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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

I just gotta say, I love FFA (free for all). It is really fun, builds XP for your civ and hones in skills and is a good test area for different strats. It requires different strategy than Sup or TR if tyou want to win though. and uses about 50% diplomacy which I love because its more real to life than knowing who your enemy is and that they are going to try to rush you. You may have peaceful borders with neighbors or they may strike you at any second. Each game is different in that respect as some people get rushed, some turtle, some straight boom, and usually goes to late game where full civ strength is realized. Its like having a good 1v1 then another and another. and even when you do get it 2v1 it creates a challenge and sometimes u surprise yourself and come out victorious. I love that its a melting ground for all player skill levels and that its easier to find a game because no one is worried about fairness of teams.

France, russia, and port are the best ffa civs in my opinion, do to their good eco and map control, port just have great defense and superb military, but I win about 70% of the time with India. India has fast become my favorite civ even despite its short comings (no canon, no spammable unit and bad path finding for elephants). It is a surgical base destroying machine. It has excellent infantry as well as good map control with the barracks spamming. They also have a great eco that intimidates other players when they see your score and can age incredibly fast while still having the wood to build up a solid defense. The peace wonder makes so much of this possible. and can be used to do amazing things like stop an army at your door and train one yourself, stop mid battle to retrain an army if you lost too much, make time to catch pesky opriniks or use to enter someones base and start building barracks or hitting key targets. To fight with india you must realize that india has great strength but it fights in waves and is really versatile and quite fun. I never get bored with them like I have with other civs.

Some other great civs for ffa are Aztec, china, japan (but you better protect your wonders!) the civs that seem to be weakest are iro ( just needs too much wood) sioux (eco wont last to kill more than 1-2 people) but reallyits a place you can play any civ that you love.

Well just had to put a shout out to an under played game format thats really fun.
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Post by noissance »

i like FFA because petard ff is sometimes viable
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Post by Good ol Ivan »

They're ok but ffas would be more fun if 95% of players didn't play like it was treaty or something.
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Post by gibson »

ivan wrote:They''re ok but ffas would be more fun if 95% of players didn''t play like it was treaty or something.

ffa is nr 40 for all practical purposes
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Post by Good ol Ivan »

FFAs in Mongolia or Andes can sometimes play out otherwise. But if it's large siberia then yeah it's pretty much a nr 40. Sure you can rush or make a fort/ind pushing at some french/jap player or something, but it hurts your boom and the other play will most likely be able to rebuild somewhere else.
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Post by yemshi »

Not if you kill 3 of 5 players with an revolt.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

I don't know why people complain about it being nr 40.... you make it what you want it to be. You can raid at 6 mins, or boom yourself so its really up to you. Sure people can flee and rebuild and that's what makes games epic its more akin to real scenarios where cultures have refugees. And may times it is more efficient to kill a player early on than to wait until they have fully boomed, as is mostly the case with france. Some times its just better to knock em out early. But yes there is an emphasis on maintaining a healthy economy, as for me i like the economy of the game and the feel of a successful turtle boom. Large siberia is just a terrible map for FFA those games can go for 2-3 hours sometimes. I think the best maps are Lrg Saguenay, Carolina, Silk Rd, G plains, and texas. but lots of other fun quirky maps out there too.
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Post by 360noob »

howlingwolfpaw wrote:I don''t know why people complain about it being nr 40.... you make it what you want it to be. You can raid at 6 mins, or boom yourself so its really up to you. Sure people can flee and rebuild and that''s what makes games epic its more akin to real scenarios where cultures have refugees. And may times it is more efficient to kill a player early on than to wait until they have fully boomed, as is mostly the case with france. Some times its just better to knock em out early. But yes there is an emphasis on maintaining a healthy economy, as for me i like the economy of the game and the feel of a successful turtle boom. Large siberia is just a terrible map for FFA those games can go for 2-3 hours sometimes. I think the best maps are Lrg Saguenay, Carolina, Silk Rd, G plains, and texas. but lots of other fun quirky maps out there too.

unfortunately the person who wins generally is the person who avoids fighting. Large maps i find are terrible for ffa because it encourages everyone to just boom like treaty. If you choose to fight sometimes i have 3-4 players ganging up on me because i choose to fight. It becomes lame when you kill someone and then they are allowed to rebuild beside another opponents base untouched.
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Post by momuuu »

You cant win if you play aggressive. You can get 3rd or sometimes even 2nd.

Ive wiped out half of the players in some games rushing their lame ass treaty decks. But in the end there's always one guy who's gonna get away with his filthy treaty boom.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

try using a treaty deck and rushing with that. in ffa unit cards become inefficient. So its a different type of game play and requires different strategy for sure. Sometimes booming can get u in trouble as people will have much harder bases to breach. and if you see the person who is booming all game u can see it in their scores and that's who you can go for. and making enemies in ffa is all the real world strategy that I love about it. If you let someone escape and don't continue scouting out he may very well be back again. Most of the time though players are respectful and do not double team. but if all you did was wreck someones base when they had nothing cause u are a rush expert then yeah they are gonna want to put aggressive players out of the game. just like your reasoning to attack someone with a lame treaty deck, with mine I'm thinking ok I'm gonna run and come back at you when I have my upgrades. unless you did so well its not worth rebuilding. which is what makes age 4 fights the best. because then you can prevent players from getting their factories again and/ or wonders. To me it really is more like a game of rising empires and how they would react to each other. Its why the nazis didnt succeed. I've had some games where just my might alone has caused players to resign in fear. that is true martial arts to win without ever having to cast a blow.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

and even if you didnt win, i hope you had fun.
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Post by Papist »

I typically use a treaty deck, but delay my ageups so that I can get out a late fortress/early industrial military. It just goes to show that there is more wiggle room in FFA that people might imagine. A player can easily pop out 15 huss for raiding without sacrificing his/her boom.
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Post by momuuu »

Its barely fun when everyone is playing treaty. You just kill a few guys, have like 1 opponent (the third or fourth, depending on how much they suck) that is slightly challenging and then the rest has boomed so hard that you cant win beat them anymore. If I want 1 challenging opponent, I think I'll play a standard 1v1.
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Post by Papist »

jerom wrote:Its barely fun when everyone is playing treaty. You just kill a few guys, have like 1 opponent (the third or fourth, depending on how much they suck) that is slightly challenging and then the rest has boomed so hard that you cant win beat them anymore. If I want 1 challenging opponent, I think I''ll play a standard 1v1.
Oh well, everyone has their own preferences. FFA is typically what I play when I want something treaty-esque. Or I can just use it to test a new supremacy build and then leave.
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Post by gibson »

jerom wrote:Its barely fun when everyone is playing treaty. You just kill a few guys, have like 1 opponent (the third or fourth, depending on how much they suck) that is slightly challenging and then the rest has boomed so hard that you cant win beat them anymore. If I want 1 challenging opponent, I think I''ll play a standard 1v1.

even if you do boom hard, you''re likely to get double teamed and end up loosing anyway. Or you say something that pisses someone off, and they rush you. Or you have the highest score and everybody just goes for you. So many more random factors than in a standard game.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

I'm sure your a fantastic player but attacking right out of the bat and continuing to do so gauntlet style is just bad strategy. It might be good to kill a player and then catch up to kill the next. but once your imperial good players can go kill everyone like that because u will have your own eco to fight and probably micro better and becomes a fun challenge. like the game i just finished on yukon.... i was rushed ( i was not prepared because i went across map to make my based on nomad start and went for a cup of tea in age 2) and lost my base (guy had a grudge vs me for beating him so many times) I ran with what I had to make an army. I put up a solid defense vs what he had attacked me with. He ended up quitting because he raided some other guys villies or something and got attacked. by now I was a couple hundred points behind. Then a war broke out between russia and france. France won but by the time it was over we were equal scored. I attacked the france when the russian guy went out and made a hole through his walls and decimated his army. He quit because he didn't have much defense behind his walls. then i went over to a sitting jap player who got the chinese guy out early and we battled and I got into his base and GG. Fun game
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Post by Good ol Ivan »

It's not whether booming or rushing being more efficient strategies in FFAs, but that booming for 20+ mins is boring as fuck. And it's even more boring if everyone is booming and is too scared to rush. Few things are more pleasant than ruining a treaty player's boom and destroying his factories/wonders.
If there's something I will never get its people who enjoy playing treaty.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

Some people enjoy the economy of the game. I just sit back with some tunes and boom and build a solid turtle and then once I've done all that I get to have a lot of great battles with the full strength of my civ.
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Post by gibson »

ivan wrote:It''s not whether booming or rushing being more efficient strategies in FFAs, but that booming for 20+ mins is boring as fuck. And it''s even more boring if everyone is booming and is too scared to rush. Few things are more pleasant than ruining a treaty player''s boom and destroying his factories/wonders.
If there''s something I will never get its people who enjoy playing treaty.

amen, especially if it''s Jab..... I can''t stand that guy, I think literally the funnest time I have ever had playing age of Empires was meticulously and systematically destroying his base over and over again in an ffa game.
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Post by Good ol Ivan »

gibson wrote:
ivan wrote:Its not whether booming or rushing being more efficient strategies in FFAs, but that booming for 20+ mins is boring as fuck. And its even more boring if everyone is booming and is too scared to rush. Few things are more pleasant than ruining a treaty players boom and destroying his factories/wonders.
If theres something I will never get its people who enjoy playing treaty.
amen, especially if its Jab..... I cant stand that guy, I think literally the funnest time I have ever had playing age of Empires was meticulously and systematically destroying his base over and over again in an ffa game.
Oh that motherfucker.
Yeah if hes in a FFA game I always go after him first and I do the possible to make sure I kill every last of his villies. The more he whines, the more Im motived to finish him.
I actually managed to piss him off so much and ruined so many of his games - he literally pested all my accounts.
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Post by DerMaxinator »

I also don't really enjoy treaty for all of the people booming, and complaining when you rush/raid them...
But I can just recommend Interjection's tiny FFA map. So much action and no one who can really boom, unless they really pressured and fighted for resources.
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Post by howlingwolfpaw »

jab games are rarely fun, he has master the exploitation of the genderme OP
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Post by DerMaxinator »

howlingwolfpaw wrote:jab games are rarely fun, he has master the exploitation of the genderme OP
Who''s Jab? Never heard of him...[span] [/span]
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Post by Good ol Ivan »

dermaxinator wrote:
howlingwolfpaw wrote:jab games are rarely fun, he has master the exploitation of the genderme OP
Whos Jab? Never heard of him...[span] [/span]
You havent really actively played FFAs then. I have played FFAs with Jab since 2008 or so and I dont play that often.
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Post by yurashic »

gibson wrote:
jerom wrote:Its barely fun when everyone is playing treaty. You just kill a few guys, have like 1 opponent (the third or fourth, depending on how much they suck) that is slightly challenging and then the rest has boomed so hard that you cant win beat them anymore. If I want 1 challenging opponent, I think Ill play a standard 1v1.
even if you do boom hard, youre likely to get double teamed and end up loosing anyway. Or you say something that pisses someone off, and they rush you. Or you have the highest score and everybody just goes for you. So many more random factors than in a standard game.
This is all true.

Golden rule of ffa - the one who fights the least wins in the end. You dont gain anything from beating someone and that is why it is never viable to attack. Even in Interjections ffa you follow this rule if you want to win. This is the reason I dont like ffa.

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