I read somewhere that in a well balanced RTS game, rushing, turtling, and map control/eco are balanced in a rock-paper-scissors like way automatically.
Turtle beats rush, as the player who hunkers down inside his base, primarily or exclusively uses local ressources to build up, building defenses that can withstand any attacks from small forces created fast. If turtle isn’t viable, the player who trains 5 soldiers first wins.
Eco beats turtle, because the local resources of a trutle player will eventually run out, while the eco player goes for map control, claiming every source of resources on the map as fast as possible, since the turtle player leaves them uncontested, increasing their total resources and income, allowing them to outproduce the turtle player, and launch massive attacks against him that overwealm his defenses. If eco isn’t viable, the player who builds the strongest fortress wins.
Rush beats eco, because gathering posts in the middle of nowhere are poorly defended, if at all, allowing a rush player to snipe down at his economy and damage early expansion attempts, crippleing his economy and ability to grow and adapt from the second on the rush player managed to build five soldiers. If rush isn’t viable, the player who controls and maintains control of the largest portion of the map, and the most resources on it, wins.
This might be just a hypothetical ideal scenario of some random person on the internet, but I think it makes somewhat sense.
Yes, they wanted to fix it in the expansions but they had already lost the first impact… luckily in 3DE they are correcting it with the historical maps…
My personal experience: I’ve been playing AOM since 2002, when I was a kid. I have loved it since it released, I don’t even know how many countless hours I put into it before Steam ever existed. I have never stopped going back to play AOM every once in a while for a few skirmish games or to replay some favorite campaign missions. And AOMR is fantastic, I absolutely love it. It’s everything I wanted and more (aside from the campaign voice acting lol). That said, it is essentially the same game I have been playing since 2002. I KNOW the game.
And so, having played through the campaigns and explored the new content, I am very happy with it but also feel that it’s still familiar enough that I’m not putting a ton of time into it right now. The REAL test will come when they start releasing brand-new content, things I HAVEN’T seen since 2002. I absolutely love the Freyr Gods Pack, I really hope we see more like it, but even that is still just an expansion of the Norse pantheon I’m so familiar with.
That’s why I’m extremely excited for Immortal Pillars. Almost everything in AOMR right now gives me a lot of confidence that Immortal Pillars is going to be great, and it will add substantial new content to the game that will bring be back for many more hours of playtime. I can’t wait to play as and against the new Chinese pantheon. Tale of the Dragon was bad, it definitely did not bring me back to AOM:EE in the way I hoped it would, but I’m glad that the devs are redoing the Chinese pantheon from scratch and finally truly expanding AOMR. I’m also very excited for the next new pantheon and whatever other future content we may get. I’ve been checking youtube every day hoping for more info on Immortal Pillars haha, I’m dying out here waiting for a release date or just any more information about the expansion, about the Chinese, how they play, what gods they have, etc.
I agree 100%, the only thing I am sad about is that they will add only 1 pantheon each Time. So that’s means we could wait really long time to get a large pool of pantheons, it depends also how much DLC they will add each year
An all-in Pantheon of Major Gods + Minor Gods each one with their unique God Power, Human Units, Myth Units, Bonuses, and playstyle has the right amount of time to be done well!
The games are too similar from each other, whoever wins the first fight has a good 75% to win the game,
Most games doesn’t even reach 20+ minutes, I would like to see more lategame matches, more buildings spam, more walls being built etc.
Some players find lategame exhausting or boring, but most games been decided by one, single early or mid fight is boring and lame aswell.
You nerfed walls, towers, ships’s range etc. so the differences between Watering Hole and Savannah in lategame are basically absent, every land map seems and feels exactly the same.
While somewhat true, most higher level matches tend to end late age 3/early age 4. I don’t think every game should be decided by wonders and who has the most abusive GPs and endurance to last 40min games. Walls are also used in nearly every high level match to protect vills, but it would be interesting to see towers/fortresses get another slight buff to promote an option to play more defensively. Siege units are the most unrepresented unit type in the game due to the current meta.
Personally, I think the devs could help speed up the age 1 → age 2 time, the game doesn’t really begin until age 2, so you’re forced to do the same cookie cutter build order for the first 4 minutes with some scouting and then you get to play the game.
Yes, the more content there is, the more people will play and stay. Over a very long timescale, they could add twenty or so pantheons, but at the rate of 1 new pantheon a year, that would take decades to achieve… That’s why I’d like to see at least 2 new DLCs a year and not just one…
There has already been a buff to outpost, I don’t want another game in the AoE franchise where the metagame tends to turtle and boom which is what some of you want.
Walls and fortresses are built to buy time and I hope there are hardly any buffs in the future, that’s what mods are for in casual games.
I also hope they don’t add military AQ to ranked, that’s what the other game modes are for. At that rate, the game would be almost automacro.
No AutoQ for military is a great and unexpected change and we all agree on.
Regarding walls and towers, they should be definitely buffed in some way because vills are weaker now (good thing) and population has been raised (another welcome change), I’m not exactly a fan of the booming/turtling strategy but it should be as viable as the other playstyles.
Usually players just build 1 or max 2 layers of walls for the whole game— mostly to protect a starting goldmine or a choke point and that’s it.
On a good portion of maps or games they don’t build ANY wall or additional tower at all, this is basically the opposite extremization.
There’s no strategy, any competent player has the first 4 minutes already layed out - 0 variation other than scouting and for the first few seconds of the match figuring out where to send your vills. Most other RTS’s allow you to build military from the jump, opening up rush or less eco focused playstyles, but I digress.
I feel like many of the comments here are from people wanting changes in the game to compensate for their lack of skill. Most of those asking for buffs to walls and building are probably not very good at the game and will continue to lose even after such buffs. However, they likely don’t play ranked, so why not just create a lobby and use one of the modes that offer those changes? Balance should be dictated by the results of skilled players, not casual or non-ranked gamers.
This kind of elitism was what caused the almost two decades of death the RTS genre has suffered. The “pro” players, the esport, competitive PvP crowd, became so loud of a minority, as small as they were and still are, that the top 5% of players were believed to be the entire RTS community and then some, causing the developers to listen to those exclusively. And that top elite group that looks down on “noobs” in disgust and has long moved on past any story and singleplayer content, and thus had the developers focus their efforts entirely on PvP features and tournament potential, making singleplayer content turn into an extended tutorial at best.
But catering to AoE2 and Starcraft competitive players exclusively didn’t make them migrate, and new players had little reason to stay, because the games weren’t fun for them.
It reached a point where big companies with famous RTS IPs (like EA with C&C) considered to “stop wasting resources into a dead genre” entirely.
Now, that the value of singleplayer and casual content is being picked up on again, good RTS games are being released again. Some still chase the already more than saturated korean esport market, but more and more developers are now coming around, and I’m glad that’s happening.
I would say,that it is actually opposite - people with with low game skill or lack of knowledge of the game want useless defense, because they do not know to deal with it, or missunderstand game balance
the defense buildings are unnaturally nerfed at the moment and this degrades both casual and ranked games