Walls/water discussion

[deleted_user0]

if u do it properly ur up by 3.45. 3.35 if you have luck with tres. obviously you don't need to send 2-3 unit shipments in a row. even 4 kanya 5v/600w variation, though stronger, is still beatable on good maps. also, if you play vs water and walls, even if its a tp map, youre 100% gonna lose by opening 4kanya BB. so that im just no sure why youre claiming that it was super dominant and OP when its just pretty clear that the dominance was a side effect from another factor, namely maps predominantly, and poor adaptation by players. even just dropping a tower in base is very effective to midgitating the 4 kanya 5 toma rush. as well as just placing a few well placed walls to block off chokes. sioux and aztecs can also kill the warhut with explorer + converts

you an open 4 kanya BB and go indus even. I used to do that vs ports. 4 kanya 5v 4v. Can always play fortress if needed but goes to show that iro really can do anything because of the early advantage.

you can get away with it vs ports ye, but i dont think its a good example as ports is probably one of iro's easiest mu's on RE land maps, perhaps only vs dutch is easier. And you can win pretty much by doing any kind of bo. FI is really strong vs ports indeed, whether you straight FI or semi fi doesnt really matter. in any case, 4 kanya bb isnt always the best way to exploit iro's advantage, which was my main point. Not that you should never play 4kanya BB.

[Jaeger]

Well all of those colonial games on Alaska were india mirrors so they might as well all be F games . I guess one way to look at it is the number of games played; another is to look at what's standard to do in all the (105?) matchups. Let's see, which civs give you mostly fortress matchups? Honestly the only ones I can think of are India, Aztec, Orto, maybe Brit

I don't really understand. You mean India/Aztec/Otto/Brit are more likely to create games in which 1 or more players age? I'm not sure I would agree with that, except maybe in the case of India.

There's another thread somewhere on this forum where I did a similar analysis for ESOC Spring 2017, I think? It was mostly the same conclusion as well, I believe.

Sorry I meant to write colonial matchups. I think all the others (Dutch, French, Japan, China), etc. age in most matchups. Don't take it too literarly though I didn't actually go through the list but it feels like most civs age in most of their matchups. I think the reason why there were so many colonial games was because the few colonial matchups (such as India mirror) were just played over and over.

[Amsel_]

I honestly love RE's walls/water. I understand that water laming was OP, but I don't really like the way the ESOC patch handles it. It seems like an attempt to sterilize gameplay. Water, rushing, and booms of all kinds should be encouraged in order to get away from this semi-FF meta. I think part of the problem is that ESOC tries to balance around top-level competition, instead of just working out the kinks and making the game more fun, but still competitive. Currently it seems like anything that's strong and that isn't a semi-FF gets nerfed.

Instead of reworking water for the 20th time, why not reexamine the strength of rushes? Why not do something with the church, saloon, or livestock pen? It's disappointing how the patch has sterilized gameplay so heavily instead of adding spice and more variety.

[Gendarme]

How about just reducing the cost of crossbowmen (and perhaps pikemen)? The crossbowman is the basic unit but is despite that almost never used. Clearly, this is wrong. I honestly think this will solve many issues.

[HUMMAN]

How about just reducing the cost of crossbowmen (and perhaps pikemen)? The crossbowman is the basic unit but is despite that almost never used. Clearly, this is wrong. I honestly think this will solve many issues.

Yeah some players like kaiserklein wants xboww buff too.

About semi-ff meta, as Mitoe mentioned mostly maps favor semi-ff which is not necessarily bad. You can also argue it depends of players style if everyone plays like kynesie we could argue meta is fi-min. 20 imperial games.

[t3rror1sta]

There is no meta.. wht makes aoe3 so fun is the numbers of possibilitys. Otherwise we have to ban cheeses, water, Imperial... lets play just colonial/fortress standard shit

[Gendarme]

An xbow buff would effectively buff the colonial age of many of the European civs that currently almost exclusively semi-FF. It would also punish the Kynesie playstyle as pikemen probably have a bit too much siege.

[VooDoo_BoSs]

I honestly love RE's walls/water. I understand that water laming was OP, but I don't really like the way the ESOC patch handles it. It seems like an attempt to sterilize gameplay. Water, rushing, and booms of all kinds should be encouraged in order to get away from this semi-FF meta. I think part of the problem is that ESOC tries to balance around top-level competition, instead of just working out the kinks and making the game more fun, but still competitive. Currently it seems like anything that's strong and that isn't a semi-FF gets nerfed.

Instead of reworking water for the 20th time, why not reexamine the strength of rushes? Why not do something with the church, saloon, or livestock pen? It's disappointing how the patch has sterilized gameplay so heavily instead of adding spice and more variety.

Could not agree more.

What would be truly impressive is if the patch team takes a statistical approach to balance. For example, analysing the frequency that cards are played and boosting the least-used cards / techs and nerfing the most-used cards and techs. Imagine a world where every deck didn't just send 700 res + vills as the first 4-5 colonial shipments, or church technologies are sufficiently strong to beat a strong water play.

AOE3 has the capacity to be an extremely diverse and varied game, but seems that there are 2-3 dominant strats (colonial, semi-FF, water) that are used in 95% of games.

[Interjection]

I hugely agree with Amsel too, though I am generally very pleased with how ESOC patch handles things.

It's such a shame that literally half of the colonial age politicians are dead content and even more of the fortress options too.

This is half the issue right here:

Another thing I've also suggested in the past to tackle this issue is to adjust Fortress politician research times.

Fast age is too difficult to punish and gives you access to Fortress age shipments and units too quickly. It takes 40 seconds to research.

On the other hand, slow age is far too slow and is very difficult to get away with in many situations. You get access to your Fortress shipments and units significantly later, and in return you receive a handful of units (sometimes very undesirable units). You clearly need to think about investing into more Colonial units while you're aging if you want to survive. Slow age takes 110 seconds to research, a whole 70 seconds longer than fast age.


I think that increasing the fast age to 50 seconds and decreasing the slow age to 100 seconds would go a long time to making the game easier to balance and also making people think twice about how they approach each situation. This gives more room for civs to punish Fortress age ups, and because slow age is more appealing than before by a factor of 20 seconds, a lot of players will inevitably pick it in situations where they shouldn't and get punished for it. Slow age also gives more options to a lot of civs who like to stay Colonial; civs like Iro and Aztec who like to use fast age to Colonial, or British, who don't have fast age, or even civs like Russia who don't really have any shadow-teching units and would continue training units in transition to Fortress anyway would like a slower politician so that they have more units overall once they are Fortress.

All of these civs would have more follow ups after initially applying Colonial pressure if they so desire. At the moment part of the reason Colonial isn't preferable is because it just doesn't have a good follow up, and this helps address that issue a little bit.

[Interjection]

I'd really like to see people's thoughts on the above that I quoted from Mitoe. I think it's a very elegant solution to a difficult problem

[Gendarme]

Bugfixer Gendarme at your service.

[t3rror1sta]

I honestly love RE's walls/water. I understand that water laming was OP, but I don't really like the way the ESOC patch handles it. It seems like an attempt to sterilize gameplay. Water, rushing, and booms of all kinds should be encouraged in order to get away from this semi-FF meta. I think part of the problem is that ESOC tries to balance around top-level competition, instead of just working out the kinks and making the game more fun, but still competitive. Currently it seems like anything that's strong and that isn't a semi-FF gets nerfed.

Instead of reworking water for the 20th time, why not reexamine the strength of rushes? Why not do something with the church, saloon, or livestock pen? It's disappointing how the patch has sterilized gameplay so heavily instead of adding spice and more variety.

congrats
100% agree with you

[Gendarme]

That's totally something Garja would have said.

[charlemango]

First, we have to define what principles of balance EP is trying to achieve in regards to walls/water. In my humble opinion,

1. If player A goes full water boom, and player B goes full land boom while each ignoring the other, they should have about the same eco (until lategame when water player has both land and water boom). I think schooners lets boats train too fast, ruining this principle.
2. If a player puts some res into contesting, he should be able to do a little damage. For example 5 huss raiding slows down opponent eco. But two caravels does pretty much nothing if opponent has advanced dock.
3. An all-in boom should be hard countered by an all-in rush. I don't think this is possible with walls/CM/water.

An idea for nerf that hasn't been mentioned yet: what if culverins had bonus against walls (maybe 1.5 or 2x)? This continues the theme of culvs being used for special situations: anti-artillery, anti-ships, and now anti-turtle weapon. I don't think it'd be that big of a change since culv attack is weak anyways, but helps the aggressive player push a little faster.

[bwinner]

I disagree.
1. It's just a different boom : TP, bank or manors boom are faster, which is very important. Then water boom is usually larger (depending of the map). But one is not better than the other, they are different.

2. 2 caravels is almost always usefull : it will iddle and kill fishing boats + force 2 caravels as reaction for the defender. You shouldn't ever lose them to dock. If you can force advanced dock with only 2 caravels, it's huge, imagine if you force CM with 5 Huss...

3.if you have CM/walls/water (I guess warship ?) You aren't full boom all in.

[lemmings121]

About kynesie tournament games: is hard to use them as balance reference, it was clear that kynesie is at least 5pr above rapha and snow in water maps (and 5pr bellow them in standard land maps).

Imo current schoones is too strong. the idea of giving 70w boats so everyone can go water is good, but making schooners even better just makes sure the same civs as before are still the only "water viable civs", just in a different way. With current fishboat train time schooners civs can actually boom with only one dock with a decent efficiency and small investiment, and if some 'non water civ' tries to contest, you already have many boats to garisson in your soon to be advanced dock.
proposed change: schooners makes boats cost 40w. (same as re, no training bonus, shooners is just as viable as before, but you can opt for a smaller boom without schoones)

About water vs land: thats a map problem imo. if you make maps that have little to no res near the shore, rushing/timming becomes viable vs full water (currently you rush, kill the tc, the guys just migrates to gold mines and trees in the shore, ggnore)

Walls: We could try increasing building time of walls (maybe 3x current time). they still serve the same purpuse, but you cant spam 5 layers in one minute. Also helping agressive play vs fullwall no army style. (water boom should be viable, but full rush all in should still counter full boom.)

[Interjection]

Schooners does seem to be quite effective. Perhaps it should be more like East Indiamen granting a dock wagon and -20w to fishing boat cost

[Hazza54321]

Yea asian civ ones are just much worse

[momuuu]

I think in terms of gameplay doubling/tripling the cost of walls wouldn't actually be a bad change. They're not only strong in the way kynesie uses them, I actually think spamming random wall segments on the map as any civ is amazingly strong and underused right now. If people start using it the gameplay will only get worse.

[Garja]

In the end trade monopoly is the right answer to excessive use of walls. We could also make it so that counter is shorter every time it is queued (if technically possible).
Wall segments are hard to balance because it's hard to find the boundary between use and abuse.

[martinspjuth]

If walls are to be nerfed, I like the idea of increasing the build time. That you can close a gap in your walls in less than 10s and the result is that you bought yourself another two min safe time is too strong. That walls seem so OP when Kenysie uses them (in late game) is because his opponents refuses to respond properly. If they would only make some walls of their own, Kenysie wouldn't be able to move right at his opponent’s base whenever it is his perfect time. Nor would he be able to effortlessly expand his base with new walls whenever he needs to. Nor would he be able to raid. You don't need to wall spam to be able to lock down the map and punishing Kynesie for letting you have the whole map for free, a few strategic walls at chokepoints etc is enough. Walls become OP in late game when only one side uses them. It is not the fault of the one using them, it is the fault of the one neglecting them.

[zoom]

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.

What's wrong with Schooners? Also, do you realize EP Schooners is also a nerf to Advanced Dock?

[deleted_user0]

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.

What's wrong with Schooners? Also, do you realize EP Schooners is also a nerf to Advanced Dock?

eh? how is it a nerf to advanced dock?

and what's wrong with it is that it's much better now than it was. and we can all agree that schooners on re, if not too strong, was just fine. there's no need to add 40% faster training, which in itself is already an excessive number for a card, on top of a cost reduction. this change has many unintended side effects

A) it's not just a cost reduction now, faster train speed means u need less docks. where before ppl like kynesie would go 5-6 docks on water maps, u can now just boom with 3.

B) faster training means u have more out earlier, snowballing the boom effect, even if the overall amount of boats made isnt changed.

C) because u have more boats early, advanced dock is stronger early, meaning its now viable to send earlier. but even without the card, more ships in dock = easier hold vs a 2 caravel shipment.

[zoom]

while I do think Kynesie played the games really smart, I would not like this to become the new "meta" of playing the tournament. Its kind of boring, and very time consuming.
I do think Kynesie has improved a lot since the last tournaments - and he is deserving to be in the final.

If there are to be changes to the docs, and how much the boats will cost, I hope that will also be a thing TWC civs can benefit from??
Think the suggestion by Goodspeed, that TWC could choose a card that make a doc + improve the traintime for fishing boats, sounds good?

TWC civilizations did benefit from the Fishing Boat cost buff, I believe.

[zoom]

I honestly love RE's walls/water. I understand that water laming was OP, but I don't really like the way the ESOC patch handles it. It seems like an attempt to sterilize gameplay. Water, rushing, and booms of all kinds should be encouraged in order to get away from this semi-FF meta. I think part of the problem is that ESOC tries to balance around top-level competition, instead of just working out the kinks and making the game more fun, but still competitive. Currently it seems like anything that's strong and that isn't a semi-FF gets nerfed.

Instead of reworking water for the 20th time, why not reexamine the strength of rushes? Why not do something with the church, saloon, or livestock pen? It's disappointing how the patch has sterilized gameplay so heavily instead of adding spice and more variety.

Your post is partly merited. In particular where it concerns improving feature viability. Unfortunately, this has never been a priority of the patch.

Also, apart from Monitors, water has been touched a grand total of... one time. It's been touched once.