To make the Game more competitive Laming should be adjusted/ removed

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hello Players,

as seen I wanna talk a bit about why Laming isnt good for a AoE2 as a competitive Game and how to fix this Problem.

Laming is luck based, not skill based.
The argument learn to adept is completly nullifyed by that fact. Sheeps can spawn very far outside, or very close. If one player has a lucky spawn he finds all 8 instantly and can go cross map. If the other player then is unlucky and has his sheeps far out then it can happen that he cant find the sheep before his 3th circle around his base, while the enemy can do 1 circle and then be lucky and find the enemy sheeps also by luck while the enemy still does his second- third circle.

The same logic applys to boars.
(and before you say luring back a boar requires skill: every 1300+ player can do that, its no skill, its something normal. And laming has a higher impact at higher elos because build orders become more tight)

Also you cant adept, you can only try to minimize the Dmg.
Losing 1 boar to a lame makes a Food disadvantage of around 700 food (~350 food lost and 350 gained for the other). You are factually playing from behind by this moment, which means you cant adapt, you just try to minimalize the Dmg.
Thats also the reason why in pro play most players go Drush Fc if they get lamed, because a normal Feudal Age play is impossible with such a huge disadvantage vs equal players. Hidden Cup 3 Finals are a famous example of laming ruining a hyped Finale. For more detail on this stuff look Nilis Video on why laming should be forbidden: Stealing boars should be banned in (competitive) AoE2 - YouTube

In the end its a non/ to low risk action.
You lose a bit scout hp for a 700 Food Dark Age advantage for a Boar and lose nothing by finding sheep. Ofc you can get your second boar together with your first to avoid getting boar lamed, but this would mean you rot away like 100 food, also giving you a big disadvantage only because the existence of this bad mechanic.
And btw 700 Food in Dark age is MASSIVE, because resources are worth more earlier in the Game.

All in all Laming is a luck based mechanic, with minimal investment which gives a to big advantage for its minimal risk, which is also highly luck based and by this less competitive. (competitive means skill wins, not luck)

Ofc it could be fixed with some easy adjustments.

For example some potential ways to fix this laming Problem:
- The starting Scout cant attack Boars like dears.
(the fact Scouts cant attack dear and gets killed 1v1 by the boar implies that the Devs 20 years ago thought about this problem, but didnt thought back then that people could lure them back. So it probably wasnt intended originally)

With this Change you couldnt lame Boar/ Dear with the starting scout and would have to either send a Vil or milita. Sending a Vil/ milita would be a bigger investment and by this punish an unsuccessful lame. A higher risk would justify more its huge potential gain. Huge gains without risk are normaly just unbalanced, huge gains with a meaningful risk are more balanced.

- Sheeps have a much closer max spawning radius.
Boar and sheep can spawn in a tile radius with a minimal and maximum distance. Because of this sometimes sheep can spawn so far outside that its hard to find, resulting in situations in which your enemy can find your sheeps before you.
By reducing the max spawn radius Sheep would spawn much closer, making it findable on the first to latest second circle around your base, removing the possibility of not finding it in time. Best solution would probably be to make it as close as your berrys as a max to prevent cheese strats in which people go cross map instantly (which also is a no risk strat, bcs 4 sheep + 2 boar are enough to go feudal, and you can find both boar with sheep scout very consistantly)

Conclusion:
ā†’ with these changes laming would still be possible with Vils or a drush, but it would require an investment and justify the potential insanly huge gain by an actual risk of potential lose in the case of failure. Sheeps couldnt be found by your enemy by luck, but still be stole from under your TC if you miss micro.
Over all it would remove some luck based aspects and make the Game overall more skill based and competitive.

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One last note:

Some People use the ā€œArgumentā€ : Its part of the game.
I dont wanna discuss this ā€œArgumentā€ if possible, because just because something exists doesnt mean its good.
Scanning also existed in the game and got removed because it was non competitive.
Also Lithuanian Palas with +300 Attack and the possibility to delete enemy Walls existed at some point in the Game and got removed because it was a bug an obviously not good for the Game.
If a Game wants to be good it should always be considered which aspects of it are good and which are out of date and should be redone or even removed.
(If things would stay just because they existed in the past no matter i they are good or bad then we would still have queens and Kings and not developed as a Civilization.)

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3548Ɨ4752 674 KB

Just some stats about laming. Do what you like with these stats.

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Interesting Statistic, thanks.

Ofc it analyzed Games of Players of different Elos because the Match making system cant always make perfect Games, but despite that its still nice to see that it kinda shows that Laming is impactful.

The 0,3% value at the boar Lame looks like a statistical error (especially in the context of the Sheep statistic) which is natural to happen in only 2,6k Games of players of very different Elos playing each other, but the Sheep Lame statistic shows its huge impact.
Losing 3 Sheep is a deficit of 600 Food and by this similar to a boar and i talked about Sheep and Boar laming which is nice to see that both is comparable with this value.

With 3 Sheeps Lamed we have a difference of 19% or other sayed a 38,5% higher winchance for the Lamer.
In statistics as such a statistical Error of around ~5% or so could probably be expected and rather be ignored, which is why having such a big difference is nice to have, to make sure its not a statistical error but a correlated response.

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Suffice to say, I disagree.

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To make the game more competetive you have to make it less fun.
To make the game more fun you have to make it less competetive.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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Currently, in Arabia 1v1 on DE, this is unlikely due to the way the map script works. Both players get their sheep generated at the same distances from their TCā€™s. So if itā€™s far for player A, itā€™s the same far for player B. So the only aspect of luck here would be when the sheep are very far and one player scouts in the ā€˜wrongā€™ direction. This is just about as minimal as luck can get about sheep placement. While it is desirable to make maps fair, I think the complete removal of luck would mean having to spawn all sheep extremely close to the TC. If we did that, weā€™d have less use of the scout in dark age, since itā€™s one of the most important resources we use it for right now.

So all in all, this would be quite an awkward solution, even if it would technically solve the ā€˜problemā€™.

I donā€™t remember how the map script works for boars, but I wager that in most cases both players could go and lame each other.

It is unfortunately nicer to deal with a drush than with a typical feudal forward. So I can understand why people would lame. Militia can be quickwalled out, so this is basically currently a nice way to not have to deal with feudal age forwards. Or at least delay them long enough to wall up if the enemy isnā€™t going drush for whatever reason.

So maybe undo some of the questionable balance changes of the past and laming will seem like a less necessary/attractive option than it is now.

This is kind of solution doesnā€™t appeal to me. So now I donā€™t have the potential option of laming to delay my opponent, but the scout can still be used as part of the feudal forward that I can no longer delay with a lameā€¦ well then just replace the scout with a horse unit.

Addendum: Iā€™m talking about regular games on the ladder. Discussion is not too relevant for tournaments, as tournaments can always set whatever rules they wish and deem fair.

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i think laming should be banned in competitive games. For pro players its super easy to do and has close to no counter play. Yesterday at the Arabia Invitational Hera was laming and running circles around Tatohā€™s scout for over a minute. All games Hera lamed he won. On the showmatches this week between Hera and Viper every game had laming tooā€¦ one of them lasted 5 minutes, as Viper lamed 2 boars and 4 sheep from Hera.

For the Ladder I dont see it as such a huge issueā€¦ Over time its not that significant if it happens 5% of the time (failing 3%) with a 49% win rate (according to statistics above for boar laming).

1-2 sheeps 51% win rate (so not that significant)
3+ Sheeps lamed only happened for a very small sample of games (40~ out of 2500 games) so not very significant to warrant a fix.

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But just because something happens rarely doesnt mean its no issue.

As you siad it can be seen in pro play that Laming is very broken if one player won all Games. Even if its less impactfull on lower Elos, on around 1400+ build orders are already so tight that it has a similar effect as seen in the sheep statistic (38% higher winrate is a lot)

How the boar statistic happen I cant explain tbh. Laming 3 Sheeps is a 600 Food Advantage, while laming a Boar is 700, so a comparable advantage. My only explanation would be that its a statistical error, because 2,6k Games arent enough normal to get a precise statistic and some weird stuff could have happened resulting in these Numbers (like people forgetting to queue Vils while Laming).
Also another explanation could be that often People who Lame do it nearly all the time and by this winning Games against better opponents they couldnt otherwise, so maybe they really forgot to queue Vils or screwed their Macro while luring the Boar and just are losing against better players more often when they cant get a Sheep Lame (because a Sheep Lame is easier to execute on).

Overall the statistic as well as pro play matches can show that at some level Laming highly impacts the Game results and as you sayed yourself ā€œhas close to no counterplayā€.
If a mechanic has no counterplay, no risk and a huge winrate impact, then why would you want such an unfair mechanic in the Game.
Unfair Games are neither competitive nor fun, so I think also for the leader it would be good to do something about it.

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The food advantage is kinda of converted on late farms, because they dont really need/make use of all the food under the TC before minute 10 anyway, so lamers should be able to adapt their build order slightly to have an edge as they do not need wood as soon, but I assume most dont and float some wood in early Feudal which is why you dont see it having a major impact.
Also, the person that got lamed usually compromise and sacrifice scouting for pushing deer, which then mitigates the ā€œfood advantageā€ significantly (to a point where its not that impactful) and since they are on the back foot already just go for a passive & safe play.

Laming on a tournament has significant impact because you cannot simply go for another game. It may decide a tiebreaker or at the very least produce bad games for the viewership (reason for most tournaments nowadays).

If you end up losing a ladder game because you got lamed 3 sheep (which happens once every 100 games and still 60/40 on you losing) you can just queue againā€¦ It will only happen a couple times per year if you play every other day.

Whilst I do think there is a lot of RNG involved and that most unfairness has to be taken out of the game, I also believe maps should still be random and players have to adapt to it. If we are going after this kind of unfairness, might as well just make the boars and sheep spawn under the TC, mirror gold/stone, mirror hills, mirror forestā€¦ Remove wolfs too, because when I try to trickle my militia to drush super early and theres a wolf on the way 80% of the hp of my first militia is gone, killing the drush, for pure RNG that isnt even related to my opponent outplaying me or at the very least getting lucky.

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The statistics donā€™t make sense to you because your numbers are wrong. Even assuming you steal a boar, itā€™s not even close to a 700 food advantage. What you are actually earning is wood savings from fewer farms, not food earnings. In the case of the boar steal, while the boar is being gathered, you earn an extra .08~.09 food per second, per villager gathering it, until the boar is gone. Thatā€™s the difference between your gather rate on the boar and their gather rate on sheep/farms.

Once the food is actually gone, you save yourself almost 120 wood (two farms is actually more food than what you get out of the boar even without farm upgrades) in farms if you steal the boar successfully. That, plus the small bonus of faster food gained on the boar, is the totality of the boar stealā€™s bonus.

Losing a boar is not a 700 resource swing. Not even close. It might barely add up to 150 total resources after all is said and done, and youā€™ve lost scout HP for any pressure as a result. Thereā€™s a reason why there were plenty of situations where the best players in the world decided in HC4 that the steal wasnā€™t worth it.

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Laming 3 sheep is more like a 100 wood advantage, because 2 dark age farms have significantly more food than sheep plus you gather faster.
I would much rather have 2 dark age farms next to my TC than 3 extra sheep in nearly all situations.

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itā€™s 3 boars vs 1. thatā€™s two extra boars, not one

if youā€™re going to try to do math, at least do it correctly

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Applying this to my post above, losing 1 boar is roughly like losing 120 wood. Gaining 1 boar is like saving 120 wood. So overall youre down 240 wood compared to your opponent. Thatā€™s significant but still quite a way off game ending unless weā€™re talking pro level.

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No, even youā€™re stretching it too far. You donā€™t suddenly have abundant resources because your opponent needed to spend some. You donā€™t net the resources anywhere. Your opponent simply spends more. You still need to spend villager time gathering resources (at which you and your opponent should have equal rates outside of the boar) and you arenā€™t going to have a villager lead as a result of stealing a boar unless your opponent is incompetent.

The totality of the boar swing is well below 200 total resources (probably closer to 150) once you factor in the extra gather speed of the boar (which is the only actual source of a bonus resource being netted by you in the short or long term) and the extra farms your opponent made, even after counting build time. Best not to confuse it with the 3-to-1 boar thing, because you can trick yourself into thinking more than one boar has changed hands and needs to be accounted for.

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I mean yeah, if you take the same time that your opponent used their scout for stealing your pig with pushing in deer, you can probably make up a good quarter of what youā€™re down, so i guess 180 resources is more accurate. minus another 20 or so seconds of idle time, that your vil would normally have by luring the boar.

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If this bothers you so much why not have the sheep coded to you from the beginning also have the boars spawn next to tc. No need to have you find them if they are garrentee yours. You could even have the map explored and get rid of the scout entirely. Then have relic near your base so your relic doesnā€™t get taken. Should your resources also spawn behind your tc. I have played many a game with my resources forward and my enemy behind. That seems pretty luck based.

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Why not just move boars to always be in the back of the base (like HC4) and sheep closer to the TC? It keeps laming in the game but adds more risk for doing it.

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I think itā€™s a fair concept. Still, this would then mean that itā€™s more likely to have 2 forward gold which can be even worse than having forward boar.

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To all our ā€œMath Geniousesā€:

1 boar steal saying is 120 Wood and saying its no huge deal is just wrong, so I gona make you the exact math and explain its consequences in the context of a game:
(Didnt made the exact before because people dont care normaly for these exact things. Simply said you gain a 340 Food boar and an enemy loses a 340 Food Boar, simply said 700 Food Advantage.)

Detailed right Math:

1 Boar steal is a 2 Boar Advantage, because your enemy loses one for the one you gain. Same with Sheep.

First we need gather rates: We gona take the Gather rates of the Vil itself taken from this website:

(which means gather rates without any walking, 100% efficiency, except for the Farm at which we take the estimated value of 0.32 noted in the details)

To make comparable Math I gona make it with the 600 Food of 3 Sheep and ignore its Decay. With Decay the 600 Food will still be less Food then from a well saturated Boar for comparison. Its 600 because one wins and one loses 300 Food.

Also it doesnt matter if a Resource is Food or Wood, in the End any Resource is just a conversion of Vil working Seconds, and by this a Resource. Also any gathering can be seen as Vils working Seconds no matter the number of working Vils, because 10 Vils working 10 seconds is the same as 1 Vil working for 10 seconds mathematically.

The Math:

1 Vil has a Gather rate of 0.41 for Boar and 0.33 for Sheep. To make the math for both we take the average Value of 0.37 for our Food income form Boar/ Sheep.

A Dark Age Farm has a gather rate of 0.32 Food and a Lumberjack has one of 0.39 without walking.

To make 1 Dark Age Farm with 175 Food you need to collect 60 Wood first.
To make this in perspective for every 2.916 Food you gather you need 1 Wood. In other words around 1 Wood for every 3 Food, which means for every Second a Farmer works (collecting 0.32 Food) you need around 0.11 Wood. Wood has a collection rate of 0.39, which means you need ~extra 0.282 seconds.
In total you need 1.282 Seconds for 0.32 Food of a Dark Age Farm, or in other words you effectively collect 0.249 Resources per second of a Dark Age Farm (0.32 Food per Second / the 1.282 Gather Seconds needed for this Food value)

Our Value for Boar/ Sheep gathering was an average value of 0.37 Resources Per Second.
If we gather from a Boar instead of a Farm with our values we make 0.121 more resources per Second with our found values.

We said we would have 3 Sheeps/ 1 Boar, which is around 300 Resources per Player, or in other words a 600 Resource difference in Sheep/ boar collecting.

Now we have to get the number of work Seconds we Safe by collecting Boar/ Sheep instead of Farm and then translate that into the Resource advantage:

The Actual Resource Advantage:

The time we spend working on the Sheep/ Boar is 1621.62 Vil working Seconds (600 / 0.37).
In these working Seconds we would get 0.121 more Resources from working from a Boar then from working from a Farm, which is 196.21 netto more Res (1621.62 * 0.121).

Ofc it wouldnt be absolut 600 more Resources, because your Vils wouldnt Idle in the time they could normaly gather from the Boar, but just gather worse (but ofc might Idle for soem time).

Now lets get these Numbers into context:
the 196 Resource Advantage would be the one that one player would have when he ate all his Boar/ Sheep. This Number can already cause a later Age up time.
On top of that ~ 200 Resources is more then the cost of a Stable/ Archery and by this most likly cant produce a Stable/ Archery at the start of Feudal Age and even if you could you would have less Resources for military.
200 Resource Advantage means ,5 more scouts in a Scout Opening or 2,85 more Archers.
In an actual Game this means you gona have a situation in which one player fights with 5 Scouts vs 2 Scouts or with 6 Archers vs 3. It also means tight Build orders like M@a are impossible to play, because you need some extra gather Seconds to get these 200 Resources you would have had later, meaning you wont have them at the start of Feudal game, making it impossible to produce. On top of all of that this advantage only happen if both Players played perfect which often isnt the case. If you get lamed you often have to click up later, because you first need to get some farms up which need some time to pay for themself and could also cause some idle time.
So on top of the absolute Resource advantage a lot of meta advantage/ disadvantage happens like a slower Age up, low Food income in the beginning because of low Farm count, weird Eco balance because of the need for many wood as well as the situation that one player cant afford Military right away, causing situations like 5 vs 2 Scouts, which then can snowball massively.

All in all shown in the perspective of a Game and what not being able to afford a Stable means or having to spend much more resources on Dark age Farms without Horse collar, which could have been with eco ups otherwise and so on is a massive impact in the Game that snowballs out of control very easily.

Also in Feudal Age with a 21 Up Scout Build order you have 20 Vils and as mentioned before you have a an effective resource difference of 200 Resources. With our collection Values for Dark Age Farms of 2.49 this would mean that with 20 Vils (which is the number you have while Ageing up) you would need ~ 40 Seconds to get these 200 Resources as Food if all of your 20 Vils would be Farmers. Ofc in a real Game you would have much less Farmers, which is an important point, because the Resource type you would have gotten from the Sheep/ Boar would have been Food, and Food has the by farm slowest effective gather rate of all resources in Dark Age if we account for its passive Wood cost (which we must do to get a realistic value).
With a normal Value of maybe 6-8 Farms you would need ~100 Seconds to get these Resources. 100 Seconds is a lot in an RTS Game. In the context of the Game this would also mean it would take you 100 Seconds to get the same scout Number your enemy had 100 Seconds ago, which now will have even more, and the snowball continues.

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