EP9: More details on fixed crates

[Qosashvili93]

Wait what

Dutch gets extra coin and wood crate too?

That means second cancer civ after china

[[Armag] diarouga]

Wait what

Dutch gets extra coin and wood crate too?

That means second cancer civ after china

No, Dutch will be balanced with these crates.

[n0el]

if a lot of players like this change, don't put the default start woods would be much better imo, the best solution is to delete all the extra crates and play with the one by defaults as garja said

Talk about boring

[look]

its a significant change and kill the variety at the beginning.. so I would prefer not to change anything.

[deleted_user]

What is this "variety" everyone is talking about? RNG inter-civ imbalance?

There are anyways variations listed under each civ in the OP.

[Qosashvili93]

If u will do every time same bo it means ur just bot thats all, no need to blame starting crates

[kevinitalien]

if a lot of players like this change, don't put the default start woods would be much better imo, the best solution is to delete all the extra crates and play with the one by defaults as garja said

Talk about boring

totally agree is boring, crates fix is boring and terrible bad idea but well, almost no one agrees with me so I'm probably just going to watch meta botting in the future, which is really worse than right now

[Qosashvili93]

Wait what

Dutch gets extra coin and wood crate too?

That means second cancer civ after china

No, Dutch will be balanced with these crates.

Maybe im missing something but

As I remember on coin start dutch has 5 coin crate and on wood start 4

So if for dutch now every game will be coin start + wood crate we will see how many ppl will complain how cancer is dutch

[n0el]

if a lot of players like this change, don't put the default start woods would be much better imo, the best solution is to delete all the extra crates and play with the one by defaults as garja said

Talk about boring

totally agree is boring, crates fix is boring and terrible bad idea but well, almost no one agrees with me so I'm probably just going to watch meta botting in the future, which is really worse than right now

Yes, because there's not botting right now....

[kevinitalien]

Show hidden quotes

if a lot of players like this change, don't put the default start woods would be much better imo, the best solution is to delete all the extra crates and play with the one by defaults as garja said

Talk about boring

totally agree is boring, crates fix is boring and terrible bad idea but well, almost no one agrees with me so I'm probably just going to watch meta botting in the future, which is really worse than right now

Yes, because there's not botting right now....

for me only 3 civ are bots right now: china, otto and russia, but soon will be almost all civ

[edeholland]

We will see more variety with maps & matchups. Easily defendable trade posts give more incentive to build a trade post over a market. An extra wood/coin crate on some maps will give more options to civs. Playing against an aggressive civ gives you the incentive to age up with 12 coureurs instead of 14.

There are many ways to make sure we have variety in viable build orders, fixing crates isn't the only way, nor the best way.

[RefluxSemantic]

Its not much different from a wood+food start though. Dutch has always been far weaker on food+wood starts than other civs, and right now most civs are getting food+wood starts. I think the cases of coin+food start and food start were relatively much better for dutch than Dutch getting coin+wood crates while other civs get food+wood crates. Maybe I can explain this better with some hypothetical numbers.

In the current state, you get coin start 25% of the time, food start 25% of the time, wood 25% of the time and food+wood 25% of the time. If we assume Dutch has exactly a 50% winrate, then these starts must average out to a 50% winrate. But the coin start is far better for Dutch relative to other civs, so they have a higher winrate on those starts. The same can be said for a food start. Dutch is much weaker relative to other civs on a wood start, because they can't really make use of the wood at all while other civs basically get a free age 1 TP.

Given that the suggestion is to mostly give other civs food+wood, that's actually a really large nerf to Dutch. So then compensating Dutch by giving them coin+wood (which for the record is only 25 villager seconds better) seems reasonable.

[kevinitalien]

We will see more variety with maps & matchups. Easily defendable trade posts give more incentive to build a trade post over a market. An extra wood/coin crate on some maps will give more options to civs. Playing against an aggressive civ gives you the incentive to age up with 12 coureurs instead of 14.

There are many ways to make sure we have variety in viable build orders, fixing crates isn't the only way, nor the best way.

I hope so, sincerely

[Peachrocks]

Yeah people who think builds are going to become fixed and such are crying in the rain. This is already true. Fixed crates or random crates do not change that. Players in every game under the sun are going to be copy paste bots.

If you want to encourage creativity and different builds randomness isn’t the answer. Increasing the viability of the truck ton of stuff in this game that doesn’t get used IS the answer. This way it’ll be harder for copy paste bots to do what they do because there will be more to consider in terms of strategy.

You are fighting the wrong battle. The problem you believe will happen is already happening.

[Garja]

This is just so bad

[helln00]

I think for testing phase of the crates, it might be better to start with a baseline without extra crates and then figure out what we can add and remove rather than starting with the pure food and wood option. I think always thought that knowing which crates to priorities and sometimes ignore until later was a part of the game ( but rich from a china player) and personally I dont want that gone.

In addition to that I kind of want to see more creative approach to balancing starting conditions (more vils, maybe even a shipment at the start) rather than just crates so I think starting with the default crates is better.

[Garja]

Yeah people who think builds are going to become fixed and such are crying in the rain. This is already true. Fixed crates or random crates do not change that. Players in every game under the sun are going to be copy paste bots.

If you want to encourage creativity and different builds randomness isn’t the answer. Increasing the viability of the truck ton of stuff in this game that doesn’t get used IS the answer. This way it’ll be harder for copy paste bots to do what they do because there will be more to consider in terms of strategy.

You are fighting the wrong battle. The problem you believe will happen is already happening.

Randomness is actually the answer because it literally forces suboptimal builds, e.g. market instead of TP or just nothing (and often age up with one less vill). Again, different developing curves.
Also starting crates interact with treasures. Sometimes you start market and find enough gold to buy wood. Sometimes a civ starts with 100w and can make use of it in age1 because it finds a wood treasure. All this stuff is clearly removed/reduced with fixed crates, especially those suggested here.

[Peachrocks]

I think for testing phase of the crates, it might be better to start with a baseline without extra crates and then figure out what we can add and remove rather than starting with the pure food and wood option. I think always thought that knowing which crates to priorities and sometimes ignore until later was a part of the game ( but rich from a china player) and personally I dont want that gone.

In addition to that I kind of want to see more creative approach to balancing starting conditions (more vils, maybe even a shipment at the start) rather than just crates so I think starting with the default crates is better.

Well villager numbers were messed with in the distant past (like during ES's time 10+ years ago) but I think we are at a decent level globally regarding that. I personally agree that we should start with fewer resources rather than more because sure having options is good but more often then not there's usually an optimal approach, however this can and will be tweaked. Still I would rather that then have games at higher levels especially be decided on a coin flip.

In any event, nothing ventured nothing gained

Randomness is actually the answer because it literally forces suboptimal builds, e.g. market instead of TP or just nothing (and often age up with one less vill). Again, different developing curves.
Also starting crates interact with treasures. Sometimes you start market and find enough gold to buy wood. Sometimes a civ starts with 100w and can make use 1 it in age1 because it finds a wood treasure. All this stuff is clearly removed/reduced with fixed crates, especially those suggested here.

.

And what happens when one player is forced to build sub optimal but the other is not? That's the inherit problem with randomness. It's random. Ideally sure things would work out, but why leave that to chance when there's plenty of better ways that are not random that are guaranteed to work or at least tweaked until they do.

[iNcog]

Starting to agree with Garja and Hazza here. Still think these crates are worth testing

[edeholland]

Also starting crates interact with treasures. Sometimes you start market and find enough gold to buy wood. Sometimes a civ starts with 100w and can make use 1 it in age1 because it finds a wood treasure. All this stuff is clearly removed/reduced with fixed crates, especially those suggested here.

I don't see how fixed crates won't interact with treasures.

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

people complaining about lack of variety, its ok i understand you, so do the developers, thats why there are 14 civs to play with!

We dont know until testing, if we dont test then there will be plenty of arguments relating to this topic in the future. we would probably need a lot of testing though to get this call right (accept or scrap) and i urge all to the support the testing of this.

[chronique]

I love that su much!! Everything feel perfect to me!! And now it become much ez to balance the game (imagine, maybe we will see some uhlan with 190hp who know????)

[iNcog]

I love that su much!! Everything feel perfect to me!! And now it become much ez to balance the game (imagine, maybe we will see some uhlan with 190hp who know????)

Cant remember are you for or against fixed crates?

[chronique]

Cant remember are you for or against fixed crates?

I hate rdm stuff!!!!!!

[querty]

It feels like (some) people are arguing a lot about the downsides of this change, which is fair and necessary of course.

However, I think we should not forget about the downsides of having random crates. Making civs significantly stronger/weaker based on a random starting setup is just stupid isn't it? If all crate starts would be about equally good that would be fine i guess but they are not, aren't they?! Germany on a wood start getting a free tp vs Germany without the tp early on can almost feel like two different civs. I remember several tournament games where people pretty much said gg (as in complaining) after getting the crate start they didn't want. Having something random have this big of an impact in an rts game feels so obviously wrong that this has to addressed. I find it really hard to come up with valid arguments against PLAYTESTING a solution for such this obvious flaw...