5 ms·

I was stopping myself from buying Definitive Edition but I guess I am buying it today...

dragontamer 3y ago
Note that the April 2023 patch is live, and perhaps one of the biggest changes to the meta ever. I don't think anyone really knows how the new meta will shake out. Build orders will absolutely change this patch. Though I guess that only matters if you were hoping to get to a competitive level. Definitive Edition does have a very good tutorial mode for people interested in online combat, and "Extreme" AI is 100% legitimate (AoE2 Extreme does NOT cheat, you're fighting it fair-and-square, but Extreme does a proper build order so it just "feels" quick if you haven't studied build orders yet)
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
  What’s new? Seems kind of crazy to introduce a meta changing past to an old game like this that has managed to stay popular.
  - dayjaby 3y ago
    Several infantry civs like inka, sicilians, slavs, vikings, celts and dravidians got many huge buffs. Main change to like 50% of the civs is called gambesons, which adds 1 pierce armor to the militia line, basically reducing the damage they get from skirmisher by 50%.
  - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
    More buffs to infantry. Players got better and infantry was barely used.
  - arbitrandomuser 3y ago
    There has been drastic meta changes before too but over the years the units that have been made has remained the same. The earlier meta mostly used to be around archers or cavalry , infantry was simply not viable except with certain civilization(goths) and that too only once you had the whole economy set up to spam their cheap infantry continuosly. Theve been trying to push infantry with small buffs , and this is patch has seen some more buffs to infantry and infantry civs.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Pre-patch, the meta was growing a bit stale and settling upon Crossbows play, or Knights play. (Or sometimes: Crossbows + Knights). An odd greedy defender might go Mangonel (aka: Anti XBow) + Monks (aka: anti-knights), but the game pretty much revolved around Archers (for civs like Britons) or Knights (for civs like Franks), and their closely related counter-units. EDIT: case in point. Vikings, a civilization with numerous infantry buffs, was played as an Archer civ in practice because even with all their infantry buffs, XBow / Arbalest was considered stronger. The biggest change this patch is a new tech for +1 pierce armor to the Longswords line, which can be researched in Castle Age. Furthermore, the entire line of infantry can upgrade faster, and cheaper. Finally, most infantry civs (Malians, Goths, etc. etc.) have gotten significant economy buffs to make them even stronger. Whether or not its enough for infantry to shine is to be seen.
    - fauxpause_ 3y ago
      I played aok a bunch and aom a lot more. As a dumb kid a decade ago. It seems like a design failure that the game does not obey the intended rock paper scissors, no?
      - dragontamer 3y ago
        The rock-paper-scissors design of Age of Empires 2 (aka: Age of Kings) is more nuanced than what I described above. So the meta pre-patch is that XBows are weak to Skirmishers. (10 E. Skirms can often win vs 20 XBows). Knights are weak to Monks (100 gold to convert a 60-food+75Gold unit is effectively a 120-food + 150-gold swing, so the Monk can die afterwards and you still got an effective conversion. Furthermore, Knights are the same speed as all other knights and have a ton of armor+HP, so the converted knight can likely escape). If the monk survives for a 2nd or 3rd conversion, even worse. The monk already paid for itself after just one conversion. The "intended" rock-paper-scissors was that Infantry (ie: Longswords) were countered by XBows. But... You see, its more important to "force" your opponent into making otherwise worthless units. Skirmishers may counter XBows, but they're nearly useless against all other units in the game. So by "forcing" your opponent into a counter-unit, you've more effectively controlled the game. So Longswords are countered by XBows. But guess what? XBows were the meta-play to begin with, so you just "forced" the opponent into making good units, what he should have been doing from the start! ----------- That being said, XBows only counter Infantry when micro comes into play: effectively knowing the XBow move-and-attack cooldowns. Its not a thing beginners do. If you just patrol-move into a pile of infantry, the Longswords kinda do okay. So its only a counter much like how monks "counter" knights, I assume perfectly play on the part of the XBows (who have nearly the same movement speed, so they can perform a "retreating" kiting maneuver against enemy Longswords). If you are unable to micro like this however, its not really a true counter.
  - pomber 3y ago
    To be fair, it may be the "biggest change ever", but it doesn't change too much. It buff some units that were bad, nerf some units and techs that were too good. But the general meta remains the same. The devs are really good at introducing changes.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > old game They have been releasing expansion adding new civilizations every ~6 months or so together with a bunch of balance changes. > stay popular It didn't. Not too such an extent as it is now. For years it had only community support and a fairly small player base. Microsoft resurrected it not so long ago.
  - the__alchemist 3y ago
    In addition to the infantry gradual bufs, full-walling in Feudal using a mix of palisades and houses became ubiquitous. Pallisades, buildings-as-walls etc were gradually nerfed. Still popular, but now there's a higher associated cost. I wonder if they're done with those nerfs, or if there's another coming. (Since this technique is still very strong... Or maybe it's that scout rushes are strong!)
    - fauxpause_ 3y ago
      How was walling with housing nerfed? I remember doing that a lot.
      - the__alchemist 3y ago
        In-progress buildings are easier to destroy IIRC. Palisades cost more and are slower to build.
- vippy 3y ago
  What's up with all of these 18 feudal builds?? And to Hell with the Portuguese fast castle, organ gun OP on arena.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    It was always possible to do 18 pop feudal, but today's focus on luring deer is perhaps the biggest change to the meta? There wasn't any real balance patch. Just people who have gotten much better at luring deer to improve early build orders. Like 3 years ago, you'd just assume 2x Boar + 8x sheep as your early food source. But today, people are adding 2x or even 3x deer to that. As deer + boars collect food at the fastest rate, you can more consistently go up at lower villager counts. There's also much more precision: killing boars / deer / sheep under the town center more consistently today than before. -------- TL;DR: Skill improved, people can do 18 pop today even though its always been possible. So people are just getting faster and more optimized.
    - dayjaby 3y ago
      Hera made a video about this recently and attributes it more to all the QoL updates like shift queueing. Sheep actually spawn next to your TC now. Before DE you had to find your first 4 as well.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Oh, one more thing. April patch changed Portuguese Organ Guns. The goal of the April patch was to make organ guns more of an anti-unit shotgun, and less of a wall destroyer. So you'll see fewer organ guns on Arena (one of the few maps that start off fully stone walled).

Note that the April 2023 patch is live, and perhaps one of the biggest changes to the meta ever. I don't think anyone really knows how the new meta will shake out. Build orders will absolutely change this patch. Though I guess that only matters if you were hoping to get to a competitive level. Definitive Edition does have a very good tutorial mode for people interested in online combat, and "Extreme" AI is 100% legitimate (AoE2 Extreme does NOT cheat, you're fighting it fair-and-square, but Extreme does a proper build order so it just "feels" quick if you haven't studied build orders yet)

fauxpause_ 3y ago
What’s new? Seems kind of crazy to introduce a meta changing past to an old game like this that has managed to stay popular.
- dayjaby 3y ago
  Several infantry civs like inka, sicilians, slavs, vikings, celts and dravidians got many huge buffs. Main change to like 50% of the civs is called gambesons, which adds 1 pierce armor to the militia line, basically reducing the damage they get from skirmisher by 50%.
- CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
  More buffs to infantry. Players got better and infantry was barely used.
- arbitrandomuser 3y ago
  There has been drastic meta changes before too but over the years the units that have been made has remained the same. The earlier meta mostly used to be around archers or cavalry , infantry was simply not viable except with certain civilization(goths) and that too only once you had the whole economy set up to spam their cheap infantry continuosly. Theve been trying to push infantry with small buffs , and this is patch has seen some more buffs to infantry and infantry civs.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Pre-patch, the meta was growing a bit stale and settling upon Crossbows play, or Knights play. (Or sometimes: Crossbows + Knights). An odd greedy defender might go Mangonel (aka: Anti XBow) + Monks (aka: anti-knights), but the game pretty much revolved around Archers (for civs like Britons) or Knights (for civs like Franks), and their closely related counter-units. EDIT: case in point. Vikings, a civilization with numerous infantry buffs, was played as an Archer civ in practice because even with all their infantry buffs, XBow / Arbalest was considered stronger. The biggest change this patch is a new tech for +1 pierce armor to the Longswords line, which can be researched in Castle Age. Furthermore, the entire line of infantry can upgrade faster, and cheaper. Finally, most infantry civs (Malians, Goths, etc. etc.) have gotten significant economy buffs to make them even stronger. Whether or not its enough for infantry to shine is to be seen.
  - fauxpause_ 3y ago
    I played aok a bunch and aom a lot more. As a dumb kid a decade ago. It seems like a design failure that the game does not obey the intended rock paper scissors, no?
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      The rock-paper-scissors design of Age of Empires 2 (aka: Age of Kings) is more nuanced than what I described above. So the meta pre-patch is that XBows are weak to Skirmishers. (10 E. Skirms can often win vs 20 XBows). Knights are weak to Monks (100 gold to convert a 60-food+75Gold unit is effectively a 120-food + 150-gold swing, so the Monk can die afterwards and you still got an effective conversion. Furthermore, Knights are the same speed as all other knights and have a ton of armor+HP, so the converted knight can likely escape). If the monk survives for a 2nd or 3rd conversion, even worse. The monk already paid for itself after just one conversion. The "intended" rock-paper-scissors was that Infantry (ie: Longswords) were countered by XBows. But... You see, its more important to "force" your opponent into making otherwise worthless units. Skirmishers may counter XBows, but they're nearly useless against all other units in the game. So by "forcing" your opponent into a counter-unit, you've more effectively controlled the game. So Longswords are countered by XBows. But guess what? XBows were the meta-play to begin with, so you just "forced" the opponent into making good units, what he should have been doing from the start! ----------- That being said, XBows only counter Infantry when micro comes into play: effectively knowing the XBow move-and-attack cooldowns. Its not a thing beginners do. If you just patrol-move into a pile of infantry, the Longswords kinda do okay. So its only a counter much like how monks "counter" knights, I assume perfectly play on the part of the XBows (who have nearly the same movement speed, so they can perform a "retreating" kiting maneuver against enemy Longswords). If you are unable to micro like this however, its not really a true counter.
- pomber 3y ago
  To be fair, it may be the "biggest change ever", but it doesn't change too much. It buff some units that were bad, nerf some units and techs that were too good. But the general meta remains the same. The devs are really good at introducing changes.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > old game They have been releasing expansion adding new civilizations every ~6 months or so together with a bunch of balance changes. > stay popular It didn't. Not too such an extent as it is now. For years it had only community support and a fairly small player base. Microsoft resurrected it not so long ago.
- the__alchemist 3y ago
  In addition to the infantry gradual bufs, full-walling in Feudal using a mix of palisades and houses became ubiquitous. Pallisades, buildings-as-walls etc were gradually nerfed. Still popular, but now there's a higher associated cost. I wonder if they're done with those nerfs, or if there's another coming. (Since this technique is still very strong... Or maybe it's that scout rushes are strong!)
  - fauxpause_ 3y ago
    How was walling with housing nerfed? I remember doing that a lot.
    - the__alchemist 3y ago
      In-progress buildings are easier to destroy IIRC. Palisades cost more and are slower to build.
vippy 3y ago
What's up with all of these 18 feudal builds?? And to Hell with the Portuguese fast castle, organ gun OP on arena.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  It was always possible to do 18 pop feudal, but today's focus on luring deer is perhaps the biggest change to the meta? There wasn't any real balance patch. Just people who have gotten much better at luring deer to improve early build orders. Like 3 years ago, you'd just assume 2x Boar + 8x sheep as your early food source. But today, people are adding 2x or even 3x deer to that. As deer + boars collect food at the fastest rate, you can more consistently go up at lower villager counts. There's also much more precision: killing boars / deer / sheep under the town center more consistently today than before. -------- TL;DR: Skill improved, people can do 18 pop today even though its always been possible. So people are just getting faster and more optimized.
  - dayjaby 3y ago
    Hera made a video about this recently and attributes it more to all the QoL updates like shift queueing. Sheep actually spawn next to your TC now. Before DE you had to find your first 4 as well.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Oh, one more thing. April patch changed Portuguese Organ Guns. The goal of the April patch was to make organ guns more of an anti-unit shotgun, and less of a wall destroyer. So you'll see fewer organ guns on Arena (one of the few maps that start off fully stone walled).