EP+ ? Towards a non-conservative-patch?

[tea-zzz]

Hey All,

I am not an active player but recently enjoyed following the community tournaments. So what I will say is the perspective of a hobby player and particularly a viewer. And is aimed only at supremacy games. Considering the underused, native, double tc cup, as well the attempts of smackdown, to change the meta by adding early forts or factories, I began wondering if, since aoe3 is quite old today, there is space to work on a non-conservative patch, which broadens current meta without modding the game into something inrecognizable.

What do I mean? Patches address mostly used elements, buffing or nerving them to guarantee a balanced game. And there is nothing wrong with that =) My thought was, but what if you try to buff all those cards and units, which are normally never used? So that you can still ship 3 vills or 700 wood, but you might be tempted to try something else, and ship for example petwolves and go treasure hunting

My proposal is to work on a patch, which does not attempt to replace current EP as a well balanced patch, but aims toward a plethora of changes, making herdables, buildings or native warriors an attractive option you could go for -- as well.

Why not give those unit-transform cards which a hardly ever used a secondary minor bonus? Why not strengthen those highly situational resource-transform cards, so that there might be actually a strategy they could be implemented into? Why not give pets a better multiplier against guardians to really indulge treasure hunting? With these questions I began collecting changes, mostly to cards, a few to units.

A major idea was to increase wood gathering to 0.6, to respond to the strange wood scarcity in supremacy games, where players avoid wood gathering and mainly ship or buy it to build only the buildings they really really need. It should already open up some space for new strategies and unit diversity.

I attached a list of changes (and the files needed) I played around recently. Ranging from improving cards for herdables, pets and balloons -- yes balloons --, transform-cards, building shipments and improvements (like blockhouse cannon), covered wagon shipments, or resource trickles by adding minor secondary bonuses -- to decreasing the push-potential of iro or aztec, but giving iro a travois-boom and herdable-bonus (now aztec on farming and fish (the teamschooners now provides housing, idea of lake side communities), iro on herdables, sioux on hunts). Or taking some range from Chokunu's, but giving them a small area dmg or halbs some range, like meteorhammers..... And sure, there is always some need for balancing, but maybe not as a major concern and maybe more indirectly.

My goal is not to claim that those are the changes need to be done or well balanced, but push towards another, less conservative approach to patching which concentrates on the under- and unused, without discarding current meta options. Which makes halbs, grens, sheep or couprider, advanced mill or the food trickle at least a situational option. I would love if somebody feels like working towards an EP+ patch.

The files attached are based on the non-EP version and still need to be merged with those.

Best,
tea

[[Armag] diarouga]

It has been discussed a lot, and the community is perfectly split. The top players overall are against drastic changes because we like the game as it is, and tbh you can't deprive people of the game we like because some people would like a different game more.

[Kawapasaka]

Sadly I doubt you would ever get enough people playing on a patch like this to create any sort of new meta. Especially with stuff like trying to make livestock viable, I imagine that'd be a massive deal-breaker for the vast majority of players.

[tea-zzz]

Thanks for your feedback ! It seems to be a quite controversial topic. I think aoe3 is one of the best strategy games, offering many choices and options. And there is no intention to 'deprive' anybody of it. I think it just has many parts not viable and used, because they are just super underwhelming, partly because the game was developed on the idea of homecity progress, which is no thing anymore, partly because some parts are not developed in detail at all and support is non existent today.

Therefore, it's hard to see what would be so bad to adding a secondary bonus to pets, balloons or the 3rd age covered wagon shipments. I think such changes would rather broaden than override the current meta.

But I am in no position to tell anybody about his or her game and I can understand that it is a complex process to form any consensus in a community with different experiences and preferences. I like many of the small changes I have been trying out (but I am just playing sporadically for fun and like game design) and wanted to share them, hoping that they would enliven current discussions and offer also a different take on patching.

The files I shared are a collection of ideas, no patch, and limited by my experiences (no patch will be the brainchild of one person, but a group process). Above all, I wanted to highlight and remind of those rather (poor) forgotten cards and units and ask why not try to implement them a bit more?

Best,
tea

[[Armag] diarouga]

I guess the point is that knowing what shipment is viable/what shipment isn't is a form of skill.

[tea-zzz]

And sometimes too easy ? I think you could poll cards/units 90% of players would not use?

[tea-zzz]

You could do a "standard", a "backlist" and an "unplayed" list. Why not push those unplayed things into the backlist?

[[Armag] diarouga]

You could do a "standard", a "backlist" and an "unplayed" list. Why not push those unplayed things into the backlist?

Because that would be too many changes on the patch list.
That's the only reason, I wouldn't mind advanced mills being slightly better but it just wouldn't add anything to the game and make it impossible for someone to fully read the patch list (it's already too long honestly).

[Dsy]

I personally like lot of changes, but i would also like description next to them.
Since i see a lot of changes in your changelog and there is not a single word why you think its good... I think its a big mistake. (+ wall nerf isnt mentioned anywhere)

[Dsy]

Ive started modding in past and i've got a changelog like yours. But ive also got "notes" which describe why i think the changes are good.
I stopped working on it but you can read it if you want.

[Makrokosmos12]

I think most of these changes should be implemented in the official patch in some form or another, but the problem is that people dont like to many changes at once. They dont like things that they learned so far to change drasticly in a short period of time. Which is reasonable.

But yeah this has been discussed many times and the most players where against it, because of the fear of the balacing issues and problems that would come with the changes. (Even so i dont think buffed grens in a conservative form or making livestock actually a litte viable would break the game).

Diarougas argument is about the patch list being to big has a point, as i said (to much change at once can get confusing and deterrent) but the game as a hole lacks potential and has become as stale as it is today.

[supahons]

From my experience, if you change too much, it doesn't even work in scenarios. Don't assume that casual players (the main target group?) want to read a long list and think about the changes for 14 different civs and the homecity cards before playing. It's time consuming to keep track of all the different changes (there's already Nilla, TAD, EP). It only works to some extent for players who spend way too much time on AoE (mostly >PR 20).
But more importantly: How long will it take to find a game on fun patch, when its already hard on RE for most gamemodes? (if you don't make it a one time event)