Napoleonic Era

[janphilippr]

I'm baffled that there are so few people actually playing Napoleonic Era online although it's such a great mod. I don't exactly know how balanced NE is,mainly because I didn't get to play it that much, but sometimes I even ask myself why not the whole community has got it installed.

It adds so much variety to the game with so many new Civs that are available.

Does anyone know why it isn't that popular or why the biggest AOE 3 community Forum doesn't care that much about it? :angryapple:



P.S.

If you wanna play NE add me or post your Nickname under this post.

[oO_Chief_Oo]

balanced? ewww

[Good ol Ivan]

My ESO nick is ivanelterrible. I have been trying to get a game on NE for a while now. Verdict is the TAD community is small as it is, plus very few people know about NE. So for most its not even worth the effort.

It's pretty cool and fun, but indeed it's hard to balance a game with 21 unique civs, each one with so many differences and unique bonuses/techs. As much as they try to balance it, NE is even more unbalanced than TAD.

[slay3r19]

yeah thats why i don't play NE, balance is not there and they changed too much from TAD (IMO)

[gibson]

I would be willing to download to the mod as well if I knew there where a few people I could play with. Sounds fun and unique. Could someone please link to the thread that explains how to change between the mod and not the mod easily?

[pounendo]

I am down to play people if they are keen. 2nd/1st lt. Downloading NE now

[edeholland]

http://www.ne.elpea.net/forum/portal.php If you want more information

[gibson]

I will download it as well at the very latest when I get home from holiday in three days. The account I would play on is lionsden. Add me and message me if you want to play NE.

[tilanus]

NE has a facebook group with 260 members full of NE online players. If you're looking for mates, here you'll find them (just don't be shy):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NapoleonicEraOnline/

We are aware of the current balance issues and are working hard to minimize them as good as possible (then again, TAD has imba civs too). Feedback that we received from players like Mitoe, Cohenski or Ede is very valuable to us. So we've got an open ear for any balance issues you find and are eager to fix them.

[Good ol Ivan]

I will download it as well at the very latest when I get home from holiday in three days. The account I would play on is lionsden. Add me and message me if you want to play NE.

kay, added.
The mod just creates another .exe (age3n.exe)
you don''t have to do anything if you want to play TAD again, just run age3y.exe

[Jaeger]

I think one of the biggest obstacle is people not wanting to learn so many new civs and dozens of new matchups. I remember when I moved to TAD I was playing it only for the new maps (the RE maps), I was annoyed at having all those new civs.

[gibson]

I think one of the biggest obstacle is people not wanting to learn so many new civs and dozens of new matchups. I remember when I moved to TAD I was playing it only for the new maps (the RE maps), I was annoyed at having all those new civs.

That''s the reason why I would want it lol

[bobabu]

I think the problem napoleonic era had early on was that you had to reinstall tad when you wanted to play it online again or create a second Age of Empires 3 folder and rename it. Another problem was that everyone had a different version and you always had to have the same one. Also Ensemble Studios didn't help to promote it they could have made at least thread about it. Napoleonic Era was always unbalanced but it was still fun to play imao.

Happily the fixed all those problems except balance. But a lot of people don't realize this. Now you can actually have napoleonic era installed and still play tad online. I tried to stream Napoleonic Era once but I always get a blackscreen on the stream. Maybe this should be fixed.

[Good ol Ivan]

I think one of the biggest obstacle is people not wanting to learn so many new civs and dozens of new matchups. I remember when I moved to TAD I was playing it only for the new maps (the RE maps), I was annoyed at having all those new civs.

Thats the reason why I would want it lol

+1

[Good ol Ivan]

I really like NE, but if I had to choose, I think I''d give WoL a try.
I mean, don''t get me wrong, but it''s a mod, so IMO the idea of it is to change the game.
NE doesn''t do much in that regard, it''s just an expansion of some sort, and imba expansion, if I want a solid rts, I have TAD, which I play a lot.
On the other hand, WoL seems super flamboyant, I imagine myself having hours of just discovering stuff, but well, the mod still needs to come out.
Also, iirc, they can live patch stuff, so eventually it would get kind of balanced, regardless of having an absurd amount of civs of features.
Anyway, that''s my two cents.

link?

[pounendo]

Played NE. Super unbalanced. I feel like some civs likes the poles would be op for treaty. I had 287/200 pop, and they literally have 3 extra resource upgrades. The italians have really expensive villagers that cost food and coin, and are limited in number unless you send a total of 6 shipments to max out in merchant pop. Haven't tried the rest of them, but it's still interesting to see all the new additions for sure!

[Good ol Ivan]

Americans should also be pretty good for treaty
200+ pop in villies.

[pounendo]

bs really?
wowowowo ill try now

[tilanus]

[quote timestamp="1439686667" author="@ovi12" source="/post/39788/thread"]I think one of the biggest obstacle is people not wanting to learn so many new civs and dozens of new matchups. I remember when I moved to TAD I was playing it only for the new maps (the RE maps), I was annoyed at having all those new civs.[/quote]Never play WoL then, lol.
[quote timestamp="1439691595" author="@bobabu" source="/post/39796/thread"]Happily the fixed all those problems except balance. But a lot of people don't realize this. Now you can actually have napoleonic era installed and still play tad online. I tried to stream Napoleonic Era once but I always get a blackscreen on the stream. Maybe this should be fixed.
[/quote]Via twitch or how? Did the blackscreen have an error message or something? Could you elaborate on it pls?
[quote source="/post/39812/thread" author="@jutlander" timestamp="1439696606"]I really like NE, but if I had to choose, I think I'd give WoL a try.
I mean, don't get me wrong, but it's a mod, so IMO the idea of it is to change the game.

NE doesn't do much in that regard, it's just an expansion of some sort, and imba expansion, if I want a solid rts, I have TAD, which I play a lot.[/quote]
Ah, don't worry, there'll come enough changes in the features that give the mod a completely new spin. There are different types of mods though, not every mod needs to be a total conversion to be enjoyable, some people like less change. NE started as expansion mod indeed, but we're about to leave that path.

On the other hand, WoL seems super flamboyant, I imagine myself having hours of just discovering stuff, but well, the mod still needs to come out.
Also, iirc, they can live patch stuff, so eventually it would get kind of balanced, regardless of having an absurd amount of civs of features.
Anyway, that's my two cents.

PS. Game is not released yet, so I may just be talking nonsense.[span] [/span]

We could do live patching too, but decided against it. If a patch is badly done, it can easily screw the game for everyone with no way back. Then nobody can play? They're not professionals after all (and even those manage to screw games with patches). Plus live patchingis an error-prone and tricky process of file transfer. It only sounds great when you hear it. I've played a lot of games with autopatchers, there's always something that doesn't work or goes terribly wrong.
As for WoL, it is indeed flamboyant and they're super hypey about everything they do. Don't expect a better balance though. NE might be imba for TAD standards (which isn't well-balanced in all regards either), but the features of WoL civs are at least structurally doomed to be imba and OP, because they do everything for the sake of uniqueness and teh lulz giving much less thought to potential balance threats when designing stuff than to the looks. In massive uniqueness and variety there lies huge imbalance, you know. There's a good reason why civs from AoE have always been streamlined to a certain degree. ')
[quote author="@pounendo" source="/post/39815/thread" timestamp="1439702142"]Played NE. Super unbalanced. I feel like some civs likes the poles would be op for treaty. I had 287/200 pop, and they literally have 3 extra resource upgrades. The italians have really expensive villagers that cost food and coin, and are limited in number unless you send a total of 6 shipments to max out in merchant pop. Haven't tried the rest of them, but it's still interesting to see all the new additions for sure!
[/quote]
Yes, there is still obvious imbalance in the mod, but I wouldn't call the mod as a whole super unbalanced, that goes too far. NE is yet like this because the mod was not designed for a highly competitive audience in first place, but rather singleplayer at which it has always been very popular. Online players often underrate the actual size of the singleplayer scene, for example, the latest version has been released in November 2014 and since then made 47.000 DLs in total. If you set that into relation with online players, you'll see how many ppl play singleplayer and that's not surprising, because the AoE franchise has always been massively played in singleplayer. So that explains the current lack of fleshed out online balance. ^^

So I actually wouldn't be reliant on making the mod fit for multiplayer, but I very much care to receive feedback from competitive players like you in order to fix these things. Edeholland can approve my efforts. So yeah, I find the balance pretty hilarious myself at some points, but if you can come up with ideas how to fix it, I'm all ears!

[pounendo]

[attachment id="1371" thumbnail="1"]his is me half assing treaty, i.e. not maxing outvils straight away not ssending all upgrades at the earliest possible time. I don't think slaves cost as pop, so I had decent miltary with OOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPP eco. Also, I had 24 range skirms and 20 range skirms mounted on a horse. I mean wtf, you bascially have 7 speed skirms dealing 75+ damage at range 20. You also have 15 frontier men who can build tc's, barraks stables etc as well as gather any resource. I think americans is where its at fellas.

[tilanus]

Mounted Riflemen and Frontiermen will be replaced by other units. The eco is OP, ik. How did you achieve the skirm stats? Could you give me tech names or explain what you did?

[edehollandsbrother]

@pounendo Of course the priority should be to balance it for supremacy, not treaty.

[pounendo]

from what I remember, base attk for skirms was 36 attack. Using advance arsenal, plus infantry attack and all normal upgrades. There is a card in the 4th age that changes the skirm range from 20-24 I am pretty sure. If for every age up you op for the hp/attk upgrades I am sure you can make it even higher. I haven't had a proper look so I can't really help any further.

[edeholland]

@pounendo Of course the priority should be to balance it for supremacy, not treaty.

I agree with this, but it should at least be playable for treaty. It''s okay if you have to ban a few civs in treaty (like people ban French in AoE3) but most of them should be useable.

I have indeed tested this game and made notes for the balancing, and the team will work on making the balance better in next patch. I have not been working on for a while now, not playing a lot of AoE3 in general. :/ However, when there are specific things you think are unbalanced, it''s best to tell me or another balancer first. ^^
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