you’re entitled to your opinion but the only time I’ve ever seen pros struggle against goths is when they have a civ like Mayans. fact is that Goths just do not perform well at decent skill levels.
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I have to agree with @MatCauthon3 , Goths powerspike is late-castle and early imp, which on standard 1v1 RM Arabia is the worst time to get a power-spike. Too many games end well before that point. Unless you get drushed (which basically no one does vs Goths) you have a pretty generic civ with very few usable bonuses.
On the other hand, Empire Wars might be a great place for Goths to shine. As much of the vulnerable early game is skipped through…
We already have nearly 40 civs, and I don’t think all civ should have to be designed some 'balanced ’ way in every level and every map setting. Goths is one-dimensional civ, but have average win rate, and can shine in some map setting (even in high-elo) like Socotra where drush/ Laming is more important than other map.
It is nothing wrong to have only one civ which has heavily infantry-focusing civ. It is good for diversity. If we buff goths cavalry and nerf their infantry spam for example, they just become clone of Slavs/Bulgarians, which is bad.
It is opposite, Goths have bonus in dark age (insta Loom) and they lose their early bonus in EW. Also, mobility is more important in most EW setting and militia line is more suck in EW. Goths is picked in some map setting in RM (socotra or some super-open map), but nearly never picked in EW.
The fact is that the observance of goths performing poorly in practice is insufficient evidence to claim that the goths are terrible. You also have to assume/know that pros are not systematically underestimating their available options. Unfortunately because of how rarely pros use infantry, and how successful they are with infantry when they do use it, and the fact that pros are indeed normal people one cannot be confident that this assumption is correct. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying you’re way too confident in your opinion given the available data. I’m 90% sure I told you of this exact thing a few weeks ago for a very similar reason.
The fundamental problem is this: Balance can probably be modelled by a continuous function. All continuous functions possess the intermediate value theorem as a property. If gothic infantry are underpowered at some point early in the game, and overpowered (i.e. extremely difficult to stop) in imperial age then at some point prior to the imperial age the proportional flood of infantry is relatively competitive. Competitive strategies should be seen reasonably often because they are competitive. However we don’t tend to see high level players use this proportional flood earlier in the game. Thus one of the following must be true:
- Balance cannot be modeled by any continuous function (unlikely to be true).
- A specific version of this is that infantry get much stronger relative to other units in imperial age such that a discontinuity is required.
- Players underestimate infantry at some point prior to imperial age (not implausible)
- Competitive strategies shouldn’t be used reasonably often (unlikely to be true).
This argument has almost no assumptions other than the continuity of the relative strength of gothic infantry over time and that players should be using competitive strategies reasonably often. The most likely reason then is the 2nd one: players underestimate infantry at some point prior to the imperial age.
Another problem is the statement: No amount of practice, experimentation, and testing over any amount of time would allow a professional player to have the Goths be competitive (statement A). Goths being terrible (statement B) implies this statement. Statement A is somewhat plausible but I’m very skeptical of it. Logically if B → A then P(A) >= P(B). Since the probability of statement A is low, so is the probability of statement B.
I could go on all day with these sorts of arguments. Fundamentally Goths getting a slight buff might improve the game somewhat and won’t break the civ. However there are a lot of problems with being confident that “Goths need a buff because right now they’re trash”.
I will be curious to see their win rates. I must say that I have no data to back up what I think, but the initial loom bonus is comparatively not very good (if you dont lame it’s just basically a drush protection) and in EW there is already some eco set up for all players, so it’s not like the Goth player will be as much behind as they are usually in RM.
Sorry I’m not trying to be mean.i would truly like to know who you are? are you some pro that we don’t know of?
I’m asking because you seem to make every single one of your posts the only truth and never admit to a single flaw while degrading everything thrown your way.
From stats to pros to gameplay…
So I’m wondering either you know something we don’t or…
Like this kind of stuff…
You speak of theory with such an air of “expertise” but when you get to actual gameplay you fall off the train completely while acting as if what you’re saying is gospel…
Again I’m pointing this stuff out because if you are some hidden pro then there is some hidden reasoning behind it all… but if you aren’t then you are simply acting everything out and what you are saying is really nonsense…
With your defense of auto queue and other such recommendations we can assume the later…
In the same way woels said Malay have the best elephants in the game… only to have them buffed… I don’t see Malay annihilating games… if they were so good before the buff,what insane OP monsters are they now?
Claiming people are overconfident is not the same as saying they are wrong or I am right. Most of what I write on this forum is basically “Hey unless you happen to have studied rather academic subjects you are at risk of committing fundamentally flawed inferences”.
I’ve seen companies go bankrupt or lose out on millions even billions in revenue for the exact same cognitive errors I’m critiquing on this forum. So you’ll have to excuse me for believing a bunch of people who don’t have millions of dollars on the line and a team of experts working for them aren’t also vulnerable to the exact same cognitive errors, group think, etc.
In that respect my AoE2 background is irrelevant for making most of these claims. Pros are the best indication we have of what works. It doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t take a step back from time to time and analyze what problems there might be with the data they generate and how it affects how we should view the game.
I very rarely comment on how people should play the game. What I comment on is how they should analyze the game.
pros don’t go longswords because you always set up eco according to unit type you want to make and as others have explained, massing infantry is too hard and expensive in Castle Age. No bias here, simply you generally need 20 Longswords where 10 Knights are sufficient and 20 Longswords cost more food which is the most valuable resource on top of costing MUCH more in terms of upgrades you must get.
Also thanks for the 2nd year Economics lectures, but really the matter here is much simpler than that, all this lengthy wording only makes you look out of touch with the core of the issue.
You are right on one thing, and and is that pros have biases and so on but you totally don’t know how the game works, it’s not like a game theory graph where you have 4 or so clear choices, in this game many situations are less black and white, for example how many Longswords are “just enough” to feel like you can push for map control vs an archer player, obviously u need +2 armor but is 17 enough to make him kite back to TC AND have enough numbers to pressure buildings or do you need 20? This is a less binary situation and it’s not easy to strategize with so many shades of grey.
One area where I can see pros having biases is civ picking for example, as for stats, they develop new stuff every day but most of it is really FAR less flexible than you think, for example to hit a competitive Castle Age time you must seed farms as soon as you have 60w which already puts a big constraint on your economy, and there are more like these such as keep constant arch production while slowly accumulating 200g needed to click up etc.
But really Longswords ultimately lack a unit type they are good against, technically that could be Pikeman and Skirms, but nobody goes full trash units in Castle Age, or you could argue that they are good against buildings, but since you will most likely be making siege anyway why not mix 1-2 rams instead (which unlike Longswords require 0 upgrades).
Also when you look at HP per food you get from Knight line and Longswords, Knights come ahead on top of having far better base armor.
These are really simple considerations that pros do and there is no need to do any game theory, equilibrium search or hire an economist (which as a person with a sound Physics/Maths background and with FAR better grasp of optimization methods than any economist can hope to master, I don’t see myself hiring anyway).
Surely a person of your educational background immediately realizes that your reasoning here is extremely vulnerable to counterexamples? For example all the following games are pros using longswords to good effect:
- Japanese v Burgundians
- Slavs v Celts
- Slavs v Celts
- Celts v Saracens
- Vikings v Mayans (daut vs yo game 1)
- Celts vs Aztecs (game 6)
- Britons vs Goths
- [Goths vs Japanese] (https://youtu.be/iLM4Uz3wOks)
- [Goths vs Goths] (https://youtu.be/uyhxhn7AYWk)
- Goths vs Japanese
Your reasoning implies basically all of these games had special circumstances. It also implies that Huskarls will face a similar problem in castle age but you can also find examples of those working.
You can find a remarkable variety of situations where castle age infantry are used. Heuristically they seem to be occurring more frequently as time goes on as well. Also players as a whole don’t exactly get worse at playing a strategy or unit over time. So the list of counterexamples is likely to grow over time, possibly to a large enough dataset that the opinion of certain civs change.
Someone of your background can appreciate how difficult the optimization problem at hand here is. You are also familiar with how many optimization algorithms are sensitive to their hyperparameters, especially as it relates to convergence time and the probability of ending up stuck in local minima. We humans suffer from the same things, especially related to biased sampling of the domain. Clearly this presents problems when making optimization inferences from these agent’s decisions at a given point in time.
By the way
An economist would not make this claim because they realize using food as a constraint is inferior to villager time. You lose a ton of relevant info by using resources rather villager time. Knowing FAR more about optimization than any economist can hope to master isn’t worth anything if you solve the wrong problem or use the wrong heuristics to simplify the problem.
But hey maybe I’m just trying to fool everyone for no reason whatsoever. I guess time will tell won’t it?
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After testing infantry play with Burmese I have noticed that LS don’t do too badly vs. cavalry civs. You can always mix in pikes and pressure buildings extremely well. Also because infantry is so cheap you can often justify five barracks and delay blacksmith upgrades. It seems barracks upgrades are more important than blacksmith upgrades and if you get them, get the attack upgrades first
I’m sorry, but mine was just a 1x remark. I have no interest in engaging in a ■■■ for tat debate right now. You are wrong though in everything I read in your post. For example, no, villager time is not the more generic constraint.
The problem isn’t the civ; it’s how people choose to play them. Obviously the goal is to get to imp. and spam infantry but if that’s all you do, you’re gonna get owned by champions. So if you random Goths, don’t just focus on infantry. Adapt your strategy depending on what age you’re in. E.g. Feudal Man-at-Arms with skirms or towers. Then full knights and scorps (or skirm if you don’t have the gold) in Castle age forcing your opponent into pikes/monks/camels/his own knights etc. to buy you enough time to boom and get castles up for the infantry transition in early imp. Or go xbow in Castle if you see he’s going infantry. Only buff I can think of would be to give them a little bit more HP on palisades. Or Heavy scorps to counter champions. People rarely tech into heavy scorp anyway because it’s so expensive and hard to mass, but the option could be there. Even without a buff, full infantry spam with xbow in imperial is pretty hard to stop. Giving them arbalest or eco bonuses would make them too OP. Cheaper infantry is already a huge eco bonus and Perfusion with conscription makes it very hard for opponent to keep up production. Also the fact that Goths are pretty one-dimensional means the opponent is expecting infantry flood, so he will most likely avoid committing to the archer line. So if he hasn’t scouted your military buildings you can surprise him with xbow, scorp, cheap champs etc.
If you play the long drawn out game of fighting in castle age you just get beaten by better eco civs with better armies. Goths only work on boomy maps at higher levels on open maps they’re probs dead unless you outplay opponent hugely.
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Honestly I mean the best proof would be to destroy pros using Goths. Otherwise even tho pros are not playing optimally, they are playing with a higher win rate against Goths then using Goths right now.
Same as Hoang rush, now pros are making use of Celts rush more often in pro games as they realized its power. Also market abuse of Saracen are used more often, e.g. just in last Empire War Duo 2. Not really a thing for Goth until now. I think mathematical proof is good but it cannot beat experimental proof as there are too many hidden variables.
As a (previously) computer science student with some machine learning background, it’s like saying some models and/or their params are superior to others because of X/Y/Z, without providing any useful dataset for others to follow on. The arguments are pointless and impractical by itself.
Yes i agree with this assesment and i dont think it has to be adressed. Chinese are good on high elo and bad on low elo, goths are the other way aruond. Both are fine imo.
I only dislike it when a civ is strong or weak for the vast majority of players like franks and portugese
I think devs should adjust the hunting bonus just a bit. +5 dmg vs boars is fine, but the extra carry capacity is barely useful. They could easily replace it with something like :
- villagers have +5 attack against boars, hunted animals don’t decay while villagers collect food from it
It will be at least useful in most of the sets, granted a bit more extra food in dark age and help them in early stages.
From a global perspective, I wish they could give more viability to Longswords in Castle Age and balance things out by a nerf to perfusion in late game.