Wonder & Relic victories in ranked

This is a topic that has been discussed throughout the forum’s lifetime, but I’m curious to know what its people think about the addition of Wonder & Relic victories.
Would they be viable? Is balancing needed to ensure their use? Can technologies and civ boni be added to benefit such tactics?

All I really know is, only half of Atheism has been valid for God-knows kek how long, and as such it’s a Unique Tech that only sees use outside of ranked, with the gold generation penalty being only a small boon in the case of ranked.

Maybe in certain MUs a relics victory could be possible. But usually, when you have that much map control you can take all 5 relics, you just win the game. I could imagine someone going for hardcontest on arena while his opponent just booms, but thats a really rare case.

Wonders hell no. Waaaay too much investment. If you can invest that many res into nothing and survive, you could have just gotten paladin upgrade and steamrolled.

Not a fan, it’s just a really empty feeling way to win or lose, nowhere near as fulfilling or real as conquest.

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in 99% of 1v1 games this won’t make a difference. the kind of map control you need to get all 5 relics is usually game winning anyway, holding the for that long means you have tons of gold as well.

wonders are so expensive that they still would never get built

not sure how it would affect team games

this is a really good point as well. i was watching some aoe4 and saw someone win with landmark sniping, and it felt really cheap. i think this would be like that

To provide another view point I actually really like the possibility of winning with relic and wonders. You can do this in the Quick Play games and I often do try it. Here’s my thoughts:

You don’t need map control for relics really, a sneaky monk/ distraction is all you need. Burmese civ bonus helps a lot. Mostly viable in 1v1s as team games have too many relics.

Wonders are hard but good fun, I have won essentially a 2v1 cause my ally got wrecked early. I don’t have enough pop to fight in two places at once, but since I was not attacked early I could build a wonder and defend in one place.

I think it’s a nice addition to maps like BF team game, if your team is losing switching to wonder does a few things:
1 shifts focus of enemies away from allies who are being defeated
2 enemies might throw army away taking bad fights to get to wonder
3 provides focus for your team to either reboom/ or throw everything a lot defence for the last minute hold

I think this can provide a nice swing in the game, not always “can only do it if you’ve already won”

I understand not everyone likes it, I have had team mates attack ground my wonder with onagers because ‘it’s the wrong way to play’ but IMO that’s griefing and bad sport.
But it can feel very fulfilling to hold on by the skin of your teeth, or destroy the wonder at <50 years left.

Anyway, I like it and I’m glad I can play with these settings in Quick Play, even if not in ranked.

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Wonders are too damn expensive (and extremely slow to be built) for 1v1 games imo. For TGs not really sure, may work but have to be really careful about not making it too OP on closed maps (AOE4 suffered from that before)

Relics - not sure as well, can be fun way but I guess it can be problematic in Arena if one player is strong at Castle age light cav dancing?

a relic or wonder victory alone would be a bit dumb, but a gamemod, that uses theese mechanics, would be interesting. As far as I remember, AoE 1 had a pointmatch mod in its early days. You played for a fixed time and the player with the highest score wins. The only differences to normal games were, that you could technically hold a wonder or all relics for the period but don’t win. You just received an immense score boost for that. On the other hand, you could get completly erased but win the game cause of score you reached until that poinrt, you just suffered a heavy score drop for getting defeated. The mod was more about getting the strongest culture. 1v1 such a mod is pointless since it ends in a completly generic match, but in bigger ffa games, such a mod forces to make alliances with others and is cool to play. Anyway ts nothing for ranked

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