ZP: The Zoi Patch

[momuuu]

I agree with your point, but what people fail to understand is that aoe3 civs are either good at agression or at defense, while in sc2 and aoe2, all civs can either rush or def.
As a result, you have to be predictable in aoe3 if you don't want to use a suboptimal strat: you have to rush as Russia, you have to boom as Dutch etc.
Furthermore, depending on the map, rush will be better or worse than defensive play. For instance, on maps with a lot of resources, defensive civs will beat agressive civs if you balance from low resource maps, and on low resource maps, agressive civs will be better if you balance on high resource maps, and you won't be able to hold the rush with defensive civs.

Thus, it's impossible to balance the game on both low and high resource maps.
The choice of the EP has been to balance the civs on high resource, TP maps. That way, defensive civs can hold rushes, but they can't turtle too much, because the agressive civs can take the TP line and match their economy.
It's not optimal, but I don't see a better way to get a balanced game.

This is definitely true, and personally oppose the extreme variety of maps. It's probably best, like you said, to focus balance on some specific type of maps.

That doesn't mean that you can make it so that the gameplay on the map that the balance was designed for is still really diverse. That aspect has failed a little bit. I think it could be good to try to compensate for the fact that the maps are really high resource (which they made be trying right now with for example the exiled prince). Although this is dangerous because it may turn out terribly, I think it's worthwhile. The other aspect is the balancing by EP. Many balancing decisions have moved civs into the defensive/age3 spectrum and that's sad because the balancing could definitely have been done differently too. I really hope the EP team/Zoi will at least present some sort of vision for the future of the game and act accordingly.

[deleted_user0]

A small meta change is more than welcome to me.

Is there seriously anything more boring than always the same skirm battle in most of the nilla mirrors?

[[Armag] diarouga]

I agree with your point, but what people fail to understand is that aoe3 civs are either good at agression or at defense, while in sc2 and aoe2, all civs can either rush or def.
As a result, you have to be predictable in aoe3 if you don't want to use a suboptimal strat: you have to rush as Russia, you have to boom as Dutch etc.
Furthermore, depending on the map, rush will be better or worse than defensive play. For instance, on maps with a lot of resources, defensive civs will beat agressive civs if you balance from low resource maps, and on low resource maps, agressive civs will be better if you balance on high resource maps, and you won't be able to hold the rush with defensive civs.

Thus, it's impossible to balance the game on both low and high resource maps.
The choice of the EP has been to balance the civs on high resource, TP maps. That way, defensive civs can hold rushes, but they can't turtle too much, because the agressive civs can take the TP line and match their economy.
It's not optimal, but I don't see a better way to get a balanced game.

This is definitely true, and personally oppose the extreme variety of maps. It's probably best, like you said, to focus balance on some specific type of maps.

That doesn't mean that you can make it so that the gameplay on the map that the balance was designed for is still really diverse.


That aspect has failed a little bit. I think it could be good to try to compensate for the fact that the maps are really high resource (which they made be trying right now with for example the exiled prince). Although this is dangerous because it may turn out terribly, I think it's worthwhile. The other aspect is the balancing by EP. Many balancing decisions have moved civs into the defensive/age3 spectrum and that's sad because the balancing could definitely have been done differently too. I really hope the EP team/Zoi will at least present some sort of vision for the future of the game and act accordingly.

The issue is that the map team doesn't agree with that point of view. They keep making unstandard maps, with less resources or no TP. As a result, if we don't want the defensive civs to become UP, we need to make defensive play predominant on std maps, and slightly weaker on unstd maps.
If all the maps were standard, then we could try to balance agressive and defensive play, but right now we can't.

[[Armag] diarouga]

A small meta change is more than welcome to me.

Is there seriously anything more boring than always the same skirm battle in most of the nilla mirrors?

Says the guy who goes sepoy rush, jan rush or 5/4/13 every game lol.
It's not like you ever play a skirm/goon battle.

[momuuu]

I agree with your point, but what people fail to understand is that aoe3 civs are either good at agression or at defense, while in sc2 and aoe2, all civs can either rush or def.
As a result, you have to be predictable in aoe3 if you don't want to use a suboptimal strat: you have to rush as Russia, you have to boom as Dutch etc.
Furthermore, depending on the map, rush will be better or worse than defensive play. For instance, on maps with a lot of resources, defensive civs will beat agressive civs if you balance from low resource maps, and on low resource maps, agressive civs will be better if you balance on high resource maps, and you won't be able to hold the rush with defensive civs.

Thus, it's impossible to balance the game on both low and high resource maps.
The choice of the EP has been to balance the civs on high resource, TP maps. That way, defensive civs can hold rushes, but they can't turtle too much, because the agressive civs can take the TP line and match their economy.
It's not optimal, but I don't see a better way to get a balanced game.

This is definitely true, and personally oppose the extreme variety of maps. It's probably best, like you said, to focus balance on some specific type of maps.

That doesn't mean that you can make it so that the gameplay on the map that the balance was designed for is still really diverse.


That aspect has failed a little bit. I think it could be good to try to compensate for the fact that the maps are really high resource (which they made be trying right now with for example the exiled prince). Although this is dangerous because it may turn out terribly, I think it's worthwhile. The other aspect is the balancing by EP. Many balancing decisions have moved civs into the defensive/age3 spectrum and that's sad because the balancing could definitely have been done differently too. I really hope the EP team/Zoi will at least present some sort of vision for the future of the game and act accordingly.

The issue is that the map team doesn't agree with that point of view. They keep making unstandard maps, with less resources or no TP. As a result, if we don't want the defensive civs to become UP, we need to make defensive play predominant on std maps, and slightly weaker on unstd maps.
If all the maps were standard, then we could try to balance agressive and defensive play, but right now we can't.

I'd be more inclined to just fuck those understand maps and focus balancing around a certain map pool. It's problematic though.

If however you would focus balancing around 'average' maps, then high res maps would just have a slightly more defensive meta and low res maps would have a slightly more aggressive meta, but the middle ground would be pretty good then, wouldn't it?

[[Armag] diarouga]

Show hidden quotes

I agree with your point, but what people fail to understand is that aoe3 civs are either good at agression or at defense, while in sc2 and aoe2, all civs can either rush or def.
As a result, you have to be predictable in aoe3 if you don't want to use a suboptimal strat: you have to rush as Russia, you have to boom as Dutch etc.
Furthermore, depending on the map, rush will be better or worse than defensive play. For instance, on maps with a lot of resources, defensive civs will beat agressive civs if you balance from low resource maps, and on low resource maps, agressive civs will be better if you balance on high resource maps, and you won't be able to hold the rush with defensive civs.

Thus, it's impossible to balance the game on both low and high resource maps.
The choice of the EP has been to balance the civs on high resource, TP maps. That way, defensive civs can hold rushes, but they can't turtle too much, because the agressive civs can take the TP line and match their economy.
It's not optimal, but I don't see a better way to get a balanced game.

This is definitely true, and personally oppose the extreme variety of maps. It's probably best, like you said, to focus balance on some specific type of maps.

That doesn't mean that you can make it so that the gameplay on the map that the balance was designed for is still really diverse.


That aspect has failed a little bit. I think it could be good to try to compensate for the fact that the maps are really high resource (which they made be trying right now with for example the exiled prince). Although this is dangerous because it may turn out terribly, I think it's worthwhile. The other aspect is the balancing by EP. Many balancing decisions have moved civs into the defensive/age3 spectrum and that's sad because the balancing could definitely have been done differently too. I really hope the EP team/Zoi will at least present some sort of vision for the future of the game and act accordingly.

The issue is that the map team doesn't agree with that point of view. They keep making unstandard maps, with less resources or no TP. As a result, if we don't want the defensive civs to become UP, we need to make defensive play predominant on std maps, and slightly weaker on unstd maps.
If all the maps were standard, then we could try to balance agressive and defensive play, but right now we can't.

I'd be more inclined to just fuck those understand maps and focus balancing around a certain map pool. It's problematic though.

I would too. It's possible to make France vs Russia balanced on maps like Hudson Bay by making the Russian rush stronger. However, if you do that, they're going to be broken as hell on Bengal, and the tournament team is never going to remove all unstd maps from the pool.
The issue from the start is that the EP team, the map team and the tourney team haven't been working together, but rather against each other.

If however you would focus balancing around 'average' maps, then high res maps would just have a slightly more defensive meta and low res maps would have a slightly more aggressive meta, but the middle ground would be pretty good then, wouldn't it?
No. No TP maps would be totally hopeless for semi ff civs.

[deleted_user0]

So what? I'm talking about viewer perspective.

Watch for example my mono civ final vs mitoe? Even if I'm rushing those games tend to escalate further. And I don't know about you but I'm quite confident community finds those games more interesting than skirm war in dutch mirror.

[momuuu]

Just fuck no TP maps or maps without resources. Those are gimmicks that never should have become as 'standard' as they are. I just want the more diverse meta so badly. We both know that the maps team isn't going to change shit, but the EP team and tournament team could and should just force the extremely weird civ out of 'standard' and into 'gimmicks for a change of pace' which is what they really are.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Just fuck no TP maps or maps without resources. Those are gimmicks that never should have become as 'standard' as they are. I just want the more diverse meta so badly. We both know that the maps team isn't going to change shit, but the EP team and tournament team could and should just force the extremely weird civ out of 'standard' and into 'gimmicks for a change of pace' which is what they really are.

Considering I'm neither in the EP team, nor in the tourney team, there's not much I can do about it lol. And apparently both the EP and the tournament teams disagree with that point of view.

[Mr_Bramboy]

Completely agree. From an ex-media team perspective, having a competitive tournament on a completely different patch is not a good idea seeing as the patch is not the official patch. The EP is an incredible initiative with hundreds if not thousands of hours put into it, but it needs to be careful not to overstep its boundaries. EP was never made to incorporate changes which change the game this much - just look at some of the first posts regarding EP. There was a poll back then asking the community if a patch was desired, and one of the specific fears that people had was that the patch would split the community too much with big changes. I hope the tournament scene will still have faith in the patch and that we're not past a point of no return.

[momuuu]

Just fuck no TP maps or maps without resources. Those are gimmicks that never should have become as 'standard' as they are. I just want the more diverse meta so badly. We both know that the maps team isn't going to change shit, but the EP team and tournament team could and should just force the extremely weird civ out of 'standard' and into 'gimmicks for a change of pace' which is what they really are.

Considering I'm neither in the EP team, nor in the tourney team, there's not much I can do about it lol. And apparently both the EP and the tournament teams disagree with that point of view.

We're just here to pray.

I think your best bet to matter would be to create a smurf account, get good on that, never make it clear that you are diarouga, and then behave super friendly (god, it sounds so terrible to have to behave like the incarnation of flower power, but oh well), and then bribe zoi into getting you in the EP team to push your agenda.

Good luck my young pawadan, you can do this.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Just fuck no TP maps or maps without resources. Those are gimmicks that never should have become as 'standard' as they are. I just want the more diverse meta so badly. We both know that the maps team isn't going to change shit, but the EP team and tournament team could and should just force the extremely weird civ out of 'standard' and into 'gimmicks for a change of pace' which is what they really are.

Considering I'm neither in the EP team, nor in the tourney team, there's not much I can do about it lol. And apparently both the EP and the tournament teams disagree with that point of view.

We're just here to pray.

I think your best bet to matter would be to create a smurf account, get good on that, never make it clear that you are diarouga, and then behave super friendly (god, it sounds so terrible to have to behave like the incarnation of flower power, but oh well), and then bribe zoi into getting you in the EP team to push your agenda.

Good luck my young pawadan, you can do this.

Tbh it would be too obvious, and I don't want to waste time doing this. I'd rather just play on the RE.

[deleted_user]

Show hidden quotes

Just fuck no TP maps or maps without resources. Those are gimmicks that never should have become as 'standard' as they are. I just want the more diverse meta so badly. We both know that the maps team isn't going to change shit, but the EP team and tournament team could and should just force the extremely weird civ out of 'standard' and into 'gimmicks for a change of pace' which is what they really are.

Considering I'm neither in the EP team, nor in the tourney team, there's not much I can do about it lol. And apparently both the EP and the tournament teams disagree with that point of view.

We're just here to pray.

I think your best bet to matter would be to create a smurf account, get good on that, never make it clear that you are diarouga, and then behave super friendly (god, it sounds so terrible to have to behave like the incarnation of flower power, but oh well), and then bribe zoi into getting you in the EP team to push your agenda.

Good luck my young pawadan, you can do this.

Tbh it would be too obvious, and I don't want to waste time doing this. I'd rather just play on the RE.

Hi! Can We 1v1 Please?

[pecelot]

A lot of arbitrary statements there...

– Trample mode speed multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1

Why would you change trample mode? Trample mode is a cute micro trick to kill the low HP minutemen, the idea was never to give an area attack to all cav units.

How do you know what the idea was? Do you want trash features remain trash? It's not like it's fantastic anyways, you clearly must have missed my trample mode thread, in which it's explained that it's detrimental as units trampling take half of the damage dealt — a rather-poor trade for any cavalry.

– Crossbowman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w
– Pikeman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w

Ok, so you nerfed semi ff builds, and buffed bow/pike rushes, what do you want, bow/pike rush every game? That's uninteresting, that's what used to happen on nilla and it was super boring.

Do you actually think people will xbow-pike in every game from now on?

[[Armag] diarouga]

A lot of arbitrary statements there...

A lot of arbitraty changes.

How do you know what the idea was? Do you want trash features remain trash? It's not like it's fantastic anyways, you clearly must have missed my trample mode thread, in which it's explained that it's detrimental as units trampling take half of the damage dealt — a rather-poor trade for any cavalry.

Trample mode is meant to kill minutemen, that's it.

Do you actually think people will xbow-pike in every game from now on?

No, but I think that with the fast age up getting nerfed, bow/pike will become a bit broken.

[Kaiserklein]

Obviously trample mode was meant to be an alternative to the regular melee mode, not just to kill low hp minutemen rofl. That's just the only use we have for it currently because it's utter shit besides in that specific case. You can't say it's "meant to kill minutemen" and nothing else, that's pure bs. Now "do we really want trample mode to become viable?" is another question.

There's lots of other things to argue about (like the bow/pike........) but I'm not gonna waste my time
P.S: culvs have a multiplier of 10 on RE.

[GiBthedurrty]

hi @tabben @Jerimuno

[Guigs]

– Crossbowman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w
– Pikeman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w

Ok, so you nerfed semi ff builds, and buffed bow/pike rushes, what do you want, bow/pike rush every game? That's uninteresting, that's what used to happen on nilla and it was super boring.

Do you actually think people will xbow-pike in every game from now on? [/quote]

Well I don't think everyone will xbow pike cuz it's still terrible units, but it could be a good buff for civs than need cheap siege units and can't afford them too much (i'm thinking about playing vs japan) like france, dutch maybe) but idk i might be wrong ^^

[[Armag] diarouga]

– Crossbowman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w
– Pikeman cost changed from 40f, 40w to 50f, 30w

Ok, so you nerfed semi ff builds, and buffed bow/pike rushes, what do you want, bow/pike rush every game? That's uninteresting, that's what used to happen on nilla and it was super boring.

Do you actually think people will xbow-pike in every game from now on?

Well I don't think everyone will xbow pike cuz it's still terrible units, but it could be a good buff for civs than need cheap siege units and can't afford them too much (i'm thinking about playing vs japan) like france, dutch maybe) but idk i might be wrong ^^[/quote]
It only gives more options to fre and ger, which are already top tier.

[Kaiserklein]

Ok fr and ger are top tier. That's new.
Meanwhile you complain about the fast age getting nerfed

[scarm]

There is no point in nitpicking on singular changes or the comments diarouga made concerning them, because the issue he is trying to point out isn't that xbows shoouldnt cost 50f, but that the EP shouldn't become a playground with an own and very different meta, because that is not how you generate a large competitive community. What he is saying is very valid, casual players wont care one bit about those balance changes, they want flashy new content, so if thats what you want to achieve just make italians with elmetis and lil bombards or sth, and for competitive players its just an huge obstacle to have to learn 2 different metas. Just think about how much time it takes to learn and get good at even one; sure many skills and basic principles carry over, but the more changes there are the more time one has to invest.

[Atomiswave]

Now when i study changes more closely i can see Zoi logic behind them. However, some changes like manors, zams and few other seem problematic and i think they will be removed/tweaked in final version.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ok fr and ger are top tier. That's new.
Meanwhile you complain about the fast age getting nerfed

Fre and Ger at top tier yea. And I complain about the fast age up getting nerfed because it's stupid design-wise, and it nerfs Port, while it's an average civ.

[Atomiswave]

There is no point in nitpicking on singular changes or the comments diarouga made concerning them, because the issue he is trying to point out isn't that xbows shoouldnt cost 50f, but that the EP shouldn't become a playground with an own and very different meta, because that is not how you generate a large competitive community. What he is saying is very valid, casual players wont care one bit about those balance changes, they want flashy new content, so if thats what you want to achieve just make italians with elmetis and lil bombards or sth, and for competitive players its just an huge obstacle to have to learn 2 different metas.

That's simply impossible, at least until DE if/comes out. The best that can be done is to balance the game, and EP team is trying to do just that.

[scarm]

No they are not only trying to balance, goodspeed and zoi even said so themselves.