4-5 civs on average, maybe 8 in worst case ? That is very, very far from going random.
Furthermore, pros have 10x more time to play than the average player and thus are expected to master more civs. For normal players it’s unreasonable to ask them to play all 35, they will necessarily have more experience with certain civs and win/lose will depend largely on whether they rolled a civ they are familiar with.
You deserved to get banned. What a terrible attitude. You’re willing to ruin other players’ game and force them to queue again, just because you don’t like one setting? Grow up! You have one vote just like everyone else. The thing you really have a problem with is other players, and nobody here can help you with that.
Most civs are pretty similar, its not that hard to switch between most civs except meso
This forum:
If the rest of the game wants to play Random Civ you’re wrong if you want to leave. If you want to have guaranteed settings, host your own game.
Also this forum:
If the rest of the game wants to play Not Arabia you’re totally fine to alt-f4 your client and retry until you get one. What? Host your own game? What an absolutely outlandish statement. I’m of a mind to belt you, you brat. If someone doesn’t get their arabia setting they are in the right to burn the house down.
If someone doesn’t get their arabia setting they are in the right to burn the house down.
I find it hard to believe anyone holds both of these opinions at once. It’s more likely to me that someone who is willing to mess up other players’ game over maps would also do it over civs.
The only difference for the latter is that it’s easier to get caught.
I want to make a point against those arguing that the new system is fair because of democracy. In fact majoritarianism is one of the flaws of democracy. We should do a more direct cost-benefit analysis.
So the question to ask is if this major inconvenience of one person worth more than a small benefit for 7 others. If your answer is yes, then the old system is better. Otherwise the new system has some merit. But then what about 2 persons inconvenience vs 6 persons benefit. Or 1 vs 5. Where do we draw the line? Presently the line is drawn at simple majority with a favour for civ picks in case of tie. I feel this gives too much merit to the small benefit of the majority in comparison to the inconvenience of the few.
You forgot that we all used to be playing random civ in the past. Almost all games were all random pre DE. This was brutally changed to pick civ by the DE system. You have to know many players played this game for years an are used to this setting and wants to play with that settings. For that reason this is implemented. Players are used to certain settings and want to play with those settings. You seem to fully neglict this part of the equation, which for me is important.
For me the line is drawn at a good spot. If something needs to change, then it would even be give more priority to random civ. But that is also based on my personal preference. I can see why the devs decided to say it is pick civ if it is 50:50.
You are just arguing for preservation of tradition. And in my personal experience before DE, all random was only dominant in nomad map. About half the games in Arabia and Arena were with picked civs. In fact Hun war/Meso war in Arabia 1v1 was very common. Maybe we played with different set of people because of rating/region and this may explain the differences in our perception.
I feel you are giving your own desires much more bias. This is natural after all. But consider this. When I queue for a game with all random choice but I get the picked civ, I don’t fret about it at all. I didn’t care much. I would never quit because of it. But when OP was forced to play with a random civ, they felt like quitting immediately. Surely the benefit I get from playing all random is much less than the inconvenience suffered by OP. Do you consider playing all random as so much sacred? In fact I can just select my civ as random/full random if I am so inclined at playing random.
Yeah, we had a fase of pick civ, that meta slightly moved to random civ, which in my eyes was the standard for almost all games. Maybe some new players wanted to play pick civ (So i think pick civs is still more popular under lower rated players, while higher rated players will more lend towards random civ), but most seems to prefer random.
DE forced everyone into pick civ, but the devs see many request from users that just want to play random civ. So they enabled ths for ranked. So i dont think that the preferences of the player base are much different then before DE. Most people seem to agree with this change (at least that is my opinion), some would dont like it. That is totally fine. You cant make everyone happy. In the end: If you dont like the settings of the competative scene, then you can always play in the lobby. So no one really force your to play in the competative scene.
I think everyone looks at this with there own desire. In the end you know you queueu up for ranked. Ranked has specific rules and you agree with the rule set with joining the queue. So you know that you could end up with a random civ and not a pick civ. If you dont like that, than dont join the ranked queue. You can also ask your team to go for pick civ. If everyone on your team goes for pick civ, then you can still force pick civ.
Pick random and playing all random are both different to me. It kind of does feel as cheating (it isnt, i know) to pick civ, while most others goes random. Pick civ is an advantage over random civ. You can already have a pre planned strategy, which isnt possible for random civ.
In the end ranked needs to be the place where most people enjoy playing. Since this feature was a popular request, i do think it is good to have this feature in ranked.
As long as it’s pick civ with anything below 60% and random if it’s 60%+ I’m okay with that -
OP can simply ask the party not to pick random civ
Actually that would be majority rule. “Demos” in democracy implies the rule of the entity of the people. Thats why most (all?) democracies have constitutions to protect minorities (who are maybe terrible with random civs 
) from majority votes. Works in theory, rarely in practice though.
There is an awesome graphic allegory to this misconception, where basically all the animals vote in favour of drying out a lake to free up grasslands, the fish get outvoted and die out.
Not saying that choosing civs should be an AoC basic right but well, my two cents 
You should never try to explain democrazy using the root of the word - otherwise you would have to mention that below 10% of the population of ancient greek cities were considered part of the “demos”. It just goes to show how little we gain by looking for a “true” meaning of words, searching in its linguistic roots.
Most modern democrazies generally go by majority rule, with two systems kinda holding it in check: Majority of areas and basic rights (edit: “Majority of areas” is not used often, rather, every country uses their own expression).
The first one means that not only do you need a majority of the votes to win an election, but areas (usually states) have certain privileges. Think of the US, where less populated states got an overproportional amount of votes in the electoral college. Even without “winner takes all” you could have situations where winning the popular vote is not enough. Or Switzerland, where every change of the constitution needs to be approved by a majority of Stände (=states) on top of winning the popular vote.
The basic rights you mention are something completly different. They are agreements about stuff so important, so unquestionable, that it can not be voted away. The exact definition varies depending on where you live, but usually its stuff like freedom of speech etc.
And sometimes we see a majority expressing their wish for a stronger protection or a wider definition of basic rights, but a minority with special constitutional status voting against it. So the two systems can even be in a direct conflict.
In your example, minority protection by majority of areas would mean that both land and lake have to vote the same in order to press for change; basic rights would mean you cant vote on the fishs right to survive. In that case they would both have the same effect, but still, they are very different in kind.
Now, if we wanted to apply those concepts to AoE it gets tricky. Voting by area is not impossible, but would be very strange. Maybe you could introduce stuff like “a majority of flank and a majority of pocket players has to agree to go rnd”. Other than that, i dont really see an option.
And using the basic rights argument falls flat pretty quickly, as you realized yourself
So overall, i think in the case of AoE there is little reason to not go by majority rule.
That is actually the case right now, as ties result in picked civ and a majority <60% is impossible with an even number of persons below 12.
The problem of interpreting democracy as the “dictatorship of the majority” was a reason I was very hesitant to like your first post. It’s a genuine problem.
Where do these agreements come from? What happens if a majority decides to suppress a minority? Even a constitution can usually be changed with a supermajority or a referendum. There are some real-world examples, such as blasphemy laws; and suppression of native rights in eg the US and in Brasil; and suppressions of various ethnicities in many former colonies (I think South Sudan should be an uncontroversial example at this point. If I may mention a slightly more controversial example, the 3.5 million people of Somaliland would be subject to a government they don’t want to recognise if internationally recognised majority rule was implemented).
In AOE2, as example of the dictatorship of the majority being averted, we have the map pool. I far prefer the current system over the results I’d anticipate in the case of blunt direct democracy.
None of this is to say that I disagree with the majority rule for random civ picks. My reasons for agreeing are written somewhere earlier in this thread 
I think we are arguing on the same line of reasoning, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Also I very much agree that it may be tricky to implement some kind of minority right’s protection into the AoEII community (as it is in the international states system, as well as literally every national one).
Also, I don’t know if “picking civ” would qualify for that, but maybe there are some features which some niche player would like or like to keep, but are by no means “mehrheitsfähig” (as I suspect you are a fellow Swiss AoE player )
If not, we still have the devs as benevolent authoritarians to take care of all their sheeps
It surely is a huge problem. However, as far as i know there are only three possibilities: Majority rule, minority rule or anarchy (no, not the Goth one). Sometimes you can have elements of several of those systems, e.g. when there usually is majority rule but a minority has veto power. But overall, if you dont want the majority to rule you implicitly favor a minority ruling or anarchy (unless there are systems of decision i am unaware of). Keep in mind that “no change” is also a decision, so consent systems are just an extreme case of minority rule.
History. We may not like it, but thats the truth. E.g. when the Human Rights Declaration banned forced labour after WW2, they excluded conscription - simply because they knew no state would sign the declaration if it was included. And obv, those agreements arn’t alwas “right”. They are just the best we have or rather the best that we can at least somewhat enforce.
oh no, busted! What gave it away??
If not, we still have the devs as benevolent authoritarians to take care of all their sheeps
Although you were mostly making fun here, i think thats an important point: It is rough to compare aoe2 voting with democrazy as we know it because the devs are, as you correctly put it, benevolent authoritarians. So in the end, we dont have to think too much about minority protection since there is no threat of “majority dictatorship”, simply because the players dont have the power to dictate.
Your mentioning of the “Stände”.
You’d either have to be a very dedicated political scientist or just an everyday Swiss citizen (or both?). Thought the chance for the latter was a lot higher as I don’t think the number of political scientists plus the few interested laymen will get close to eight million anytime soon 
I don’t think minority rule and anarchy are the only alternatives to the tyranny of the majority. Ideally everyone’s interests are kept in mind and solutions are reached which are pretty OK for everyone. I’m aware I’m not describing something that can be captured in a set of rules or a constitution. Perhaps any system can devolve into majority rule, minority rule or anarchy if everyone is willing to play hardball. Even rights which are constitutionally protected have historically been violated.
But that doesn’t have to happen if people care about & protect the rule of law and the principles of compromise and tolerance.
A system to reach decisions has to take everyone playing hardball into account, as otherwise, you are defenceless against those who do. Talking and seeking compromise are great! As nevermore pointed out, im Swiss so i have a fair share of experience on that regard (little known fact about Switzerland, it is legal to shoot any person who doesn’t say “Kompromis” at least 7 times a day). But you will have situations where talking is impossible or no compromise can be found.
And thats actually the situation we have with civ picking, right? Its either civ pick or rnd. Its binary, not really much options for a compromise. And talking is (nearly) impossible with your own team and completly impossible regarding the opponents. So it comes down to Minority rule (the civ picker get absolute veto power, as we had up to the patch), majority rule (the system we have now), or anarchy (Voobly, from what i’ve heard).