Walls/water discussion

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Italy Garja
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Re: bai bai

Post by Garja »

gibson wrote:thats odd, considering that tourney results are the most relevant results

To be fair, considering all the shit that inevitably affects aoe3 tourneys I'd say they're the less relevant really. And if not that at least the fact that it is only a bunch of games vs the x1000 games you play outside of tourney.
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Re: work in progress

Post by gibson »

odd, consdiering that tourney games are the only games where you can guarantee 1) that people are trying and 2) a balanced match
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Re: bai bai

Post by deleted_user0 »

Garja wrote:
IAmSoldieR wrote:Advanced Docks has been a staple in water decks for AT LEAST the last 2 years.

But then again, none of you here play water.

2 years is a stretch. Maybe tit and kynesie did but everyone else, including other water lamers never did since the last year or less.


Darwingiovanny, breeze, boneng and other water players were using it since 2013+. Darwin used it all the time with russia.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by Cometk »

I've seperated the balance discussion from LordRaphael's farewell thread so as to keep Raphael's goodbyes and the water/walls conversation nice and neat. All discussion of water and walls should be kept to this thread, please!
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Re: bai bai

Post by deleted_user0 »

ovi12 wrote:
umeu wrote:i played vs water plenty, and played it plenty myself, i also abused adv dock ofc. and i can say its broken.

what ppl do at low lvl is quite irrelevant here, sorry @HUMMAN. what you say is reasonably true, until adv dock is shipped. playing 2 front push doesn't really work vs aoe water, because warships can defend both np. so the best is to commit 100% to either killing water, or killing land.

i dont think rapha played g1 correct btw. he lost cuz he didnt focus on one or the other, but tried to play water and land.

Well Tit did succesful 2 front push in his game vs Kynesie. So it's possible with at least in some matchups


india is one of the few civs that can because u can age up with a rax. But i dont think its the best way to play, atleast early, for most civs.
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Re: bai bai

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Post by Cometk »

Garja wrote:Of course he does. He plays that since forever.
As for the reason why others don't:
- it's not supposed to be good but it ends up being with some civs
- it's boring af

the thing is, if your attitude or mentality is preventing you from doing what should be the strongest strategy in the metagame, then you're just not a competitive player and you don't deserve to win

for example, I can say that I hate doing standard builds and that I refuse to do them, but if standard builds are the correct thing to do and I’m losing because I refuse to do standard builds, then I have no reason to complain after I lose a competitive match. having that mentality just makes me a non-competitive player
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Re: Walls/water discussion

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Post by t3rror1sta »

Kynesie has not even won and people already wants to nerf turtle style.
Why not just think and discover a counter?

Maybe, for so long perfecting this same style, buakaw finally reached the supreme level of this build
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Re: bai bai

Post by deleted_user0 »

Cometk wrote:
Garja wrote:Of course he does. He plays that since forever.
As for the reason why others don't:
- it's not supposed to be good but it ends up being with some civs
- it's boring af

the thing is, if your attitude or mentality is preventing you from doing what should be the strongest strategy in the metagame, then you're just not a competitive player and you don't deserve to win

for example, I can say that I hate doing standard builds and that I refuse to do them, but if standard builds are the correct thing to do and I’m losing because I refuse to do standard builds, then I have no reason to complain after I lose a competitive match. having that mentality just makes me a non-competitive player


I wonder how many of you (I'm quoting CometK but there are more with similar arguments) were saying the same thing when the balance discussion was about otto/iro and old han. by this logic we never shouldve had esoc patch to begin with. afaik no one is saying stuff about kynesie for using this style, people are talking about the style, not about who uses it. And that's already progress from the otto/iro china old han debate, because there people would say you should die if you jan rush etc.
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Re: bai bai

Post by Cometk »

umeu wrote:
Cometk wrote:
Garja wrote:Of course he does. He plays that since forever.
As for the reason why others don't:
- it's not supposed to be good but it ends up being with some civs
- it's boring af

the thing is, if your attitude or mentality is preventing you from doing what should be the strongest strategy in the metagame, then you're just not a competitive player and you don't deserve to win

for example, I can say that I hate doing standard builds and that I refuse to do them, but if standard builds are the correct thing to do and I’m losing because I refuse to do standard builds, then I have no reason to complain after I lose a competitive match. having that mentality just makes me a non-competitive player

I wonder how many of you (I'm quoting CometK but there are more with similar arguments) were saying the same thing when the balance discussion was about otto/iro and old han. by this logic we never shouldve had esoc patch to begin with. afaik no one is saying stuff about kynesie for using this style, people are talking about the style, not about who uses it. And that's already progress from the otto/iro china old han debate, because there people would say you should die if you jan rush etc.

so, you have to come at this from two different angles

1) when you are playing in a competition, you should do everything in your power to win it. there are no excuses for not utilizing anything and everything, within the rules, to your advantage
2) taking a step back from the competition itself, it's important to recognize what things break the game and what things don't

a decent definition of "breaks the game" (certainly not an all-inclusive one, as there are many other ways to define it or otherwise suss out its meaning) is if you MUST play the particular strategy or face losing the game without doubt. as was the case in the PK clan tournament (to my shoddy memory), basically every game contained either iroquois or ottoman if not both. everyone was playing those two civs as often as they could. while yes as i mentioned earlier this is the most competitive way to play the tournament, when taking a step back from the competition itself we can kind of see that a 14-civilization game being completely dominated by just 2 of them does not constitute a very healthy metagame

in the autumn championship, we've seen a single (1) player in the top 8 utilize a water-heavy style. while it's still fully possible that, overall, water is a broken strategy, i hope you can understand the rationale behind my doubts

and fwiw i totally agree that the bastion upgrade for walls should be nerfed
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Re: bai bai

Post by deleted_user0 »

Cometk wrote:
umeu wrote:
Show hidden quotes

I wonder how many of you (I'm quoting CometK but there are more with similar arguments) were saying the same thing when the balance discussion was about otto/iro and old han. by this logic we never shouldve had esoc patch to begin with. afaik no one is saying stuff about kynesie for using this style, people are talking about the style, not about who uses it. And that's already progress from the otto/iro china old han debate, because there people would say you should die if you jan rush etc.

so, you have to come at this from two different angles

1) when you are playing in a competition, you should do everything in your power to win it. there are no excuses for not utilizing anything and everything, within the rules, to your advantage
2) taking a step back from the competition itself, it's important to recognize what things break the game and what things don't

a decent definition of "breaks the game" (certainly not an all-inclusive one, as there are many other ways to define it or otherwise suss out its meaning) is if you MUST play the particular strategy or face losing the game without doubt. as was the case in the PK clan tournament (to my shoddy memory), basically every game contained either iroquois or ottoman if not both. everyone was playing those two civs as often as they could. while yes as i mentioned earlier this is the most competitive way to play the tournament, when taking a step back from the competition itself we can kind of see that a 14-civilization game being completely dominated by just 2 of them does not constitute a very healthy metagame

in the autumn championship, we've seen a single (1) player in the top 8 utilize a water-heavy style. while it's still fully possible that, overall, water is a broken strategy, i hope you can understand the rationale behind my doubts

and fwiw i totally agree that the bastion upgrade for walls should be nerfed


I agree with you. And people are now talking about 2). Nobody is really talking about 1). Kaiser already mentioned it, and I think lordraphael did so too. Although I might be mistaken on the last part.

As for the PK reference, it's true that more people played otto/iro than people play water now, but it's not as lopsided as you are making it seem. Not just kynesie played water/walls. There have been more, including somppu and tit, although few do it as well or as extreme as kynesie. PK3 wasn't just otto/iro either, many players stayed away from those civs for the same reasons most people stay away from wall/water.

also the problem here isn't just how overpowered it is (aka, the design is alright, but the numbers need to be tweaked) but how broken it is (aka the design is just flat out no working). IMO, the problem lies in a broken interaction pattern between water and land. Rapha mentioned this already. But docks shouldn't be your main line of defense vs water. Warships shouldnt be your main line of defense for the shore line + a big chunk of land. And the interaction between warships and landunits (either mobile or stationary such as towers etc) shouldn't be so lopsidedly in favor of warships. Also the schooner card definitely needs to be retweaked. 50w +40% faster training is so much better than just 40w... the fact that the base cost is now 70 is quite irrelevant in real water games, although its a nice feature in light water games where people go for like a 1 dock boom. but tbh, that was always already possible. even though the +3 ships you now get from 700w is a nice little bonus, but nothing really gamechanging.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

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Post by deleted_user »

in fact it's hilarious to see the water is still under the discussion. its bs... these water resources are nerfed something like %50 compared to re patch and there is no map that has more than 4 whales ( re maps has atleast 6-8 whales ) what made the advanced dock card viable is as @Kynesie also said that the size of the water is really small. and the faster fishingboat training thing kinda changed the meta. while you would just have 2-3 fishing boats at 5 min. now you have 8-9 fishboats to put into dock and kill caravels. and yea for sure the advanced dock card is broken. when I used to play sea i had it in my deck but it was not used at all for early game atleast, and about the walls i don't see any reason to cry about it they are already %50 nerfed while they had 3k hp on re patch, if you dont know how to play against it then you are bad. dont blame the walls or civs meanwhile i saw a lot of times during the obs games and streams blackstar roby was not even having a hard time to beat kynesie. because blackstar was smart and trying to figure it out to outplay. it's just a make up excuse to blame Wall and sea at this point.. its just pointless when someone thinks like "I CANT PLAY AGAINST WTR LETS MAKE WALLS 100 HP" "REMOVE WARSHIPS FROM THE GAME ITS JUST BROKEN" "ONLY NOOBS PLAY WATER" it's same as saying "I CANT RUSH. SEMI FF IS BROKEN SO ITS FOR NOOBS" "BOW PIKE RUSH DOESNT WORK VS MUSK HUSS SO WHOEVER MAKES MUSK HUSS ARE NOOBS LAMERS" lmao
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Re: bai bai

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Post by Goodspeed »

Cometk wrote:
umeu wrote:
Show hidden quotes

I wonder how many of you (I'm quoting CometK but there are more with similar arguments) were saying the same thing when the balance discussion was about otto/iro and old han. by this logic we never shouldve had esoc patch to begin with. afaik no one is saying stuff about kynesie for using this style, people are talking about the style, not about who uses it. And that's already progress from the otto/iro china old han debate, because there people would say you should die if you jan rush etc.

so, you have to come at this from two different angles

1) when you are playing in a competition, you should do everything in your power to win it. there are no excuses for not utilizing anything and everything, within the rules, to your advantage
Of course there is an excuse. Not everyone plays in a competition to win it. Most people play in a tournament because they enjoy the game and want to up the stakes a little. Besides, if the best style of play is not enjoyable to play or play against then it makes sense if players don't want to spend time practicing it or against it.

2) taking a step back from the competition itself, it's important to recognize what things break the game and what things don't

a decent definition of "breaks the game" (certainly not an all-inclusive one, as there are many other ways to define it or otherwise suss out its meaning) is if you MUST play the particular strategy or face losing the game without doubt. as was the case in the PK clan tournament (to my shoddy memory), basically every game contained either iroquois or ottoman if not both. everyone was playing those two civs as often as they could. while yes as i mentioned earlier this is the most competitive way to play the tournament, when taking a step back from the competition itself we can kind of see that a 14-civilization game being completely dominated by just 2 of them does not constitute a very healthy metagame
I don't agree with that definition of "breaks the game". I think that, to an extent, if a playstyle is too different from the game everyone wants to play, from AoE3 supremacy as most of us know and love it, AND it has major design and balance issues, then imo it should be treated as game breaking. It cannot be strong enough that players are forced to deal with it when it's not the game they want to be playing. I would call it broken, but not necessarily overpowered.

As for the design and balance issues, there are many that EP hasn't touched (yet). To name the (imo) most important ones:
- War ships don't cost population, rather there is a hard limit
- Whales allow for gold gathering on water, which makes control of the water too important; it gives the player an economic advantage for the entire duration of the game
- War ships don't fire in predictable ways which means there are only so many (basic) micro techniques involved in controlling them

On top of that there are still balance issues with many cards.

I was always afraid to change too much because it was very controversial. I and many others argued things needed to be done about this years ago and there was a lot of resistance, mostly I think because people enjoyed watching it so much.

For reference: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=559&hilit=water+thread

My point being that water doesn't have to be overpowered for us to change it.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

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deleted_user wrote: what made the advanced dock card viable is as @Kynesie also said that the size of the water is really small. and the faster fishingboat training thing kinda changed the meta. while you would just have 2-3 fishing boats at 5 min. now you have 8-9 fishboats to put into dock and kill caravels.


actually this is the most important part to take into consideration for the next balance change.

A) if there's more water, and the fish patches are further away from the docks, then adv dock is less problematic.
B) if you can pass docks without being in range of them (for example rapha had to hug the edge of the map, and then he was still almost in range) adv dock is also less problematic.
C) the 40% faster training on schooners needs to be tweaked.

Imo it should be something like this:

Schooners > -30 wood. (I don't think 40w fishing boats was any problem). That's it.
TAD schooners > +1 dock and +25%-40% faster training of fishing boats (numbers need to be looked at)

Possibly: docks cost 250w instead of 200.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by deleted_user »

umeu wrote:
deleted_user wrote: what made the advanced dock card viable is as @Kynesie also said that the size of the water is really small. and the faster fishingboat training thing kinda changed the meta. while you would just have 2-3 fishing boats at 5 min. now you have 8-9 fishboats to put into dock and kill caravels.


actually this is the most important part to take into consideration for the next balance change.

A) if there's more water, and the fish patches are further away from the docks, then adv dock is less problematic.
B) if you can pass docks without being in range of them (for example rapha had to hug the edge of the map, and then he was still almost in range) adv dock is also less problematic.
C) the 40% faster training on schooners needs to be tweaked.

I think nobody would disagreee with putting fishingboats to their old status. it's just the fact this faster training thing made the advanced docks viable early game.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by pecelot »

really just what's so tough in making outposts fire cannons at fishing ships
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by Sargsyan »

pecelot wrote:really just what's so tough in making outposts fire cannons at fishing ships

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Re: Walls/water discussion

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Post by Mitoe »

Having looked through the games now, I think Raphael's plan was the main problem here. He clearly wasn't as prepared for the Port mirror as he could have been, and when he had to pick first he picked civs that, while normally pretty solid first picks, have a hard time vs Kynesie's style of play where the game often gets dragged out to the lategame.

In game 3 he picked India first, which might be alright considering that India is actually pretty strong on water, but it's not something Raphael had in mind when he picked it and probably wouldn't be the wisest course of action (see games 1 and 6) against someone as experienced in water play as Kynesie. So if you're not going to play water, what's India really got going for them? Honestly, not a lot. They have a strong economy which can help combat the economy water provides, I guess; but your units don't scale very well past the Fortress age, leading India to struggle in a lot of matchups in the lategame. Against a player like Kynesie who likes to wall and turtle you probably want a civ that scales well into lategame.

I suppose Kynesie could still counterpick some civs with Aztec or Otto, but that's a style of play that Raphael would definitely be a lot more comfortable playing against regardless of the matchup, I think.

In game 5 he first picked Germans, which kind of have the same problem as India. They're hard to counterpick, and have reasonably strong mid game timings and a decent economy, but they don't scale very well into the lategame, nor do they have easy access to siege units like cannons which is kind of a must against Kynesie's style of play a lot of the time.

Top this off with the fact that Raphael was--by his own admission--fairly certain he would lose the Port mirrors if Kynesie sent Advanced Dock, and I think it's fair to say that Raphael just wasn't sure how best to deal with this style of play and wasn't confident in his usual style of play to deal with it.


I'm fairly certain if Raphael had just avoided Kynesie's game and drafted better civilizations for lategame he would've won. You can see when he did get to play games he was more comfortable with in the British mirror and Aztec mirror that he was able to win pretty convincingly, even when the early game didn't go his way in the British mirror.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by Atomiswave »

Just nerft advanced dock if it is so big problem.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by HUMMAN »

Kynesie is noob and his strat is counterable but you dont bother because its just boring. Well it's sad to see motivation of a top player that low, its just a challange to handle and in tourney format prepearing against a speacial play style/openent sounds just fun. I hope after raphaels quit, ambitious players like Kaiserklein get mechanically even better and we can see contentious games with both sides trying /adapting to new strategies instead of whining.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

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Post by Gendarme »

"Kynesie is noob" EleGiggle

Poor guy gets to tournament finals and is flamed for it.
Pay more attention to detail.
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Re: work in progress

Post by Garja »

gibson wrote:odd, consdiering that tourney games are the only games where you can guarantee 1) that people are trying and 2) a balanced match

I don't understand what you mean with balanced match but anyway, tourney necessarily have lag just because games are streamed by some observer.
Also tourney have this civ rule for which if something goes wrong you may end up playing mostly bad MUs.
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Re: bai bai

Post by Garja »

umeu wrote:
Garja wrote:
IAmSoldieR wrote:Advanced Docks has been a staple in water decks for AT LEAST the last 2 years.

But then again, none of you here play water.

2 years is a stretch. Maybe tit and kynesie did but everyone else, including other water lamers never did since the last year or less.


Darwingiovanny, breeze, boneng and other water players were using it since 2013+. Darwin used it all the time with russia.

Boneng wasn't using it. As far as I know he never had that in his deck.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by Mitoe »

Well it's only useful if you're fighting water vs water, so a lot of people may not even have it in their deck because they don't really need it, as there are not a lot of games where both players try to go hard on water.
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by Garja »

Ye that's why I only have it in tier2 water decks
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Re: Walls/water discussion

Post by deleted_user0 »

I mean... Water is not op but you can't deny that water battles on a map like manchuria are completely ridiculous. With advanced dock you get a supercannon dock that can fire like 1/3 area of the entire water. You shouldn't even do ships because buildings and docks dominate so hard. Docks even kill opponent fish boats.

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