Criticism regarding EP
Posted: 01 Nov 2017, 14:51
The other day I played this game that made me realize some things about how this game works. It was a Dutch vs British game and the british player was manor booming so I tried to make some units and try to get value out of those. I made some hussars and did a few attempt raiding, had an effective trade against pikes and then added in some skirmishers to contest his pikes more and try to get even more value. I think it worked out really nicely and I did seem to get ahead a little. We then both aged to age 3 and I figured I'd try to hit a timing somewhere there. But I slowly realized that he would be on hunts for quite a while, so a timing kinda ended up being an impossibility. And then I started wondering, why did I make units, why did I try to interact with his army? You can't use an advantage in army yet because the safe resources aren't close to running out, so in the end it's just better to focus as much on eco as possible so that you're stronger at 12-15 minutes for that one big fight thats going to determine the outcome of the game. It made me realize how much maps change the game, how the natural resources are at the core of how the game is being played and how EP should take this into account.
The maps ended up adding a ton of resources and at first everybody liked them a lot (and still, they're much better than RE maps in general, especially in terms of consistency). The initial meta shifted was interesting - at least to me - and trying to figure out how it was shifting and how to play in certain match ups was a fun thing to do. But this meta has gotten stale and will always shift towards a stale meta. The defenders advantage in aoe3 is huge, with not only the general RTS advantages of being the defender (better vision through buildings to take a perfect engagement, closer to reinforcements), but also added defenders advantages in TC fire, shipments popping from the TC and minutemen. This has never been problematic, or too turtly so to speak, because hunts and mines are an essential thing to even remain competitive. The initial hunts run out pretty quickly on RE maps, most RE maps actually for example have just one! safe mine while most EP maps feature 1 mine superclose to the TC and at least 1 safe mine, with often a third mine in a pretty decent spot.
The resulting meta is stale in the sense that many civilizations actually literally exhaust all their economic options (France and Germany for example go for almost a maximal boom build order, and theres Dutch vs British games where Dutch makes 5 banks and gets market upgrades while brits VC booms). The scope of strategies become extremely limited because there are no actual eco options left. You maximize eco and then maximize army basically. Theres no "okay I think I have barely enough units now to squeeze in the age up", theres only "I'm booming, I hope my civ's boom will beat the other civs boom at 14 minutes". Okay, this is a bit of an exaggeration, there are still civs that do have the ability to put on early pressure, but I do think this is the dominant scenario of this meta. It's often referred to as a skirm goon meta, maybe indeed unfairly so, but the term no rush 10 meta is actually accurate, and I think it's clear how this can be experienced as boring. Theres no point in making many units and try to interact with the other player in order to create an advantage that you can maybe profit from because its not actually possible to take a serious fight in the early to early midgame, so you just end up sitting back and booming.
RE is the game we've at least all fallen in love with at first. As much as the balance is flawed, as much as mapscrews completely fuck people over, the patch excells at interactive gameplay. If you rush you might not actually be able to straight up win, but then at 10 minutes you'll have secured key positions on the map and theres a second phase where the rushed player will have to push out and get the hunts back. This doesn't happen on most EP maps, because the rushed player will just hold the rush and then continue to sit back while being ahead because he didn't rush. The RE patch tends to hit this balance just right, the timing at which hunts start running out (if you didnt get mapscrewed) is precisely so that the defending player will be able to actually do economic things but that that defending player will struggle to actually profit enough from his economic advantage to push out and reclaim the map at the critical timing. This is a really undervalued aspect of the RE patch. Interactive gameplay is interesting to begin with, nobody likes playing against the AI trying to maximize their army at 15 minutes, which is a standard EP game except that one big gamedeciding fight is missing. Interactive gameplay creates for versatile games. If you start out trading units early on, every game will be a bit different because battles will almost never be identical. I would conclude that the RE playstyle leads to interactive and non repetitive games, while the EP maps have eventually led to a meta of non interactive, repetitive games where the result is often determined by one battle. Again, its a bit of an exaggeration and one could go in some specifics where there are very interactive games, but it is clearly the trend of EP.
I would propose a couple of things for a patch team: First of the mappool needs to be treated with extreme care. Not only in the individual maps but also in the distribution of different types of maps. It would be at least great if there would be a large pool of maps that were a prototype mapstyle for the balance. Right now we're balancing off Arkansas basically (or are we balancing according to Kamchatka style TP line?) but almost over half of the maps are very different from Arkansas with 5 TP maps, tons of no TP maps, maps with lots of livestock, maps that are very low resource or low on hunts, water maps and other non standard maps. I've said this before and I do understand how the map makers want to make interesting maps too, but it's quite extreme at the moment. Right now I do not believe the patch team and the map team truly work together in creating a specific style of maps. That's actually really odd, because aoe is a game that revolves around the natural resources and maps are a determining factor when it comes to maps. Balance and maps go hand in hand. I'd say that from this point onward maps need to be examined with utter care. A map type should be picked as the standard map that balance is based on, and a mappool should be created that has a large percentage of similair maps (I'd personally say at least 70%). The other option is that you balance for all types of maps, but that seems impossible (how can a civ like otto actually become viable on no TP maps, or germany for that sake).
Secondly, I think it'd be important to actually keep the core of RE intact: Interactive gameplay, where investing in army early on to try to use that army and get something done is viable. If you were to keep these sorts of maps, maybe nerf the things that make passive gameplay so strong; There has always been a correlation between civs being able to get a quick TP and civs being OP (Otto, Iro, France, Germany), and TPs in general offer absolutely insane value if you're doing a semi FF. If you slow down the meta with the maps, you could try to compensate and speed up the meta a bit by nerfing slow styles in general. One could for example also look at banks, manor booming, Japan's booming, the age up time (especially fast age up), and even more extreme things like minutemen or TC fire. I think it'd be best to lower the safe resources on maps while preserving the map consistency and overall hunt count that makes RE so great, but if one elects to not do this (right now for example it would be impossible because it's not actually possible to negotiate with garja about this I fear) then it'd make sense to compensate for the slowing down of the meta through balance changes.
Instead what EP has done is quite the opposite and that has consistently led to criticism. EP did start out with the idea of not changing the way RE is played but instead making a balanced RE. The problem is that it has always focused on the civ strength (and honestly, maybe we've all done this) and never on the huge effect that the maps have had on the meta. But that is not where it ends. After the initial patch, which actually nerfed aggressive civs (iro, otto) and did buff passive civs (Dutch ports) - which probably were fair nerfs tbh - the latest patch is way too extreme. Sepoys nerfed, Jans nerfed, Bow riders nerfed, a reluctance to buff russia; one can say the changes don't actually promote the style of RE at all. The patch team is doing the opposite of compensating for the effect of EP maps. And then instead of fixing the cause of civs not having enough eco options (because all civs just exhaust all eco options due to the map layout), the patch team is trying to deal with that symptom: Dutch got an extra bank so that they have more eco options, spain gets an eco option because they have too few apperantly, Otto has been given extra eco options (church techs), Sioux has been given more eco options, India is being pushed in the economic direction, and even now town centers are buffed. If you continue to treat this symptoms instead of fixing the caused you'll end up in an endless loop of trying to give civs more economic options to then realize they're still exhausting all of their economic options to then give civs more economic options again. It's not the right direction, and it'll never become as fun and interactive as RE is.
So in conclusion, Ive argued that maps are one of the most important factors in gameplay and balance, that EP maps lead to a no rush 10 playstyle, that the EP team is actually not compensating for the EP maps at all and that they're treating symptoms of the maps instead of treating the cause. I suggested the map pool should be monitored more closely, that the patch team should actually direct the style of the maps and what maps actually end up in a balanced mappool, and I suggested that the patch team should compensate for the increased passiveness caused by EP maps by nerfing the better passive styles.
PS: This is meant to be constructive. It's not constructive to always be positive of anything, its much more constructive to speak up when theres something that you don't like or think should and can be done better.
The maps ended up adding a ton of resources and at first everybody liked them a lot (and still, they're much better than RE maps in general, especially in terms of consistency). The initial meta shifted was interesting - at least to me - and trying to figure out how it was shifting and how to play in certain match ups was a fun thing to do. But this meta has gotten stale and will always shift towards a stale meta. The defenders advantage in aoe3 is huge, with not only the general RTS advantages of being the defender (better vision through buildings to take a perfect engagement, closer to reinforcements), but also added defenders advantages in TC fire, shipments popping from the TC and minutemen. This has never been problematic, or too turtly so to speak, because hunts and mines are an essential thing to even remain competitive. The initial hunts run out pretty quickly on RE maps, most RE maps actually for example have just one! safe mine while most EP maps feature 1 mine superclose to the TC and at least 1 safe mine, with often a third mine in a pretty decent spot.
The resulting meta is stale in the sense that many civilizations actually literally exhaust all their economic options (France and Germany for example go for almost a maximal boom build order, and theres Dutch vs British games where Dutch makes 5 banks and gets market upgrades while brits VC booms). The scope of strategies become extremely limited because there are no actual eco options left. You maximize eco and then maximize army basically. Theres no "okay I think I have barely enough units now to squeeze in the age up", theres only "I'm booming, I hope my civ's boom will beat the other civs boom at 14 minutes". Okay, this is a bit of an exaggeration, there are still civs that do have the ability to put on early pressure, but I do think this is the dominant scenario of this meta. It's often referred to as a skirm goon meta, maybe indeed unfairly so, but the term no rush 10 meta is actually accurate, and I think it's clear how this can be experienced as boring. Theres no point in making many units and try to interact with the other player in order to create an advantage that you can maybe profit from because its not actually possible to take a serious fight in the early to early midgame, so you just end up sitting back and booming.
RE is the game we've at least all fallen in love with at first. As much as the balance is flawed, as much as mapscrews completely fuck people over, the patch excells at interactive gameplay. If you rush you might not actually be able to straight up win, but then at 10 minutes you'll have secured key positions on the map and theres a second phase where the rushed player will have to push out and get the hunts back. This doesn't happen on most EP maps, because the rushed player will just hold the rush and then continue to sit back while being ahead because he didn't rush. The RE patch tends to hit this balance just right, the timing at which hunts start running out (if you didnt get mapscrewed) is precisely so that the defending player will be able to actually do economic things but that that defending player will struggle to actually profit enough from his economic advantage to push out and reclaim the map at the critical timing. This is a really undervalued aspect of the RE patch. Interactive gameplay is interesting to begin with, nobody likes playing against the AI trying to maximize their army at 15 minutes, which is a standard EP game except that one big gamedeciding fight is missing. Interactive gameplay creates for versatile games. If you start out trading units early on, every game will be a bit different because battles will almost never be identical. I would conclude that the RE playstyle leads to interactive and non repetitive games, while the EP maps have eventually led to a meta of non interactive, repetitive games where the result is often determined by one battle. Again, its a bit of an exaggeration and one could go in some specifics where there are very interactive games, but it is clearly the trend of EP.
I would propose a couple of things for a patch team: First of the mappool needs to be treated with extreme care. Not only in the individual maps but also in the distribution of different types of maps. It would be at least great if there would be a large pool of maps that were a prototype mapstyle for the balance. Right now we're balancing off Arkansas basically (or are we balancing according to Kamchatka style TP line?) but almost over half of the maps are very different from Arkansas with 5 TP maps, tons of no TP maps, maps with lots of livestock, maps that are very low resource or low on hunts, water maps and other non standard maps. I've said this before and I do understand how the map makers want to make interesting maps too, but it's quite extreme at the moment. Right now I do not believe the patch team and the map team truly work together in creating a specific style of maps. That's actually really odd, because aoe is a game that revolves around the natural resources and maps are a determining factor when it comes to maps. Balance and maps go hand in hand. I'd say that from this point onward maps need to be examined with utter care. A map type should be picked as the standard map that balance is based on, and a mappool should be created that has a large percentage of similair maps (I'd personally say at least 70%). The other option is that you balance for all types of maps, but that seems impossible (how can a civ like otto actually become viable on no TP maps, or germany for that sake).
Secondly, I think it'd be important to actually keep the core of RE intact: Interactive gameplay, where investing in army early on to try to use that army and get something done is viable. If you were to keep these sorts of maps, maybe nerf the things that make passive gameplay so strong; There has always been a correlation between civs being able to get a quick TP and civs being OP (Otto, Iro, France, Germany), and TPs in general offer absolutely insane value if you're doing a semi FF. If you slow down the meta with the maps, you could try to compensate and speed up the meta a bit by nerfing slow styles in general. One could for example also look at banks, manor booming, Japan's booming, the age up time (especially fast age up), and even more extreme things like minutemen or TC fire. I think it'd be best to lower the safe resources on maps while preserving the map consistency and overall hunt count that makes RE so great, but if one elects to not do this (right now for example it would be impossible because it's not actually possible to negotiate with garja about this I fear) then it'd make sense to compensate for the slowing down of the meta through balance changes.
Instead what EP has done is quite the opposite and that has consistently led to criticism. EP did start out with the idea of not changing the way RE is played but instead making a balanced RE. The problem is that it has always focused on the civ strength (and honestly, maybe we've all done this) and never on the huge effect that the maps have had on the meta. But that is not where it ends. After the initial patch, which actually nerfed aggressive civs (iro, otto) and did buff passive civs (Dutch ports) - which probably were fair nerfs tbh - the latest patch is way too extreme. Sepoys nerfed, Jans nerfed, Bow riders nerfed, a reluctance to buff russia; one can say the changes don't actually promote the style of RE at all. The patch team is doing the opposite of compensating for the effect of EP maps. And then instead of fixing the cause of civs not having enough eco options (because all civs just exhaust all eco options due to the map layout), the patch team is trying to deal with that symptom: Dutch got an extra bank so that they have more eco options, spain gets an eco option because they have too few apperantly, Otto has been given extra eco options (church techs), Sioux has been given more eco options, India is being pushed in the economic direction, and even now town centers are buffed. If you continue to treat this symptoms instead of fixing the caused you'll end up in an endless loop of trying to give civs more economic options to then realize they're still exhausting all of their economic options to then give civs more economic options again. It's not the right direction, and it'll never become as fun and interactive as RE is.
So in conclusion, Ive argued that maps are one of the most important factors in gameplay and balance, that EP maps lead to a no rush 10 playstyle, that the EP team is actually not compensating for the EP maps at all and that they're treating symptoms of the maps instead of treating the cause. I suggested the map pool should be monitored more closely, that the patch team should actually direct the style of the maps and what maps actually end up in a balanced mappool, and I suggested that the patch team should compensate for the increased passiveness caused by EP maps by nerfing the better passive styles.
PS: This is meant to be constructive. It's not constructive to always be positive of anything, its much more constructive to speak up when theres something that you don't like or think should and can be done better.