The point is: Those civs could be given very powerfull tg/lategame/map specific buffs, but deathcounter would still be argueing they suck just because in his mind every civ should have a 50%wr on ara 1v1.
in his mind every civ should have a 50%wr on ara 1v1.
What the ****I would say a winrate of 50% and +- 5% is fine for arabia,
And maybe halbs.And maybe skirm.
Balanced actually means 50/50 so statistically every civ should have a 50% win rate in the long run. Rock Paper Scissors is a 100% balanced game because every option is equal when you look at the whole game while rock always beat scissors and scissors always beat paper, but paper always beats rock.
I dont see any problem about giving Skirm or Pikes to Turks.And maybe halbs.
I see one, civ identity.I dont see any problem about giving Skirm or Pikes to Turks.
So yes, I will always push back against giving Turks skirms and pikes, Teutons light cav and husbandry, Persians bracer and all this kind of things, until all other options have been explored.
But why turks have to be the one civ with "no trash", they are already unique without having elite skirms, what if they get pikes, but malians lose them - malians have camels (with +3 attack) and a strong UU to counter cavalry - besides that it is seens as the most powerful 1v1 civ aswellI see one, civ identity.
Balance wise it makes sense, but it's also the worst way to balance civs. The easiest way to achieve balance is simple : give everyone access to all the same techs and units and you will have a perfectly balanced game. But also a very boring one.
So yes, I will always push back against giving Turks skirms and pikes, Teutons light cav and husbandry, Persians bracer and all this kind of things, until all other options have been explored.
People have no clue how statistics work and what Balance really mean.
Balanced actually means 50/50 so statistically every civ should have a 50% win rate in the long run. Rock Paper Scissors is a 100% balanced game because every option is equal when you look at the whole game while rock always beat scissors and scissors always beat paper, but paper always beats rock.
While winning 100% vs one Option they lose 100% vs the other means your win rate is 50%.
With multiple options like in aoe (1 civ facing 30other options) this would be much more complicated to find a correct balance because one change has multiple effects on other variables. So the conclusion is that a win rate between 45% and 55% means its Actually not that bad but has still room to improve. So why not try ?
You dont need data from 20 maps you need only from 4
Closed ( BF)
Semi Open (Arena)
Open (Arabia)
Water (Islands)
These tech tree "lacks" are common among AoC civs. Meanwhile WK civs seem to have generally more blacksmith/university upgrades, more bloodlines, more thumb rings, more bombard cannons, more monastery upgrades. There are 2 options to balance this out. Either AoC civs lose some of their civ identities and get their lacks in tech trees filled or WK civs start to lose techs from their nearly complete tech trees. I think a good example of complete tech tree civ is Italians. Besides them being the best civ on water they have roughly speaking access to pretty much every unit/tech in every military building.I see one, civ identity.
Balance wise it makes sense, but it's also the worst way to balance civs. The easiest way to achieve balance is simple : give everyone access to all the same techs and units and you will have a perfectly balanced game. But also a very boring one.
So yes, I will always push back against giving Turks skirms and pikes, Teutons light cav and husbandry, Persians bracer and all this kind of things, until all other options have been explored.
But I have a feeling that community doesn't welcome nerfs to WK civs too happily. People want to have their civs that have access to everything topped with the best eco bonuses.
Indeed, it's a pretty noticeable trend of having civs with very open tech trees in the expansions, sometimes at the cost of civ identity. Portuguese strikes me as the civ that lacks the most civ identity, but has a very well rounded tech tree. You mentioned Italians, but the list of civs that don't really miss any crucial techs also includes Berbers and Magyars for example.These tech tree "lacks" are common among AoC civs. Meanwhile WK civs seem to have generally more blacksmith/university upgrades, more bloodlines, more thumb rings, more bombard cannons, more monastery upgrades. There are 2 options to balance this out. Either AoC civs lose some of their civ identities and get their lacks in tech trees filled or WK civs start to lose techs from their nearly complete tech trees. I think a good example of complete tech tree civ is Italians. Besides them being the best civ on water they have roughly speaking access to pretty much every unit/tech in every military building.
But I have a feeling that community doesn't welcome nerfs to WK civs too happily. People want to have their civs that have access to everything topped with the best eco bonuses.
The original intent of ES was to make Turks lack both trash upgrades to make up for their extremely strong options when there is plenty of gold. Not only they mine gold faster, but they have all gold costing units available, except arb, pala and onager, as well as the best gunpowder and one of the strongest castle age UU.But why turks have to be the one civ with "no trash", they are already unique without having elite skirms, what if they get pikes, but malians lose them - malians have camels (with +3 attack) and a strong UU to counter cavalry - besides that it is seens as the most powerful 1v1 civ aswell
Yes you feel more limited with your options with AoK civs, but no old civs aren't weaker than new civs on average.The identity of AoC civs remain in AoC, but in Wk they are so behind and can only be played in one direction, lets say persians, scouts, few camel+monks, boom halbs+rams+HC 99% of persian games are like that, same with teuton with the only variable of trushing, turks must be the civ that i hate the most due their lack of options in no gold scenarios (not only late imperial but vs fwd players)
Buffing old aok civs seems like a must before aoe II DE arrival, all civs must be playable, i really hate the draft system or ban civs from latest tournaments, we the players pick random civ and get 80% of the times turks, japaneses and saracens, against burmeses, berbers, magyars etc, etc, due the last settings of tournaments the true weakness of all aok civs remains hidden from the eyes of the sponsors and supporters of the game.
Yes. This "long run" is the actual theoretical population parameter value of the probability. In rock-paper-scissors it is a matter of simple probability calculus. But it is basically impossible to know what it is in a game as complicated as aoe2. Any observed probability from a sample of games is just an estimate of that theoretical value. And it depends on the variance and the sample size how good of an estimate it is.
Inspired, I actually performed a very quick and simple experiment: I took 31 random samples of size 500 (roughly how many 2000+ games were played for each civ) from binomial distribution with probability of success p=0.5, the case where the civs would be perfectly equal in balance. The lowest value I observed was 0.452 and highest one 0.542. Then same thing with sample 1500 (roughly similar to the 1700-2000 games). This of course made the results a bit more similar (a phenomenon we see even the original graph) but still the lowest value was 0.462 and highest 0.526. The conclusion of this experiment: with sample size of 500 games, winrate between 45% and 54% is _indistinguishable_ from winrate of exactly 50% and dont have to mean anything other than normal variation in the data. Sure, there are values more extreme than that in our data and they perhaps mean that there are real imbalances, but the point is that we really need to distinguish between those winrate differences that are the result of genuine imbalances and those that can just as well be a result of pure chance.
I disagree that you only need data from four maps, because then these 4 maps might be balanced, but other maps (even similar) might be unbalanced still (there is for example a difference between islands and team islands simply due to distance). Additionally, there is 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and DM, that are all different on different maps.
Also, in the context of AoE just the winrate doesn't say too much about balance either. Both a civ that has a 50% chance to win against every other civ and a civ that has a winrate of 100% against half the civs and 0% against the other half have a winrate of 50%, in terms of games balance though these are complete opposite approaches to balancing
Yes you feel more limited with your options with AoK civs, but no old civs aren't weaker than new civs on average.