What is the point of TGs?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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1700 RM player here.

I recently started playing TGs and I’m 1200 elo or something like that in TGs. To me, it seems that while I can climb over a large number of games, TGs are largely random, and I would say you can write a sketch equation of TG elo, and RM elo that looks like this:

TG elo = RM elo - ~200

It seems to me that I play with players who are 1k elo in RM, and have 0 clue how the game works, not only in terms of gold unit comps being stronger than trash units, but bad at everything: booming, reading the game, controlling the map, choosing an adequate unit in Feudal/Castle…

I don’t even expect them to macro well, or make as large of an army as I do, but often I see people on Arabia flank thinking that defensive Castle into defensive Organ Guns and 3 TC boom is the play. Or on Arena, I’ve even seen a guy who is officially 1200 elo in RM do a 34 pop “fast” Castle as Poles flank making sure to pick ALL eco upgrades before clicking up (stone mining upgrade included!). He also forgot the 2 buildings so he hit Castle age at like min 23 (on Arena) and got destroyed by a Fast Imp Bengalis Monks play. I, his Teutons pocket, admittedly didn’t scroll my screen on his map because I assumed he could survive until min 30-32 (at which I had 6+ Stable Paladin ready).

Since I’m often the best player in the team/highest score and clear 1 guy relatively fast, I am often doubled/tripled, probably as a result of enemies X’ing my TC or something like that (“let’s kill this annoying guy”).

I try to explain to these people that in TGs, you cannot make Spearmen and Skirmishers only, occasionally I sling resources, or send army to help clear the army of my flank if he is losing. Still, it’s often not enough, I can clear 2-3 Xbow armies from my flank but this doesn’t give him incentive to reboom and make army, it’s like once they are shocked by an attack, 1200 elo players panic and stop booming, stop making army, the shock is too much for them to recover and they don’t understand that even if he has 20 Castle Age Xbow, those are good enough to clear the Burmese Halbs killing my Bengalis Elephants trying to steamroll everything.

Anyway.

To me it seems TGs, is a mostly random experience, and a not fun one at that. Most people in my TG elo (which I consider very low elo) are convinced that on flank the play is FC into UU and on pocket the play is 3 TC boom (with army made only in Imperial Age), regardless of map. Trying to explain to them that, for example, a pocket must generally supply Scouts in Feudal is often met with condescendence and a “I will just fc and make Knights” (which from 28-30 pop of Arabia FC, even if you succeed, is not enough Knights to beat a full Scouts play). Very often what they call “make Knights” is 4 Knights without Bloodlines and maybe with only +1 armor, which any Feudal full Scouts crushes easily.

Thoughts/experiences? I don’t think I will stick to team games, as I find people leeching off of others boring, but maybe I am not as good of a TG player as I think so I’m open to hear stories/suggestions of how to play pocket/flank in low elo (I generally prefer flank as I find it a more skillful role but I play whatever is needed or whatever I’m in the mood for).

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You could try finding people to play with who know what they’re doing? Even using voice if you wanted to go that far.

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so you are saying this game is like other games online? With mostly griefers, especially in low elo? Tbh I’m not THAT committed to TGs to look for a team, but you are saying it’s normal to get bad teammates in solo queue? Tbh, to make a small statistics, in most TGs where the map was Nomad, enemies always went water and my allies went water only 1 out of 5 games from memory.

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I’m not totally sure, I haven’t played many TGs, but from what I’ve heard, at least at the lower level, most people seem to play like how you’ve encountered, but this seems to change as the elo increases, so you could try and climb as fast as you can as well if you wanted?

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I think someone with this attitude and reflection just shouldn’t play TGs.
But it looks like exactly these people seemingly are super addicted to TGs despite always complaining about how bad it is…
Sometimes I have the impression they only play TGs so they have some others to complain about…

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Nah TGs are not my thing, I gave them a fair try.

Incidentally, my attitude is good I think, I don’t mind bad players, it’s leeches who have this mindset “boom to imp 200 pop THEN make army” that make me upset because they shouldn’t join TGs with such mindset of someone carrying Feudal and Castle X-1 v X since they wanna pure boom.

ok interesting. Ty for sharing, I will maybe try 5-10 more games, see if I am capable of climbing or not. I’m sure there are ways of exploiting bad teammates, such as using them as meatshield or something like that, just I don’t wanna theorycraft people problems too much and would like to play “standard”.

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I never Play with randoms. Sometimes i or the host forgets to untick the 4v4 when we are only two or three and most Times i feel we get a teammate that quits as soon as he is under pressure. Sometimes we win the game nonetheless sometimes we loose. I once had a teammate that did a landing on Islands with me being his pocket. I supported him until he got a castle on the enemy island and then joined the 3v3 waterfight which we were winning. Somehow His castle got killed and be blamed it on me for being his pocket… He then Landed me and destroyed my Base with mangonels to “teach me a lesson” and " i will remember to Support flank" and let the other two die against three?

But yeah, TG is only fun with Friends. Alot of early quitters, griefers and sometimes just toxic idiots… you dont have to take the game super sirious for me but at least dont be an ass.

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I played as solo player and most of my experiences were like this one
image
Even if the allies and enemies have the same tg elo, on 1x1 they are not close some guys are 1.9k, 2.k and my allies up to 1k or 1.2k max, the only elo that reflects the skills is the 1x1 elo, the tg doesn’t mean anything other than how hard you can stack and climb the ladder with a team.

I don’t play that much and i am not interest in giving it another try anymore, i tried for +2 years with the same outcome, DE tg match making offers the worst team games experience from all aoe2 platforms.

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There isn’t a thing that will encourage people to get good so many people don’t bother to learn the game. I saw a lot of players have 1k+ games with only 1k elo. Obviously they refused to learn the game at all.

In low ELO games, the problem is that any strategy can win games so people don’t need to learn meta. I have never attacked anybody before imperial age and I can still win 50% of the games in 1.4k ELO solo TG. This kind of experience clearly shows that something is wrong. Probably the devs should greatly increase the price of TC to deny the booming play.

The players who don’t care about winning and refused to learn the game shouldn’t be allowed to play on ranked games because this is a passive aggressive toxic behavior , it will make more people stop caring about the game.

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Oh my god

so much to unpack here…

First, this discussion has been had over and over in other games. If you want to read different takes on it (or rather, the same 2 takes a million times), go to LoL forum, search for “Elo hell” and…enjoy. The tl:dr is:
-No, you can’t be “hold back” by your teammates because if your teammates suck at a given elo, your opponents will do so, too. That makes 1 competent player and 3 noobs vs 4 noobs and that should be an easy win.
-Yes, it can take some time to reach higher mmr but not that much.

I wont go into this general discussion too much and instead focus on the aoe2 related stuff.

TG elo = RM elo - ~200

You’re kinda right, but not completly.
TG is just a different set of skills than solo, and flank is a different set of skills to pocket.
TG imho is more about where to place your army and good execution, and less about unit combos (since you just play archer/kts anyways…). Scouting and mindgames become less important, proper army position gets more important - because a bad fight wipes not one, but two armies and you can’t comeback by building the correct counter units because there are none.
Same for pocket/flank: Flank is more micro oriented, with a fast start and then a constant “1v1” against the other flank (lets be honest here, the cav player just does a stand ground patrol and then goes back to macro 11). Pocket is more macro oriented, the important skill is to know where to place your army; do you support your flank, hit enemy flank, hit enemy pocket, even hit other side pocket? Do you jump or just patrol?

I think all those remarks hit a similar tone: Bad players be bad, and in the extreme case shouldn’t even be allowed to play.
The extreme case can be easily dismissed: If bad players should not be allowed to play, then please, Mr. Freewin, uninstall - because at 1.4k, you are pretty bad. Furthermore, if we start banning players below you, your elo would even drop further (as there is none feeding points into the system anymore).
But to the more general point of “bad player”: The problem is less “bad”, and more “inconsistent”. We all do oopsies - we shoot our boars, delete vills instead of palisades, movecommand entire armies into the enemy - but in 1v1, its just a “lol gg”. In teamgames, its not that easy. For example, there is a player who always goes mongol step lancers. He has solid macro/micro, and sometimes he overruns enemies - sometimes he failes and looks like a fool. I wouldn’t call him a bad player, but its really frustrating to play arena and see your flank open step lancers for no apparent reason. But I had him as an opponent on a more open map and it was really difficult to fend off his raids…again, its not about beeing bad, but about consistency: We call a player on our team “bad” but call ourselfs “ouch, unlucky game”. If we just accept that players not only have different strengths, but also better and worse days/matches, there is a lot less frustration.

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this is not necessarily true because:

a) there are smurfs
b) people grouping up are generally more likely to coordinate (and to make army in Feudal/Castle to begin with)
c) etc.

Is it possible to climb through this? Definitely. But, in single games, it’s possible for bad players to drag down good ones. The important part here is not the ELO number, is the quality of games overall, if most games you have trash mates, win or lose, it feels like a trash experience.

I agree on this part. I don’t find macro THAT hard, how hard it is to macro is largely overrated imo, which is why I consider flank a harder role. Dropping farms and sending 20+ to gold can be only so hard, macro for Knights is generally easier than macro for Archers + Pikes + Siege etc.

I tried to convey the idea that we should NOT ban people for being low elo, but rather for trying to piggyback on good players. It’s one thing to only have 10 Knights when you could have 20 cuz your macro is bad, another is having only 3 because you just wanna 3 TC boom with bad macro. The former is a low elo player trying his best, the latter is a low elo player expecting carry and that’s what we call an “anti-mate”.

how is making 3 Knights and 3 TC booming as a pocket Franks, “inconsistent”? You should know that +2 Knights in early Castle age are extremely strong, particularly when paired with Xbow, and these days everyone watches TheViper or a random Youtube channel to know that the play in TGs is to make A LOT of army, in TGs generally booming is a bad strat. I can’t even excuse these players for being ignorant about the TG meta because EVERY 1k player I’ve met knows EVERYTHING about the game (when I was 1k, 80% of my games were, Mongols on Valley, Spanish on Nomad, Portuguese on Mediterranean, Franks/Hindustanis on Arabia - so I don’t believe for a second that these people don’t watch youtube when they know EVERYTHING about the game when they play 1v1 at least at at a theoretical level).

I don’t think Mongols Step Lancers are “RNG driven”. Step Lancers are good in early Castle age, as they can deny walls easily, and bad later on. Equal numbers of Knights generally beat Step Lancers. Camel/Step Lancer mix probably beats Knights cost-effectively but otherwise the main weakness of Step Lancers is their 1 PA. Overall in TGs I reckon they are hit-or-miss, you can make a few in early Castle age, but I wouldn’t commit to the unit long-term, even the Mongols ones with increased HP.

I judge by scoreboard generally, which is a fairly objective way of judging. I often have best/2nd best Villager High, nearly always most kills secured and very often the best KDR. My food collected as pocket is often 2x the food of any other player in the game (cuz I macro like a 1.7k and not like a 1.2k) and even then, I sometimes win only in Imperial. 2x food collected than any other players means, I have 2x the Knights of the enemy pocket, and you gotta wonder, how many Xbow armies I gotta clean up on the flanks before my flanks build an Xbow mass and push the enemy flanks back? But no I clean up 5 Xbow armies from enemies, my flanks see that and think it’s a good excuse to 3 TC boom into Ghulam/Camel mix. A recent game I had, Hindustanis + Magyars pocket, Hindustanis did 1 Castle Ghulam (with bad upgrades) vs Mayans flank, Magyars teched STRAIGHT CA (which idk if you know but CA is a unit you normally tech into in Imp because in Castle Age you generally can’t build a critical mass before being overrun).

Meanwhile opponents tryharding in 1200 elo, stone walling WHOLE map, 2 players even did fortified wall! And set up trade (neither of my allies bothered making a market for me).

We won but ultimately such games don’t feel very fun.

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Tell me you are not good at English or don’t have enough education. You also could be too mad to understand what I am talking about

Here is a common logic. It is okay if you didn’t know 1+1 at age 1 but it is not okay when you are at age 10.
People start with 1k elo, they played 1k+ games and still have 1k elo, and you are telling me this is called bad instead of toxic ?
Still, having common sense in ranked games should be required. Not asking for trade in early castle age and not trying to wall half of the map on standard maps. In my opinion, they need to pass tutorial tests or beat a hard AI without cheese.

Telling people to uninstall is toxic so probably the toxic players I mentioned include you.
You need to understand the terms of low elo. new players ( noobs ), and the bad people who don’t want to learn the game at all. Please read and think first before you reply something.

Your example is close to the case I mentioned before, any strategy can win games in low ELO games.
Your example is legit I wouldn’t call him bad because it is not a completely troll strategy. However, there are really meta with higher win rate on Arena.

You must have experienced early resign and throw the game on purpose. Your opponents might not do the same to make the match fair.
Some people just don’t care about the game. We can do nothing to them. I blame the game for not reward respectful players and punish toxic behaviors

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The fact that already your 3rd point is just “etc.” shows me you didnt really think that trough :smiley:
I mean, thats a discussion that has been had over and over in other games and im glad (or: WAS glad…) AoE2 was spared until now.
Again, if you want to know in detail why you are wrong, just go to any LoL forum and read the endless discussion there. But in very short: It does not matter WHY the enemy team beat you. They, a random set of players of the same elo as your teammate, beat you. If they are really that bad, this shouldn’t happen, at least not regularly.

Now you’re just beeing dishonest. Playing bad is pretty much the same as having low elo. It does not matter WHICH mistake the player makes - you can’t ban them for mistakes, period.

So you are telling me you were spectating a random player you met through multiple days, just to see how they play? I doubt that.

Nope. That point is so stupid i only need 3 letters to refute it: Lyx.

If you are the best player in the game, prove it by winning. Easy as this.

Honestly, you just came here to rage about your teammates. If you can’t handle playing with other players and there mistake, then don’t. Fine by me. But dont pretend something about the system is broken when really, its your attitude thats the problem (casusincorrabil apperntly was right for once).

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No, it should not be. The only thing that ranked requires is a PC and internet connection good enough to run the game, and to actually play (not alt+f4, no afk). Those are the requirements and everything above that is handled by the MMR: You get paired with player who have similar “common sense” to you.

See, the problem is that “common sense” has no real definition. To a 400 elo player, constant villager production might not yet be common sense. To a 800 elo player, having a proper build order might not be common sense. To a 1.2k player, using stand ground in feudal fights might not be common sense. Its way easier to have a match making system handle this stuff than to just ban half the playerbase.

Its extremly funny how you at first insult my english, yet seem to be unable to understand the meaning of “if”. I was just taking you by your word: IF(!) you really want bad players to not play teamgames, then you should start with yourself, right?

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In every game, there are factors that you can control, for example let’s take CSGO, you can always control your aim, and there are factors you can’t control, for example in CSGO you can’t control whether the Molotov you threw was thrown at the right time, or how many enemies will rush your camping spot. AoE2 is the same, there are all sort of luck-based factor, where villagers spawn on Nomad, your vulnerable Gold mine not getting punished and allowing you to carry with a FC Knights, and so on. The bottom line is that over a large number of games, these luck factors even out, but over a small amount of games it’s definitely possible to have “bad luck of the draw” in terms of getting bad teammates, bad civilization randomization, bad spawns, teammates picking a bad strategy etc.

I don’t need many games to judge a person. If I see you eat at McDonald’s, I can deduce you are probably fat and like greasy food. It might not be a 1:1 correlation and sometimes I might be wrong but I will be right more often than not. Likewise if I see a ~17 min something Arabia ## ###### pocket with 3 unupgraded Knights and 2 TCs placed badly, I can infer a number of of things:

a) you are low elo (bad TC placements)
b) your macro is poor (inconsistent strategy of doing Knights but lacking the resources for upgrades)
c) your strategy goes in 2 directions (are you booming or are you committing to Knights)
d) FC Knights isn’t rly a valid strategy because 3-5 Feudal Spearmen beat it, you don’t have the eco for constant production
e) you are an anti-mate (refused to make the strong French Scouts in Feudal which is a huge part of why Franks are played, and chose to boom in Castle age)

Really I don’t need to watch 1000 games to infer all of this, much like the kid caught with the hand in the cookie jar is most likely stealing the cookies.

other elo, other civilization matchup, also, often Lyx loses games. He is a wild card and creates chaos but there is no conclusive proof that his chaos is effective, he wins as often as he loses and you can’t call his strategy “solid”.

this is not what I wrote, I don’t mind bad players, but it’s a war game and if you make 0 army, you are leeching off of others, this is the meaning of my post in a nutshell. TGs are army-based, booming isn’t rly as much of a thing as in 1v1 because walls, counter units, etc. are far less effective and even if you aren’t the one attacked, chances are your teammates are getting doubled.

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You are absolutely wrong. In almost every competition games ( ranked), you need to know the rules at least. This is an requirement other than having a PC. You have to play alone if you don’t want to follow the rules. The problem is that we can’t do anything to the people who messed with us.

I don’t talk trash, I don’t resign early. I used to try hard in every game, but I got matched with trash talker and early quitter sometimes. MMR can’t handle this.

Exactly, but we can set a minimum to it. How about tutorial test or beat a certain AI without cheese ?
I don’t hate new players, but I hate the players who refused to improve at all. You can surely tell the difference between a new player and a toxic veteran with low elo. They are showing their attitude to their teammates clearly. They are not going to try to win the game. They don’t want to fix their mistakes. They don’t care about teammates’ opinions.
I don’t want to team with this kind of players, I want to dodge them, even though I knew this guy is a teamkiller, I still can’t dodge him because I will get timeout.

My opinion is bad players should not be allowed to play. Bad players stand for the players with bad behaviors and negative attitude. Not new players with low skills. I explained it in the end with “The players who don’t care about winning and refused to learn the game”

And look at your own reply. You called 1.4k elo is pretty bad, you even told me to uninstall. In this case, obviously you misunderstood the terms of bad behavior and low ELO. I can think of the following things of you.
You might be bad at English, you can’t understand what I am talking about.
You might have problem with me so you are trying to pick a fight. Well, we had not talked to each other before so I don’t think we have problems between us.
You were triggered by a certain word so you didn’t finish reading. This means you are one of the toxic player in my post and I called you out. Still, I don’t know you so I would not think of this first.

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only that playing off-meta is not against the rules. the rules for team games should be ‘play to the best of your ability’, not ‘practice build orders’ or ‘learn unit matchups’ etc.

why do you want to ban new players from playing ranked games? I had some great fun carrying some friends in ranked games. they had only played william wallace before, but they still enjoyed themselves

and yet they are still at a similar enough elo to you to get matched with you?

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I agree with you here, but it is not what I was trying to say in my previous post.
Although playing meta could get you the higher win rate, you don’t have to do so, but you still need to do something similar, not something dramatically different. For example, archer + scout is the meta on Arabia. I wouldn’t blame them for replacing archer or knight with other military units even though those are not the best choice. However, it does not mean they can use stonewall or trade carts instead of military units.

I have never said anything about ban new players from playing ranked games. I repeat, I am only against the players who played thousands of games but still not better than fresh players. They must have personal problems and I can’t trust them. I should be able to dodge them anytime at least.

I got bad experience with them when I was trying to train my practice account to my real elo . They resigned for whatever weird reason such as not building a market on the edge of map in early castle age. Did I have a choice ? I either carry 3 quitters or just lose the game. All of them got 1k+ games in the mentioned situations or I would forgive them.

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So let me try to explain to you a 3rd time the thing you did not understand in my first 2 responses. This part actually gives me a good opportunity.

When i was a fresh player, i went on a 20 games winning streak and reached about 1.4k 1v1 elo. So that was my skill as a fresh player. So…you are 1.4k elo, right? Meaning…you are NOT BETTER THAN (some) FRESH PLAYERS. I hope you see now how incredibly weird your proposal is. Why would players need to start bad and improve over time to be able to play the game?

It does not matter what strategy a player plays, it does not matter how long he had to reach his level, it does not matter how he spends his time when not playing (reading guides or playing the piano) - only thing that matters is he actually plays. Those are the actual rules. If he plays weird stuff that loses most games, he will drop elo until he matches with other players of the same calibers. If he puts in effort to improve, he will rise the ranks and get stomped by chinese premades. Its really his choice, and the nice thing is: Everyone can have a good time like this, if they have the right mindset.

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what do you call a “fresh player”? I don’t see someone reaching 1.4k before… let’s say 100-200 games. It’s just no matter how fast you click, it takes time to learn the counter unit system, each civ’s strength etc. And I don’t see people learning that before 1400.

Oh also, in 1400, assuming you aren’t TheViper in terms of decision-making, always making the right unit, etc., you actually need to wall because it’s where people start playing aggressive.