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    Age of Empires II *sad throat singing*

    February 10, 2021

    Age of Empires II *sad throat singing*

    *sad throat singing*

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 04:41 AM PST

    I came here to wololo, not to cry

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 08:28 PM PST

    Trying my hand at 3D printing and painting some aoe2 buildings - credit to Tipam for design

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 04:01 AM PST

    Just passing...

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 05:55 AM PST

    One day I'll be able to do a decent build order

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 09:28 AM PST

    I updated my spreadsheet of all campaigns in chronological order to include the "Lords of the West" campaigns, also improved some aesthetic aspects

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 07:10 AM PST

    I really hate Coustelliers

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 08:25 PM PST

    That's all. I just hate them. That unit tilted me for the first time in my life. I just want them to disappear. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

    submitted by /u/Manifold18
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    Future expansion: Northern Crusades?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 02:27 AM PST

    As a singleplayer I really like the Lords of the west expansion and the 3 campaigns. I like that one of them is the Britons, it is not a new civ but one that hasnt gotten the proper attention it deserves. I usually learn a lot about medieval times by doing these campaigns.

    I would love to see at least one more: The Baltics, Russia and Caucasus. I see a lot of people wishing for Georgians to be added and mayhaps Armenians too. I would suggest adding a 3rd campaign involving the Northern crusades and you play as both The Slavs (Novgorod) and the Lithuanians (Baltic heathens) against the onslaught of the Northern Crusaders (Teutons). Both the Slavs and Lithuanians havent gotten campaigns yet and I think its a logical next step.

    submitted by /u/VagereHein
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    Feature Request: Display aggregated team bonuses of currently selected civs in team games

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 02:45 AM PST

    There could be an icon which reveals a list of currently active team bonuses on hover.

    I think this would highlight the importance of some civ team bonuses and enable better strategic planned civ picks in random team. Especially when some team bonuses stack for one unit type.

    What do you think?

    submitted by /u/jammisaurus
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    When you're usually the better player but your teammate carries you for the win

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 03:44 PM PST

    Challenges For Me Possibly Are "reasonably" able to unlock after the Reset error? I originally unlocked up to the Bombard Cannons, so maybe they had a short-term fix? Nothing is locked for me and it seems like I can just unlock them in any order now. I will update this post after a game!

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 07:11 AM PST

    Holy crap I just had a 2 minute game

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 02:21 PM PST

    Wish I recorded.

    African Clearing, and by sheer happenstance, me and the other guy legit put our TCs down one tile from another. I couldn't see his and he only saw mine when his vil routed awkwardly over to mine cause of a tree. (looked like he was trying to build but his drunk vil started routing all the way around mine)

    We HAD to villager brawl. Ended up winning because I exploited DAT SWEET HILL BONUS on a tiny tiny incline, but something that small is apparently game deciding when it's 3v3 villagers.

    What are the odds of placing TCs in almost the exact same spot with no intent to lame each other? Never had that happen before.

    EDIT: YO MY LIFE IS A LIE, HOMIE TRIED TO LAME ME WTF BRO

    submitted by /u/AFlyingNun
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    Looking for a production cost calculator

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 03:57 AM PST

    Hey people,

    I recently saw a helpful page where you can calculate how many Vils you need on what ressource to produce unit x from y facilities. It was something like https://grishrl.github.io/ but with the possibility to add civ bonusses and eco upgrades to the calculation. Unfortunately, I forgot to bookmark it and can't find it now. Do any of you know what page I mean?

    Thanks and have a nice day!

    submitted by /u/tjb937
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    Hello old friend.

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 02:17 PM PST

    UPDATE: Challenges For Me Possibly Are "reasonably" able to unlock after the Reset error? I originally unlocked up to the Bombard Cannons, so maybe they had a short-term fix? Nothing is locked for me and it seems like I can just unlock them in any order now.

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 07:54 AM PST

    UPDATE: Challenges For Me Possibly Are "reasonably" able to unlock after the Reset error? I originally unlocked up to the Bombard Cannons, so maybe they had a short-term fix? Nothing is locked for me and it seems like I can just unlock them in any order now.

    The original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/lgvncr/challenges_for_me_possibly_are_reasonably_able_to/

    I was able to unlock and work towards my challenges! I played against Moderate since Hard AI was going to smash me. Played on Hamburger, and built the Bombard Towers near the starting wood and they instantly resigned :( But I did get progress on the Bombard Towers!

    I played Spanish so I had access to Cannon Galleons, Hand Cannoneers, and Bombard Towers.

    https://preview.redd.it/2xntmesq8og61.png?width=621&format=png&auto=webp&s=5487ab59b5f6862b61101ddfc70578a9214e6494

    submitted by /u/WhySmash4Lag
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    The Super Civ: a civ with all the bonuses, full tech tree and all unique units available. What would the most OP combinations would it have, and which units would benefit the least. Has anyone given this some thought?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 01:51 AM PST

    60 khmer double-crossbowed scorpions = ��������

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 11:54 AM PST

    The Turks Represent

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 12:04 PM PST

    Watchtower on the English-Scottish border

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 08:43 AM PST

    Vanishing Boar

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 08:39 AM PST

    I thought there was a q&a thread, so sorry posting this separately.

    I'm fairly new, and I've seen this in practicing against the AI, but it happened for the first time in a ranked game. I lure the board, it's shot until dead.. then it just isn't there.. kinda horrifying, pretty sure I lost that one.

    submitted by /u/amcfatboy
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    Burgundian sportsmanship

    Posted: 09 Feb 2021 03:05 PM PST

    I am really impressed that on my Arabia games over the past two weeks virtually nobody has been picking burgundians.

    I'm putting it down to sportsmanship and people not wanting cheap wins using the flawed coustillier.

    Thank you guys! You're all great.

    submitted by /u/Odysseus7754
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    [LONG POST]Game State, Balance Changes and Patch Notes, What They Are and How We Should Approach Them

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 06:52 AM PST

    I've been trying to keep up with the discussions around DE every day in various platforms. I either read or actively post/comment on an existing topic. It seems like the periodic support from the devs,at least as a concept, kept the gameplay aspect on par with the modern ecosystems of other competitive games. As a result, our community achieved a very respectable support for competitive tournaments, events and other contents. In addition to that, community itself is also growing and everybody is happy about that.

    Current discussions are rather focused on the gameplay as well as the bugs and crashes. I think we can all agree that those game breaking bugs and improving stability of the game should always be the top priority for devs and community should work together with the devs so that we can spot the bugs quickly and report back in a precise manner.

    That being said, the discussions around the gameplay are rather a bit chaotic at the moment. In my understanding, two big reasons cause this blur on the community:

    1. People are having discussion on so many platforms but it feels like it's not enough. Don't get me wrong, I really like that I can go to reddit and see some fanart, go to official forum and maybe paticipate in a poll about a discussion, ask a pro-player about some build order stuff on their discord channels, check twitter or youtube and watch some content about the latest patch, etc. However, there isn't any "go-to" platform for the majority to have discussions and inform themselves first hand. Yes, we have the official website and the forum,which is very active. However the majority hasn't adapted to use that platform to check for "what's up on aoe2 today". I think that's because the appearance of the forum itself is a bit outdated. In addition to that, we don't see devs actively participating on the conversations or opening new topics in the forum as much as they should. A detail I want to mention also is, that it is very hard to spot a comment or a topic from a dev because their title and name looks almost the same as a random member. Maybe they should use a red font or something more striking so we can spot it easily.
    2. Everybody is looking at the game from a different perspective and it's a though job to find a common ground. Some people want to preserve the historical consistency in the game, whereas others welcome changes without any attachment to the historical aspect. Some people want to see their favourite civ get a buff, others want the same civ get a nerf. The age discrepancy between the boomers who played the game when it was first released and the zoomers who just picked up the game for the first time may be causing some clash of opinions as well.

    One thing I realised while reading people's ideas is, that the concept of "balance change" is sometimes misunderstood and therefore creates confusion and confict in the community. In our game, "balance change" does not necessarily mean that every civ should have %50 winrate, or if they do something good, then they have to be bad at another thing. Winrate is a good indicator for how a civ performs but sometimes people forget that winrate changes according to the game state and the power level of other civs. Play rate is another good stat we can discuss. People would prefer some civs more by default than others. However you can change the power levels of civs not for a pure balance adjustment , but to shake up the play rates, so that the game wouldn't feel stagnant. As far as I've observed, both devs and the community are rather insisting on preserving the identities of civs and correcting some edges in the game, like the current Coustillier or pre nerf steppe lancers.

    While I agree with the idea of a civ having an identity in the game, I think both the community and the devs could loosen this policy a bit to avoid awkward situations. I've been looking at the stats of Franks in aoestats for a couple of patches and I cannot understand the fact that this civ has the highest winrate, highest playrate and also has the trait of being easy-to-play or beginner friendly. In my opinion this is a balance nightmare. I think all three attributes can exist in a civ but only for a brief period(1 or 2 patches maybe) . Otherwise it feels unfair, almost like a p2w situation. In competitve games, there's always a beginner friendly choice to ease the player to the game slowly while they progress on the learning curve of the game. However, those options are in general observed closely to have a proper balance in the game.If we look at the civ Chinese,they're a very powerful civ and they have a harder learning curve and require additional knowledge and skill expression to master. If you look at the winrates relative to the elo, you can clearly see how the winrate of chinese rise from bottom to a respectable 8th position as the elo increases. I think this is a good indicator that the civ is close to its optimal power in relation to the current game state and other civ's power levels, however devs can change some aspects of them in order to increase/decrease their playrate or their identity if they want to, which is fine. Another detail in the winrate table I want to point out is, that some civs are consistantly below 45% winrate or close. Personally I think that the civs in theory shouldn't have a winrate more than 55% or less than 45%, otherwise they become very noticably unbalanced. While I understand that it's only natural for the strong water civs perfoming worse than land civs, the recent change on italians is a good way to change that perspective because whether we like it or not, the majority of the ranked games are played on arabia or similar land maps, therefore they may need some boost on land power.

    The last civ I'd like to bring attention to is Turks. The last buff on their scout line was noticed immediately by the community and both their winrate and playrate have risen compared to their previous state. However, devs wanted to clearly preserve their identity in a very strict fashion and kept their weaknesses and buffed what they were already strong at. The discussions on whether they should recieve another type of buff insead of pierce armor buff on scout line continue even today. Even though Turks receive this considable buff, there's no more room left to wiggle around their techs and units anymore. Imagine you have a sword and you wanted to sharpen it, but you sharpened it so much, that it became something like Arya's sword "the needle" from GoT. There is nothing wrong with that sword, but you can only to certain moves with it. Insisting on this approach doesnt mean much if it's causing dissatisfaction on the players. Their balance became an issue beyond winrate or playrate. I see people saying "Turks dont need more buff" or "they dont need other trash units" to justify their current state as balanced. While those statements may be true, their issue does not lie on how good they're performing at the moment. You wanna raid your opponent: Hussars, you need trash unit: Hussars, enemy goes Arbalest: well Hussars have extra pierce armor now, I need meat shield in front of jannisaries/CA : well I can mass Hussars. I do not deny other strategies you can do with Turks. You have good CA, Jannisaries, bbc+ bbt, you can even go crossbow,knights and camels. But I have to say, putting to much importance on a single unit is a bit awkward.

    As I've stated on the chinese example, the skill level can be a factor on the balance of a civ. This opens up the possibility of targeting a specific group of people which I think is a great way to balance. Lets assume devs decided to give 1 melee armor for archers of a specific civ. All players who play that civ will benefit from that buff naturally, however the impact of it can be felt in a different degree with respect to elo change. Since giving armor makes the unit more tanky, in lower elos this buff might have a bigger effect because the unit becomes more forgiving to micro. I'd argue that if the attack damage is buffed instead, higher elo players might feel the difference more compared to low elo.

    After exploring these concepts on balance changes, it became clear to me that we need clear communication from devs in order to understand the changes they make and make sense of the game. I've stated in a couple of other topics, that the most important thing we lack at the moment is communication between the community and devs. I think people have to believe that they're heard loud and clear when they're stating a bug, inbalance, etc. At the moment, most people don't even know who the devs are or how we can reach them. We need a much quicker and frequent way to interact with them. They need to make clear what they're thinking about the state of the game, what and why they made a certain change in the game and I want to point out that it's very important devs explain to us not just what but WHY they made a certain change in that particular fashion or what their intention was. Also I'd like to add that a nice QoL change for the patch notes would be to simplify the patch name itself. Instead of this long random number, we could use something like 2.1a(second year,1st patch+version or hotfix) or 21.1b(year,patch number+additional change if any)

    This post is not a rant but rather brainstorming on some consepts and sharing ideas. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to share it in the comments. I appreciate you for taking the time to read this.

    submitted by /u/Lorenborn
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    Brainstorming for Korean buffs

    Posted: 10 Feb 2021 05:44 AM PST

    I'm not saying they are unplayable, and it isnt an auto lose, but it is obvious Korea isnt performing well, regardless of what people might think. At their worst they have a 23% win rate vs aztecs, and ranging between 30 and 37% for the next 4 worst match ups in 1250-1650 elo (broadest range of games with higher elo, since 1650+ can distort results very quickly due to low number of gamesbut even there its avg 44% win rate)

    Even if they are balanced at the highest elos, they seem very handicapped vs melee (and potentially meso civs) since they are so channelled into archers with minimal eco/military bonuses. Towers were specifically nerfed to be less oppressive, archer armour means almost nothing vs melee civs, and the wood discount is so low and on such an unimportant resource.

    But at the same time I'm not sure how devs could buff Korea without making them too oppressive vs archer civs.

    Regardless at every elo they are performing poorly, and even if we dont have the stats on the latest patch, there's no way the few changes would have boosted korea out of it's abysmal position.

    To give some ideas (because people are quicker to correct than offer info):

    1.Broaden wood discount to siege (portuguese save the same amount of gold, and its worth more on an even wider range of units)

    2.Increase the value of the discount to 40% but dont include siege (it sounds oppressive but it really isnt)

    3.Give them bloodlines, but reduce WW by 10hp

    submitted by /u/Helikaon48
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