Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

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Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

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Post by Interjection »

I'm genuinely curious what members of the community think about this? If you reply to nothing else in this post, at least let me know your opinion on ageing with 2 outposts

AOE3 being released with a few politicians that see almost completely no play feels like a missed opportunity. If the devs had ever bothered to patch them there could have been a lot more scope for potential build orders and also just way more variety in a game by game basis. It seems a shame that 50% of some civs options e.g., The Naturalist (4 cows) & The Bishop (2 vils) see no play, and nor do an assortment of III & IV politicians either.

Surely adjusting these would be an excellent EP tool for addressing current & future balance issues? More importantly, it would freshen up the tournament meta & viewing experience which as we host more events will increasingly become a issue regarding audience retention & expansion. I'm already starting to see the effects of this come through in my commentary and for the YouTube content of the Age of Empires Gameplay channel I run https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYL_kUvJaOgKDeJYUlDVkTg

A prevalent balance theme from the most recent ESOC tournament was the popularity of All-Ins & Russian aggro. Now, obviously an experienced player can deal much better with those strategies, so the discussion surrounding whether they're the strongest or not compared to 'X, Y & Z' is something I'd like us to avoid. What I personally find more problematic though is the strength of those civs relative to how easy they are to play.

When playing against them at the top level it looks like you have almost no room for error - that you have to play with incredible precision & competence to come out on top*. But when playing as them it seems as if once you reach a certain skill level... adding any more skill has very little impact on the overall power level of the agenda. I think this is illustrated reasonably well by my very make shift graphs below (red is 'playing against', blue is 'playing as' - NOTE: perfect balance in the perfect world would be where the lines for every civ & all their different strategies run perfectly straight just like how they both started off).

I think this clearly explains why such civs were popular in the early-mid rounds of the tournament, and that's fine with me. But what I would expect to happen as the later rounds of the tournament are approached is for Russia, Otto, All-Ins etc to taper of as the skill level of 'red line' players intersects with 'blue line' players on the graph. This did not seem to be the case though even all the way to grand finals.

I clearly do not play the game as much as the majority of the users on this forum... so maybe my opinion doesn't matter since I'm not really a 'player'. But I would say I represent the opinion of the viewing majority & have the interest of the entertainment experience at heart. From my experience casting and time creating videos on YouTube, the content which is consistently most successful (in terms of both viewer numbers and audience retention) typically feature longer games with vicious drawn out fights over map control. In the best games, the fighting moves around a lot/is back & fourth (due to constantly shifting resource locations when they get used up). Ideally the fights last until there are no resources left and players have to build mills/plantations. This is not to say the gameplay produced by Russia/Otto/All-Ins is always boring. There is certainly an element of excitement in watching the 'red line' player hold & overcome the not necessarily but often described as 'cheesy' 'blue line' strat. But more often than not though this ends in disappointment and becomes repetitive very very quickly as it's very frequently seen.

In my honest opinion, a civ as dry and easy to play as the Ottomans should not be as nearly as rewarding. This is especially true in a tournament setting where your opponent will not be as equipped to deal with them due to the civ selection format. Because not only is the civ pools restricted after each game potentially 'using up' a civ that deals well with Ottoman. But also, when you have to pick first your opponent can easily counter pick Ottoman into you for a safe easy-to-execute win. The same also applies to Russia. But for Ottoman in particular I genuinely do think the civ should be nerfed so hard it becomes uncompetitive... (reducing the number of 'blue line' civs by 1 would actually mathematically have an enormously positive impact on the frequency of matchups picked that usually produce 'interesting games' (as defined by the criteria discussed earlier).

If you look closely you will notice a yellow dot on the blue line in the graph, I think a good place to start would be to metaphorically get the two lines to intersect there. I'm not saying that the title of this thread is the solution, but I do think the topic is an interesting way to frame & potentially address this issue.

I'm not actually sure if this topic has been brought up before but this has been my opinion for a long time now. I meant to write it up much earlier, but either way, please let me know what you think or like the post if you don't have time for that.

________

*Not losing vils but making sure they're working, constantly kiting with the explorer/units and not losing them, calling mm, dogs and unit shipment in exact sync, constantly redirecting TC fire on weak units, knowing when how to fight with vils, actually controlling those vils in a fight, etc.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by AOEisLOVE_AOEisLIFE »

any idea that brings up more build order options and new strategys (aizamk <3) is cool.
love the idea of giving better balanced age up options.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by __Uhlan__ »

New politician buffs woulf be extremely interesting and fun to mess around with if certain ones were buffed, the only downfall of this is you can completely change the meta, if you buff 2 vills to 3 vills that may become the brit standard instead of a outpost wagon & 200c. Which at a competive level messes with the meta and you sort of just open a can of worms you might not want to get involved with. Certainly I'm not even sure 3 vills would be better then 500f or the tower and 200c.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by AOEisLOVE_AOEisLIFE »

__Uhlan__ wrote:New politician buffs woulf be extremely interesting and fun to mess around with if certain ones were buffed, the only downfall of this is you can completely change the meta, if you buff 2 vills to 3 vills that may become the brit standard instead of a outpost wagon & 200c. Which at a competive level messes with the meta and you sort of just open a can of worms you might not want to get involved with. Certainly I'm not even sure 3 vills would be better then 500f or the tower and 200c.


3vills, 2 bears + explorer can train a doggo new age up for brits.
setting the standards for a new meta.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by sdsanft »

One thing I would like to point out is that rushing is part of the game and getting rid of it completely would ruin the game imo. While it's true that many rush civs are very powerful in comparison to skill cap, they are still part of the game. I think a better approach to just straight nerfing would be to somehow make them more difficult to play, but in theory a rush should still be better then a boom and lose to turtle play.

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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by deleted_user0 »

Which civ ottos are supposed to counter in ep ???
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

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Post by __Uhlan__ »

somppukunkku wrote:Which civ ottos are supposed to counter in ep ???


Sioux :hmm: :lol:
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by KINGofOsmane »

__Uhlan__ wrote:
somppukunkku wrote:Which civ ottos are supposed to counter in ep ???


Sioux :hmm: :lol:

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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by Darwin_ »

I think that your point about skill and power is important, but is also somewhat incorrect. The difference between a pr 20's jan rush to a pr 40's is not the same as the difference between a pr 20's azzy and a pr 40's azzy. Otto is super low skill-gap, so playing them well is very easy, but that also means that playing better has diminishing returns on how relatively strong they are. However, for a civ like azzy, which is quite high skill-gap, it gets even stronger the better player you are, with increasing returns.

I think that spicing up variety is a good thing imo. I would love to see age 1 politicians changed up a bunch. It could change the meta, for sure, but would probably only make the game more interesting.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by kami_ryu »

Interesting thread, one which brings up a good point, imo.

The approach described in OP is a lot like the one used by devs in League, Starcraft 2, even Dota 2 with their recent 7.0 patch.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

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Post by deleted_user0 »

Here are my thoughts:

On the first part, I do think EP has an opportunity to make useless options viable, and I think it's a good thing. Balance units that are currently unviable could add alot of depth to certain mu's and civs. On the other hand, I also think that many people lack a certain creativity. I don't think it's bad that some units are niche, the spy, the grenadier, even the rajput, they may not be your core unit, but they have a place. Perhaps they still need a little touch, but there isn't really something principally wrong with them. You use them in a certain situation and they get that particular job done, but suck at other stuff. However, as I said, many people lack creativity, or go along with this typical aoe3 snobbishness (which you also see in other rts games, or just in other games in general, like how in basketball or tennis underhand throws/serves are frowned upon, for no apparant reason), and they refuse to look past the boundaries they have imposed upon themself.

This leads me to the second part. I dislike the entire narrative that a civ is cheesy or lame. This is bullshit. Only a strategy can be cheesy or lame. How lame or easy is ottomans when you don't do a jan rush but instead go for 3 tc's with full mosque upgrades and cav archer abus. Now sure, otto is one of the easier civs to play, mainly because you dont have to press t+v every 25 seconds, but really, it's not much harder than most other aoe3 civs. In fact, almost all civs are equally hard, with a few exceptions. Some civs have a bit harder macro and others have bit harder micro, but really iroquois isn't easier or harder to play than france, or germany or japan for that matter. So I don't think you can really make a graph the way you did, it's definitely not that simple.

People complain about Russia's pressure, but they don't do the most obvious counter to it, send MM to the blockhouse. They also don't age up 1 vil faster most of the time. They could also build a tower, because tower + tc fire one shots russian musketeers and makes it really hard for them to really siege anything down. In fact, players play exactly how they would play vs some slower greedier civ, like ports for example, and then complain they can't win the game. There are really many ways to deal with agression, ranging from defensive timing pushes, to mm or cm, to walling etc. It's true that pulling a solid defense, with boxing vils and pulling and popping them takes a whole lot of skill, but truth be told, its often not even needed, because the defenders advantage is so big in this game. Still many people play sloppy and take unneccesary damage from rushes. If you play vs otto or russia, why would you still build your first house in front of your tc if you are doing a spain ff? Why would you still place your stable or rax exposed? If you know 5 cossack or 4 kanya are coming around 5 min, why aren't all your vils near your tc? So much can really be avoided, but people don't do it, and then they cry when they lose.

There are alot of ways strats and little tricks that people don't know of or refuse to use even when they do know it. Instead they are content to call whatever doesn't suit their little ideal picture of the game as lame and won't learn from the mistakes that they made. Because that stuff is just lame so it doesn't deserve any recognition or attention. I made use of this when I played alot of iro. People always cry about the 4 kanya and iro lame rush, so many would try to prepare for an incoming rush. And then I just wouldn't rush. I would send 600w 5v and sometimes even 4v in a row and just outboom them and mount huge midgame pressure. Ofcourse they were just sitting in their base waiting for a rush that never came and by the time they started doing something, the window in which my strat is weak, had already passed. In fact, whenever I lost as iro, it was usually to people who didn't wait in their base, but instead would rush me. Then I would lose, because obviously even iro can't get away with 600w 5v vs a 12 sepoy rush.

I guess what I want to say is that in many cases, the tools to create an effective counter strat are already present, they just require some creativity to find it. Ofcourse, this isn't the case in all matchups, but sadly, thats the way this game works with its 14 civs, not every mu can be equal. I do think EP should make sure those cases don't happen more than they should and as least as possible, but i doubt it can be totally eliminated. That said, russia can beat an otto FF. However, if otto no longer ff's vs that, then russia get's caught with their pants down and loses. Then russia no longer ff's and goes colo again, and now ottoman will lose the age2 battle. So then otto will FF again, and beat the age2 russia and we've gone full circle. Most people don't even attempt to circle it though. Thats sad imo.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by __Uhlan__ »

umeu wrote:Here are my thoughts:

On the first part, I do think EP has an opportunity to make useless options viable, and I think it's a good thing. Balance units that are currently unviable could add alot of depth to certain mu's and civs. On the other hand, I also think that many people lack a certain creativity. I don't think it's bad that some units are niche, the spy, the grenadier, even the rajput, they may not be your core unit, but they have a place. Perhaps they still need a little touch, but there isn't really something principally wrong with them. You use them in a certain situation and they get that particular job done, but suck at other stuff. However, as I said, many people lack creativity, or go along with this typical aoe3 snobbishness (which you also see in other rts games, or just in other games in general, like how in basketball or tennis underhand throws/serves are frowned upon, for no apparant reason), and they refuse to look past the boundaries they have imposed upon themself.

This leads me to the second part. I dislike the entire narrative that a civ is cheesy or lame. This is bullshit. Only a strategy can be cheesy or lame. How lame or easy is ottomans when you don't do a jan rush but instead go for 3 tc's with full mosque upgrades and cav archer abus. Now sure, otto is one of the easier civs to play, mainly because you dont have to press t+v every 25 seconds, but really, it's not much harder than most other aoe3 civs. In fact, almost all civs are equally hard, with a few exceptions. Some civs have a bit harder macro and others have bit harder micro, but really iroquois isn't easier or harder to play than france, or germany or japan for that matter. So I don't think you can really make a graph the way you did, it's definitely not that simple.

People complain about Russia's pressure, but they don't do the most obvious counter to it, send MM to the blockhouse. They also don't age up 1 vil faster most of the time. They could also build a tower, because tower + tc fire one shots russian musketeers and makes it really hard for them to really siege anything down. In fact, players play exactly how they would play vs some slower greedier civ, like ports for example, and then complain they can't win the game. There are really many ways to deal with agression, ranging from defensive timing pushes, to mm or cm, to walling etc. It's true that pulling a solid defense, with boxing vils and pulling and popping them takes a whole lot of skill, but truth be told, its often not even needed, because the defenders advantage is so big in this game. Still many people play sloppy and take unneccesary damage from rushes. If you play vs otto or russia, why would you still build your first house in front of your tc if you are doing a spain ff? Why would you still place your stable or rax exposed? If you know 5 cossack or 4 kanya are coming around 5 min, why aren't all your vils near your tc? So much can really be avoided, but people don't do it, and then they cry when they lose.

There are alot of ways strats and little tricks that people don't know of or refuse to use even when they do know it. Instead they are content to call whatever doesn't suit their little ideal picture of the game as lame and won't learn from the mistakes that they made. Because that stuff is just lame so it doesn't deserve any recognition or attention. I made use of this when I played alot of iro. People always cry about the 4 kanya and iro lame rush, so many would try to prepare for an incoming rush. And then I just wouldn't rush. I would send 600w 5v and sometimes even 4v in a row and just outboom them and mount huge midgame pressure. Ofcourse they were just sitting in their base waiting for a rush that never came and by the time they started doing something, the window in which my strat is weak, had already passed. In fact, whenever I lost as iro, it was usually to people who didn't wait in their base, but instead would rush me. Then I would lose, because obviously even iro can't get away with 600w 5v vs a 12 sepoy rush.

I guess what I want to say is that in many cases, the tools to create an effective counter strat are already present, they just require some creativity to find it. Ofcourse, this isn't the case in all matchups, but sadly, thats the way this game works with its 14 civs, not every mu can be equal. I do think EP should make sure those cases don't happen more than they should and as least as possible, but i doubt it can be totally eliminated. That said, russia can beat an otto FF. However, if otto no longer ff's vs that, then russia get's caught with their pants down and loses. Then russia no longer ff's and goes colo again, and now ottoman will lose the age2 battle. So then otto will FF again, and beat the age2 russia and we've gone full circle. Most people don't even attempt to circle it though. Thats sad imo.


Not worrying about constant vill production is huge on lower level, and having less vills in general = easier to manage your macro/eco no matter which way you twist it. Managing 25 vills & protecting them from raids is just much easier then managing 60 with brit for example. But almost everything else you said here I 100% agree with.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by deleted_user0 »

I'm not talking about lower levels. And honestly, at really low level, ottomans isnt even an easy civ to play, but rather one of the harder civs with low winrates. Otto is strongest in the middle segment, the master sergeants to the lt cols. Above and below that otto comes weaker for different reasons. It's true that it's easier to manage 25 vils, compared to 60, but at the same time, the margin of error is smaller. You cannot misplace 1 vil in your macro, or you will be short res you need to produce units. You cannot really afford to lose vils either, and even though otto's vils are free, it hurts them much more to lose one. Otto is also very vulnerable to raids, because usually they dont have alot of cav. It's hard to raid them early, its true, because most vils are near tc or fb. But if you can raid them, it usually cripples them alot. It's kinda the same for their units. They have a big mass soon and with strong units, however they can't really replace that mass if they lose it. So otto has to be very careful about when to pick a fight, because if they don't win it convincingly enough, they might not win the game. The same is true for sioux to a lesser extent. Russia on the other hand doesnt really care if they lose a fight, they just want to lose it at a high enough cost. They lose and lose fights until they won the game.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by milku3459 »

2 tower age up + 2 tower shipment makes an unbreakable colonial base
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by AraGun »

Interjection has a fair point here.. we should focus on the politicians that are never played and figure out how to buff that.. The discussion about lame civs/strats will never end and there is no way to properly deal with that so lets just focus on what we can fix?


And otto is in no way OP or lame anymore.. only player to successfully pull off an otto win in last tournament was lordraphael vs a very tilted mankle that didn't even call CM (no offense mankle) but that doesn't prove anything. Same goes for the russia vs india game.. he didn't even really try to put up a defense.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by zoom »

I'm confused. What is the point of discussing this? Are you making a patch?
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by SoldieR »

The argument against changing polis is simple -- and strong. It changes the game too much. And the stated purpose of the EP is to balance with as little change as possible.
You just can't have huge changes.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by sdsanft »

IAmSoldieR wrote:The argument against changing polis is simple -- and strong. It changes the game too much. And the stated purpose of the EP is to balance with as little change as possible.
You just can't have huge changes.

It's true, while doing so may balance the game, it also changes it more which alienates new players abd actually shrinks the player base.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by JakeyBoyTH »

But then if you are ports you can have 2TC and 5/6 outposts up pretty quick. Thats some pretty insane map control.
I suppose it would even out there colonial play, but maybe too op? Increasing the coin instead may be better.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by sdsanft »

I think it's better to buff defensive play then nerf rushes, but then the problem id that people can turtle and boom simultaneously and then slow-scaling rush civs have no chance at all.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

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Post by lesllamas »

IAmSoldieR wrote:The argument against changing polis is simple -- and strong. It changes the game too much. And the stated purpose of the EP is to balance with as little change as possible.
You just can't have huge changes.


This is a bullshit line of reasoning. Age up politicians are resources like anything else in the game, with values that can be changed in varying degrees. It is possible to make changes to literally garbage politicians without changing the fundamental nature of the game. Changing something like 400 wood to 350 would change the game far too much. Making a politician give 7 cows instead of 5 would not. Of course, changing 5 cows to 20 probably WOULD. Somewhere in between those two numbers is a value that allows the politician to fit a niche and useful purpose without crowding out other options or making other options unviable.

There are some age up politicians that, if changed, would alter many matchups. Exiled Prince, Governor, Quartermaster, the various common Asia/Natives ones, they probably shouldn't be touched. But why don't you just fucking remove the other age up politicians if you don't want them to ever be usable? Because right now they're not usable, and saying that they should not be changed in the name of preserving the game says that you don't want them to ever be usable. So why not just delete them? The fact remains that the game can be made much richer by allowing more options to be selected. Changing 6 skirm fortress age up to 7, or 8 skirm isn't going to break the game until the number reaches an as yet unknown point. It will, however, allow players to take a risk by not using Exiled Prince, and feel like that risk pays off if they get away with it.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by sdsanft »

lesllamas wrote:
IAmSoldieR wrote:The argument against changing polis is simple -- and strong. It changes the game too much. And the stated purpose of the EP is to balance with as little change as possible.
You just can't have huge changes.


This is a bullshit line of reasoning. Age up politicians are resources like anything else in the game, with values that can be changed in varying degrees. It is possible to make changes to literally garbage politicians without changing the fundamental nature of the game. Changing something like 400 wood to 350 would change the game far too much. Making a politician give 7 cows instead of 5 would not. Of course, changing 5 cows to 20 probably WOULD. Somewhere in between those two numbers is a value that allows the politician to fit a niche and useful purpose without crowding out other options or making other options unviable.

There are some age up politicians that, if changed, would alter many matchups. Exiled Prince, Governor, Quartermaster, the various common Asia/Natives ones, they probably shouldn't be touched. But why don't you just fucking remove the other age up politicians if you don't want them to ever be usable? Because right now they're not usable, and saying that they should not be changed in the name of preserving the game says that you don't want them to ever be usable. So why not just delete them? The fact remains that the game can be made much richer by allowing more options to be selected. Changing 6 skirm fortress age up to 7, or 8 skirm isn't going to break the game until the number reaches an as yet unknown point. It will, however, allow players to take a risk by not using Exiled Prince, and feel like that risk pays off if they get away with it.

I agree but you still have to be careful. Quartermaster and Exiled Prince should still be standard, but all the others should be able to fill some type of niche. You dont want to overdo if ofc, and make the naturalist and the mantlet/scout to become the new meta because it scare off new players and ruin the original intent of the game.
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by milku3459 »

I'm sure @aizamk has used the 4 cow age up before, maybe to block enemy units.
I remember somebody posted on the old forums something like "4 cows is best Age up by far that's 2000 potential food right there!"
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Re: Advancing to the Colonial Age with a '2 Outpost Wagon' politician

Post by SoldieR »

Hey, look, if we were talking official patch to change the game for everyone, then I'd agree 100%. Changing polis would probably not only be the most fun way to update the game, but one of the best ways to balance. But we aren't dealing with that.

It's just not good to have someone jump on a patch and play not knowing matchups have drastically changed.
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Post by deleted_user0 »

Thats why u have patchnotes? I mean why would u even play a mod if not for changes...

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