. Like I said its just to waste both opponents time and posses a threat.

This gives HRE freedom to do what ever they want. You won’t reach HRE base with good enough army to hinder them especially when you’re constantly threatened by horsemen. Also you cant TR rush HRE because mongol horsemen that can deny any attempt on it.

By the time you would be able to do any meaningful push its too late. HRE hits castle with burger and 5x production of MAA will just overrun you after that it follows up with HRE getting all relics and sacred sites. You can look at your own gameplay and try rushing and think about it how fast you can get any meaningful push to HRE, especially when they got emergency repair to stall you out.

This is not issue in 1v1, because map size is smaller and HRE is responsible to responding any threat by themselves and covering this weakness makes this type of strategy insanely broken.

I watched Szalamii yesterday he played 4v4 and went malians. Wanna know what he did? (Didn’t watch entire game but end of it) He spammed cows into every allys base and trade boomed. Game lasted 20mins and he had freaking 60k gold income meanwhile everyone else had 5k-10k

image
poor screenshot because of pause but as you can see. He was 1tc and like 30-40 villagers. Meanwhile feeding thousands of food to allies which makes them not ever make any farms or anything which is insanely strong. Plus this trading was not done with neutral market but with another player which results less income vs neutral trading.

And by the time you get there to try punishing this style of play. There is multiple walls to slow you down and the trade been going with toll outposts for few minutes so you’re already heavily behind in economy and got less army

22

i looked they are still not that good but french seems very good

we are talking early game what threat you will already lose if you dont gather wood

yes malians like that i did samething too and i had food and gold surplus after couple games they can get nerf this has nothing to with tg by the way its a civ balance problem but it takes time to reach that strength you must early raid them and when you reach castle man at arms destroy them