Rewarding Aggressive Play

[evilcheadar]

Aggressive play should be better rewarded.

[Warno]

This game is dead af. Can't find games anymore. Instead its everybody discussing such useless shit here. Just play the game. Age up politicans are good and make sense.

Online now, lets go (no russia).

[Garja]

What if the maps had more and better designed tier 3 treasures. This is almost a wasted part of the game design right now on EP maps. The treasure design should reward making age 2 units and encourage fighting over them. Might need to change or add guardians that have more HP but less attack so that you can’t just run in with an army and snag it, you have to commit some time to it.

I once tried to sneak in some tier 3 and 4 treasures (320xp is tier 4) but I've been asked to remove..

[ChewSick]

just buff iro please. it's sad that the strongest rush civ was pushed into a weak semi ff shit civ just because people were scared of their rush (wich indeed was too strong, but why kill it like that)

[Mitoe]

This game is dead af. Can't find games anymore. Instead its everybody discussing such useless shit here. Just play the game. Age up politicans are good and make sense.

Welcome to my world ever since the cheating killed quick search and forced everyone who relied on it for games to quit.

Doesn't help that you have to live in Europe to find games over PR30+

[deleted_user]

Also doesn't help that the game's primary base is aging with it. The good players were playing when they were in middle school, and slowly, they lose their free time, if not their will (although strangely I am experiencing a personal renaissance, finding the alternatives just as valueless and less enjoyable/more frustrating).

It's easy to type a paragraph about game balance because you still enjoy strategy, and know more about aoe than anything else, but it's different staying active enough to not constantly hate yourself for being a lesser player than you were.

Also NA times, yeah, aren't good.

[deleted_user0]

This game is dead af. Can't find games anymore. Instead its everybody discussing such useless shit here. Just play the game. Age up politicans are good and make sense.

Welcome to my world ever since the cheating killed quick search and forced everyone who relied on it for games to quit.

Doesn't help that you have to live in Europe to find games over PR30+

Don't blame moesbar. It was EP!

[Kaiserklein]

What if the maps had more and better designed tier 3 treasures. This is almost a wasted part of the game design right now on EP maps. The treasure design should reward making age 2 units and encourage fighting over them. Might need to change or add guardians that have more HP but less attack so that you can’t just run in with an army and snag it, you have to commit some time to it.

I once tried to sneak in some tier 3 and 4 treasures (320xp is tier 4) but I've been asked to remove..

I personally remember treasures with 6 outlaws or w/e, sometimes giving extra hp on your explo...

[Kaiserklein]

just buff iro please. it's sad that the strongest rush civ was pushed into a weak semi ff shit civ just because people were scared of their rush (wich indeed was too strong, but why kill it like that)

Iro isn't weak at all, and even their rush is still viable in some match ups. Probably only the all in rush doesn't work anymore cause you don't have an age 1 TP to spam shipments

[pecelot]

all I can see is Aztecs getting 100 XP for each of my manors destroyed... no

[zoom]

if we want a more aggressive patch, lets just fire goodspeed and hire sumppu and look tom in his place.

Jokes aside, firing goodspeed would be a serious first step. Given that he is basically the entire patch team right now and consciously or subconsciously slightly favors defensive play imo.

You really know how to word yourself.

One does not simply fire Goodspeed. I bet you people presume to "fire" Garja, too!

[zoom]

If TPs need a nerf it is not on their effect. Such nerf would just make the building itself weaker overall, when in fact its xp/res boost is nothing special in mid game and it becomes a totally neglectable building. If anything it should be the cost because 200w does feel cheap in a vast majority of cases. Civs like Aztecs, Brits, India were never played with TPs, now they are. Fre, Ger, etc. now always stagecoach if possible.
Then again I'm not positive at all that TPs need any kind of nerf.
If you want to push for less semi FF play just nerf the fast age up and then also adjust resources. For the record it's not just hunts. Mines are often more impactful on the meta. 2 mines in base it's just ez FF.

I've always thought the build-time unreasonably quick.

[momuuu]

if we want a more aggressive patch, lets just fire goodspeed and hire sumppu and look tom in his place.

Jokes aside, firing goodspeed would be a serious first step. Given that he is basically the entire patch team right now and consciously or subconsciously slightly favors defensive play imo.

You really know how to word yourself.

I just reused the word firing because lemmings used that word??

[momuuu]

In my opinion it would be very complicated to take the current iteration of EP and just start changing things around to make aggressive play viable. I think it might be better to simply start all over again.

EP set out to try to not actually change design. The logic, as far as I understand it, was that it might create controversy to change design as opinions on game design aren't as objective as simple opinions on balance.

However, looking back on it now I'd argue balancing can't realistically be done without touching game design. Both the maps to start with, but also the general balance decisions have moved aoe3 to be slightly more defensive/passive. Goodspeed has claimed this is just the natural state of a game to progress, but I think such a statement is logically incorrect (which I will not discuss in this post but we could have that discussion). In general, I dont think this is necessarily that bad, although there are some arguments that favor slightly more interactive gameplay. In the end, balancing will start affecting gameplay. For example you can balance russia by making their rush or their lategame better. Similairly Otto was balanced by nerfing their rush and buffing their eco, and the same can be said for india. These balance decisions are in the end also gameplay decisions.

If you start to apply all sorts of changes you're indirectly disrupting the balance, which is currently based on some standard for aggression. You'd directly be counteracting many changes.

Thats why I think it would be better to restart the process from scratch. Instead of simply balancing stuff, one should define or set a norm for the pace of the game, and then start balancing around that. If a civ is too slow for the pace, you make them faster/sturdier, if a civ is too fast you nerf their aggression/defense a bit. In hindsight such a norm should have been set for EP to begin with.

[momuuu]

Thats why I think it would be better to restart the process from scratch. Instead of simply balancing stuff, one should define or set a norm for the pace of the game, and then start balancing around that. If a civ is too slow for the pace, you make them faster/sturdier, if a civ is too fast you nerf their aggression/defense a bit. In hindsight such a norm should have been set for EP to begin with.

Honestly, I don't know if this would be worth doing. EP is basically a fine product. The balancing is pretty great and the gameplay is okay. The gameplay does feel a bit stale, because there's generally not as much interaction and a lot of passive booming, and it might be slightly better if the norm was aggression. After all, more interaction means the state of the game will have more variance and thus it will not be as repetitive (especially compared to follow a build order and boom up into one deathball fight).

However, no matter how you balance or adjust current aoe3, I think the gameplay will remain stale. The depth in aoe3's gameplay is just rather low. The bit of depth that aoe3 does have works out great; Strategically you're looking to either hit/defend a timing or to maximize the army you have once the safe resources run out. Generally, once safe resources run out your army needs to be competitive because transitioning to mills/plantations is too expensive and inefficient. This leads to somewhat stale gameplay: everything you do needs to pay off short term, because in almost all games short term is the only relevant thing in aoe3. Who cares if you're getting an advantage after 5 minutes if you will die before you get that advantage? Whether age 2, age 3 or age 4 is the meta, this will always be a thing. Only when the game becomes so passive that natural resources aren't a thing this effect seizes to exist, but in that case the game is inherently extremely stale, uninteractive and thus boring. Because everything has such sharp requirements in terms of efficiency, not a lot of things are actually viable in the game. Arsenal? Too slow! Livestock? Too slow! Industrial age? Too Slow! Economic upgrades from the homecity? Too slow! You're supposed to get market upgrades, trading posts, villager shipments, and resource/military shipments and invest everything into military once the safe resources run out. Actually, villager shipments are only barely viable as early shipments, at around the 4th shipment villager shipments are actually generally too slow. Whether this stale gameplay happens in age 2 or age 3, after 5 or after 10 minutes, it doesn't really change that much.

With that in mind, I'd actually be interested in a mod that redesigns/rebalances aoe3's gameplay by reducing this extreme requirements for everything that are caused by the necessity to have natural resources available to you. I'd be strongly in favor of reducing gather rates on natural resources and reducing the cost of farms/plantations or find a different way to actually make the game playable without having safe resources. But also do this without making the game stale and passive, so in exchange defensive options need to be nerfed: TC fire, minutemen and walls need to take a hit while siege options should be stronger. If doing something along these lines, more playstyles, buildings, upgrades and shipments become viable.

[Garja]

Compared to other games, in aoe3 you can actually carry on an eco advantage forever thanks to mills and plants (especially the latter). This is why, given equal other factors, whoever has an eco lead is very likely to win.
However the lip to mills and plants is often too big so who lasts longer on natural res usually wins.
In theory the solution to this is not buffing mills and plants but rather just split them in several buildings that require less villagers. For example mills and plants with 4 workers and that cost/gather 40% of current values. That would also make late game macro a bit more interesting. Honestly houses should also cost half and provide half pop, but that's another story.

[momuuu]

Compared to other games, in aoe3 you can actually carry on an eco advantage forever thanks to mills and plants (especially the latter). This is why, given equal other factors, whoever has an eco lead is very likely to win.
However the lip to mills and plants is often too big so who lasts longer on natural res usually wins.
In theory the solution to this is not buffing mills and plants but rather just split them in several buildings that require less villagers. For example mills and plants with 4 workers and that cost/gather 40% of current values. That would also make late game macro a bit more interesting. Honestly houses should also cost half and provide half pop, but that's another story.

I must say that the statement 'given equal other factors, whoever has an eco lead is very likely to win' seems extremely generic. Obviously, if everything else is equal a player that has a lead in any area is more likely to win in any game, as per the definition of 'lead'.

The truth is indeed that whoever lasts longer on natural resources wins, and that results in short-term oriented gameplay; if you don't spend everything on improving your army, you will lose the access to natural resources because you can't take a fight to defend your natural resources.

I don't know how much splitting mills and plantation in smaller buildings would really achieve, as in the end you're still investing much more than your opponent and thus will be overrun most likely.

[Garja]

The game is not always short term oriented, that's my point. It is true that who stays on natural res for longer wins, but in aoe3 is very likely to split resources on the map equally, at least on EP. Then whoever has more eco potential just wins because can switch to infinite resources with more efficiency.
This is not trivial. In aoe2 and sc2 an eco lead doesn't grant the win at all. There is plenty of room to outplay even when natural resoueces are close to run out.
To improve the gameplay in aoe3, either you remove the infinite resource mechanics and only keep the nat res part of the game while rebalancing it, or make the transition to infinite resources more affordable and more complex at the same time.

[knusch]

idk what this debate is about...erik won last tourny and played his fair share of age 2.

btw tackling xp bounties or w.e. to encourage aggressive play won't make a difference considering how walls work and r used atm

[ChewSick]

idk what this debate is about...erik won last tourny and played his fair share of age 2.

I don't like this argumentation. "the player with the best micro in this game who wins every single age2 cav battle can win through colonial so it's good". no shit.

[knusch]

idk what this debate is about...erik won last tourny and played his fair share of age 2.

I don't like this argumentation. "the player with the best micro in this game who wins every single age2 cav battle can win through colonial so it's good". no shit.

micro is so overrated considering how "lagfree" this game is....

[enjoy2play]

come eso @knusch 3/4 hazza bigpro here

[momuuu]

The game is not always short term oriented, that's my point. It is true that who stays on natural res for longer wins, but in aoe3 is very likely to split resources on the map equally, at least on EP. Then whoever has more eco potential just wins because can switch to infinite resources with more efficiency.
This is not trivial. In aoe2 and sc2 an eco lead doesn't grant the win at all. There is plenty of room to outplay even when natural resoueces are close to run out.
To improve the gameplay in aoe3, either you remove the infinite resource mechanics and only keep the nat res part of the game while rebalancing it, or make the transition to infinite resources more affordable and more complex at the same time.

By the definitions of the words in your initial statement, that statement is entirely trivial. If everything is equal, except that one player has a lead in ANY area, then that player should be more likely to win. After all, a lead basically means you're more likely to win. It's like saying if one player is more likely to win he is more likely to win. It's entirely trivial.

Aoe3 is in my opinion actually one of those games where the eco advantage is extremely unimportant. If people don't wall turtle, games just don't go lategame. It doesn't even happen in 1% of games I'd say. The chance that you can actually carry your economic advantage into the infinite resources scenario is absolutely minimal; If you don't have the natural resources and your opponent does, you will just lose (unless you were extremely far ahead in all other aspects). In aoe3, economy is just irrelevant in practise if you can just ship more units/resources and win the battle for the safe hunts. Otherwise, wouldn't shipments like refrigeration/royal mint actually be popular?

[Garja]

it is not trivial. Given equal factors a mild lead in army pop doesn't imply one player is likely to win. This is because of the defender advantage which requires the army lead to be > than a certain point in order to promote the win. Any eco advantage is instead very relevant in aoe3 because it inevitably translates forever as the game has infinite resources (in the very extreme case, when both players are maxed, it translates to more bank).

As for the short term argument. I'd say royal mint and refrigeration are indeed good cards, the latter being more viable just because mills are more affordable. But for India for example, royal mint is a very good card and comes in to play from time to time. Of course, if one player makes a mistake the game never reaches that point. Statistically I agree that stage is not reached very often but that's mostly cause of the level of players and the way they decide to play rather than the game design itself.

[momuuu]

it is not trivial. Given equal factors a mild lead in army pop doesn't imply one player is likely to win. This is because of the defender advantage which requires the army lead to be > than a certain point in order to promote the win. Any eco advantage is instead very relevant in aoe3 because it inevitably translates forever as the game has infinite resources (in the very extreme case, when both players are maxed, it translates to more bank).

Given equal factors a mild lead in army pop does imply one player is more likely to win. Similairly a mild lead in eco pop implies one player is more likely to win if other equal factors. Thats what these words mean, a lead literally means that someone is more likely to win given equal factors. I think what you're trying to say is that an eco lead gives a bigger advantage relative to a military lead. I'm not even sure if that's what you are trying to say because you're not saying it. You're stating x=x and then using that as an argument against infinite resources, which doesn't make any sense to me. Even if somehow there is a statement with regards to eco leads, there is still logical reasoning missing as to how that even affects gameplay. You need to actually properly state your logic.. you can't force other people to guess what the fuck you're trying to say because the way you're putting it is just a series of trivial statements into a random conclusion.

Compared to other games, in aoe3 you can actually carry on an eco advantage forever thanks to mills and plants (especially the latter).

This is a 'factual' statement (you're kind of forgetting the villager limit in this reasoning though) that seems to bring no logical reasoning to the table.

This is why, given equal other factors, whoever has an eco lead is very likely to win.

This just states x=x, obviously if everything is even any advantage in any regard, if big enough, makes a player more likely to win.

However the lip to mills and plants is often too big so who lasts longer on natural res usually wins.

So what you're saying here is that the previous mentioned fact is generally not relevant.

In theory the solution to this is not buffing mills and plants but rather just split them in several buildings that require less villagers. For example mills and plants with 4 workers and that cost/gather 40% of current values. That would also make late game macro a bit more interesting. Honestly houses should also cost half and provide half pop, but that's another story.

I don't get it. You've never even presented a problem so what is your solution solving? Are you trying to solve the lip to mills and plants with this? Why is that a good thing, why is that lip a problem to begin with? Why would this make late game macro more interesting? You need to provide logic/reasoning for this. All I read is a few trivial statements/facts and then suddenly a jump to conclusions with a solution to an unknown problem with no reasoning as to why your solution actually solves whatever problem it is supposed to solve.

I'm not trying to cherrypick or argue for the sake of arguing. The problem is that you're responding to a post I made with a post that, when read carefully, has almost zero relevant content. Either you're phrasing yourself extremely poorly or don't have a point. It doesn't help that when I point this out you just proceed to say that I'm wrong. I don't even know what the fuck your point is because you failed to properly explain it.