why is cm too lame

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Re: why is cm too lame

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Riotcoke wrote:Can't believe there's a whole thread for this and nobody has talked about the sea version of Advanced Dock. That card at least equally if not more retarded.
more for sure
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Re: why is cm too lame

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Riotcoke wrote:Can't believe there's a whole thread for this and nobody has talked about the sea version of Advanced Dock. That card at least equally if not more retarded.
Didnā€™t you hear? A significant number of players at varying skill levels treat water as though it doesnā€™t exist.

Really itā€™s a matter of awareness. CM has been like this since launch though sure in that case itā€™s more of other factors around it resulting it becoming stronger.
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Re: why is cm too lame

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RefluxSemantic wrote:
Goodspeed wrote: With the "free defense" argument, I'm attempting to illustrate that there's a big difference between the two types of defender's advantage: Defense that costs resources interacts with early aggression in a healthy way (it's a trade), whereas too much free defense can lead to significantly reduced player interaction. AoE3, with its long-range TC, already features a good amount of free defense. If they wanted to increase defender's advantage even more, they should have added non-free defense. That's my main point.

Maybe it's helpful to look at it as "instant-speed defense" rather than free defense. Meaning it can be used at any time without any prior investment needed.
Ive been thinking about it, and I don't think your argument is wrong because it's subjective. I actually think it's a nonsensical argument in general and I don't really understand why you yourself accept it as a good argument.

Ultimately, you come up with the term 'free defense' (or 'instant speed defense', it doesn't really matter) and then you arbitrarily put a lot of weight on this. The reality is that 'free defense' is part of RTS games. It's actually inherent to basic RTS design, because the distance between bases already gives a defender's advantage through reinforcement time (this is for example the biggest source of defender's advantage in many sc2 match ups). Some games choose to add some amount of extra free defense, like how you have TC fire or how you have ramps and choke points in sc2 or how you have natural choke points in aoe2 and unkillable buildings that can be used to wall in for free (and unkillable buildings make real rushes impossible in general), or how in CoH2 you have free defensive structures in your base. Or even how in civilization your city is super strong in the early game. There is always some amount of natural free defense.

So then when introducing this term 'free defense', and once we acknowledge that there is always free defense to some degree, your case ultimately boils down to drawing a line where apparently there is too much free defense. This line is extremely arbitrary. Would it be okay if TC fire was 80? If you got 5 minutemen? 2? No minutemen but TC fire is 120? I just don't see any real reasons to draw any sort of line as an argument for good or bad game design. It's just not such a discrete thing, where there is a clear line. If there's no defender's advantage at all (imagine sc2 but no ramps, no worker pulls and then a PvP mirror where you can warp in wherever you like), then there's no way to play economically. If there is no opportunity for attackers because of how strong the defender's advantage is, then there's no way to play aggressively. But anywhere between those extremes there is a balancing act. Some games are naturally more defensive (like aoe2 and apperantly aoe3 in its current state), some games are more aggressive (Tooth and tail is a great example of a game with very little defender's advantage). I don't see where the line of 'good game design' exists in this spectrum. I don't actually understand how you can subjectively believe such a line exists.

The subjectivity of what's fun or not fun does play a role in why I'd call something good or bad game design. I'd argue that good/bad game design comes down to the ability of a game's system to make the game achieve certain goals. Aoe3 attempts to be skillful and strategic. The amount of free and cheap defense makes this possible. There's a lot of strategy involved in the game. So I don't understand how one can believe that this game design is 'bad'. It's a certain flavour of a broader, objectively good game design - where I'm using the word objective because it's an ubiquitous element of all succesful RTS games. I can understand how one can say that he doesn't like the design, but that doesn't make the design bad. It's like how I can say I don't like certain songs, while acknowledging that the songs are in principle good songs. That is, the songs have a good production quality and good performance by the musician and they have good lyrics, I just don't like them. There's a subtle but huge difference between saying 'in my opinion pop music is bad' and 'I don't like pop music'. Similarly, there's a subtle but huge difference between saying 'in my opinion mm is bad game design' and 'I don't like minutemen'.

If you want to somehow argue that minutemen are bad game design, then you'd have to justify the exact way you draw this line. You need to justify why other forms of 'free defense' are okay and why the line needs to be drawn precisely between aoe3 without minutemen and aoe3 with minutemen. To justify that, I'd imagine you'd try come up with many examples of similar principles in lots of different games. And even then, I feel like it's hard to justify it properly. For example, an argument like 'it's not as interactive' is even a bad argument to claim it's bad game design: Just consider board games. Many popular board games have a very low amount of interaction. It's actually a whole genre called eurogames - which is arguably the most popular and succesful board game genre. Apperantly 'interaction' isn't necessarily preferable, apperantly people have different preferences for the amount of interaction. At that point I'd say it's not something you could reasonably consider good or bad game design. The argument wouldn't hold up to scrutiny, so why would you base an opinion on that? Ultimately I just don't see any arguments for your case that would really hold up if you examined them critically.
My point is about whether or not it was a good idea to add more of this type of defense when there was already the long-range TC that defends your entire eco. In a game where player interaction is already relatively low compared to other RTS, I don't think it was.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by Jotunir »

I like CM. It makes people cry.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Goodspeed wrote:
RefluxSemantic wrote:
Goodspeed wrote: With the "free defense" argument, I'm attempting to illustrate that there's a big difference between the two types of defender's advantage: Defense that costs resources interacts with early aggression in a healthy way (it's a trade), whereas too much free defense can lead to significantly reduced player interaction. AoE3, with its long-range TC, already features a good amount of free defense. If they wanted to increase defender's advantage even more, they should have added non-free defense. That's my main point.

Maybe it's helpful to look at it as "instant-speed defense" rather than free defense. Meaning it can be used at any time without any prior investment needed.
Ive been thinking about it, and I don't think your argument is wrong because it's subjective. I actually think it's a nonsensical argument in general and I don't really understand why you yourself accept it as a good argument.

Ultimately, you come up with the term 'free defense' (or 'instant speed defense', it doesn't really matter) and then you arbitrarily put a lot of weight on this. The reality is that 'free defense' is part of RTS games. It's actually inherent to basic RTS design, because the distance between bases already gives a defender's advantage through reinforcement time (this is for example the biggest source of defender's advantage in many sc2 match ups). Some games choose to add some amount of extra free defense, like how you have TC fire or how you have ramps and choke points in sc2 or how you have natural choke points in aoe2 and unkillable buildings that can be used to wall in for free (and unkillable buildings make real rushes impossible in general), or how in CoH2 you have free defensive structures in your base. Or even how in civilization your city is super strong in the early game. There is always some amount of natural free defense.

So then when introducing this term 'free defense', and once we acknowledge that there is always free defense to some degree, your case ultimately boils down to drawing a line where apparently there is too much free defense. This line is extremely arbitrary. Would it be okay if TC fire was 80? If you got 5 minutemen? 2? No minutemen but TC fire is 120? I just don't see any real reasons to draw any sort of line as an argument for good or bad game design. It's just not such a discrete thing, where there is a clear line. If there's no defender's advantage at all (imagine sc2 but no ramps, no worker pulls and then a PvP mirror where you can warp in wherever you like), then there's no way to play economically. If there is no opportunity for attackers because of how strong the defender's advantage is, then there's no way to play aggressively. But anywhere between those extremes there is a balancing act. Some games are naturally more defensive (like aoe2 and apperantly aoe3 in its current state), some games are more aggressive (Tooth and tail is a great example of a game with very little defender's advantage). I don't see where the line of 'good game design' exists in this spectrum. I don't actually understand how you can subjectively believe such a line exists.

The subjectivity of what's fun or not fun does play a role in why I'd call something good or bad game design. I'd argue that good/bad game design comes down to the ability of a game's system to make the game achieve certain goals. Aoe3 attempts to be skillful and strategic. The amount of free and cheap defense makes this possible. There's a lot of strategy involved in the game. So I don't understand how one can believe that this game design is 'bad'. It's a certain flavour of a broader, objectively good game design - where I'm using the word objective because it's an ubiquitous element of all succesful RTS games. I can understand how one can say that he doesn't like the design, but that doesn't make the design bad. It's like how I can say I don't like certain songs, while acknowledging that the songs are in principle good songs. That is, the songs have a good production quality and good performance by the musician and they have good lyrics, I just don't like them. There's a subtle but huge difference between saying 'in my opinion pop music is bad' and 'I don't like pop music'. Similarly, there's a subtle but huge difference between saying 'in my opinion mm is bad game design' and 'I don't like minutemen'.

If you want to somehow argue that minutemen are bad game design, then you'd have to justify the exact way you draw this line. You need to justify why other forms of 'free defense' are okay and why the line needs to be drawn precisely between aoe3 without minutemen and aoe3 with minutemen. To justify that, I'd imagine you'd try come up with many examples of similar principles in lots of different games. And even then, I feel like it's hard to justify it properly. For example, an argument like 'it's not as interactive' is even a bad argument to claim it's bad game design: Just consider board games. Many popular board games have a very low amount of interaction. It's actually a whole genre called eurogames - which is arguably the most popular and succesful board game genre. Apperantly 'interaction' isn't necessarily preferable, apperantly people have different preferences for the amount of interaction. At that point I'd say it's not something you could reasonably consider good or bad game design. The argument wouldn't hold up to scrutiny, so why would you base an opinion on that? Ultimately I just don't see any arguments for your case that would really hold up if you examined them critically.
My point is about whether or not it was a good idea to add more of this type of defense when there was already the long-range TC that defends your entire eco. In a game where player interaction is already relatively low compared to other RTS, I don't think it was.
So why do you use the term 'bad design'? You have no solid arguments for this. And whether or not it was a good idea to ads more or less of this type of defense is a meaningless question. The answer to this question is: "depends on the type of game you want to make". Its still a point you cant actually make.

Now if your point would be that you prefer more interaction so weaker defense, sure that makes sense. But the weird logic to justify that mm is the problem still doesnt make any sense. Why mm over TC fire? Maybe TCs should be closer together for shorter reinforcement times? Resources should be out on the map more maybe? Maybe building health should be reduced? It seems entitely arbitrary to specifically complain about mm.
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Re: why is cm too lame

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Post by Goodspeed »

RefluxSemantic wrote:
Goodspeed wrote:
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My point is about whether or not it was a good idea to add more of this type of defense when there was already the long-range TC that defends your entire eco. In a game where player interaction is already relatively low compared to other RTS, I don't think it was.
So why do you use the term 'bad design'? You have no solid arguments for this.
Because I consider that decision, specifically, to be a poor design decision. You've heard the arguments and apparently disagree. That's okay.
Now if your point would be that you prefer more interaction so weaker defense, sure that makes sense.
Not weaker defense. A different kind of defense. The kind that requires an investment. I tried to explain that this kind of defense interacts with early aggression in a healthy way, whereas mm don't. In my opinion. Again you disagree. That's okay.
But the weird logic to justify that mm is the problem still doesnt make any sense. Why mm over TC fire? Maybe TCs should be closer together for shorter reinforcement times? Resources should be out on the map more maybe? Maybe building health should be reduced? It seems entitely arbitrary to specifically complain about mm.
TC fire is only as strong as it is in AoE3 because of map generation. Resources spawn so close to the base that there is no reason for vills to get outside of TC range for a long period of time. If you insist on keeping minutemen, removing TC fire or changing map generation are other options to increase player interaction in the early game. There's a variety of reasons I'm talking specifically about mm in this case. In order of importance:
- Changes in map generation that would make vills need to venture out more would be much more impactful to the meta than changing mm or TC fire
- This thread is about mm
- Defensive buildings are already not a thing in AoE3. TC fire is pretty much the only type of relevant static defense in AoE3. Static defense should be relevant in an RTS imo
- TC fire was likely there first; The decision to add mm almost certainly came after the decision to have TC fire, and my point is mostly about the decision to add more free defense being a wrong decision

But yeah, removing TC fire would have largely the same effect as removing mm, and would be fine with me. I'd prefer removing mm though
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Given that you're ignoring it, I suppose you agree that you have no arguments that minutemen are bad game design. You actually meant to say that you personally prefer games with less 'free defense'?
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Re: why is cm too lame

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I actually think CM as a design concept is fine. You're paying a shipment (worth around 700-1000 resources) in order to get some added defense in exchange for less military. The minutemen aren't free either, but the problem is that often the 400/400 batch of minutemen is enough to shut down armies at almost all tech levels, and instead of buying a few minutes of time to allow the defending player to add to their boom/tech before pushing for resources, it can often buy 10-15+ minutes by making bases unpushable. It's also not equally good for all civs. Ports? Amazing shipment. Dutch? Great. Spain? India? Japan? Can be pretty good. But you would never be caught dead sending CM as France or Germany; it just doesn't work. Honestly, the card might be a little bit overtuned, but not much. Maybe mostly for Ports because it synergizes so well.

There are other factors at play in DE and the current meta that are making this card and other defensive styles stand out more than they had previously.

For one, AoE3 has always been balanced about map control becoming important at a certain point. Eventually your resources run out, and switching to mills and plantations is hard, so you need to push. Or your opponent has control of the TP line, or whatever. RE was too extreme in this, sometimes you had a small starting hunt and 1 mine, and nothing else. This meant that rushing and playing aggressively from the very start of Colonial was almost always rewarding, and pushed a lot of strategies out of the realm of possibility. EP maps solved this issue. DE maps have pushed further in this direction, and if you look through them you will notice most of them have more starting resources than their EP versions. This means that players have significantly more time to boom or tech up than they had in previous iterations of AoE3, and consequently enables things like CM, Heavy Fortifications, Fast Industrials, etc. to be much more viable, while rushing and all in timings become less viable.

Previously, forcing your opponent to send CM could be considered a win for you. It was up to your opponent to prove that the short term sacrifice in military strength was worth it to stall out the game for a bit. You could back up and use your advantage to secure map control and boom a bit, and then prepare for when your opponent had to make a play to stay in the game, but now that is simply much harder to punish because they can often stay inside their base for an extra minute or three. Sometimes they do not have to leave their base at all, because the later the game goes and the larger your economy grows, the less burdensome switching to mills and plantations is on your economy.

And honestly, often this can still be the case on land maps. However, on water maps you never have to leave your base, and some civs have a much easier time controlling or contesting water than others. It also snowballs so fast right now. Having 60-70+ vills between 9-10 minutes sometimes is insane, especially when you can easily stall for that economic power spike with CM. You cannot sit idly by after forcing a shipment like CM, or walls, or other defensive investments. You need to be aggressive and really kill buildings and villagers. Here, the combination of the unpushable base with significantly harder to contest resources has become a problem. You can't even go later into the game and try to get siege because they will often outboom you too quickly, or one shot your thousands of resources invested into siege from range with a single 800 resource warship (seriously, I've never seen a more cost effective unit in AoE3).

Personally, I think the issue here is that investments into water economy (Schooners, Rendering Plant, etc.) simply pay off slightly too quickly.



Also, I think the "NR10" or "Semi-FF" narrative is vastly overstated. We see plenty of tournament games being ended aggressively either by rushes or timing pushes. I think I myself have won almost every game in my last 5 tournament/showmatch series by pushing my opponent's base and doing damage before following them into Fortress, or even outright killing their TC.

Defensive play is definitely very strong right now, but it's important to consider the context in which it has become a problem.

Ultimately, it is important for RTS games (or at least for AoE3) to have strong defensive mechanics early on in order to incentivize a variety of strategies, but the game should trend towards favouring the aggressor the later the game goes (meaning that defenses become easier to overcome in later stages of the game), or else the game will never end. Right now map control is probably not being rewarded enough because booms are so much faster and easier to pull off now than they were before. Water build optimizations and cheaper TCs enable this, for sure, and the 15% nerf to TP income definitely hurt here as well.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by dansil92 »

can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
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Re: why is cm too lame

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Dolphincup wrote:
macacoalbino wrote: The biggest issue with this is the imbalance of civs int the game, not CM per se. Many dont have a boom option and are forced into early damage to be able to compete in the middle game. TPs partially fix that, but bring other issues like undepletable resources.
I agree that there's a larger problem at hand, but can you argue that CM doesn't exacerbate the issue?
You mean that it does exacerbate, right? Agreed, it just deepens the hole of the first problem.
I guess what I think is that if the economy issue could be fixed we wouldnt have to worry about CM at all. But maybe I'm wrong, and I think I'll never know for sure haha
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Re: why is cm too lame

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dansil92 wrote:can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
I think you could extend that to European boats in general with their silly dancing and firing and I for one know I do better on water maps. Monitors break the rule but are stupid for another reason. Do agree though with what was said earlier that monitors should only work on ships or buildings like mortars do.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by Goodspeed »

RefluxSemantic wrote:Given that you're ignoring it, I suppose you agree that you have no arguments that minutemen are bad game design. You actually meant to say that you personally prefer games with less 'free defense'?
Ignoring it? I've made many attempts to explain why I consider mm to be bad design. That you disagree doesn't mean I have no arguments, just that they didn't convince you. That's okay, and was to be expected. You think everything that's wrong with the game is my fault so you couldn't be expected to agree with me about game design.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by look »

today i played a 30 minute game that could have ended at 15.. simply he sent 3 cm tower when it was half lost.. spreading across the map.. omg that sick
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Re: why is cm too lame

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dansil92 wrote:can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
It reminds players not to forget about the water.
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Re: why is cm too lame

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Jets wrote:
dansil92 wrote:can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
It reminds players not to forget about the water.
if this was 100% the case then the warchief civs need monitors too. they dont get a 200 range intercontinental ballistic missile labled "remove all artillery from the map"
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by princeofcarthage »

dansil92 wrote:
Jets wrote:
dansil92 wrote:can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
It reminds players not to forget about the water.
if this was 100% the case then the warchief civs need monitors too. they dont get a 200 range intercontinental ballistic missile labled "remove all artillery from the map"
I mean... natives aren't exactly known for building world class navy. Besides the only thing that matters is controlling the sea and natives are more than capable of establishing naval dominance.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by dansil92 »

but they can't nuke artillery from 120 tiles away, thats the difference
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Re: why is cm too lame

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dansil92 wrote:
Jets wrote:
dansil92 wrote:can we all just admit that monitors are a stupid unit and should be removed, no questions asked
It reminds players not to forget about the water.
if this was 100% the case then the warchief civs need monitors too. they dont get a 200 range intercontinental ballistic missile labled "remove all artillery from the map"
I am in favor of nats getting monitors over monitors being removed from the game
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by helln00 »

Maybe nerf the range of monitors combined with a lower build limit? also maybe a culv cannoe that can snipe art from shore.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by Withen »

I thought I'd just bring my perspective as a, on balance, very bad multiplayer player to this.

Re: monitors

I definitely would keep them. I remember back on RE that I'd just been sitting there ignoring the water like I'd done in every game before that and voila, killed by monitors. (Saguenay, I think.)

Re: defensive play

I'm a very passive player... too passive, even, for the current meta... and I'd love to be able to just sit behind some outposts and boom. And maybe if I shipped colonial militia, I would be able to. But I don't ship it and I obviously don't really attack in a situation where CM proves fatal to my ambitions.

The problem I have with DE is that it's anti-siege. And just reading through the comments here, that's the real problem you have... the player with the map control is never rewarded for that map control by having access to units or strategies that will tear down a TC before CM is relevant. On RE I reached a point where I'd prefer to lose trying to make Age II Improved Grenades Grenadiers work than play without them... in DE, that card has massively nerfed twice over. Firstly, they shoved it to Industrial. Secondly, they massively reduced the stats effects it granted.

Grenadiers with 163 siege would melt literally anything you put in front of them. With the damage they max out on now, everything seems to go down so much slower that it's not really worth attacking buildings. In principle, what you can only do now, is destroy the enemy's army... which is where CM comes in.

On a TP map, the CM/turtle problem is simple. The player who is playing aggressively is rewarded with a much faster XP stream... this means they should be able to ship a card they otherwise would not usually send. That card should be something like the old (RE) version of Improved Grenades. It has to be available in Age II, in order to avoid the turtle player booming and/or teching out of the aggressive player's containment strategy.

For many civilisations, such a card may need to unlock a new unit... something in the mould of a grenadier, that is functionally useless outside the very specific role of taking down defensive infrastructure quickly. And, the other thing, of course, is to make the unit have a very high, perhaps, 0.6 range resist, to limit the effectiveness of CM against it.

The other possibility on the TP map is bringing trade monopoly forwards to Age III.

(Both these options are defensible... they're not instawin conditions... as we all know, trade monopolies aren't that difficult to defeat but they do require exiting the turtle, and grenadiers get melted by anything, literally anything, in melee: the problem is that their siege attack is too low to justify their cost and fragility.)

On the non-TP map, the problem is more difficult because the only way to reward map control is to have access to resources, but if you move resources too far from the TC then you end up with maps that can only be played as ultra aggressive rushes (which is not a meta I wish to return to... variety is good). The solution, however, is obvious... treasures. More specifically a massive XP treasure or a siege attack boost treasure or a 1000 coin treasure.

The water situation is an additional complexity and my main suggestion here is... I don't think it's problematic. Playing against water should require players to play differently. It's only a problem insofar as some civilisations (e.g. Ports) can use civ mechanics to secure water much more easily than others, but that really just a restatement of my original diagnosis: the game is anti-siege.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by Jets »

Make mm give kill xp, therefore CM would be a double edged sword.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by dansil92 »

the trouble is that cm have a multi against all siege units, which compounds the issue. by the time you have a big mass of anti-infantry (hard counters abstract infantry) with long range or a good surround- (such as heavy artillery or lancers, flamethrowers, also naginata with bloody harvest among others) , in which case ports has probably overboomed. A few civs have decent long ranged siege options age 3, hand mortars come to mind, siege elephants as well which can push fairly early if you commit to them. I do also find japan an excellent counter to ports by going age 4 with morutaru and a ridiculous amount of carded yumi. I agree with the sentiment that killing minutemen needs to provide xp, since popping minutes currently is a guaranteed xp swing in your favour as well. They're also way too cheap. 300 res for a batch of units that can usually hold about 1500+ res of units easily
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by helln00 »

I think we need like a gren shipment in age 2 for some civs, it should provide a earlier siege option to deny buildings or to mass up for a timing more easily. Grens are also theoretically a good ish counter to CM due to the splash damage so that a mass of 1 hp CM will just drop like flies. Even though CM has multi against siege, with 200 base HP and 40 range resist they should do the job.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by fei123456 »

The first TC could call another batch of minutemen, but I can't agree that player can call 44, 66, 88 minutemen from different TCs, or to build a TC immediately after the first is destroyed and call 22 minutemen again. The base defense of AoE 3 seems to be overpowered.
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Re: why is cm too lame

Post by uberjz »

CM (cool moving)

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