The reason why people feel more frustrated in random team games (supermacy) in Aoe3 then other RTS games

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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First, I am not a pro or even a good player. I only played this game serioulsy when DE is released and I only play hundreds of games. I just want to share some thoughts about the random team games of AOE3. So maybe all I wrote below are totally wrong so any opinion is welcome. :sweat:

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I’ll start by explaining why I feel Aoe3’s RT is autually ok, and then I will to explain why it pratically doen’t work and what let people feel AoE3’s RT games are worse then other RTS games and what I suggest to do inspired by the RTS games.

In the current design, even in a early 3v3 game if i got tripled by enemies and my teammates had no units to help me immediately, but my teammates were having their plan in mind (teching or booming), I would know our team still have big chance to win, even my base would be totally destoryed soon and I would be forced to flee with my remianing army and villiagers. At this moment, I would try to do my best to hide to avoid engaging my opennents and wait for my allies’ reinforcement, or try to delay the oppenents’ offense as possible as I can, to buy time for my teammates. Because I know if my teammate are awaring what they are doing, they probablily will bring their huge high tech army to push back later and we will still win in the end. This has already happened several times and I still enjoyed these games very much even i was beaten badly.

But this design requires all team players to have a certain level of knowledge about the game, or it doesn’t work.

Of cource, the worst scenario is I got tripled by enemies, and my teammates don’t know what they are doing and then our whole team is totally doomed. If this happens, it is hard to call it a gg and I can completly realize people’s feel and why they think AoE3’s RT vs AT game experience is terrible.

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So why doesn’t this situation happen to other RTS games’ team games, and how can we fix it without change the current meta dramatically?

Every other RTS game has their mechinism to solve it. For example, in Starcraft 1 and 2, most maps are carefully designed and most players’ main bases have only one choke point, so players can easily block it and defend early rush well, if they are not careless, and remember to scout.

In Warcraft 3, Every players has a transport scroll at start, and players usually has basic army in the early time because of the exp and creep mechnism. So even arranged enemy team organize a rush, the random team can still cooplerate and reflect quickly and push them back.

In AoE2, the game pace is slower and the defensive buildings are very powerful. (The damages of Tower and TC are huge, and all foot unit can hide in them if the defender is at a numerical disadvantage.) Also the cost of rush is larger due to there is no card system, bigger team map, tougher building, weaker early units, and the economic punishinent to a rushing player is much more huge than AoE3
 and so on.

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So the answer is quite clear now I think. AoE 3’s game pace is fast, and It lacks all the mechnism I mentioned above to give defender teams any advantage. The card system make this situation worse: the rushing team can spend all their exp on sending troop cards early, let the defending team have less time to preprare for a sudden organized rush.

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I want to provide two methods to solve this, without affecting current 1v1 game and without affecting team game largily:

  1. In teams games, allow team players to call militia from any allies’s TC. A more extreme approach is, that the more players a team game has (3v3 or 4v4), the more militia players can call. (since in larger team games, the troop card provide organized rush larger advantage.)

  2. Add Ramping Cost mechinism in RoN to AoE3.
    https://riseofnations.fandom.com/wiki/Ramping_Cost
    And again, the more players a team game has (3v3 or 4v4), the large the effect of Ramping Cost has. In 1v1, there is no Ramping Cost effect. in 2v2 the Ramp Cost is small that players almost can ignore it. but in 3v3 and 4v4, Players will need to consider the Ramping Cost seriously.
    The reason to add this mechnism to the game is to balance the advantage of Arranged team and Random team. We all know in the currenct design of the team games cause strange phenomenon: the most effective way to utilize the maximum a team’s advantage is every member of a team only make one type of units to save the cost of military building and upgrading. So if the members of a random team can’t communicate effectively, their chance to win would become extremly low. And this situation definitely won’t happen to the other RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft, COH or even the AoE3’s previous game: AoE2.
    So this is Why I suggest to add Ramping Cost mechnism to this game:
    To force every member of a team to build a mixed army like what happened to the other RTS games.

As for the details of the above methods, such as how much the militia needs to increase, and how much the Rampin Cost needs to increase, more tests and discussions may be needed.

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That’s all.
This is a long message.
Thanks you if you read to the end. :bowing_man:

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Quite a long post for what is basically a l2p issue.
Getting trippled will almost always end you in any game unless you sevearly outplay your opponents or your allies help you. This is regardless of game. The same is true in SC1, War3, SC2 or Aoe2. Having chokepoints, OP defensive buildsings or whatever else will not help you.This is coming from someone who played all those other RTS games extensively in teams, getting tripled or quadroppled and tripling and quadrupling others.

Aoe3 in fact does better because you can use shiments to quickly spawn units.
Again, l2p issue.

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true, in other RTS when in that position its game over, in aoe3 you just try to send smt like mamelukes via shipments

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Alright maybe my memory is wrong. I’ve been trying to figure out why my random teammates in AOE3 are always more negative than I rememer the teammates in other games. :thinking:

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Trata de jugar los juegos en equipo con alguien que conoscas, en cualquier rts ir solo esperando a ser emprajedo es una basura ya que te puede tocar alguien super noob y te vas a segunda divisiĂłn xd

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I don’t think the Age games in general were designed with team games in mind. In my opinion they are meant to be played as 1v1 non-treaty games. I hate playing team games and I don’t like watching them either because I feel they are less related to skill and more luck as to whether or not you win. Play perfectly and lose, play poorly and win. I think you will have more fun just playing 1v1 ranked where someone could rush at any moment. If you like to turtle, then turtle with the possibility of a rush in mind. It is part of the game design.

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I totaly agree with you, team games are brainless despite there some team card designed for team games. But this is most relaxed way to release preasure and have fun for a causual players. Basically I played RTS just for fun and relax.

if not AoE 3’s random team’s players (both teammates and oppenents) often troll each other after game over, I might not touch 1v1 forever. :rofl:

If I remember correctly I usually can have 50~70% win percentage in other RTS brainless team games with relaxed mood, but in AOE3 teammates ususally rage quit immdiatley when they find they are doubled or tripled and left a “noob team”, This is not even happened to the AoE2 DE either (maybe because as I mentioned above, the benefits of early rush in team games is few), or are times changing? :joy:

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From an aoe2 player’s point of view, I think the opposite. Aoe3 teammates are spawn close to each other, all far away from enemy. This makes distance between the two teams very far, leaving a big defender advantage. Rushing is hard in team game because the long distance offensive team need to cover. And aoe3 age up and trains units faster. Therefore aoe3 team games are very boomy and turtle like. (It is like aoe2 lombardia map, the way players are located).

In aoe2 there are flanks and pocket. Flanks are very close to enemy flanks (even closer than 1v1). This forces players to make army early. It is also much eaiser to rush down enemy flank.

Also in aoe3 there are villager cards, resources cards, TC cards etc
it is much easier to reboom. While aoe2 if you lose vills it is huge disadvantage you will probably be much behind the whole game if you lose like half of your vills to early rush.

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This is actually a very interesting take because I’ve always felt since the release of Aoe3 that the ensemble devs designed it with mid sized team games in mind(3v3s), there are so many cards and mechanics in the game that are pretty bad for 1v1 but considerable for team games. Take for example the vanilla civs Royal guard units system, I think the devs anticipated this to be like a defining feature for the civs but in 1v1s it can be rare that you even get to age IV let alone use your civs Royal guard units, which most of the time are actually a debuff because of the increased cost. I think the devs didn’t realize how much troop cards would speed up the game and create the ‘timing’ meta we know the game to be today.

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I think it was still designed with 1v1 in mind, it is just that the devs did not anticipate how ‘bloodthirsty’ online players would be, such that it would be so hard/rare to be able to reach age IV. They didn’t anticipate that everyone would try to rush and end the game as soon as possible as opposed to building up their forces. I am still surprised when someone double barrack Jan rushes and burns down the TC before I can do anything and then thinks it was fun? I don’t get where the fun is?

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The real team was on vanilla aoe3, here on de there is just rubbish there is no skill team but a team of civ ops that dominate others, you can’t understand this if you haven’t played vanilla 2v2 and 3v3 at high levels.

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Well, vanilla had their issues like insta cuirassiers and OPrichnik boxes.

One problem of AoE 3DE is the low player base. With more player base you could rank and match people of your level. But in team games sometimes I get allied players that start farming on age I or II.

Is not like its fine to dont know how to play, bit I shouldnt be paired with that kind of players.

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to be fair, cav box was an issue till about 4th major DE patch

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Insta French heavy cav and orp box’s were terrible. So glad insta French cav was taken out

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This is true and it was a problem when you got there but first you had to get there and every error, especially micro error, was paid unlike the De version, stop the discussion here I don’t want to talk further because it is useless.

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the real jackpot was instant cuir spam + using broken box formation with 1 dragoon

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also russian insta train musks still exist, not sure if its op or not

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I would say instant musk has been their characteristic since 2005 and they mostly rely on this late game strength otherwise they would be meh.

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