[Official] EP change suggestion

[HUMMAN]

I agree damaging eco and equaling game is way more entertaining and if anything patches etc. should improve it. Yet agression and only agression two different things, a good example would be to examine average length of piroshiki games.

[Hazza54321]

thank you lads for talking sense, your eco is your military doing damage to your opponents eco, thats technically your eco option , giving everyciv an eco option is the reason behind this nr10 style of play, spain is suppose to do damage with the fast ff and control the pace of the game, not ship spanish gold and mass. Likewise with otto their entire military gets nerfed but eco upgrades which were never taken previous were buffed so people just ff and 3 tc with a supposedly aggressive civ. Also with sioux their job is to get almost guaranteed vill kills to compete economically, at the very least idle alot or force opponent to make units to defend. Ultimately they use their military to have a huge map presence on the map to limit opponents eco, now we see sioux shipping 5v and spamming 5-10 teepees in base and having alot of hunt in base and later shipping 15 bison. dont even see many sioux players raid anymore lol, literally the design of the civ

[Mitoe]

That's just asking to turn the game back into a giant flowchart of matchup counters. Civs need to be stronger at different stages of the game, but I don't think the gap should be so massive that you're left with civs who must play a specific way or lose. There needs to be room to adapt your build a bit, or at least so that if you fail your timing you have room to outplay later in the game despite being weaker at that stage; or, conversely, you shouldn't have to just sit there and get shit on by an all in rush or timing just because you got counter picked, or something similar.

I don't want the game to be primarily about civilizations, it should be about builds, mechanics, scouting, macro, etc. Everything that can set you apart from other players. Ideally the game is something more along the lines of Boom > Turtle > Rush > Boom etc. etc. regardless of civilization. This means that you need to be aware of what your opponent is doing at all times, and be mindful of your own strategy relative to what they are doing. This opens up room for deception and wacky adaptations or surprises. Your civilization should enhance your preferred playstyle, or give you a minor edge in a matchup or against a certain type of player, on a certain type of map, but it shouldn't limit you to that one specific style of play. Limit a civs options or strengthen one option to the point where it is something a civilization must do, and instead of scouting and interacting with your opponent, you sit in the lobby of the game and dance through civs until someone gives in and plays a disadvantageous matchup or mirrors: Boom (Brit) > Turtle (Port) > Rush (Iro) > Boom (Japan) > Turtle (Dutch) > Rush (Otto), etc.

I think it is good that different civs are better at different strategies than other civs: this creates diversity and forces you to interact with your opponent. However if you want a balanced game where you don't feel forced to mirror or to pick counters to everything then the gap between civs at these different stages of the game needs to be apparent but not large enough that it's unwinnable, so that you have room to outplay.

If you want to emphasize each civs strengths so heavily, you turn each game into rock paper scissors--not even with build orders but with entire civilizations. Scouting becomes unimportant, as you know exactly what your opponent needs to do to win: they don't have a choice, and the game becomes entirely about whose power spike comes sooner, and if it fails, then they lose. If it works, then they win. Does that sound very interactive? Does that really sound like there's a lot of room for skill expression in here? Or is it about how well your civilizations do against your opponents civilizations?

Ideally the game is like a dance, where you lead until you are forced to follow (or vise versa), and need to outplay if you don't want to lose when the other civ is stronger, rather than automatically losing.

[Kaiserklein]

@Hazza54321 You can't rely on your opponent playing sloppy and losing vils as an "eco option" lol... Thinking sioux can win games through raiding means you're not trying to balance the game at the highest level.
I'd like you to come up with a way to balance RE sioux or RE otto without giving them an eco option. Tell us how there won't just be an optimal all in timing (doesn't matter if it's 700f 600f 5 jans or 2 falcs push or whatever) which will either work or not work, resulting in these civs always losing some mus and always winning some others. If you don't have a follow up, it's theoretically always gonna be decided by the one timing where you push, and that timing will always work or always not.

edit: yeah what mitoe said

[Cometk]

@[Armag] diarouga it’s just a beta coming out mate, if the changes are shit then you’ll have all the opportunity to explain why in a no-pressure scenario

[Cometk]

@Hazza54321 i consider ottoman to be a militaristic civilization with alternative economic options. so they have strong unique units and utilize non-standard booming mechanics like the church and trade posts/XP. so while i agree with you that the jan HP nerf is a step in the wrong direction (a step in the right direction, by that i mean maintaining consistency with the civ's design, would be keeping jan RE stats but increasing cost), i disagree that ottoman should be an exclusively aggressive civilization, for the same reasons that kaiser points out. saying a civ is designed well if it's a one-trick pony has just got to be wrong.

however, i'll have to say that RE otto and EP otto are actually quite similar in that they both have a lot of options available to them. double rax jan rush, classic abus jan, ATP colonial play into extended colonial or ageup, FF all-in, all are viable build orders on both patches. i'd argue that EP still does it better, because otto isn't actually OP broken anymore, and because there are new viable builds being discovered that influence the course of a game in beautiful ways - in particular i'm thinking about @WickedCossack's age 1 dock start build

[[Armag] diarouga]

in particular i'm thinking about @WickedCossack's age 1 dock start build

Age 1 dock has been used for years now. Boneng used to do that build on every water map iirc.

[Cometk]

in particular i'm thinking about @WickedCossack's age 1 dock start build

Age 1 dock has been used for years now. Boneng used to do that build on every water map iirc.

really? what’s the build? i can’t imagine it being stronger than standard play unless you were fully committing to water anyway

[Hazza54321]

@Hazza54321 You can't rely on your opponent playing sloppy and losing vils as an "eco option" lol... Thinking sioux can win games through raiding means you're not trying to balance the game at the highest level.
I'd like you to come up with a way to balance RE sioux or RE otto without giving them an eco option. Tell us how there won't just be an optimal all in timing (doesn't matter if it's 700f 600f 5 jans or 2 falcs push or whatever) which will either work or not work, resulting in these civs always losing some mus and always winning some others. If you don't have a follow up, it's theoretically always gonna be decided by the one timing where you push, and that timing will always work or always not.

edit: yeah what mitoe said

No. I mean doing an aggressive build and idle your opponent and forcing them to do a low economic build to survive. Vill kills are a bonus

[bwinner]

in particular i'm thinking about @WickedCossack's age 1 dock start build

Age 1 dock has been used for years now. Boneng used to do that build on every water map iirc.

On re you need schooners, on ep you can go straight for 1 dock in age 1 (no TP), which is an entirely different build.

[Garja]

That's just asking to turn the game back into a giant flowchart of matchup counters. Civs need to be stronger at different stages of the game, but I don't think the gap should be so massive that you're left with civs who must play a specific way or lose. There needs to be room to adapt your build a bit, or at least so that if you fail your timing you have room to outplay later in the game despite being weaker at that stage; or, conversely, you shouldn't have to just sit there and get shit on by an all in rush or timing just because you got counter picked, or something similar.

I don't want the game to be primarily about civilizations, it should be about builds, mechanics, scouting, macro, etc. Everything that can set you apart from other players. Ideally the game is something more along the lines of Boom > Turtle > Rush > Boom etc. etc. regardless of civilization. This means that you need to be aware of what your opponent is doing at all times, and be mindful of your own strategy relative to what they are doing. This opens up room for deception and wacky adaptations or surprises. Your civilization should enhance your preferred playstyle, or give you a minor edge in a matchup or against a certain type of player, on a certain type of map, but it shouldn't limit you to that one specific style of play. Limit a civs options or strengthen one option to the point where it is something a civilization must do, and instead of scouting and interacting with your opponent, you sit in the lobby of the game and dance through civs until someone gives in and plays a disadvantageous matchup or mirrors: Boom (Brit) > Turtle (Port) > Rush (Iro) > Boom (Japan) > Turtle (Dutch) > Rush (Otto), etc.

I think it is good that different civs are better at different strategies than other civs: this creates diversity and forces you to interact with your opponent. However if you want a balanced game where you don't feel forced to mirror or to pick counters to everything then the gap between civs at these different stages of the game needs to be apparent but not large enough that it's unwinnable, so that you have room to outplay.

If you want to emphasize each civs strengths so heavily, you turn each game into rock paper scissors--not even with build orders but with entire civilizations. Scouting becomes unimportant, as you know exactly what your opponent needs to do to win: they don't have a choice, and the game becomes entirely about whose power spike comes sooner, and if it fails, then they lose. If it works, then they win. Does that sound very interactive? Does that really sound like there's a lot of room for skill expression in here? Or is it about how well your civilizations do against your opponents civilizations?

Ideally the game is like a dance, where you lead until you are forced to follow (or vise versa), and need to outplay if you don't want to lose when the other civ is stronger, rather than automatically losing.

The game as a whole is a big counter civ /counter strat thing.
11 civs out of 14 lack something and are better at something. Then you have TAD civs which are good at everything, because that's how devs wanted TAD to be.
I didn't mind RE design appearance except for the extremes that would ruin balance.

[momuuu]

That's just asking to turn the game back into a giant flowchart of matchup counters. Civs need to be stronger at different stages of the game, but I don't think the gap should be so massive that you're left with civs who must play a specific way or lose. There needs to be room to adapt your build a bit, or at least so that if you fail your timing you have room to outplay later in the game despite being weaker at that stage; or, conversely, you shouldn't have to just sit there and get shit on by an all in rush or timing just because you got counter picked, or something similar.

It's a game with 14 civs and thus 91 unique match ups. You can't not have match up counters and one should simply accept that. The only way to mitigate that is to heavily standardize all civs in some way which makes the gameplay stale and boring.

I don't want the game to be primarily about civilizations, it should be about builds, mechanics, scouting, macro, etc. Everything that can set you apart from other players. Ideally the game is something more along the lines of Boom > Turtle > Rush > Boom etc. etc. regardless of civilization. This means that you need to be aware of what your opponent is doing at all times, and be mindful of your own strategy relative to what they are doing. This opens up room for deception and wacky adaptations or surprises. Your civilization should enhance your preferred playstyle, or give you a minor edge in a matchup or against a certain type of player, on a certain type of map, but it shouldn't limit you to that one specific style of play. Limit a civs options or strengthen one option to the point where it is something a civilization must do, and instead of scouting and interacting with your opponent, you sit in the lobby of the game and dance through civs until someone gives in and plays a disadvantageous matchup or mirrors: Boom (Brit) > Turtle (Port) > Rush (Iro) > Boom (Japan) > Turtle (Dutch) > Rush (Otto), etc.

What you want is to play a different RTS game called starcraft 2, where all three civs are designed to be very interesting and flexible. Aoe3's diversity is in the different civs you can pick which play out differently. If you are feeling like playing aggressively, you pick an aggressive civ, and if you are feeling like playing defensively you can pick a defensive civ. I would agree that it's probably better to have a handful of flexible civs than a bunch of more one dimensional civs, but that's not what aoe3 is. Aoe3 was designed around having a variety of very diverse civs. If you try to reduce this diversity because it polarizes match ups, then you will be standardizing civs. You yourself say that ideally you want something more along the lines of all civs being able to boom and rush, but on EP (maps) I feel like rushing never even is a possibility with the majority of civs. On RE I don't think many civs are forced into doing a certain strategy. Many civs are forced to be defensive or aggressive depending on the match up. For example, Otto is generally forced to be reasonably aggressive, but they have 4-5 different adaptations of their aggression from double rax jan to jan huss/abus to a very aggressive 2 falc FF timing to the slightly later mam timing. It's all reasonably aggressive, but it isn't boring from a strategic point of view at all; the build order really does matter.

What is funny is that your ideal scenario, where civs can do whatever they want to do, is present in aoe3: There are 14 mirror match ups where the civs have exactly the same strengths and thus realistically aren't forced to be aggressive or defensive. Yet, those are usually the most one dimensional match ups and also generally the most hated match ups.

Also, the Boom > Turtle > Rush > Boom thing is purely a theoretical thing. Turtling doesn't even really exist in aoe3 and that becomes pretty clear from your example where you said Japan is a boom civ that beats a turtle civ, while if there's one 'turtle civ' it's Japan.

I think it is good that different civs are better at different strategies than other civs: this creates diversity and forces you to interact with your opponent. However if you want a balanced game where you don't feel forced to mirror or to pick counters to everything then the gap between civs at these different stages of the game needs to be apparent but not large enough that it's unwinnable, so that you have room to outplay.

This would be ideal. But it's easily achieved by deleting 12 of the 14 civs and then balancing the remaining 2. There's a reason why this hasn't been done yet: the amount of diverse civs offer something enjoyable to aoe3. Standardizing to achieve less polarizing match ups will lead to a more stale and boring meta and really only matters if all people would endlessly counterpick eachother (which quite frankly, is not something that happens much at all). Besides, all civs can play at almost all different stages of the game, some just need to put on some pressure and prevent the opponent from doing a full boom unpunished. I already linked an awesome Dutch vs Russia here, where indeed Russia is 'forced' to punish the dutch player for going for 4 banks without eco. He does punish the dutch player and then remains competitive until the very late stages of the game. There was plenty of room for both players to outplay.

If you want to emphasize each civs strengths so heavily, you turn each game into rock paper scissors--not even with build orders but with entire civilizations. Scouting becomes unimportant, as you know exactly what your opponent needs to do to win: they don't have a choice, and the game becomes entirely about whose power spike comes sooner, and if it fails, then they lose. If it works, then they win. Does that sound very interactive? Does that really sound like there's a lot of room for skill expression in here? Or is it about how well your civilizations do against your opponents civilizations?

Ideally the game is like a dance, where you lead until you are forced to follow (or vise versa), and need to outplay if you don't want to lose when the other civ is stronger, rather than automatically losing.

This is such an extreme exaggeration. I don't think the civs strengths should be emphasized so heavily. I think the patch shouldn't actively be removing traits that civs have that allow them to play aggressively or anything that isn't semi FF nr10. It's also bothersome to state that scouting becomes unimportant just because you know that your opponent needs to be aggressive to win; I clearly remember you training me to face somppu's india in the tournament, you then only teaching me about the slow sepoy rush and me beating your slow sepoy rush succesfully, to then die to a consulate rush without standing a chance. India had to do damage in that match up and had two different styles in that match up that could work out. I didn't scout and lost. Yet you're saying that if you know a civ has to do damage you don't have to scout and the game is decided when you select civs. You are also still ignoring the possibility that a civ can reliably do enough damage to put the game back on equal footing. I remember back on RE patch with RE maps, France vs Dutch was usually France trying to musk huss. They'd do at least some economic damage or prevent the full greed from Dutch, but then the Dutch would defend reasonably well and just barely stay in the game, after which it'd usually end up in fortress vs fortress age. But instead of doing a boring hussar semi FF, the game was really interactive and entertaining, with for example a very important strategic decision of when France would actually age and also earlier in the game for Dutch if they could get away with aging. This was extremely interactive and there was way more room for skill expression than just doing a hussar semi FF and then poking at eachother with skirms.

So, your argument that leaving civs to sometimes be forced to be a bit aggressive (to the extend that it is in RE) makes the game revolve around counter picks where you can't outplay is one big bad assumption and a big exaggeration. The design of RE isn't nearly as black and white as you make it out to be. The idea that one civ needs to do a bit of damage, or at least prevent the other civ from doing a big boom, doesn't simplify the game like you claim at all. India and Otto had very diverse and distinct ways to be aggressive that one definitely needed to scout for and play around strategically for example. I think the Dutch vs Russia game that I linked shows exactly why aggressive gameplay like that is fun, and that game didn't at all seem a one-dimensional "Dutch won because Dutch is a turtle civ and Russia a rush civ and turtle civs beat rush civs". That game seemed like "BSOP did a good build order, Raphael did good damage but then was slightly outplayed in the mid and lategame". If balancing had anything to do with it, it was that Dutch was maybe slightly on the strong end of the spectrum in that patch while russia was a bit on the weak end of the spectrum. Nothing of that match up had anything to do with "Russia can't go eco so this match up is boring".

Also, there are 14 civs. Whats the harm if a handful of them are really unique and thus can only be aggressive (Russia, Otto, Sioux) or can only be defensive (Dutch, Portuguese, Japan)? You still get to play civs that are very diverse (India on RE, France, British) and then some people that love playing aggressively and love the feeling of being on a clock can play like that, while players that love the feeling that they will win if they just survive long enough can play like that, and then people like you that love the feeling of being able to do any strategy that feels good for the situation can also play like that. This falls in the category of if everyone likes your game, but nobody loves it, it will fail. Maybe you dislike the rush civs, but that's fine! There are still plenty of civs that you get to enjoy. But what if someone loves the rush civs? Well, he will get something to enjoy on RE indeed. However, on EP he will feel limited. He may still like it, but he won't love it. And that's poor game design.

[Kaiserklein]

@Hazza54321 You can't rely on your opponent playing sloppy and losing vils as an "eco option" lol... Thinking sioux can win games through raiding means you're not trying to balance the game at the highest level.
I'd like you to come up with a way to balance RE sioux or RE otto without giving them an eco option. Tell us how there won't just be an optimal all in timing (doesn't matter if it's 700f 600f 5 jans or 2 falcs push or whatever) which will either work or not work, resulting in these civs always losing some mus and always winning some others. If you don't have a follow up, it's theoretically always gonna be decided by the one timing where you push, and that timing will always work or always not.

edit: yeah what mitoe said

No. I mean doing an aggressive build and idle your opponent and forcing them to do a low economic build to survive. Vill kills are a bonus

Yeah but again, some civs are much better at defending than some others. If you rely only on aggression without anything else to balance otto, it won't be balanced, cause for example france will win the mu easily while japan will die.
Anyway it's simple. Why is otto not viable on a no tp map? Because then they don't have an eco option. Which proves the point

[bwinner]

Otto are viable on no TP map (wood start on this map is very anoying though).

[Kaiserklein]

They're not

[Mitoe]

@momuuu I’m a bit tired and on my phone so I’m not going to write a very detailed reply right now.

What I was describing is a bit of an extreme, yes. I don’t think RE is like that; well, not in most cases anyway.

I’m not trying to standardize everything. If anything, I think been more strongly against standardizing than most other players over the last few years. But I still do think that civs power curves should not be as extreme as some of them are right now. There should be clear advantages or disadvantages for your civ at different stages, absolutely, but I don’t see how making that gap smaller in some cases could possibly be bad for the game.

Otto, for example, was basically a free win in age 2 on RE. Virtually no civ could compete with them there, but at the same time they have almost no opportunities to win at later stages of the game unless they get there first and do some kind of weird timing with falcs and mames or a revolt or something. But if you play age 2 and fail to prevent your opponent from reaching Fortress or something like that, you might as well just resign. Similarly, if you were playing against Otto and forced to stay Colonial, there’s no chance that you will ever be able to win.

I don’t think it should be like that. It should be hard to win in these situations, but not completely impossible, and I don’t think it’s going to take away from any civ’s identities really.

There will always be good and bad matchups, yes, and in AoE3 that’s not necessarily a big problem given how many matchups there are. But in an ideal world none of these matchups should be an auto-loss or auto-win, and to argue that we should give up on trying to balance that is silly.

Also, you seem think I have something against aggressive play. I don’t. I’ve suggested many different changes that I think would benefit aggressive play across the board without making Fortress totally unviable, and no one seems very eager to try any of my ideas.

[momuuu]

@momuuu I’m a bit tired and on my phone so I’m not going to write a very detailed reply right now.

What I was describing is a bit of an extreme, yes. I don’t think RE is like that; well, not in most cases anyway.

You were describing an extreme and I responded to it so? What's the point of the first comment then?

I’m not trying to standardize everything. If anything, I think been more strongly against standardizing than most other players over the last few years.
You're not trying to do anything because you aren't part of any EP team. But you were arguing for standardization. Does that mean you now disagree with the previous post you made?

But I still do think that civs power curves should not be as extreme as some of them are right now.

There should be clear advantages or disadvantages for your civ at different stages, absolutely, but I don’t see how making that gap smaller in some cases could possibly be bad for the game.
I argued in depth why making the gap smaller can be bad, but you refused to respond to that so maybe you actually respond to what I said?


Otto, for example, was basically a free win in age 2 on RE. Virtually no civ could compete with them there, but at the same time they have almost no opportunities to win at later stages of the game unless they get there first and do some kind of weird timing with falcs and mames or a revolt or something. But if you play age 2 and fail to prevent your opponent from reaching Fortress or something like that, you might as well just resign. Similarly, if you were playing against Otto and forced to stay Colonial, there’s no chance that you will ever be able to win.
Otto was bad design because they were OP. Oh and by the way, Otto FF was insanely strong too and part of their core strategies. I just don't see the argument here, Otto was simply OP and if toned down is can be a fun civ to play. Your entire argument here is that Otto was bad because you couldn't play around them because they were OP. But that has nothing to do with game design, it has something to do with balancing.

I don’t think it should be like that. It should be hard to win in these situations, but not completely impossible, and I don’t think it’s going to take away from any civ’s identities really.
Again, who the fuck mentioned civ identity? I surely never did. It's such an empty term too. I mentioned diversity in playstyles, so maybe you should actually respond to the point I made instead of responding to a point that nobody made?

There will always be good and bad matchups, yes, and in AoE3 that’s not necessarily a big problem given how many matchups there are. But in an ideal world none of these matchups should be an auto-loss or auto-win, and to argue that we should give up on trying to balance that is silly.
And in this world no match ups are auto loss or auto win. Balancing 91 match ups is impossible anyways; take away a bit of strength from a civ in one match up and you will make all its other match ups imbalanced. The only way to actually balance that many civs is to reduce the amount of civs by standardizing. That's the entire point. Your counterargument is that you shouldn't 'give up on it' which isn't even an argument but just an empty statement.

Also, you seem think I have something against aggressive play. I don’t. I’ve suggested many different changes that I think would benefit aggressive play across the board without making Fortress totally unviable, and no one seems very eager to try any of my ideas.
It's good for you that you suggested changes. It's good for you that you don't have something against aggressive play. You did however respond to people arguing that EP hurts aggressive play and claimed that wasn't true, which I responded to.

Can you please come up with arguments or content?

[Mitoe]

Lol

Seems like you’re misinterpreting a lot of what I’m saying. I’ll write a proper response later, as I am tired and can’t be bothered to read and write on my phone.

To be honest it sounds like we want the same thing, and you’re just arguing that it’s impossible.

[momuuu]

I'm arguing there is a clear balance between having good, diverse gameplay and having all match ups balanced. Also, I'm saying that civs that are forced to hit timings and at least do some damage create fun games. I'd also say EP took the easy approach to balancing by just standardizing gameplay into some passive shit and by doing so disrupted the sweet spot that RE actually hit. Which is also something I'm arguing for, as n0el didn't really understands that apperantly (but if asked for arguments doesn't provide any).

Honestly, I responded to every point of your post in depth and you're now saying you're not saying what you were saying, which confuses the fuck out of me. So yes, go home and write up something more clear then.

[HUMMAN]

lul jerum ur funny