Game sucks. Its all meta driven

[Endoskeleton_Jim]

its exrtremely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bland. all it is is just mass a certain unit comp (or eagle scouts) and rush the enemy with janky micro. the way people play this is so braindead, this game really is a "cult classic", meaning you ♥♥♥♥♥ like it no matter how bad it is. Still havent fixed the pathing, still havent fixed the unbalanced units, its ONLY continuously make villagers and archers and skirmishers until you have an unstoppable ball. its pathetic

[Kasbfaäfad]

引用自 Aegis：

引用自 Kasbfaäfad：

I do not agree. But yes, if you fight extremely bad you might lose your advantage. But we are also older and have an horrible EAPM and are normally around 1150 in TGs. And we only play 2-3 games a week normally.
The FAST decision making is the most important part, then comes army management.
If you are slow in decision making, maybe civ6 or old world is more for you.
I love those games aswell but they are too time consuming thus aoe2 :)

Exactly! Well not quite. Decision making does not equate to actions per minute. Which again, involves more reflexes, memory of hotkeys, as opposed to any "strategy" or building composition. The top 10% of players are a whole other thing.
But the majority of players... it's undoubtedly decided by faster micro/build orders....

About half my games are decided by the discrepancy of scores, more than any actual strategy.

A player executes his build and hotkeys faster than you? BAM. Huge disadvantage.
It's much less to do with decisions, and more emphasis on faster executions...
which again, is more akin to a FPS (lol) than anything even resembling "strategy"

I feel like I'm betraying my own community =\ sadly. But the older I get, the more I realize that it comes down to Meta/APM as opposed to any "strategy".

Even a game like Company of Heroes.. with it's flaws, has more "strategy" and mind games involved. Matches in that game are not simply determined by who has the FASTER MICRO... which is what AoE2 keeps devolving into

You will still win 9 of 10 games when you have a better understanding of the game than you opponent although he has better micro. This holds true on "stranger" maps.
If you have no micro at all, simply build cav and champions. Ranged units and siege need more micro but I often see people simply rocking goths or franks and destroying everything without any micro

[Kampfschwein Fjonda]

Well Aegis, you lost all 3 games today and are pissed.
I am at this point every week, too.

There are chess matches where you have 5 hours time and matches where you have 5 minutes. Both are strategy games.

[76561199509385856]

Yeah the amount of times I'm beating someone and they hold on thinking they still have a chance when they don't is very tedious, I seen a post on Reddit 'don't resign until 0 resources' and this happens all the time, sucking the life out of the game.

As well as that, and getting dropped into maps with huge chunky woodlines (FC maps).

There's no point in me rising ELO, only to get frustrated when hitting a wall because melee units take 10 seconds to acquire a target sometimes and by that time they're already basically dead.

Having to watch your melee units and click 'stop' because they're all targetting one swordsman in the middle of 10 swordsman while they all get hacked down

Or when Skirmishers have some sort of built in tiny frame delay that makes archers micro better = gold units everyone (Archery range and mangonel/stable mix in rush) - with quickwalling for the early game

Haven't played in a while the map pool was already stale for me even on day 1 it renewed.

[76561199509385856]

In the Ancient Times Romans mixed a javelin and sword I think.

But after that in Medieval times, AoE 2 acts like a skirmisher can't attack when something is within one tile. Archery Ranges Crossbowmen and Cavalry/Mangonels for all basically

[76561199509385856]

If you want a real skirmisher that can micro (not the same as, but better than) archers, you need choose Lithuanians - who by the way half their bonuses are stacked into monks and knights and you might not like that .

[76561199509385856]

if you want reach 1400 elo you train mechanics then learn when to wall and how to wall basically to hit timings, it's a wall fest sorry

[76561199509385856]

+ the timer moves at 1.7x speed - so like 1 seconds idle time actually shows as 2 (boom fest) checking TC so much you can't do a micro unless high elo.

[76561199509385856]

+ the maps all have like 200,000 wood, probably just to make it look symmetrical or give you options where to boom rather than what actually is good.

Otherwise it would be a trush fest.

So you're stuck with the sideboom TC's everywhere and 2 hour matches.

[76561199509385856]

mangonels move around while they can fire, I mean come on, and this is what millions of matches are decided by.

I would be interested if real history mangonels moved around like APC's while firing.

[76561199509385856]

+ everything is about reading the eco bonuses and timings, never about just making a huge push like eg a Stronghold match

[76561199509385856]

The TC should represent an actual city, so you must defend it like Stronghold or Civ

EG not just be something that, when you lose a battle, you can just build another one at the next treeline and keep booming, like little village centres instead of Town centres.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Can you not spam and post all the things you want to say in one comment ?

[Moist Butt]

I think the better question to ask is which competitive game doesn't have a meta and isn't meta driven in the high level. You don't need to play meta but don't expect to climb the ladder especially if you aren't a good player to begin with.

[Moist Butt]

引用自 Aegis：

引用自 Kasbfaäfad：

Just on arabia in feudal. Arena is 90% strategy

Not really. A person out-booms = GG. I've seen games with like 500-1000 score discrepancy purely on micro. No strategy involved. Just hotkeys, muscle memory, etc.
It really takes the strategy away from "RTS".

EVEN when games are balanced, the winner mostly comes down to better micro. Which again, is not "strategy". I love this game and I've played it for years, but I'm really ready to retire this s***. It's not fun anymore when the meta is basically "solved" and it comes down to FASTER hotkeys and APM. I might as well play an FPS

I found something pretty interesting.

https://cdn.ageofempires.com/aoe-forums/original/3X/f/2/f269991bab1927a0c62c7d8e2c5368556945f7c4.png

Someone from aoe2insight posted this so it seems legit.
Key things to point out
1. 1k-1.5k is like the vast majority of players and their avg EAPM seems to be 20-40.
2. there are quite a few that are 2k+ with <40 EAPM. Some that are 2k+ with <30 EAPM.

Point that I am trying to make is macro is very important. You don't need to be amazingly fast to be in the top 1%. You can have averagish EAPM and be around top 1%. With that said I don't see how anyone can say this game is micro heavy.

[AgentFlea]

引用自 Kasbfaäfad：

You will still win 9 of 10 games when you have a better understanding of the game than you opponent although he has better micro. This holds true on "stranger" maps.
If you have no micro at all, simply build cav and champions. Ranged units and siege need more micro but I often see people simply rocking goths or franks and destroying everything without any micro

And what understandings are those? rock paper scissors.
Come on.. lol The game isn't exactly very deep when it comes to basic strategy

I don't get how people can deny how reliant on micro the game is.
It's nearly impossible to recover if you fall behind in eco - the slightest deviation of a build can leave you at a huge disadvantage. That's not strategy that's macro

If you don't keep up on economy, you will fall behind and impossible to recover.
How can anyone deny that?

For that very fundamental reason, using hotkeys and being able to quickly and efficiently set up your build, far exceeds whatever strategy you end up using in combat

引用自 Moist Butt：

引用自 Aegis：

Not really. A person out-booms = GG. I've seen games with like 500-1000 score discrepancy purely on micro. No strategy involved. Just hotkeys, muscle memory, etc.
It really takes the strategy away from "RTS".

EVEN when games are balanced, the winner mostly comes down to better micro. Which again, is not "strategy". I love this game and I've played it for years, but I'm really ready to retire this s***. It's not fun anymore when the meta is basically "solved" and it comes down to FASTER hotkeys and APM. I might as well play an FPS

I found something pretty interesting.

https://cdn.ageofempires.com/aoe-forums/original/3X/f/2/f269991bab1927a0c62c7d8e2c5368556945f7c4.png

Someone from aoe2insight posted this so it seems legit.
Key things to point out
1. 1k-1.5k is like the vast majority of players and their avg EAPM seems to be 20-40.
2. there are quite a few that are 2k+ with <40 EAPM. Some that are 2k+ with <30 EAPM.

Point that I am trying to make is macro is very important. You don't need to be amazingly fast to be in the top 1%. You can have averagish EAPM and be around top 1%. With that said I don't see how anyone can say this game is micro heavy.

That's a pretty good insight.

I think my point is pretty simple too.

Falling behind in eco/building/vills upkeep is a way bigger reason for losing, than any actual battle of wits and strategy.

A lot of games can be considered over before they even start lol. If a player takes 20 minutes to get to feudal, and there is a big enough discrepancy between the player scores/villager /tech It's pretty much over right there.

Before even an ounce of strategy or fighting even happens. You can't use "strategy" (spam archers/scout rush/etc) (which in itself is laughable in terms of a 'strategy game') If you can't even keep up in economy or building quickly.

Speed > Strategy is my argument basically.