Meta Discussion: Russia

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Switzerland sebnan12
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by sebnan12 »

:hmm:
Hazza54321 wrote:Whilst i agree the russian meta has been refined and that people are smarter with their initial units. I still feel 15f saved per batch is pretty significant. Previously on re you had to cut vills in order to keep up in mass sometimes. Also on 500f starts you can have alot of idle time. Cheaper vill batches and training your initial batch of vills faster allows sometimes for a 10sec faster age up. And having 5 coss in ur opponents base that much earlier is a big deal might be one or 2 less hussars in their initial batch

exactly son u nailed it
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

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Post by momuuu »

I think theres a lot of little things that might have contributed towards the swing in how russia is perceived, although most of it it's people overstating everything and not being nuanced enough about things, at least thats my vision on it.

So the change is pretty small. 5 food per villager being saved is not a lot, and it's often been compared to getting a 45 food treasure, probably rightfully so. Often the term "snowball" is used to defend that this change is actually more influential than it seems. I don't really like using the term snowball, there aren't many snowball effects in aoe since economical expansion is kinda limited to just getting some market upgrades and this change doesn't really allow russia to really change a build order and sneak something in that actually snowballs. What I do think is important, and potentially understated, is the fact that being up to age 2 a little bit faster is a pretty big deal for a civ that almost 100% of the time goes for a military shipment first, shipped to their fb. This villager cost change also shaves off a little bit of time of the first musk batch, or at least makes it easier to queue musks and villagers. The result is that the 5 musketeer 5 cossack army hits just a little bit earlier and tends to do more damage. Most importantly, it kinda prevents, or makes it harder, for the opposing civ to reach a state of stabilization. I think this is most nicely shown in lordraphael vs h2o (russia vs british), where it's easy to imagine that being just a handful of seconds slower would have a pretty drastic impact. That would in my eyes sum up the actual impact the change has, it's little bit not nothing, it's not really something that snowballs either imo nor is it something that just means you age up faster.

There is also the fact that people tend to judge a civ relative to the top civs in the game at that point in time. In balance discussions, russia was often argued to be weak by looking or comparing it to france/germany, two civs that were, imo, quite amazing. The match ups, especially versus germany but also versus france, were quite weak for russia. They might have been the two weakest match ups for russia even, although otto and india aren't the best match ups either. Now that France/Germany have fallen off, the comparison is made to different civs. It's become more apperant due to that for example that Russia vs Dutch on RE is probably quite a bit in russias favor, whereas before I was more inclined to call it a fair match up. Russia vs British has never felt like a poor match up for russia either to be honest, and British is now much more prevalent than it was, so this gives a very different view to how strong russia is. And of course, France and germany being nerfed in itself makes russia stronger relatively. I feel like the fact that we are judge a civ's strength without actually weighing all 13 match ups equally can really screw with our judgement of a civ's strength through patches. Take Dutch vs Spain for example, this match up is a disaster really. If spain becomes the go to civ to the extend that france and germany were, dutch would look so shitty regardless of how good dutch actually was relative to the rest of the civs. So part of why russia suddenly became good might be that we actually just fail to properly assess a civ and that inability was revealed by the latest patch.

Similairily, the latest tournament might have clouded our judgement too. There is quite a few maps, especially those without TPs, on which russia is probably easily one of the best civs. We kinda look at a tournament and see russia winning, and then incorrectly apply that strength that we perceived to russia in general, rather than that we manage to see russia on a no tp or low resource map as a different thing entirely.

I'd like to claim that russia on EP1.0 wasn't half that bad. It probably had quite a few decent match ups, and only a few really bad ones. I'd also like to claim that russia's strength right now is kinda overstated. Theres still a fair chunk of match ups in which they struggle. Some people act as if the vill cost reduction is actually nothing at all, some act as if its a huge deal that completely snowballs the civ. I'd like to claim its a small change that in a small percentage of games is enough to shift the odds into russias favor, and that russia was good enough to now be maybe slightly above average (it probably went up to that spot from slightly below average tbh).

I'm honestly not that much of a fan of saying people magically started playing better or refined build orders. I honestly don't even see much of a difference in build orders at all, and I don't really believe the meta shifts that do seem to happen happen as magically and out of nowhere as it might seem. If there is a different in build orders, I think that is likely due to how russia plays out slightly differently because the first push is a tiny bit faster.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by sebnan12 »

n0eL wrote:@breeze @Hazza54321 take it outside this topic.

ha
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by forgrin »

I'd like to point out that alot of the maps are pretty good for Russia too; lots of hunts and mines, but often in mid-map. This is especially true for autumn tourney ones such as Mendocino, Colorado etc. This kind of map setup lets Russia drain the opponent of natural resources while still having tons of resources available to outmass them with.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by britishmusketeer »

Jerom wrote:
Jerom wrote:

So the change is pretty small. 5 food per villager being saved is not a lot, and it's often been compared to getting a 45 food treasure, probably rightfully so.

Why would you compare it to a 45 food treasure when its effects remain in age 2. Sure it goes to 0.4 vills with h.d and down to 0.3 vills with s.t but that doesn't mean it is insignificant.
Jerom wrote:Often the term "snowball" is used to defend that this change is actually more influential than it seems. I don't really like using the term snowball, there aren't many snowball effects in aoe since economical expansion is kinda limited to just getting some market upgrades
You don't have to snowball economically, you can snowball with military also. As an example: Say that the faster 5 coss 5 musk means that they are getting 3 hussars on their first batch so that they now lose to both the 5 and 4 cossack shipments meaning they have to be more cautious when raiding which means they do less damage to your eco which means you have more units ect.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Garja »

Russia eco design is all about snowball effect.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by deleted_user0 »

britishmusketeer wrote:
Jerom wrote:
Jerom wrote:

So the change is pretty small. 5 food per villager being saved is not a lot, and it's often been compared to getting a 45 food treasure, probably rightfully so.

Why would you compare it to a 45 food treasure when its effects remain in age 2. Sure it goes to 0.4 vills with h.d and down to 0.3 vills with s.t but that doesn't mean it is insignificant.
Jerom wrote:Often the term "snowball" is used to defend that this change is actually more influential than it seems. I don't really like using the term snowball, there aren't many snowball effects in aoe since economical expansion is kinda limited to just getting some market upgrades
You don't have to snowball economically, you can snowball with military also. As an example: Say that the faster 5 coss 5 musk means that they are getting 3 hussars on their first batch so that they now lose to both the 5 and 4 cossack shipments meaning they have to be more cautious when raiding which means they do less damage to your eco which means you have more units ect.


Its not insignificant but its effect on aging up faster, one of the more prominent arguments for why russia is better, is similar to a 45f tres. And in age2 the effect is not insignificant, but not that big either. Im quite sure that if they remove this buff, russia would not be alot worse in most, if any mus, to the point where it matters between winning or losing the mu.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by DaRkNiTe1698 »

Garja wrote:Russia eco design is all about snowball effect.
What do you mean by that?
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by deleted_user0 »

He means that training 3v at a time gives you a slow start, but after a while you have more of them then you would with other civs because they train slightly faster. Specially with 3 tc's you max really fast.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Darwin_ »

Russia does have a snowball effect, due to how their civ bonus, unlike most other civs, scales into the late game. Russia age 5 units are even more cost effective than other civ's counter parts, due to how upgrades go off of the unit's normal stats, not the russian lower ones. Also their eco just keeps on getting better due to how in the late game you dont have to cut vills, so you can experience the full benefit of them training faster and being cheaper.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by britishmusketeer »

Darwin_ wrote:Russia age 5 units are even more cost effective than other civ's counter parts, due to how upgrades go off of the unit's normal stats, not the russian lower

Really?
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by _H2O »

I think that looking at the whole picture is required to say if a civ is good late or not. Russia is one of the better civs but others do beat it. Also it depends largely on how many eco cards and upgrades you keep in your deck.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Darwin_ »

britishmusketeer wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:Russia age 5 units are even more cost effective than other civ's counter parts, due to how upgrades go off of the unit's normal stats, not the russian lower

Really?

Yeah. When a russian musk is upgraded to veteran, it gets the stats of a normal colonial musketeer, a ~27% increase instead of 20%.

An imperial russian musk is about 125% better than a colonial one (x2.25). A normal musk is only 100% better (x2). It seems that they actually just stay as efficient as they were. I guess I was wrong. However, other upgrades do go off of the stats of the normal units, so arsenal techs are more efficient for russia.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by deleted_user0 »

Darwin_ wrote:
britishmusketeer wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:Russia age 5 units are even more cost effective than other civ's counter parts, due to how upgrades go off of the unit's normal stats, not the russian lower

Really?

Yeah. When a russian musk is upgraded to veteran, it gets the stats of a normal colonial musketeer, a ~27% increase instead of 20%.

An imperial russian musk is about 125% better than a colonial one (x2.25). A normal musk is only 100% better (x2). It seems that they actually just stay as efficient as they were. I guess I was wrong. However, other upgrades do go off of the stats of the normal units, so arsenal techs are more efficient for russia.

But on the other hand, unit with -25% less hp and attack is more than 25% weaker. This was already debated so much that I'm lazy to bring numbers/arguments to the table. Find the topic concerning russian musks.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Challenger_Marco »

@Darwin_ are you Darwin_Giovanny or some other guy? I'm confused like sometimes u say oh yeah I never thought of this idea it's so cool .So u were like pr 40+ so that means u have good knowledge about the game and know many things Yeah I understand that somethin u may not know but the way u respond to it makes me feel you are some other guy.
Yeah sorry from distracting from the topic...
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Darwin_ »

somppukunkku wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:
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Yeah. When a russian musk is upgraded to veteran, it gets the stats of a normal colonial musketeer, a ~27% increase instead of 20%.

An imperial russian musk is about 125% better than a colonial one (x2.25). A normal musk is only 100% better (x2). It seems that they actually just stay as efficient as they were. I guess I was wrong. However, other upgrades do go off of the stats of the normal units, so arsenal techs are more efficient for russia.

But on the other hand, unit with -25% less hp and attack is more than 25% weaker. This was already debated so much that I'm lazy to bring numbers/arguments to the table. Find the topic concerning russian musks.

Yep, very true. Pathing sucks in big fights.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Darwin_ »

Challenger_Marco wrote:@Darwin_ are you Darwin_Giovanny or some other guy? I'm confused like sometimes u say oh yeah I never thought of this idea it's so cool .So u were like pr 40+ so that means u have good knowledge about the game and know many things Yeah I understand that somethin u may not know but the way u respond to it makes me feel you are some other guy.
Yeah sorry from distracting from the topic...

Nah im just some PR 20-25 trying to get by in life. No relation to the omnipotent Darwin_Giovanny.
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Re: Meta Discussion: Russia

Post by Challenger_Marco »

Oh lol! I didn't knew this I thought u were the original Darwin giovanny.
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