Various comment and opinion on the new arabia after a lot of games

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hey! So i have played quite good number of games since that new arabia came out and i can say that is the first time since DE came out that i take pleasure by playing ladder, it even gave me desire to try to reach the highest elo as possible, i have even reach the 1900 on it, now trying to get 2k, so great thanks for theses changes, a lot of players that i know have the very same feeling and enjoyed the new arabia. So what is the good and bad on the current arabia ?

Lets begin by the good:
-The hills are perfect and are clearly better than the old one where the ground were completly flat and you’ve got 1 hills everytime always on the mid which is important to control and that’s all, these new hills generations is more random plus promotes both agressives play and scouting, so i very like it and i think that’s the best change in the map.

-Distance of forest :
This distance simply promotes as well agressives play and get the classic m@a archer wall nerfed so good changes for the variety of the game.

-Back and forward ressources :
Number and type of ressources in the back are random but still remain fair because of some ressources always forward and the full wall becoming much harder (you cannot have 100% ressources back or forward) and that’s a very good thing which promotes again agressive play while clearly keeping the possibility of playing defensive.

-Variety of strategy possible:
Drush fc if you got berries and 1 gold in the back and preferably 1 stone as well then you can drush fc especially in some matchups vs scout opening, i was thinking that the drush fc is dead on the new arabia at first but by playing it, i was wrong i even think that is easiest than the old arabia because of m@a opening less present !
Scout rush is now cleary viable and wasn’t before
m@a archer or m@a trush both usefull while getting nerfed and less omnipresent
drush archer still viable as well when berries and gold in the back i think but personnaly i don’t like it, i find it very weak compared to maa opening
You can also forward with skirm / spear or archers.
and probably a lot of thing that i forget.

Now the bad things imo:

-Third gold is too far away and even get the feeling it’s an extra gold now, get it nearest while keeping that 3rd gold the most farest is probably a better thing for example like 8 tiles nearest seems ok.

-Forest as well: sometimes not generated beacause they are generated outside of the map so it’s a bug which prevent some players of forest or some trees which is bad
Plus 2 forest in the back is great but i would put 1 on the front or even 2 sometimes because of variety, the important thing is to prevent these forest from making a full wall easily, a full wall should be done on the early castle age if wanted, before, you can still wall tc in dark, feudal as now.

-Cows very minor :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: but they are very annoying especially to scout with or with lame, pls remove it from arabia.

I sometimes saw comments where the map is always the same thing : full feudal, that is totally false, and i wonder if that’s just because no full walls means always full feudal for them or juste that they are just too used to early timing for castle age and getting 22-23 min castle is a full feudal ?

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I totally agree.
We finally got a real arabia.
Just remove that forests always spawn in the back and its perfect imo.

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That’s just the basic openers
 Where is the strategy part? Are you only play rushes and get to 1.9 k elo with it? potentially even 2 k?
The game is in a worse state than I expected


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I agree. The game is in a bad state. Unfortunately rushing is the best way to secure wins right now. And here I am even speaking against my own interests, because I personally love going full YOLO.

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Where is the strategy part in getting always the same opening ? and wall and wait ?
About my type of gameplay you could not getting more wrong i am know for lacking good mechanics and being good for knowledge and strategic aspect of the game :slight_smile:
btw a lot of games that is played end up in early imperial or mid castle, i also played some megarandom as well where all win, so don’t use it as argument pls.
if you etablish a strategy by dark age this is a mistake that’s why i don’t talked about it you should just think for the early feudal then adapt exemple :
-you go for a scout rush by looking civ match up berries etc wat opponent want to do ? how is reacting to your opening ? is he full walls ? some factor which can lead to follow your strategy in a certain way.
-up castle ?
-adding archers?
-do a full scout with bloodlines?
-add skirms in defense and go up castle ?
etc etc if you want to make scout fc 2tc kts because of your map dark age and civs it can be a bad thing because you are not taking opponent’s reaction in factor.

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That’s just not true. We had a lot of different openers played before the patch. That’s just a wrong claim.
And yes drush fc or just a small rush into walling and going up are also a legitimate openers.

This patch destroyed variety in openers.

Not to mention that strategy is also lacking a lot, cause after the first few rushes often one already has a clear advantage in the game and the game only develops from the other player need to find a way back in the game
 What results in mostly the same game scenarios every single game.

Usually even more rushes, as getting a counter raid in is actually the best way to have a comeback.

How cun raid into more raid into more raid be “strategic variety”?

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So you said both drush fc and rushing is viable then:

I don’t understand

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Rushing is not all in 1tc nor play agressive that’s juste one way to do it the most extreme and not the best in most cases.

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A good player wants to play, so he can and wants play WITHOUT walls in feodal and another ages.

A fake good player wants to wall and decide after that, between imperial and post-imperial, what will be his strategy. Maybe wall stone, it is more secure.

If you want to play WITH walls, there exists maps for that : arena and another. So leave Arabia as it is: open and, suddenly, interesting.

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People will have to learn to play real defensive game. Active defense, no just walling and quickwalling
 look Hera’s play style
 this is play defensive


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Sorry, but that way just can’t work currently.
There are civs that have rush timings 3 vills earlier than the “common” ones.
If you can’t stale their rushes with your walls you can’t bring your own rush in to somehow balance it out.

In the current arabia all rushes are getting guaranteed eco damage, so if you can’t be agressive because you are put in defence all the time, you are just dead.

Civs with bad early agression potential just need walls to be competitive, it’s that easy.

And it kills strategy aswell, it’s always one player with a lead very early already. The opponent then forced in defence and must try to get back into the game by getting raids in himself. It’s no variation, just raid after raid. No unit comps, no matchplan, not playing the map even anymore.
Arabia is dead.

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Don’t think so but you can still tc wall which is clearly enough for early rush and is not that expensive at all, probably even cheaper than old full wall

no

if you take a lead, you take a lead yes ? whats the problem ? did you think than losing some vill in feudal must be to just the show ? it should create avantage while old do not because your can just wall then rewall and no "raid when you got a disvantage of army is the badest possible decision in early stage especially.

In defense don’t mean you are dead just you are defending an advantage that you get if you suceed to , most of the time economic

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I totally agre with le loup argentĂ©, and I don’t understand why some of you are saying that the rushes are overpowered because walling with the tc is still possible most of the time. And if you can’t do that walling your ressources is good for the beggining of feudal age.

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Sorry but Playing defensive like Hera or Viper is the highest art of AOE2. It has a reason they are the top players. Cause others just can’t play defensive as they can. It’s like you would demand to “Just throw the football like tom brady.” Nobody can throw it like brady. That’s why he is the goat.

Again, that’s extremely hard, and in the current arabia I think a “normally skilled” player just can’t play defensive anymore and get away with it, at least in high elo. It’s just not possible anymore. You have to play agressive.

Maybe Viper and Hera, but the reality is that 50 % of the players need to play “more defensive” in 1v1s than the other one. Who the fuck is still willing to be that defensive part if the balance is shifte so heavily towards being agressive?
I usually played that part in the game, cause it was acceptable. Generally offensive play was better in arabie but by an acceptable margin, and I was fine losing games early sometimes because i chose to be the more defensive playstyle type of gamer.

But the new arabia is just heavily disbalanced towards the agressive playstyle. And I’m not willing to play that part of being the “more defensive player” anymore. That’s BS if I lose to a player who only knows the standard rush buildorders just because I play defensive. Before I had a Chance to win the game with my knowlegde, now that’s not the case anymore.

Do I now have to play arena to have a game with features strategiv decisions? I hate that map. It’s so restrictive in what you can play.

But if arabia isn’t possible to reach lategame anymore if you opt to be the “defensive” part, I maybe must just look for another map. And I wonder how long it takes until others with the more defensive mindset will come to the same conclusion, that it just doesn’t make sense.

And how long it will take for the “aggressive” players to see that there is noone more willing to play the defensive part of the game and it’s just all-out raids all the time, complete strategical stagnation. Always the same game.

The optimal balance for the map to worka around is a map where 50 % players are leaning more towards being agressive and 50 % lean towards being more defensive. Only then an interesting RTS with a lot of interaction and strategic decisions can be achieved. Someone needs to be willing to take that defensive part.

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Yes it requires skill ? and no not only hera and viper are able to defend this map come on


lol ? that is probably why the meta is to play defensive

If you die on early “standard rush build order” that is very early like 12min; at this time not only tc wall is clearly enough, but also if you are unable to catch early scout rush or maa opening of the other player, you deserve to loose, because you are not defending well enough which is easy as i said just wall tc and you are safe
 if you die after that is not because of ‘standard rush build order’ that is because your opponent play and adapting better than you so again, what is the problem ? by listening to you, it feels like walls are removed and castle age removed
 Standard games on this new arabia go to mid castle ealry imperial
 and yes you can go further if you have the capacity to do so

Arabia is not a map where imperial age is the only option, again i feel like that is you want which is fine but you have other maps for you currently in the map pool: arena, ghost lake for example

If you are talking about those which not make army to defend themself and only counting of being full wall and add tc without any control map that is a MISTAKE so yes, now it’s punishable more easily while in the past that was a viable option because the map was so easy to defend. How often i just completly stop any agression with just getting walled and adding wall when necesarry while getting some stone to get a castle.

Probably yes, and this new arabia is the nearest from that very probably now if you thinks that old arabia was “fair” for both agressive and defensive i don’t know what to add on top of that
 i already explained why you could play defensive , if you still loose to these strategy as early or just on a forward siege that is because you don’t defend well and that is a fact, if you make army that’s doesn’t say you are agressive that can also said you defend there is middle ground between full wall 3tc and all 1tc.

You also did’nt respond to that. Did you just dodging things that’s doesn’t arrange you or what ?

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My take on this is just to try and make the most even of this bad map gen. The meme potential of the new map gen is legendary. All the laming, tower rush, tc douche is more possible than ever before :slight_smile: