| Mass Scorpions are oddly satisfying Posted: 15 Aug 2021 04:09 AM PDT |
| Im still confused how the obuch works tbh Posted: 14 Aug 2021 11:47 AM PDT |
| We need more Arabia-like maps. An analysis of map-types. Posted: 15 Aug 2021 05:47 AM PDT  | After my post about the new Arabia, which is so different from actual Arabia, I was thinking a bit about how maps are designed and also if there are actually Arabia-like maps, which are still significantly different to Arabia, within the popular maps. I think there is space to add more maps which work similar to Arabia but have other specifics. There are many gimmicky maps but not enough which are versatile and standard-ish. I'd say we can categorize the AoE-maps by 4 aspects: - Terrain: Land, Water, Hybrid, Amphibious (Golden Swamp)
- Openness: Open, Semi-open, Closed, Walled, Plain (like African Clearing or Colloseum)
- Ressources: Scarce, Standard, Plenty, Virtually infinite (Golden Pit)
- Structure: Scattered (Arabia, Four Lakes, Mongolia), Clustered (Gold Rush, Atacama)
The most popular map, Arabia, is a map which is a semi-open, scattered Land-map with standard ressources. That's no random circumstance, but these are the attributes which enforce (the most?) strategical play. All of them allow for multiple options but also limit your options, so that you need to find a balance: - Land-maps are, counter-intuitively, the most versatile because you have a very deep balance on land, while water is more simple and it's also super hard to balance water with land as fishing ships are so strong. (I think a few hybrid-maps such as Four Lakes and Cup can compete perhaps.)
- Semi-open maps allow for a defensive and an offensive approach (from the start). Closed/walled maps force defensive play (until Castle Age), open maps make a defensive play impossible, plain maps basically remove the possibility to defend.
- Scarce ressources limit your play to just a few options, virtually infinite ressources will end in a virtually infinite stream of the same unit composition. Even with plenty ressources (as on Nomad or Mongolia), there is a big chance that the game ends long before ressources get scarce. The standard ressources enforce a change during the game: From having enough ressources to not having enough ressources anymore. This adds to decision making.
- Clustered maps tend to enforce a certain game plan. In Gold Rush, any game will be about conquering the middle and holding it. On Hill Fort, it's always about map control in early Castle Age to protect your expansion. On clustered maps you have to adapt to certain randomly generated details of the map and the games tend to develop more differently. (That's why nomad-style maps are popular as even the starting positions are scattered.)
So, if this (semi-open scattered land-map with standard ressources) is the most popular thing, why is there not more than that? We got Runestones recently, but that is basically just a Red-Bull-Arabia which is also just played in EW yet. I took a look on where the common land maps line up and it's something like that: Standard ressources bold, Non-standard ressources non-bold, Nomad start in brackets I included the DE standard maps which are part of the map rotation and a very few common tournament maps (actually, I think only Land Madness is not in DE). There are a few things which are debatable, like Socotra being scattered or not, but that's not really relevant. So what we see is: - Closed or walled clustered maps are very prominent (relaxed sim city games) and for some reason all of them have pretty much standard ressources which I find pretty weird. (Why would you never go for plenty ressources on maps like these?)
- There are generally more clustered than scattered maps. (Which makes sense, as the clustering is often the basic idea of the map. But that's perhaps a wrong approach to map creation?)
- There are very little semi-open scattered maps. Two of them are nomad-start, Cenotes is really almost the same as Arabia, the only alternative is basically Lombardia.
How to create Arabia-type maps that are not just Arabia? The obvious question here, especially as Cenotes is so similar to Arabia, is: Does it actually make sense to make more maps that are Arabia-like and what do you vary if not the categories we discussed before? We find some clues when we look into the variety of other category maps: - Variation of elevation: Mountain Pass is basically Land Nomad with hills. Why not a Mountain Arabia or a Flat Arabia?
- Structure of woodlines: Where do the woodlines spawn? The current Arabia is an interesting variation here with leaving the middle of the map/the front oft he bases pretty plain. Another approach would be to leave the sides of the map and the back areas of the bases rather plain to enforce heavy fights for the middle.
- Thickness of woodlines: Lombardia basically just gives you much thicker, but less, woodlines. Feels immediately very differently. The old Green Arabia gave you slightly thicker and longer/more woodlines too.
- Ressources: I explained before that standard ressources are probably the best, by still I think that a semi-open scattered map with very plenty or very scarce ressources would be nice. A Marketplace-map but with scattered woodlines would also be cool.
- Random clustering: Black Forest is a map that could be seen as clustered because of their choke points and such, but actually there is not a clear, consistent cluster on Black Forest, it's scattered clusters. The same idea could be used for Arabia, to sprinkle the map with some tighter, some more open areas, with some spots where there are multiple ressources together and such. The Arabia hill generation is basically that (compare that to Acropolis or Gold Rush).
- Style: Additionally to strategical things, it also really helps maps when there is a theme to them. Serengeti, Oasis or Mountain Pass feel very specific when playing them. I think there are plenty of things in the map scripting that give character to a map?
- I don't know, be creative, you goddamn developers and map creators.
Do you think it makes sense to add additional variations of Arabia? What would you like to play? Are there maps that are similar which just didn't find their way into DE yet? (I can think of Gravestones but not many others.) Also, if you think about those categories, what would you say is important for you when it comes to maps? I am feeling that there is a severe lack of scattered maps. I started to like Nomad recently and I would enjoy to have more maps that are very adaptive. I like things like Ghost Lake and Gold Rush too, but less gimmicky feels always a bit better.
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| I think the Extreme AI has no idea how to play Arabia anymore Posted: 14 Aug 2021 01:35 PM PDT |
| Is the matchmaking completely broken right now? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 07:50 AM PDT Last 3 games I matched, the countdown went to 0 and the match didn't start. Is this happening to anyone else? submitted by /u/hydrokush [link] [comments] |
| Anyone else having a hard time getting into custom lobbies? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 08:11 AM PDT My game either just says "searching" or it will eventually change to "No games matching those parameters found", even though I have no filters selected. submitted by /u/THE_BIG_SITT [link] [comments] |
| Attack Ground for Archers? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 06:50 AM PDT I know it would completely mess up the current balance, but wouldn't it be cool if archers could attack ground? submitted by /u/qwerty_asd [link] [comments] |
| Won a game vs a 2.2k Player in the Red Bull Wololo 5 qualifiers Posted: 14 Aug 2021 08:10 AM PDT Pretty much the title (I am a little below 1800 btw), He stomped me in g1 and g3 but in g2 I all in eagle rushed him in meadows and it was hilarious. I had so little eco. 34 vills when he gg'ed but I had non stop eagle production and the 5 relics with aztecs. I just feel so happy that I wanted to share this. Edit: AoE2.net profile for the recording https://aoe2.net/#profile-300565 submitted by /u/VolkerWestside [link] [comments] |
| What is your favorite Rise of the rajas civ? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 06:27 AM PDT |
| Has anyone made an analysis of Winged Hussars vis-a-vis Magyars Huszar? Posted: 14 Aug 2021 10:51 PM PDT Like comparing Magyar Huszar with Polish and Lithuanian Winged Hussar against each other and different units. Specifically in Early imp and in Post imp trash wars. submitted by /u/nikkythegreat [link] [comments] |
| Historically accurate though Posted: 14 Aug 2021 09:05 AM PDT |
| AoE 2 DE: Delivering resources to TC with Villager instead of garrison by rightclicking? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 03:57 AM PDT Hi! How do I deliver resources to the Town Center with a Villager? When a Villager has resources on him and I rightclick the TC with him, he automatically garrisons, which I don't intend. submitted by /u/Two-Tu [link] [comments] |
| Farm speed comparisions (DotD edition) Posted: 15 Aug 2021 01:18 AM PDT  | This post aims to show how Poles Folwark farms perform in comparison to other civs Notes: - Since we are talking Folwark, these values compare only farms adjacent to dropoff building (tc/mill)
- The reseed time is not taken into account (let's assume it's negligible, however keep in mind that considering it would boost up a bit Sicilians, Incas, and Chinese & their allies)
- Base values are taken from this post (therefore credit to u/Saint_Michaels_ ) : https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/ey1nmf/complete_results_of_farming_rates_and_other/ - I do not know how correct they are but for the sake of comparison, let's consider they are (even though there is obviously an error margin, considering how Aztecs seemingly perform worse than the base rate after full upgrades).
So, here are the results : Farming rate comparison In green highlight is the best value for the row. In yellow, second best. Same as above, but with increase % There is nothing crazy about Poles calculation : one thing to understand is that overall Poles farming SPEED is actually (and maybe counter-intuitively) independent from the amount of the food on farm (so the gathering speed boost is constant, and is unchanged by any farm upgrade). Proof : Let's say B is how much food there is in the farm, and V is the base rate of farm gathering (which also appies to Poles). So, the speed of Poles is the total amount of food gathered divided by the time it took to gather it. The time calculation goes like this : they spend time only gathering 90% of the food to gather the total. So time spent = B * 0.9 / V. Which gives the farming speed of Poles : B / (B * 0.9 / V) = V / 0.9. As you can see, the farm total food cancels out, therefore we can conclude that the gathering rate of Poles is actually a flat 11.1% increase over the base speed - which makes it similar to Slavs, albeit technically calculated differently - if one were to trace a graph, Slavs' speed is constant, but Poles speed would be very high initially and decreasing until base speed towards the end of the farm life, and averaging 11.1% over the farm's lifecycle. So nothing crazy in this post, just comparing Poles (flat 11.1% increase) to other Civs based on u/Saint_Michaels_ values. Check out his post, as he goes as far as to compare second farm layer (on which Khmer and Aztecs have greater values, of course) - but this would be irrelevant for Poles since the boost only applies to adjacent farms.
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| Why does black forest get so much hate? Posted: 14 Aug 2021 11:38 AM PDT |
| Failed to join match and autopolling error on team games makes me unable to play - help?! Posted: 15 Aug 2021 02:15 AM PDT Topic. Since yesterday all my teamgames have this error. The other common error is something something event0000x . Any idea what is causing this? submitted by /u/Nutteria [link] [comments] |
| tips on how to defeat extreme ai? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 04:19 AM PDT i keep playing 1v1 but the dang ai keep beating me in eco and military strength and i want to get the achievement submitted by /u/momen535 [link] [comments] |
| Saddest campaign ending? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 07:51 AM PDT |
| A solution to alt f4 players Posted: 15 Aug 2021 07:50 AM PDT Been in the multiplayer team queue for 25 minutes without a game. Had 5 alt f4ers in a row so slightly irritated (but I have a solution). Just issue an 8 hour timeout to the account (for ranked). If people don't want to play anymore for the day then they can alt f4 and play again tomorrow. No rating loss or permaban punishment just limit them to one alt f4 a day. For the inevitable people coming to say they only alt f4 because they can't get the map they want then the unranked lobby is the place to go if you want to play a specific map. The ranked queue is for competitive play on a variety of maps. I have preferred maps but I play the ones I don't like and get better at them. submitted by /u/redditpeep210 [link] [comments] |
| After the new Arabia I realized something Posted: 15 Aug 2021 05:17 AM PDT |
| How to play archers on new Arabia? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 07:18 AM PDT I'm stuck, I play majority archers on Arabia but since the new update I've gone from 1200 elo to 1050 elo only winning occasionally against other archer civs. It seems vital to wall up early on in the game but that takes a lot of wood away from building units, and sometimes I'm just not quick enough to wall up my entire base and so get floored anyway. Feels like it's very geared towards cav civs. submitted by /u/tomcotard [link] [comments] |
| Head of Xbox at Microsoft tweets “Age feels good” on Steam Deck Posted: 14 Aug 2021 08:40 AM PDT |
| Favorite scout rush civ? Posted: 15 Aug 2021 06:44 AM PDT |
| Malian strat Posted: 15 Aug 2021 04:00 AM PDT So, i started playing Malians, but i have little clue to how to play them. Is there any malian main out there? submitted by /u/Gerix55 [link] [comments] |
| Probably the bloodiest match I have had Posted: 14 Aug 2021 12:39 PM PDT |
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