This is such a weird take. Aoe2stats is just an observation, not a judgement. They can’t always determine how strong or good a civ is, but that is almost an epistemological problem. You really can’t ever know that, and the closest you can get is through stats with context.
Also, you think it’s nonsense. Why should I care? What makes your opinion more worthwhile than anybody else’s? Back up your claims and arguments. You think Goths and Burmese are trash. Sure, you can keep thinking that. Nobody else has to agree with that.
Lastly, you keep engaging with parts of my comment. In the comment before the last, you ignored everything I said, and zoomed in on a hypothetical despite not knowing what a hypothetical even is. In the first comment, you ignored everything else and focused on just the “top players” part.
I request that you address a reasonable amount of points from my comments. I am not going to further spend my time engaging with you if this is how you want to have a discussion.
What he said was all true, and yes I agree with him also. You take aoestats as a reference like the same guy who created this topic, but why you take it partially and didn’t take it all? I will take the same argumanet that you used which is aoestats. Aoestats also show the KOTD5 winrates. Do you want to convince us that Chinese for example are trash since their winrates according to aoestats is 45% (literally above your Vietnamese one step ahead only) and we should buff Chinese?! Chinese in KOTD5 got 59% winrate.
Lets take another example; Aztecs got 60% winrate in KOTD5 . In the normal ladder Aztecs 48% so Aztecs need a buff?
You should know very well your noob ladder ratings are not a holy reference, also as @Akos mentioned, the ladder have for Goths, Burmese & Celts a very high winrate, and honestly all these civs are trash. Also you see great S tier civs like Burgundians have 42% or Britons have 43% and even Gurjaras 48% so how come this true?!
Pick rate and the wide range of the Elo in the normal ladder gives you inaccurate informations not totally correct, civs winrate is just a first look or a general view thats it.
There are civs insanely strong in the game and their winrates are really bad, like Chinese, Aztecs, Burgundisns and even Berbers. According to your aoestats Dravidians actually have higher winrate above the previous mentioned LOL.
Did you not read the initial post? I don’t care about KotD win rates, and I explained why.
Who asked you to consider the stats over all ELOs? I literally said this:
Where exactly did I say that a civ needn’t be balanced at pro levels?. My entire point is that generally, all civs should be balanced at ELO ranges 1200+, across most maps.
Those numbers are wrong for the ELO ranges I mentioned, but that’s okay. What are you basing the claim that these are “great S tier” civs on? Your opinion? I don’t give a shit. Hera considers britons to be a B-tier civ, and burgundians a C-tier civ, and even Gurjaras are just A-tier. The ratings by other pros are similar.
That other guy has got me really riled up, so I’m going to take a break. I’d come off as far more mean than I want to otherwise. In the meantime, please learn the basics of logic and argumentation. Validity and soundness of an argument, and inductive and deductive logic might be a good start. This might help @Akos as well.
These links might help you: Argument and Argumentation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Argumentation theory - Wikipedia,
I understand if that was the case. But I personally don’t agree, and have other reasons.
You don’t understand any logic 11
okay, dude, there is no further point to this. I don’t want to get into petty, personal arguments or whatever. We’ve gone far enough already. I’ll just block you and move on. Have a good day!
Buff Romans (0% winrate at 1900+) → Lower then vietnamese (ofc, you can play them, so you cant win with them)
Buff Poles (39.67% winrate at 1900+) → Lower then vietnamese
Buff Burgundians (42.38% winrate at 1900+) → Equal to vietnamese
Buff Bengalis (40.00 % winrate at 1900+ for Arabia only) → Lower then vietnamese
Vietnamese isnt the lowest. Maybe we should also focus on other civs? I dont really get the deal of focussing this hard on just one civ.
Also: Winrate dont tell the full story. You probably also need to look at the match up. Not just civ match ups, but also player match up. If a civ is mostly played by the lower rated player, then the expected win rate wont be 50%, but will be lower. And you will always have some random noise in the winrate.
Giving the winrate of Vietnamese is terrible over all elos and also pretty stable for multiple patches i dont mind a buff to Vietnamese.
Why do we need to pick a random cut off number?
1900+ or 1200+: Both are just a fraction of the total player base. Do 1900- or 1200- (depending on your choice) dont count?
This is absolutely true. This was the issue with bengalis, for example. They were never a good open map civ, but people didn’t understand how strong they were on closed maps till much, much later. However, Bengalis are a top tier closed map civ, definitely in the top 3.
However, Vietnamese have been around for a long time, and they have terrible win rates over all ELOs and across map types.
There is definitely some ambiguity in the exact ELO. However, 1900+ and 1200+ are totally different for a couple of reasons. Let me explain myself from the ground up.
I think that civs needs to be balanced for a majority of players. However, these players should be able to use the civ bonuses of this to matter. If you are a totally new player who doesn’t know how to balance your eco, the bengali skirm bonus won’t matter to you. So, the question is this, “at what ELO do you become capable enough to roughly understand and use civ bonuses?”
Now, you could argue that higher elo players understand civ bonuses better, and you’d be right. However, 1900+ELO is just 1% of players. That’s 1 in 100 players. That’s nowhere even close to the majority.
Combining that with the information I have from the community and playing games, I set it at 1200+ELO. This includes roughly 25% of the player base, or 1 in 4.
I can see a case for it to be 1000, or 1400. Above 1600 is only 5% of the players, or 1 in 20. That’s unacceptable to me. People below 1000 ELO doesn’t know civ bonuses enough to use them consistently.
There’s a lot of subjectivity here, so feel free to disagree. However, I hope you understand why I think the way I do.
The main thing you can draw from high elo results is whether or not there’s some trick lower elos are missing. Some civs, like chinese, are notably better at high elos than low. Koreans, for example, are bottom-tier for all elos, but become more middling at higher skill levels.
By contrast, if a civ is bad at all elos, or gets worse at high elos compared to lower elos, then the civ has nothing in particular worth bothering with, and could use a buff. And Vietnamese are between low 4 and low 2 at all elos. (apparently ‘bottom’ is censored, nice work guys.)
That said, that does indicate that what they probably need is something a bit more specific and skill-based; something for better players to play with, and less skilled players to try to figure out. Better battle elephant conversion range would be exactly the sort of thing that better players could play around with.
I feel like civ balance must be focused on every Elo range, no matter what. I would be fine if there are some more outliers at the lower level, but you still have to consider their impact as well. Civs dont need to be OP or completely trash at lower levels. That is no fun experience for them.
Consider a perfectly balance civ for pros, but with a 75% winrate at lower levels. Such thing doesnt make sense to me. Luckily currently this doesnt happen. In general civs are pretty balanced on most settings.
I also watched the vid of SOTL. I dont think i draw the same conclusion. Civ choices having less impact on lower levels doesnt mean civs dont need to be balanced for that level as well. There are currently some tricky civs to balance. Two examples that come to my mind: Chinese is well known for being a good civ for pros, but lower rated players cant seem to use this civ. For Goths was always the opposite. Great for lower levels, trash for pros. I havent looked up their win rates for both Elo ranges, but i do think you have to consider these things as well in balancing civs.
Another objection i have to SOTL: He is looking at the average distance of the winrates from 50%. 1600+ is a subset of 1200+. This means 1600+ contains much less games, which makes averages much more volatile. That is already a reason why the average for 1600+ is higher then for 1200+. That doesnt mean civ picks are more important for 1600+ compared to 1200+. This is a major flaw in his work for me. He should have done its calculation for 3 groups with the same number of games. I dont know if the varience will still increase for higher elos if all groups are of equal size.
Sure, I agree. All civs should be generally balanced at all levels. I also feel like OP civs are a bigger issue at low ELO levels, because they tend to civ pick more. So, 9.84% of people pick franks at <800 ELO range, 8.16% pick them at 800-1200, 6.14% pick them at 1200-1600, and 2.3% pick them at >2000ELO range (I’m also including getting them at random). This means that if my ELO was 500, I’d encounter franks in 1 out 10 games, which is pretty bad for a game with 42 civs. But, if my ELO was 2100, I’d encounter them roughly 1 out of 42 times, which is almost perfectly random.
But if you have to sacrifice balance at an elo range (like with chinese), the priority order should be 1200+ELO, Pros, 800-1200ELO, and then <800ELO.
What I mean is, most people who love the game and play a lot are never getting to 2000+ELO. However, 1200+ELO is a reasonable goal for most. You shouldn’t make people feel disappointed for getting to that ELO level, by making the game unbalanced at that point.
Oh, and here’s a fantastic reddit post which breaks down civs by ELO distribution. You might find it interesting. Reddit - Dive into anything
Vietnamese was one of my favorite civ from release. The main issue they had is that they had slow playstyle missing several important technology, no strong eco bonus.
The ideal bonus would have been the malian wood bonus but scaling over Ages, building wood cost -0/10/20/30%, this would compensate for the lack masonry, and would help afford their archer. It also wouldn’t alter their playstyle but would enhance it regardless of what they are going for.
I’d prefer they not get a dark age eco bonus(since those change too much how a civ is played) unless it’s a gold bonus(gold isn’t much use in dark age). What I’d like to see improved is their mid/late eco as well as their elephants.
Straggler tree bonus would be very hard to implement anyway without also accidentally including the main woodline on some map(either acacia/baobab woodline, or maps that spawn trees on non-forest terrain).
100% Longer lasting would awkward on some maps(ones where you need to cut through woodline) I think it would work fine as technology bonus, like an extra effect to Paper Money or Lumbercamp upgrade.
Gold Shaft Mining added to research tree, basically a buff to their existing eco bonus. Burgundian do get every eco tech alongside their discount.
Shipwright added to research tree, not really relevant for land map, I just think more civ should have the tech, especially Khmer.
Heresy instead of Faith, I really don’t think it would be OP to give elephant civ heresy, let alone the Vietnamese with the second least useful battle elephant(after Dravidian). That was even more true back when they didn’t have Husbandry.
Rattan Archer +3 damage against elephants, so that they have an easier time killing converted elephants if they don’t get Heresy.
The first balance change Vietnamese got was the removal of the Rattan Archer +1 damage vs infantry.
The immense majority of those maps are not highly competitive, so it would be a minor inconvenient as they can always cut trees with onagers. Also, vietnamese are already good in michi due to paper money.
That also would make paper money more appealing. With gold shaft mining, their gold piles would deplete sooner than they do now, so paper money would be of use in more cases.
I guess devs didnt gave gold shaft minint to them because modt units from vietnamese late comp are gold intesive and hard to stop when massed: BBC, rattans, elephants.
That is potentially OP for any Elephant civ besides malay (dravidians also have elephant archers).
More wood savings, and for the long term? Right now, vietnamese’s only perks in water maps are the little wood savings in eco techs (gillnets are useful in hybrid maps), but I dont believe shipwright would help a lot to retake water dominance in full water maps. However, korenas save more wood in water maps and thet do have this tech
Maybe is it time to revert the change due to gambesons? And revert some elephant nerfs, by the way
Yes winrate isn’t a major reference but pick rate has also been quite low ever since they were released. They are one of the bottom 15 civs picked in most common settings in almost all the patches. Its not like they “need” a buff and obviously a few other civs need a buff more than them but it wouldn’t be broken or anything if they got a small early game buff. They’re definitely not a strong civ to become broken with a small buff.
Many of these civs you’ve mentioned have received one or more nerfs in the recent balance change patches while simultaneously some of the previously mediocre civs received some buffs like Vikings, Malay, Ethiopians. So both can happen simultaneously. You can nerf Chinese, meso civs, Franks while also buffing Vietnamese. It doesn’t have to be exclusive. You don’t need a major buff to Vietnamese but something small for their early game could be good for their usability.
Franks, Chinese, Mesos definitely could get some nerf. Gurjaras, Lithuanians have received nerfs specific to certain situations where they were too strong, its probably worth waiting more to see how they turn out before overnerfing them.
Hindustanis have already been nerfed to the ground, very average civ. In case you didn’t know, their eco bonus has been significantly nerfed and since then they’ve not been that good. Mediocre stats in both ladder and multiple tournaments.
He’s just trying to say that a single impactful nerf like the ones he mentioned can pull down a civ much more than 2 small nerfs. So the “number of nerfs” needed isn’t the best way to describe the strength of any civ.
Maybe you just watched the few games where some of those civs won because Hindustanis have 22% winrate, Berbers have 24% winrate, Huns 29% one of the worst amongst civs played more than 10 times. Bottom 20 in terms of pickrates as well. They’re definitely far from being broken or needing a nerf.
You don’t balance around just top 20 players in one setting but collective stats from multiple competitive tournaments at the highest level is a good indicator of civ strength. Like if a civ is always drafted under many settings at the highest level, like meso civs, its obviously an indicator of how strong it is. Likewise if its never picked or picked but has a terrible win rate in multiple settings its also an indicator that the civ is unusable.
True wrt not being focused on one tournament, but apart from KOTD-4, Vietnamese have had a poor run in all tournaments and in ladder at almost all elo ranges.
I agree with you that a weaker civ isn’t something which has poor winrate ONLY at the top level but a civ with poor winrate at the top level, in tournaments and mediocre winrate at semi pro level is definitely weak. A civ which does well only at lower elos is definitely not balanced. And Vietnamese aren’t a civ that are doing ok at mid elos either. They literally have the lowest winrate in 1200+ in this patch, one of the lowest winrates in all patches (over 100k games, 2k games for Vietnamese) So while it might not be the weakest civ, its definitely one of the weaker civs.
How some people posted here it look like they didnt care at all about lower ratings. Some even claimed they dont have any voice in this debat. That is clearly not true and why i posted this.
I do agree with the fact that of you have to choice go for high elo. So i do agree with your way of priorities. For high level we need the highest standard, as long as it wont be too bad for lower rated players. For high level, a difference of 5% in winrates between highest and lowest might be acceptable, at lower ratings at might go up to 10%. Something like that sound fine.
This give you most priority to higher rated players, awothout neglicting the lower rated players.
Theoretically, yes. But if I was a game designer, I wouldn’t consider this at all under current AoE2 circumstances. I have 3 main problems here. First is the sample size for a balance patch. If 300 tournaments were played on a balanced patch and you had 10,000 games, sure. But each balance patch changes things, and sometimes resets the information you have. Second is player bias. At high level, everybody knows everybody else. That creates a very different environment from matching with randos. At the highest level, balance is also about knowing other people and how they play. Third, this says nothing about a majority of player base.
Rather, I’d just take the word of pros. I’d ask the opinions of the top 300 players, summarize it, and work with that.
Just so that we are clear, I am completely in support of buffing Vietnamese. They are in my top 3 civs which need a buff/change. In fact, if I could only buff one civ, I’d pick vietnamese. So, you don’t have to convince me of anything about that
100% agreed. I don’t think someone’s ELO matters to the conversation at all, as long as they can communicate their ideas well, accept criticisms, and have enough of an investment in the game. I’d take the word of a 500 ELO player who has played 10,000 hours and genuinely enjoy the game over someone who has played 100 hours and have 1000 ELO.
