Norse so weak vs Egypt

[Torimeister]

It has been this way for over 20 years. I was hoping this would change in retold, but its the same. Please balance this.

[Many-Named]

how is it weak and how should it be fixed then?

[Torimeister]

Originally posted by Many-Named:

how is it weak and how should it be fixed then?

Try it yourself, the ranged units + priests and strongholds/walls just make all the Norse melee units melt

[DinoMight]

jarl+hirdmen+TA combo with additional husk/hersir/godi when you need them can deal with eggy just fine, try to get to mythic and keep raiding

vs isis you prolly need to go 2 tc

[Gundalf]

Be aggressive in age 2 against Egyptians as they have the worst unit roster at that time and mostly rely on migdhol stronghold units.
Constantly forcing idle time on their gold mine can be brutal as they rely much more on gold as other civs.
Against chariot archers use raiding cav or huscarls.

[Jäveln]

they are? ive always found norse much more effective against buildings

[Rhacius]

Originally posted by Torimeister:

It has been this way for over 20 years. I was hoping this would change in retold, but its the same. Please balance this.

sounds like a skill issue, Odin wouldn't be the highest winrate god in the game if he had any problem dealing with egyptians. May I suggest you watch some pros to see how they deal with egypt before throwing inthe towel. My suspicion is that you do not put on enough pressure and once its far into the late game yes egypt has an advantage and even then it is not insurmountable

[Rhacius]

Originally posted by Torimeister:

It has been this way for over 20 years. I was hoping this would change in retold, but its the same. Please balance this.

Oh andd just to proof I am not talking out of my ass here, across all skill brackets Egypt consistently performs worse than norse, Egypt performs by far the worse of all pantheons with Isis having the only positive win rate among them, Ra and Set being bottom there.
Meanwhile norse gods occupy the second and third best spots in terms of winrate, to the point where the only god with a negative win rate is Thor and that is because is by far more difficult to play and I expect his winrate to climb in the weeks to come.

https://aomstats.io

Do not expect the devs to buff Norse in the Egypt match up to make it even more one sided, if anything it will be the other way around.

[Torimeister]

Originally posted by Rhacius:

Originally posted by Torimeister:

It has been this way for over 20 years. I was hoping this would change in retold, but its the same. Please balance this.

Oh andd just to proof I am not talking out of my ass here, across all skill brackets Egypt consistently performs worse than norse, Egypt performs by far the worse of all pantheons with Isis having the only positive win rate among them, Ra and Set being bottom there.
Meanwhile norse gods occupy the second and third best spots in terms of winrate, to the point where the only god with a negative win rate is Thor and that is because is by far more difficult to play and I expect his winrate to climb in the weeks to come.

https://aomstats.io

Do not expect the devs to buff Norse in the Egypt match up to make it even more one sided, if anything it will be the other way around.

From 1200 ELO to 2000 ELO Isis n set are above Odin. Im not familiar with Loki and Thor. Under 1200 ELO winrate doesnt matter because people barely know build order and macro/micro. But why do so many good players say on Twitch that Norse is usally weak vs Egypt? Was it like that in the old days or what?

[Stavrozium]

The norse are the most aggressive faction,
while the Egyptians are the most defensive/economic faction.
It has always been like this.
------------------------------------------------------------------
The counter to playing aggressively, is to play defensively.
And the counter vs defense is going for economy;
the counter vs a stronger economy is aggression.

This principle applies to every RTS game in existence.
(knowing when to switch between them is the key)
------------------------------------------------------------------
So yes, the Egyptians do have a small advantage:
as they get a tower upgrade for free in age 2,
giving them some extra defense vs rushing.
The fact that they hardly need any wood is their main eco advantage,
while Ra/Isis also have economic god powers.

The last thing you want as the Norse, is to be forced to defend.
(this applies to any matchup, but especially vs Egyptians)
Freyr does allow for a slightly more defensive playstyle,
but even with Freyr, you will (almost) always want to be on the offensive.
With every attack, you should try to build forward barracks/towers/forts/TCs;
in order to keep them contained and distracted, while you take all the TCs.
i.e. you can play offensively and defensively at the same time as the Norse,
since your military units can build; use this advantage as much as you can.

So in order to play as Norse vs Egyptians:
if they go for an economic build, (or just in general) play extra aggressively,
by going after their villagers; to raid/cripple their economy.
If they (then) play very defensively, make sure to focus on your own economy;
and go for map control, by taking over all the TCs. (so that they cant get them)
Once you have map control like this, you usually win the game.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Egyptians get the biggest power spike at heroic age,
so make sure you keep attacking during classical age;
where the Egyptians have to rely on spearman/axeman/slinger,
in order to prevent/delay their age-up into heroic age.
Go for their vulnerable eco: so hunters/woodcutters,
and later on, (in mid-lategame) their gold miners/caravans.
Make sure to do as much economic damage, as early as possible.

If the Egyptians do manage to get to Heroic/Mythic age, you can still win,
by aging up along with them, and then keeping up the pressure,
constantly, with raiding villagers/caravans. (Fimbulwinter is perfect for this!)
However, since the lategame is where the Egyptians start to shine,
once you do fall behind, (f.e. by losing too many units)
their economic advantages can ramp up quickly,
up to the point where they can maintain a much bigger army,
meaning you will most likely lose; so the key is: dont let it get that far.

In short:
Rush and Raid the living Helheim out of them. ;)

[clstnilo]

Why does everybody talks about win rate??? It is a useless metric. It makes more sense to look at the average rank of a pantheon instead. You would be surprised what you would see.....

[Stavrozium]

Originally posted by clstnilo:

Why does everybody talks about win rate??? It is a useless metric. It makes more sense to look at the average rank of a pantheon instead. You would be surprised what you would see.....

The current balance is too new, and the sample sizes are too small,
which indeed makes the current winrates practically useless;
for determining balance. Even when only looking at the top 100 players.

But using the average ranks of pantheons would be an even more useless metric,
since it is even less accurate; simply because it works with averages.
I will give an hypothetical example, to demonstrate my point:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lets say, for the sake of argument, that:
Freyr had a winrate of 25%, Thor had 40%, Odin had 60%, and Loki had 75%.
Then the average winrate for the Norse pantheon would be 50%.

Then lets say, for the sake of argument, that
Isis/Ra/Set all had a winrate of 54%.
Then the average winrate for the Egyptian pantheon would be 54%.

So then the Norse pantheon would appear to be "perfectly balanced",
and better balanced than the Egyptian pantheon, while this is obviously not the case..
I could give more examples here, but i think i already made my point..
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Players should indeed stop looking at the winrates, at all,
at least for now, and just play the game.. And ill explain why:

Some major gods (like f.e. Gaia and Ra) are picked way less, because of winrates,
resulting in people going for the other gods, instead of practising with the "bad" gods.
The less you practice with specific gods, the worse you will play with them,
which in turn lowers their winrates, and then the whole cycle repeats...

So, the only way to make the winrates more accurate, and thus more useful,
is to try and make sure that all players ignore the winrates completely,
when choosing which god(s) to play with. (which is why i am writing all this.. :P )

This may seem quite ironic, but this is similar to (f.e.) why scientists use placebos,
to determine if a certain medicine works or not: because biases affect the results.
If scientists would publish "success rates" of a medicine, (=> "win rates")
before the study is completed, and the test subjects have access to these "rates",
even while still being tested, it would make the results of the whole study invalid..
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyways...
im not saying that you shouldnt talk about balance, in fact, i encourage this.
All im trying to say here, is: leave these silly winrates out of the discussions..

Sure, the winrates are also affected by how balanced a major god is.
But instead of (only) looking at the winrates, to see how balanced everything is,
we should rather look at WHY some gods perform better/worse than others.
(=> We should be looking at the stats of all the units, upgrades and god powers,
and then compare them with all the "equivalent" units/upgrades/god powers)

[DarkPassengeR]

Originally posted by Rhacius:

Originally posted by Torimeister:

It has been this way for over 20 years. I was hoping this would change in retold, but its the same. Please balance this.

Oh andd just to proof I am not talking out of my ass here, across all skill brackets Egypt consistently performs worse than norse, Egypt performs by far the worse of all pantheons with Isis having the only positive win rate among them, Ra and Set being bottom there.
Meanwhile norse gods occupy the second and third best spots in terms of winrate, to the point where the only god with a negative win rate is Thor and that is because is by far more difficult to play and I expect his winrate to climb in the weeks to come.

https://aomstats.io

Do not expect the devs to buff Norse in the Egypt match up to make it even more one sided, if anything it will be the other way around.

you need to look above 1200> elo, only RA and GAIA is bad ISIS and SET has 52% win rate which is really good

[jonoliveira12]

Norse is literally at teh top of the leader boards. Also AoM is not balanced for people who "main" (no AoE game is, you are supposed to get comfortable using multiple civs), so it is proper that a defensive civ is at advantage against a rush civ.

This is not Starcraft, there is no "maining" here, you will have to get comfortable playing more civs than Norse, or perpetuyally get stumped when you face a defensive civ.
Just like Mayans do when they face Goths, in AoE2De (one of the most balanced RTS games ever).