You spoke about openness and ofc more woodlines mean less open.
Sorry but that narrative that arabia was more open/agressive is just wrong. The stats just show that undeniably.
And also we know that formerly arabia was played way more defensively outside of huns war.
I don’t know why you even try to claim the opposite. Often it was a stone walling feast with chinese stone walls.
Ofc this was way to defensive for our current standards, but the narrative it would have been more agressive is just wrong.
But isn’t this statement already increadibly biased? Like where is that takeover? I mean isnt what happened that the meta became increadibly defensive and there basically was no feudal age aggression except for making couple of scouts or drush. I mean so many people complained that arabia as an open map became full walls vs full walls. And from the games I played and saw in tourneys or on ladder I share that perception.
So where is that takeover? So the patch was rather a reaction to very defensive meta. And kotd ara was added bc of tourney. Might be changed soon again. Although I think it’s a pretty good arabia.
Maybe people like arena bc its a good map? And even if it’s bc of people being tired of aggressive maps that’s totally fine. At least here you don’t pretend you play an open map just too wall everything and go castle age.
I agree that drush FC was too strong. But that’s only one single strat. Also it mostly was to set up for later agression with xbows or knights.
I think if only one strat becomes too strong in the meta this doesn’t justify for a major change that affects so many other strats.
Also the change isn’t well targeted as the new design actually favors militia line openers even more.
Lastly it’s not true we didn’t saw feudal play. It maybe wasn’t as much as we probably would like, but there was feudal play and it was important.
It’s a heavy exaggeration to claim that there was no feudal agression - and btw it was way more archer play than scout play…
And in the current kotd we saw a lot of full feudal actually. Is this the goal we are aiming for? Most games decided in feudal already? Where half of the unit variety isn’t even available? Where you can’t even get greedy with your TC addition?
And whoever gets the advantage in feudal can then snowball the game out of control with adding then the right amount of TCs while continueing being agressive?
I liked it the way it was before that the more “defensive/greedy” player in feudal was forced to take the initiative to have a comeback. With the new heavy feudal play that’s not longer possible cause the one who got the advantage in feudal can add eco behind his agression and there is basically no comeback potential for the one who is behind.
It’s better we had it the way before, where the military snowball wasn’t as strong and the best way to snowball was to be greedy, this lead to very exciting games as it allowed for comebacks
Also interesting thing that this lead to a constant adaption to the current game situation, as the way to snowball was inversed to the way to get a lead or come back into the game. I think this was one of the key ingredients of the game being exciting. You needed to adapt all the time to the situation.
That’s what a strategy game should be about, constant adaption. That’s what makes it so exciting.
No, the meta was very agressive. At least in high elo (not pro, pro games usually are much longer than 1800-2000). Many games not even reaching imp.
Who said that? I think it’s a totally acceptable strategy. Ofc it shouldn’t be meta in arabia, but it also was never meta. It was more exception, just be fair here. We saw it, but it was never meta.
More often we saw drush FC which was a bit too strong, I agree there. But that can’t be an excuse to destroy the whole stratgic variety the map offered before. That’s hypocrit.
EDIT: I also don’t want to be all “negative” here. I already proposed a smooth solution that would encourage more feudal play and nerf drush fc: Just let castle age take 20 seconds longer to research. Easy solution that wouldn’t reduce the strategic diversity but smoothly give the right little tweak into a bit more feudal play.
Well MbL just tower rushed bruh’s woodlines yesterday in KOTD 4, but not as soon as feudal age started, obviously. I’m not familiar with pre-DE tower rush but I assume it was way faster than the one performed in MbL vs bruh’s game.
He was Incas vs Sicilians. Donjons really are too wood heavy to counter tower rushes, and eagles make short work of any archer/skirm combo.
Yeah, let’s keep the same speed they have now, what could go wrong? oh yeah, they are useless and a meme. I don’t care if they nerf the base stat to compensate or whatever, but in a game like aoe2 ,slow speed melee unit = useless unit. Siege units like Ram is an exception because it has huge hp pool and p armor to compensate.
That’s fair, but I have better raiding options as Malian, why would I want to build gbeto? it’s a redundant unit.
That’s false advertisement in a lot of cases. If they face against range UU, they are goners. They are only useful against melee UU. But then why would I wanna build them while champ + pike are cheaper and far easier to train?
That’s another topic for another day. Why do I want to complain about that in this thread? And yes I do have complains about that too.
Pre-DE Trush started as soon as reaching Feudal, with 4-5 forward Vills and maybe 3 M@A. MBL seems to prefer making a few Archers before going forward with 2 - 3 Villagers. It’s not as aggressive as it was, but I’m pleased to see it working at the tourney level anyway. And I hope it catches on more during and after the tourney.
honestly they could easily raise the wood costs for palisade walls by another 1 or 2 lumber.
heck, add 1 stone to it for all i care. palisade walls are a cheese tool in its current form and needs to be addressed.
when i think of medieval pitched battles between nations i get pictures of epic clashes of armies, not peasants juggling stick walls to juke access to a particular area or blocking building foundations.
Interestingly you get this more in game when people have walls to protect the eco. If you can’t raid the eco you’re much more likely to take a fight against the army. Less walls means more mobile raiding than pitched battles.
If you want actual pitched battles something like Medieval Total War is perfect for that.
No. I’m not exaggerating. Their entire stable suddenly becomes better, including insane camels.
They get reliable cav archers and of course cataphracts with 170 hp whose only real weakness would be archers.
He isn’t. Give them bloodlines and they probably have the best camels in the game, almost FU hussar, almost FU paladin and probably op cataphract if you can get to them. Considering that byz rather focuses on ranged and counter units than cav this would be a pretty good example for an overbuff.
Byzantines only need a buff for Team games.
Byzantines are one of the hardest civs to master. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad civ. It’s just a civ that doesn’t shines in lower elos.
So the only thing I would change about them is changing their Team bonus to one of their civ bonusses to make them more viable in team games.
Sorry, but there are just some civs that are harder to learn than others and byz is just one of these civs you need to have a lot of experience to play with. But that doesn’t makes it a bad civ, just hard to learn.
I disagree with your assertion that Arabia was “very versatile” when Old Arabia was pretty much the textbook example of “wall-and-boom” strat.
Very much agree with you, chap. There are plenty of folks here that are prima donnas here that fatally mistake their personal opinion as “fact” that needs to be disseminated as gospel for all Age II players.
It is disgusting.
Mat is correct @CloudAct . The Byzantines’ Stable roster would be TOO good, as coupled with cheap infantry trash (Halbs and Skirms) plus cheap Camels and the Logisitca Cataphract, Byzantines would be insane on land battles.
Now if you WERE to add Bloodines to Byzantines, then it would be best to then balance Byzantines by removing Paladins and maybe Hussar upgrade to compensate for that, but it would leave Cataphracts still too strong unless you nerfed that unit.
But Byzantine cavalry is still fine without Bloodlines, quite honestly.
Remove Hussar and Paladin upgrade in exchange for bloodlines, it will be fine. Cataphract would be countered by cav archers whether they get +20 hp or not. However, generic Paladin wouldn’t be counter against Cataphract+Logistica anymore but Leitis, Boyar, Coustiller, Teutons and Franks Paladin will be still good counter. Current Cataphract isn’t OP unit. It is useful for Byzantines composition but it need buff tbh.
