AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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Post by Mitoe »

Alright, this is going to be a bit of an atypical thread from me, as it will be half rant and half serious discussion. Let's hope the thread as a whole doesn't devolve into something awful.

This is something that's annoyed me for years at this point about the AoE3 community. It seems like no one wants to play--or even attempt to play--outside of their comfort zone; the way they've played the game for years. It wasn't very long ago that everyone (slight exaggeration, I guess) was complaining about how FF or semi-FF oriented the meta was (is?). And yet, it seemed like those same people were also arguing that many other things remain the same.

That sounds a little bit convoluted, so here's a couple of things that this applies to:

1) Maps: It would seem that the majority of people prefer high resource maps over low resource maps, sometimes to the point that they even refuse to play on certain maps regardless of whether or not their resource distribution is actually balanced.

2) Water: Water is more viable than ever on EP. Regardless of whichever civ you're playing, it's possible to add water into your build, unlike in the past where you either sent schooners and went water or just didn't go water. However, most people are unwilling to play water, or even to experiment with water. This is understandable I guess, as many of us have been playing civs that were just incapable of it until now, but it shouldn't get to the point where people are literally flaming me for going water in pr30+ team games--apparently if you go water you don't deserve to win even if the other team is conscious of it and simply chooses not to contest it :hmm:

Look at the recent 2v2 tournament. Hazza and Osmane mostly just tried to cheese the water maps rather than play it or contest it. You can even look at several Indonesia games in 1v1, where players often just go land regardless of how strong water is on that map, or have a gentleman's agreement not to go for it.


I guess I'm just annoyed that people seem to want change while simultaneously refusing to embrace other aspects of the game. Of course the meta is going to seem stale if you refuse to acknowledge half of the game.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by forgrin »

To be fair though, a stale meta is just kinda a fact for most 13 year old games, especially ones with low populations like aoe3. Without many major tournaments, new players, and an actually functioning ranking ladder, there isn't much reason to want to get better at the game. The fact of the matter is that the PR35+ population has basically been static for 5 years (and it's the same people). This is not healthy for a competitive game.

See LoL for example. If you wanna stay in masters/challenger, you have to stay on top of the meta and innovate/adopt new innovations extremely quickly as the competition is intense. There simply is very little incentive for top AoE3 players to change anything as a) rank means almost nothing and b) there are no new players coming up to threaten their spots.

Pretty much without a substantial increase in player population I don't see anything changing. Only if AoE3:DE draws many more people to the game will we see any change IMO.

Edit: to prove my point about stale ladders and low population reducing innovation, I have not been able to play a team game despite trying lobbies for an hour, and I'm not even high PR. How are new players with new ideas supposed to get better in this environment?
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Hazza54321 »

stop having a vagina between your legs and making a thread about it
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Post by deleted_user0 »

stop being a dick about it and being sexist!
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Post by deleted_user »

EP water is the best thing to have happened to the game.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Hazza54321 »

maybe im being a dick about it but i just find it ironic that you say we dont explore half the game, when the same guy saying this does some sort of eco ff into skirm goon in 99% of his games. Although now youve recently been doing a fishing boat boom eco ff now so props to you
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Post by deleted_user »

Hazza54321 wrote:maybe im being a dick about it but i just find it ironic that you say we dont explore half the game, when the same guy saying this does some sort of eco ff into skirm goon in 99% of his games. Although now youve recently been doing a fishing boat boom eco ff now so props to you

:/
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Yea that's the way things work nowadays, people don't want to play on water maps (because they don't like water), nor on some maps (and I understand why, you just can't play otto on a no TP map, besides some maps are just bad by design).

You and your friend mankle are part of the reason why there's a stale meta (I am too actually) because you both refuse to play with me because you don't like my play style.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Snuden »

5 pieces of cav in colonial and then uhlan/goon and skirms in age 3.
Zzzz....

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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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Post by Mitoe »

@forgrin yeah this is a big reason why. I'm more complaining about how people claim to want change, but then don't seem to accept change :P

@Hazza54321 I feel like I try new things a lot :( but whenever I get to play in tournaments or on streams and stuff, my opponents always want to play maps or matchups where an eco-heavy game seems to be the correct thing to do most of the time.

@Diarouga it has nothing to do with your playstyle. I wouldn't be engaging in this discussion if I discriminated who I play against simply because of the type of game we'd be playing. We just have a history of not getting along, so playing with you is not so appealing :/
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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Post by gibson »

To be fair not getting along with someone and playing with them aren't mutually exclusive. Say what you will about diarouga but he's potentially a top 5 player when he's active as well as being one of the more innovative players we've seen recently.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by 91 »

I agree that the meta is pretty static, but some people do mix it up. I think it's the ones who easily get tired of playing the same strats over and over (I know this because I'm one of them..). So you would try all these crazy things that sometimes work (mostly because of enemy confusion) and sometimes fail horribly, making you look like a fool. Every once in a while you would find something that is effective and you or someone else would improve on it, and then there's some new meta mixed in.

It just doesn't seem to me that there are enough players to even get tired of strats to begin with anymore. And maybe there are not so many of these players playing anymore either. Aizamk had things going for a while but usually it was too crazy (difficult) to be picked up by the avarage player.

Maybe post some new strats in the strategy section, and stream them/post videos?
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Post by deleted_user0 »

gibson wrote:To be fair not getting along with someone and playing with them aren't mutually exclusive. Say what you will about diarouga but he's potentially a top 5 player when he's active as well as being one of the more innovative players we've seen recently.


top 5, sure. but copying builds and improving them only a little due to better macro is hardly innovative.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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Post by Aizamk »

I may seem like an innovator but in reality I just copy builds from people in the future.
oranges.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Kynesie »

Mitoe wrote:2) Water: Water is more viable than ever on EP. Regardless of whichever civ you're playing, it's possible to add water into your build, unlike in the past where you either sent schooners and went water or just didn't go water. However, most people are unwilling to play water, or even to experiment with water. This is understandable I guess, as many of us have been playing civs that were just incapable of it until now, but it shouldn't get to the point where people are literally flaming me for going water in pr30+ team games--apparently if you go water you don't deserve to win even if the other team is conscious of it and simply chooses not to contest it :hmm:


Water is more viable than ever but water maps are still low whales or hard to have more than half. But I totally agree with your main idea, people don t even try to use or counter water, they just prefer rage, while with low hp walls, less warships 's range, culv boost, it seems more balanced..

what do you think about tourney map vetoes ? I don t talk about it for my personal interest, but I know what I'm talking about. I think there are many times there is as many vetoes as water map in map pool, so it allows people to not play water map in tourney. If they don t have to play water maps in tourney, they will not do it after 13 years just for fun..
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

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A @91 post :love:
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Mitoe »

Kynesie wrote:Water is more viable than ever but water maps are still low whales or hard to have more than half. But I totally agree with your main idea, people don t even try to use or counter water, they just prefer rage, while with low hp walls, less warships 's range, culv boost, it seems more balanced..

what do you think about tourney map vetoes ? I don t talk about it for my personal interest, but I know what I'm talking about. I think there are many times there is as many vetoes as water map in map pool, so it allows people to not play water map in tourney. If they don t have to play water maps in tourney, they will not do it after 13 years just for fun..

Personally I don't think maps should have a lot of whales, I feel like that could really push it over the top lategame. But yeah, I think it's close to balanced right now. It's possible that it might need some small tweaks to keep it in check, like making docks slightly more expensive or something for example, or maybe slightly reduce the % on some of the fishing upgrades (they're kind of insane; they affect both fish and whales at a much larger % than most other economic upgrades), but for the most part it's fine.

As for map vetoes, I dunno. There might not be a good solution for that, I feel.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by aqwer »

@Mitoe :
It is ironic that this comes from you , I have watched almost all Saturday smack down b/w you and Aiz and I rarely saw you doing something innovative.You are a good player but mostly plays "by the book". And, thanks to your friends, _H2O and GoodSpeed, they made sure that every civ be played in a semi-ff style. The game was not perfectly balanced on Re but it neither is on Ep. The traded one set of imbalances to another , to what they "think" the game should be played like.
All it was done in that direction to reduce the aggressive potential to some civs to make them utter useless while not touching the late game oriented civs as much. And while some of these changes are questionable e.g. ports vill cost to 85f while others are laughable i.e. sioux teepee eco aura. The whole point of these changes is that they are focused to cater towards the likings of a selected group; irrelevant to being logical or not.
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Post by deleted_user0 »

aqwer wrote:@Mitoe :
It is ironic that this comes from you , I have watched almost all Saturday smack down b/w you and Aiz and I rarely saw you doing something innovative.You are a good player but mostly plays "by the book". And, thanks to your friends, _H2O and GoodSpeed, they made sure that every civ be played in a semi-ff style. The game was not perfectly balanced on Re but it neither is on Ep. The traded one set of imbalances to another , to what they "think" the game should be played like.
All it was done in that direction to reduce the aggressive potential to some civs to make them utter useless while not touching the late game oriented civs as much. And while some of these changes are questionable e.g. ports vill cost to 85f while others are laughable i.e. sioux teepee eco aura. The whole point of these changes is that they are focused to cater towards the likings of a selected group; irrelevant to being logical or not.


mankle isn't involved with the patch much. but apart from that, it's mostly true.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Mitoe »

@aqwer

I agree that EP is not perfectly balanced; I really doubt that it's even possible to perfectly balance the game.

However, I disagree that all of the changes were targeted towards reducing aggressive potential. Actually, looking through the patch notes, I see very few changes that are directed specifically at aggressive play. I can even talk about some of the changes quickly:

- Dragoons nerfed
- Walls nerfed

Doesn't seem to hurt aggressive play? :hmm:

- Iroquois and Ottomans got nerfed I guess, and these civs were pretty aggressive on RE, but they were also broken. Changes are pretty justified here.
- I guess sepoy got nerfed too? But the house change and cheaper sowars helps compensate for that a bit. Sepoy were pretty strong for a musketeer unit anyway.
- China and Japan got some nerfs to their mid and lategame.
- Dutch, Spain, and Port were underperforming on RE and got some buffs, and these civs don't like fighting in age 2. I suppose this helps with that "FF" or "Lategame" meta. Clearly these changes were completely unjustified.
- French and German got some minor changes. Kind of seems to hurt their early game and mid game equally.
- Russia gets a 20 strelet card instead of a 17 strelet card. Geez. Guess they HAVE to FF now.
- Sioux? Idk, Bow Riders got nerfed. That unit was pretty good. I guess massing only Bow Riders in age 2 is not so good anymore, which means FFing is more ideal?


Really, I fail to see how these changes are really all that biased toward specific playstyle. I really do think that the reason the meta has panned out this way is because the new maps are a lot more reliable than the official maps used to be, and people often refuse or prefer not to play the low resource maps. Even in tournaments, the people that are complaining about this "semi-FF meta" will veto maps like Cascade Range or Klondike because they don't like them.

You have to realize that these balance changes are almost always a reaction to what's good or bad in the current meta, and if no one's going to play on these other maps that potentially have entirely different metagames, then of course there's not going to be any changes there; how would you know what needs changing for those types of games?

You call me a very standard, "by the book," player. I am. But "standard" play would change if all of the maps were lower resource, or had more unique designs. If we were playing more often on maps like Cascade Range, Klondike, Indonesia, Alaska, Bengal, Iowa, Tassili, Tibet, etc. then the meta would be far more diverse.

The reason I play the way I do is because my opponents veto those maps or otherwise avoid matchups or situations where other playstyles are viable. I'm fine with that, in a tournament setting. I know I can outperform most players in these situations so it doesn't really hurt me, but it does disappoint me that none of them are even willing to try something different.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Kynesie »

Mitoe wrote:
Kynesie wrote:Water is more viable than ever but water maps are still low whales or hard to have more than half. But I totally agree with your main idea, people don t even try to use or counter water, they just prefer rage, while with low hp walls, less warships 's range, culv boost, it seems more balanced..

what do you think about tourney map vetoes ? I don t talk about it for my personal interest, but I know what I'm talking about. I think there are many times there is as many vetoes as water map in map pool, so it allows people to not play water map in tourney. If they don t have to play water maps in tourney, they will not do it after 13 years just for fun..

Personally I don't think maps should have a lot of whales, I feel like that could really push it over the top lategame. But yeah, I think it's close to balanced right now. It's possible that it might need some small tweaks to keep it in check, like making docks slightly more expensive or something for example, or maybe slightly reduce the % on some of the fishing upgrades (they're kind of insane; they affect both fish and whales at a much larger % than most other economic upgrades), but for the most part it's fine.

As for map vetoes, I dunno. There might not be a good solution for that, I feel.

Complain that people don t play water and propose to nerf a bit water ? :dry: Water seems more untested than unbalanced. I had really nice games on EP versus Irish and tit, because they don t want to give up sea.
I m just waiting EP 5 for schooner boost :grin:
About map vetoes, it s not about have 50% water maps in the pool, but there is a large proportion of after veto map pool without any water map. Btw i like the weekend tour system where we ban maps for first match and then looser choose map.

Nothing to see with water , but since we're talking about balance, i feel port dragoon are overnerf. Range nerf is understandable, dragoon resist nerf is understandable, but both together totally hardly nerf age 4 port dragoon.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by deleted_user0 »

You call me a very standard, "by the book," player. I am. But "standard" play would change if all of the maps were lower resource, or had more unique designs. If we were playing more often on maps like Cascade Range, Klondike, Indonesia, Alaska, Bengal, Iowa, Tassili, Tibet, etc. then the meta would be far more diverse.


yes maps are one of the biggest influence on the balance difference between re and ep (apart from the recent water change). the reason why the order of dominance on re was at it was, mostly came down to bad maps. play re civs on ep maps and the balance won't be much different. sure, the order of civs might change, but there wouldn't be a big outlier, with the exception of iro, which indeed was too good on re, but which hasn't been appropriately addressed by EP.

those maps you list indeed would have an impact on balance, but the EP specifically states they haven't balanced for those maps, and have no interest in doing it either. So there you have it.

the ep water change is a good step in the right direction, but its not finished yet, imo there are some things that still need attention. Such as for example the inability of mostly native civs to deal with water from land or the asian schooner card. the main broken things have been fixed though (eg schooner imbalance, frigate dominance and monitor abuse)
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Mitoe »

Kynesie wrote:Complain that people don t play water and propose to nerf a bit water ? :dry: Water seems more untested than unbalanced. I had really nice games on EP versus Irish and tit, because they don t want to give up sea.
I m just waiting EP 5 for schooner boost :grin:

I do think that's it's close to balanced; I guess my main concern is that the eco you get from it might be so good and easy to add into almost any build that it becomes something you must do if you want to be competitive on a map with fish. It should definitely be an option, but I'm not sure that it should be a requirement. This is, of course, subjective.

If both players go for water it's close to balanced right now, maybe something would need to be done about civs that have too many or too few upgrades for their warships, but other than that it's reasonably balanced.

About map vetoes, it s not about have 50% water maps in the pool, but there is a large proportion of after veto map pool without any water map. Btw i like the weekend tour system where we ban maps for first match and then looser choose map.

Yeah, I do actually like this rule too. Although, maybe it would be better if the winner could veto 1 map from the pool and then the loser gets the pick from the remaining 5 maps, for example. This is to off-set the fact that the loser also gets a counterpick in a lot of situations. Picking map and countering civ would be a huge advantage.

Nothing to see with water , but since we're talking about balance, i feel port dragoon are overnerf. Range nerf is understandable, dragoon resist nerf is understandable, but both together totally hardly nerf age 4 port dragoon.

Maybe this is true? I don't know. I feel like it's probably fine. You can still get 18 range which is pretty insane on a unit with 7.25 speed. It basically ends up countering every unit type except skirms, and they don't even trade that poorly against skirms in a lot of situations. Not to mention that Port often outbooms most civs (in 1v1, at least) at this point in the game, and this was definitely close to pushing them over the top.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by Garja »

gibson wrote:To be fair not getting along with someone and playing with them aren't mutually exclusive. Say what you will about diarouga but he's potentially a top 5 player when he's active as well as being one of the more innovative players we've seen recently.

one of the most innovative players: didnt invent any strat :hmm:

Anyway, I think balance will be good with EP5 and there will be lot of options viable as long as most of maps are kept into play. Best games tend to result from not so popular maps, often no TP maps, so it is important to grant them an active role.
It is true that the meta shifted toward more calm and oong term oriented play. On the other hand this is exactly why some more aggressive strats can work, people wont expect them.
Water balance is okish. From a design pov it is unfortunate that there is basically no advantage for schooners civs tho. I dont think training time is that big of a deal. Maybe it saves the resources for one dock and makes boats also repay a bit faster but I would probably just save the card anyway. This potentially creates a new balance problem where civs like Fre or Ger have better waterplay than Brits for example.
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Re: AoE3's "Stale Meta"

Post by momuuu »

There's lots to say about the current meta.

The meta is made by the best players, who are generally the most competitive. These players usually mostly play to win. The problem aoe3 faces in this regard is that we have an awkward amount of civs/uniqueness between civs. In aoe2, if you master one civ you can play all of them and the differences are so small that players will be able to understand all match ups. In starcraft 2 there's only three races, but those are so unique that people fully focus on one race and try to master that race and its match ups fully. In aoe3, the amount of match ups is just barely too large to actually try to master all, yet the civs don't seem unique enough to the point that people mostly stick to one-two civs (generally, dyddyd and me are exceptions for example). In that regard, playing and exploring all match ups is something that will simply not yield a good result: In aoe3 you don't actually perform better by mastering just one civ.

In aoe3, playing to win means that you will try to select favorable/fair match ups and will avoid unfavored match ups. The tournament format that we have had does actually contribute towards this attitude. After all, if you're playing competitively, playing and training for match ups that are interesting for a tournament is more worthwhile than playing some hopelessly imbalanced match up trying to figure out how to play that best. For example, during the Germany/France era, German/French mirrors and Germany vs France where match ups that were particularly nice to play and practise, aswell as trying to find out counters to Germany. Meanwhile, a match up like Spain vs Japan becomes relatively uninteresting. Same with for example India vs British, or Dutch vs British, those are match ups that are particularly relevant for todays meta. People will generally gravitate towards the stronger civs already (who wouldn't be more inclined to pick up a civ that's great vs a civ that's bad), and then people end up playing and practising match ups that are relevant in the state of balance. A big part in this is of course the handicapped balance that aoe3 has. There are many match ups that are generally just too imbalanced for competitive players; it's simply inherent to having 14 unique civs.

To add insult to injury, EP's 'meta' in terms of what works best is not too diverse. For years now the strongest strats have been relatively passive, boom oriented civs and strategies, while the rushing civs have either been nerfed (iro, otto, india) or just haven't been very strong (russia). People have increasingly focused on the 'semi FF meta' or 'no rush 10 meta' and the balance is focused entirely around this meta. The fact that all commonly played match ups that are relevant in the competitive environment are very similair makes this feel extra stale. There are just so many popular match ups that are very passive, while match ups like Aztec vs Russia have disappeared somewhere in the background of 'not relevant for competitive play'.

To me it has had its benefits. I used to think the pro players where actually extremely good players that understood the game much and much better than anyone else. While those players are generally pretty good at the game, ESOC (and its concentration of high level players) made me realize that the game isn't as figured out as I thought it was. People just resort to the things that are meta, that work, and thus it leaves plenty of stuff to explore. For example, I enjoy Japan vs Aztec or Japan vs British, trying to use out of the box (read: no heavenly Kami) strategies to make these match ups more bearable. It was amazing to come up with something entirely new and use that to win a tournament series (China dock FF), that's what I really love about aoe3 and it does make me happy to see that there's room to innovate and come up with new things.

That being said, it's to be expected that a meta gets figured out and becomes stale, that's usually what happens in any game; it turns out some styles/build orders are simply the best and then players (in the competitive environment that a game is) will simply resort to that style. It would be almost insane to play football with 3 defenders, 2 midfielders and 5 attackers nowadays (for Americans: the default formation is 4-3-3, 5 attackers is way too offensive) and even in the lower leagues people play in the meta formations. That's how a competitive game simply works.

I must say, I do enjoy the low resource maps. However, given that balance is pretty bad on them, they can also be annoying and I can totally understand people getting annoyed by the imbalances they represent. This will always be the case, whether the meta is for high resources maps (and thus low resource maps being the oddballs) or vice versa. I'd argue that the meta might be more fun and diverse on low resource maps, but that's a different point entirely. EP water is new and definitely an improvement. I think people sort of ignore water because warship warfare is one of the worst designed things in aoe3. You can't really micro warships and if you do it just feels weird and clunky. I can definitely see how people find that boring. The new eco option that every civ has now is pretty nice though, especially considering standard meta play otherwise means basically depleting all eco options (in practise, that means there are no actual 'options'), and I do see it used quite a bit. But I understand that people aren't very interested in exploring the abomination that water play still is in aoe3.

If I were to give any feedback, it'd be aimed at the tournament format. The counterpick system has been a system that makes preparing for a tournament game meaningful and interesting, but it also directly impacts the 'meta' and what civs people play. In my opinion it impacts that mostly negatively. I found the monociv cup a very nice change of pace. Although people will still generally opt for meta civs, it also opened a new approach: Playing a civ and then learning how to make the bad match ups better. We saw Mitoe do this with Japan and I thought it was a very interesting experience (first aoe series I have watched in a while). Still, this suffers from the meta civ problem (gogo brits) but it is at least different than what we normally have.

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