• Breaking News

    Thursday, November 28, 2019

    Home Unlabelled Age of Empires II Civilization Match-up Discussion Round 7 Week 11: Indians vs Saracens

    Age of Empires II Civilization Match-up Discussion Round 7 Week 11: Indians vs Saracens

    November 28, 2019

    Age of Empires II Civilization Match-up Discussion Round 7 Week 11: Indians vs Saracens

    Civilization Match-up Discussion Round 7 Week 11: Indians vs Saracens

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 04:40 PM PST

    So glad this one is happening post-DE LUL

    ​

    Hello and welcome back for another Age of Empires 2 civilization match up discussion! This is a series where we discuss the various advantages, disadvantages, and quirks found within the numerous match ups of the game. The goal is to collectively gain a deeper understanding of how two civilizations interact with each other in a variety of different settings. Feel free to ask questions, pose strategies, or provide insight on how the two civilizations in question interact with each other on any map type and game mode. This is not limited to 1v1 either. Feel free to discuss how the civilizations compare in team games as well! So long as you are talking about how the two civilizations interact, anything is fair game! Last week we discussed the Celts vs Koreans, and next up is the Indians vs Saracens!

    ​

    Indians: Camel and Gunpowder civilization

    • Villagers cost -10/15/20/25% per age
    • Fishermen work +15% faster and carry +15
    • Camels +0/+1 armor
    • TEAM BONUS: Camels +6 attack vs buildings
    • Unique Unit: Elephant Archer (Very slow, tanky, expenisve cav archer)
    • Unique Unit: Imperial Camel [Rider] (Further upgrade to Heavy Camel)
    • Castle Age Unique Tech: Sultans (All gold income +10% faster)
    • Imperial Age Unique Tech: Chatagni (Hand Cannoneers +1 range)

    ​

    Saracens: Camel and Naval civilization

    • Market trade only costs 5%; Markets cost -100w
    • Transport ships 2x hp, carry +5
    • Galleys fire +25% faster
    • Archers get +3 attack vs buildings
    • TEAM BONUS: Foot archers +2 attack vs buildings
    • Unique Unit: Mameluke (Powerful camel with short ranged attack)
    • Castle Age Unique Tech: Madrasah (Monks return 33% of cost when killed)
    • Imperial Age Unique Tech: Zealotry (Camel units +30 hp)

    ​

    Below are some match up-specific talking points to get you all started. These are just to give people ideas, you do not need to address them specifically if you do not want to!

    • Okayyy this one just became a whole lot more interesting with DE! For 1v1 Arabia, Indians are a solid civ with a good eco, broad tech tree, but critically missing knights. Saracens meanwhile, now have an incredibly powerful military bonus, but a modest eco bonus with their Market. Which civ do you prefer now?
    • Comparing camel UUs, in which situations do you prefer the Mameluke or the Imp Camel?
    • Considering hybrid maps (especially now considering the DE map pool), do you prefer Saracens with their archers, galleys, and market, or would you rather have Indians with their eco and easier-to-mass camels?

    Thank you as always for participating! I am currently travelling and do not have access to my spreadsheet so idk next week's match up yet... I'll figure it out don't worry 11. Still, Hope to see you there! :)

    ​

    Previous discussions: Part 1 Part 2

    submitted by /u/OrnLu528
    [link] [comments]

    micro is important

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 11:15 PM PST

    100 Militia vs 10 Elite Teutonic Knights

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:05 AM PST

    Praise The Holy Sheep!

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:28 PM PST

    Moderate AI takes full walling very seriously in DE

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:24 AM PST

    When the devs will nerf the Cumans/Steppe Lancers?

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 04:53 AM PST

    Does anyone know when this will happen?

    It's getting so boring, every opponent I face chooses Cumans and the shit Steppe Lancers. I'm tired of playing "Age of Cumans - Definitive Cumans". I believe many people will return to Voobly if this antics do not change.

    submitted by /u/LioValiant
    [link] [comments]

    More DE campaign memes

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 12:49 AM PST

    I really liked the new campaigns btw

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 11:08 AM PST

    Eat your heart out T90

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 06:41 PM PST

    All new wonders

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 04:00 PM PST

    Anyone interested in becoming my AoE:DE II friend?

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:58 AM PST

    Hey guys, happy Thursday

    Since the holiday season is coming and I will do absolutely nothing in Christmas, would any of you be interested in adding me on stream? Just for some casual 1v1s? or 2v2s? or 3v4 hardest AI? you know...anything really? Just to have more interaction...I don't feel confident playing rated games yet so I'd love to have some casual skirmishes before with those who'd like to train as well..

    submitted by /u/MoVoner12
    [link] [comments]

    Civilization design overview and suggestions : Lithuanians

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 03:41 AM PST

    This is the second of my reviews of the new civs, after the Bulgarians one. I am mostly focusing on how coherent and unique the civilization is, and how well it fits into the game.

     

    Lithuanians

    Cavalry and Monk civilization

     

    • Start with +150 food

    • Spearman-line and Skirmishers move 10% faster

    • Each garrisoned relic gives +1 attack to cavalry units (maximum +5)

     

    Unique Unit: Leitis (cavalry)

    Unique Techs:

    • Hill Forts (Town Centers +3 range)

    • Tower Shields (Spearman-line and Skirmishers +1P armor)

     

    Team Bonus: Monasteries work 20% faster

     

     

    This civilization is quite fascinating on a design perspective. There are a lot of interesting ideas, and the overall concept of cavalry, monks and trash is very unique. However, there are several glaring issues almost everywhere. Bonuses/techs are either unimaginative, ripoffs of existing ones, or clashing with the rules of Age Of Empires 2 designs. Sometimes even all 3...

     

    Start with +150 food

    Conceptually, it doesn't work at all, it's my biggest problem with the civilization on a design point of view. It's everything a bonus shouldn't be : bland, ripoff of something existing, exaggeratedly strong so you don't think about how unimaginative it is.

    This is basically a better version of the Persian bonus (150f vs 50f 50w). It feels like a very egregious overlap that should be avoided at all costs. It's very unimaginative as a bonus, just take an existing bonus and make it more extreme. It's kind of like if you took the Japanese cheaper buildings and made the discount even bigger but just for lumber camps. It also breaks Lithuanians on maps where food is scarce, like Nomad for example.

    The idea of a civ having extra food to help with scouts, maa or FC is interesting, but this is the wrong way to go about it.

    Instead, my idea was to make each military building provide 75f once built. It keeps the food boost for making military, but leaves out the early stage intact for maps that rely on low food for example, and is also completely unique. And finally it also has the advantage of not being a one time thing, still having an impact even in imperial age

    • Start with +150 food -> Military buildings give 75f once built

     

    Skirmisher and Spearmen move 10% faster

    This one is much further down in my list of problems with the civ, but I would like to say what I don't like about it :

    It's mainly because it overlaps with Celt halbs. Not just overlaps, overshadows, the only thing that makes their halbs special is worse than Lithuanians with squires. If possible these kind of overlaps should be avoided as much as possible.

    One alternative would be to have Skirms and Spears created 50% faster.

    I know you're going to say it overlaps with goth halbs, why would it be ok for goths and not Celts ? Well, goths also get heavy discount on their spears, and anarchy makes creation even faster. The two would be different enough. While Celt halbs are just simply inferior.

    • Spearman-line and Skirmishers move 10% faster -> Spearman-line and Skirmishers created 50% faster

     

    Each garrisoned relic gives +1 attack to cavalry units (maximum +5)

    The thing for which Lithuanians are most known for, and also their biggest balance problem. And understandably why. Attack is an attribute too strong to be modified like that, there isn't enough granularity. The jumps in attack are too high, and well Paladins and hussars with +9 attack are just broken, no need to explain why.

    Regeneration would already be a better attribute to use, and I find healing a more fitting attribute to be affected by relics than attack. My main problem with regeneration is that's it's already used by two other civs, and it would wear out the uniqueness if a 3rd civ had it in a similar fashion.

    But I could live with it if it's the price to pay for a much more balanced and thematically relevant relic bonus for Lithuanians. So cavalry healing 0.2 HP/s for each relic would be the way to go for me.

    • Each garrisoned relic gives +1 attack to cavalry units (maximum +5) -> gives +0.2HP/s regeneration to cavalry units (maximum +1 HP/s)

     

    Tower Shields :

    My second biggest issue with the civ, even more so than the relic attack bonus. It's not about balance, it's about design coherence. Wall of text incoming.

    Lithuanians don't have plate mail, which makes the UT completely underwhelming for halbs. Like it's strictly worse than plate mail, it would literally be the only case in the game where a UT makes a unit inferior in every way to its standard counterpart. Think of Garland war, there is no halb but at least your pikes have 2 more attack.

    For skirms there is ring archer armor, so the design problem is not the same. The problem is a skirmisher with 9 pierce armor, aside from being slightly too strong, is just an imperial skirm without the extra 1 attack. This time we're not running into a unit being worse than its standard counterpart, but it's a UT affected unit being strictly worse than another UT affected unit. I know there is bound to be overlap between 35 civ, but overlap is not the same as being strictly worse than the other. Think of imperial camel and zaelotry camel, both have extra HP but one has +10 HP while the other has +2 attack/+1 pierce armor.

    Ok so what can we do about it ? I see 3 solutions :

    1. First, we ignore the overlap problem and we just give Lithuanians plate mail. It's less bad than currently design wise, but you're still overlapping with Vietnamese and Malians too pretty hard.

    2. Second, we can change the UT from pierce armor to melee armor as well. There is no instance in the game of halbs or skirms with extra melee armor so design wise we're pretty great. Just give plate mail too and we have a decent working UT.

    3. But we can do even better to emphasize the uniqueness of the tech. We could keep plate mail disabled and remove ring archer armor on top, and make the UT give +2/+3 armor. It would make the civ very unique, lacking the last armor for gold costing infantry and archer while at the same time having skirms and halbs with extra armor.

    Civs are better designed when removing techs than when adding ones, so I am completely in favor of the last solution. It's unique, it fits the civ identity and is an interesting trade-off, akin to Farimba and other well designed unique techs.

    • Ring archer armor removed

    • Spearman-line and Skirmishers +2/+3 armor

     

    Leitis

    At the moment I wouldn't worry about Leitis too much balance wise, I just think they aren't designed that well. Currently Paladins are the much better all around unit, and I don't think Leitis are attractive enough for people to choose them over paladins. Paladins have +30 HP, +1 pierce armor, are cheaper to produce and don't require castles. It's not even a close comparison.

    The armor ignoring feature is pretty gimmicky guys and won't matter much. Units in AoE2 all have between 3 and 5 melee armor when fully upgraded (except ETK and Boyars, more on that later). This means that in imp, Leitis with 18 attack will be basically equivalent to a unit with 22 normal melee attack. Yes it's a lot, but considering Leitis have 30 less HP and 1 less pierce armor than paladins, doesn't sound broken to me.

    The only significant difference between Leitis and a unit with 22 melee attack will be vs ETK and Boyars, well congrats on being a counter to two extremely situational units.

    It's interesting to note that we don't have any unit in the game with melee armor in the 6-8 range. We have a whole bunch of units capped at 5 melee armor, and then Boyars at 9 and ETK at 13.

    That's plenty of design space to use there, we could have Leitis with a slower speed than knights but higher armor, think of maybe 3/2 in castle and 3/3 for elite. That would be the first and only unit with 6 melee armor, that's already something different.

    • armor :
      • Castle : 1/2 -> 3/2
      • Elite : 2/2 -> 3/3

     

    Summary

       

    • Ring archer armor removed

     

    • Military buildings give 75f once built

    • Spearman-line and Skirmishers created 50% faster

    • Each garrisoned relic gives +0.2HP/s regeneration to cavalry units (maximum +1 HP/s)

     

    Unique Unit: Leitis (cavalry)

    • armor :

      • Castle : 1/2 -> 3/2
      • Elite : 2/2 -> 3/3

    Unique Techs:

    • Hill Forts (Town Centers +3 range)

    • Tower Shields (Spearman-line and Skirmishers +2/+3 armor)

     

    Team Bonus: Monasteries work 20% faster

     

    submitted by /u/TriRem
    [link] [comments]

    Me and some Random guy were queueing for 1v1s and the game put us on the same team despite it being a 2 player match. 10/10

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 01:23 PM PST

    Is there a list if campaigns and scenarios that were reworked?

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 12:29 AM PST

    I'm not a competitive player in AoE2, but the campaigns and scenarios are the thing that I enjoy since childhood. AoK and AoC have prompted my love for history and are one of the two main reasons I chose to get an education in history (the other one being europa universalis series, made me focus on early modern era).

    I tried to play forgotten, African and Asian campaigns in HD one to two missions in in each, but I didn't have much time. Now I'm going through all campaigns and scenarios chronologically, after finishing Tamerlane, Kotyan and Sforza out of order. Now I just have beaten Vinlandsaga. Some of scenarios I recognized, some didn't, like Alaric campaign . Thus, the question.

    Is there an, ahem, definitive list of campaign and scenario changes in DE?

    submitted by /u/Teyvill
    [link] [comments]

    The Age of Empires II DE cover, made entirely out of clipart.

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:44 AM PST

    Original HD music for DE

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:44 AM PST

    Is there a mod to change the aoe2 DE music to the original OST?

    submitted by /u/Perroelo
    [link] [comments]

    AOE 2 DE question: no sound when someone resigns?

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:22 PM PST

    Question for you all, I can never tell when someone has resigned until I eventually see their name crossed out. Why is that? Am I the only one not getting a sound alert?

    submitted by /u/Fried__Eel
    [link] [comments]

    Spassky Cathedral 1357, Seems to be the Slavic style church in the game

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:50 AM PST

    I suck at this game...

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:51 PM PST

    I am super enthusiast about DE. The only time I played this game seriously, was last year on AoE2 HD. I played a few games and started to learn how to be competitive since when I was playing back in 2002, I wasn't playing online.

    So I'm super happy that they implement an "automatch" system in DE where you're match with a player that is supposed to be your rank. But my ELO keeps going down to a point where it doesn't makes sense. I currently went below 800. I either get match against players that don't know how to play (literally) and I win easily, or against player who knows exactly what to do on the map, gets a super fast start, and beat me really fast.

    Something's off. I feel like there's no in-between and the games are never balanced. Now I can't say I'm good at RTS but I can say I'm above average in the other game that I play. Any new player here that feels the same thing or I'm I alone who suck hard at this?

    submitted by /u/MileEx
    [link] [comments]

    Ivaylo is dead, but his legacy lives on

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 12:48 PM PST

    What civilization is most accurately represented by the game?

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 07:09 AM PST

    We all like to poke fun at the chinese missing a lot of chemistry techs and the meso civs getting siege weapons, but what do you think are the most accurate civilizations?

    submitted by /u/ColinFan12
    [link] [comments]

    Very Satisfying Demo 11

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:18 PM PST

    Dual Perspective on this sick demo hit Ft Tatoh

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkml_QHFSk

    submitted by /u/Hera_Aoc
    [link] [comments]

    Re-Skin Mods?

    Posted: 28 Nov 2019 12:37 AM PST

    Is this difficult to do?

    I ve never came across much skin modding in AOE in 20 years despite the relatively low graphics requirements?

    I am not a modder but I am suprised there are no skin mods for a game with such a dedicated community.

    I d love to see there being skins for culture groups on generic units from stables, archery range, monastery and barracks. Maybe even villagers.

    Like a

    middle eastern Eastern european Western european East asian Steppe

    Generalization alone could achieve a lot in terms of immersion.

    What do you think?

    submitted by /u/dodo91
    [link] [comments]

    Saving my treb while aiming for that enemy castle be like

    Posted: 27 Nov 2019 03:51 PM PST
    Read more
    at

    No comments:

    Post a Comment