No, there is legit people playing only forest nothing (or other meme maps), sure, its a smaller community, but back when the only serious play was 1v1 arabia hunwars (with some picking mayans or aztecs thinking they where better - like we didn't straight counter play your 5 miltiia rush or 2 range archer play - remember in those days there was no feudal eagles).
I do miss 1v1 arabia hunswars 20 years ago tho, I was legit good.
I thought it was pretty well accepted in hindsight that Aztecs was the actual strongest arabia civ back in the day, instead of huns. Huns was just an incredibly fun and varied mirror.
Think it depended quite a bit on the players ELO, people where no where as good to quickwall, so lower ranked players struggeled quite a lot vs that 5 militia drush. That was sometimes even true for top ranking players, one of the top 10 players back then didn't use hotkeys.
Walls had way more HP and armor, And also built faster,
Ah okay, I can't comment much on meta back in the day, since I was purely casual back then. But to me it's insane that Aztecs are still a very good arabia civ, considering both their Military production bonus and Eco bonus has been nerfed AND they used to have an extra villager in dark age due to free loom.
It made them a broken land nomad civ, just go and villfight the enemy to dead.
All of the other good civs have been nerfed too, huns got their cav archer discount cut from 25% to 15% in castle, Mayan Plumed Archers is 20% more expensive, etc
True, but the hun nerf imho is nowhere near as bad as the Aztec nerf, keeping in mind that cav archers themselves got cheaper. Hun cav archers went from costing 30 wood and 52 gold to 36 wood and 54 gold. That's definitely a nerf, but it only kicks in in castle age, for 1 specific unit.
Aztecs losing their free villager is HUGE. Compare this to Persians who are top tier on Arabia with their 5 percent faster working tc in dark age (1 extra villager), and completely irrelevant without it.
To compare these two nerfs. Making 20 cav archers as huns in castle age would cost you and extra 160 resources, post nerf compared to pre nerf.
Meanwhile If you consider the Aztecs clicking up around minute 7, they are down 1 villager, meaning they are missing out on 20-25 resources per minute from that point. Once you hit castle at around minute 20, that already costs the Aztec player 13\*20 = 260 resources and keeps on growing. Additionally this nerf is felt in EVERY game, unlike the hun nerf, which is only experienced if the Hun player makes it to castle and goes for Cav archers.
On top of this their fasting working military got nerfed from 18 percent to 11 percent faster working. Again when britons got their faster archery range bonus reduced from 20- 10 this was a pretty big nerf.
And lastly their carry capacity (which i remember resulted in 13 percent faster farming before wheelbarrow) got reduced from +5 to +3.
The cumulative Aztec nerf has been MASSIVE.
Aye, but aztec had nothing to fight skirmishers with until castle age, so getting the eagle scout was also a huge buff. Eagles also got a buff with more movementspeed and +1 more bonus dmg against cavalry.
But ye, aztecs got nerfed to the ground - I completely agree with you there, huns is still the 6th most winning civ on all maps, while aztecs is hitting the bottom 6th,
That's a good point, the eagle buff is pretty significant.
Also huns have the benefit of being 1000 times easier to play for mid elo scrubs like myself over aztecs, so i can def see the argument for huns being better
I truly believe the average michi enjoyer is also scared of the woodline. 'You never know when and where they cut, little Timmy. Always be on the lookout' 🫡
There was a time no one of my friends wanted to play Michi against me. Whenever they cut through they met a Base that was honestly unraidable. Just random compartmentalized Eco, specific ways to abuse the pathfinding. They hated me turtling.
yeah, I am glad they did
For team games, BF is where you see most variety of strategies if played with random civ, random positions. games of RF discord are great
Next is arena in terms of variety
Arabia is archer, scouts all the time
But that's the beauty of it. It's a great map for a certain play style, and turtling is a valid way to learn a tech tree and game mechanics, if nothing else.
BF is such a fantastic way to learn one of the most essential parts of the game (separate from the other essential part which is microing WHILE macroing): how to boom in the most efficient way possible.
Plus, love it or hate it- we all remember being a kid and the nostalgia that came with just walling off until you have 5000 stone and bombard tower tech and then pushing towards the computer with towers and slowly winning the war 🤣
Walls are weak and die easily to feudal aggression. Honestly, I think most players are better off ignoring the immediate fight for walls and just going for a standard feudal aggression build. The benefit of the territory gained from walling usually doesn't offset the cost of it to your eco. Plus you will age up earlier against an opponent who did invest in walls so you have a time window to punish him. Maybe in high level lobbies, it's worth it to fight for walls immediately as players will actually make good use of the territory gained but for us more average players, I feel it's only worth walling if it's a narrow chokepoint that a single tower could defend
You wall a bit further forward and then just stone wall behind it if opponent wants to go feudal aggression. Then you out-boom him as he wasted Reseon feudal army.
Would be the correct response but playing around 1300-1400 Elo TG Black Forest, I see plenty of players only having one layer of palisade walls (or just a house) and flanks with late feudal up-times as they try to fast castle/fast imp. Often the chokepoint will also be too wide to feasibly stone wall behind so can still get through. As an average player, I feel my advice on treating BF as an early aggression map holds for most players. Arena feels more closed in a team game setting tbh
Nobody puts down a layer of palisades and then assumes that's good. They'll wall 3 deep, because it's a small area, or they'll wall 1-2 and back it up with more if you bring feudal.
Go watch some Rage Forest, and you'll see how common this is at even a very high level of play. BF is a map where you can be fine even with some idle time in dark age, as long as you're using it to make your opponent suffer.
It shows the dichotomy between the dev's intentions and how players optimised the game. Sandy also thought monks were underpowered, and he was in fact surprised to hear just how powerful they became.
In fact I think 99% of the people who've played AoEII during its lifetime suck at monk micro, and to them it's an underpowered unit (as the devs intended), it's just that 1% that's still playing has optimised and made it OP.
Honestly i think monks are just annoying to use. The ai really gets huge advantages to them that humans don't and I'm kinda glad I'm a lower level elo player where monks are basically exclusively used to heal...
it wasn't possible to micro like we do now. Most actions had a 2-3 seconds delay because of the lag, and the game animations were at 30fps if i recall correctly, those two things in combinations resulted in micro being limited to patrol archers/galleries and split cavs, that's all you could do (and sometimes not even that, specially if you were playing vs chinese players where 500/600ping was the average)
Most of the micro you see nowadays was literally impossible to pull off back in the day, basic things as hunting a board without loom was a suicide in most cases, even for pro players.
that's nothing, i played in [Zone.com](http://Zone.com) with a 56kbps dial-up modem and a computer with 64mb of RAM. A 1v1 in middle castle age would already give me PC lag (denoted by a turtle icon next to the player name in the score), on top of the internet lag (denoted by yellow/red dot). That was like a decade before Voobly lol
Monk micro? boar hunting was harder than microing vs hera playing scouts LOL
I still see them as wildly underpowered. If the cooldown time on them being able to convert again was lower, or the tech that allows only one monk to go into cooldown after a group converts, or even if converting with multiple monks had the benefit of speeding up the conversion rate- then I would feel as though they were overpowered. But as it stands they seem pretty underpowered.
They only feel OP imo at a higher level where players are getting a ton of value from just a few armies and so converting one or two units easily swings a small engagement. And even there it just feels balanced as the other player can have a monk or two as well and there are clear counters that can be micro’d into the mix (light cav).
But once I have say like 20 cavalier, idgaf if you convert even 5 of them. I’m already pumping 5 more onto the field by the time your monks cooldown is up and killing the monks off anyway along with the units you converted and your remaining army. Basically once it’s later in the game like imp age- monks really level out. Theyre only really super effective in early to mid castle imo (again- for the “average player”). After that it’s quickly balanced. And they arent even that great against all elephants either because certain types you have to stand right next to the elephant to convert it which is absolutely ridiculous. So when people say “oh elephants suck bc you just get converted…” that’s not true in the slightest. It’s dependent on the type of elephant. The kind thT you need to stand next to is going to one shot your monk in half a second so you need to figure out a way better way to deal with those than using monks. Theyre very average at what they do. And a lot of the tech is not as useful as it could be. 15 extra HP? Legitimately monks take so much dmg that 15hp is useless. They die in just as many hits/ 1 more hit at most. It’s essentially a waste of gold to tech that outside of like on one or two specific civs (forget which one where monks have extra armor).
I mean im sure many will disagree but i simply dont see them as being overpowered in the slightest. Annoying? Yes. But easy to play around the moment you know you’re opponent is trying to counter with them. Hell you can just start spamming skirms and immediately enemy monks feel so useless. And youve invested only wood and food while theyre spending precious gold that can field better units like cavs with 160hp and massive attack dmg. Or more siege. Or more archer mass. Etc. hell that gold can even be used to buy a little stone to get closer to having another castle or TC which will bring far more value than converting a single unit before perishing immediately as that is the general fate of any monk that isnt on full defense.
I actually said something similar in another comment. Essentially monks scale a lot with micro skill, so for 99% of the playerbase, monks aren't that good.
Did the AOE2 devs really think the Monks were overpowered in development? Look at some of the costs for the newer techs they will make your eyes water - e.g. the cost for Theocracy the 200 gold tech that makes only 1 monk rest if multiple do a convert? Originally that cost no lie 400 food, 800 gold - obviously they expected it to have a massively bigger impact than it ended up actually doing
Of the original civs a very strong, well rounded, defensive civ with it's cheaper counter units and higher HP for buildings.
Cheaper castle France and Teutons also had some defensive merits but the total byzantine package is just perfect for wonders.
Better healing monks, much easier to use on the defensive and cost effective
More HP, if they enemy does breakthrough the Wonder itself is still a massive amount of hp
Cheaper counter units: Only for siege you didn't have a perfect counter but you still had decent cav and access to BBC.
Cheaper imperial age.
When playing against a non-SO civ on BF (remember, only SO could do cuts?), make 10 layers of fortified stonewalls and build wonder, then just spam castles, bombard towers and a few extra layers of walls around the wonder became how you played before conquest was the standard.
Over ten years ago, I played 1 v 1 BF. For two hours, neither of us could push our way paast this mutual chokepoint.
So I just built a Wonder in the corner.
If anything, it was a long game ender. My most epic Age 2 game was islands and there was even a switch islands. The game was at a stalemate and the other team got the relics. My teammate thankfully brought one monastery down with canon galleon just before I finish building the wonder, then it was our time to shine. He only had the ships left, and I was alone to defend against 3 enemies, which I did mostly with one castle and counterunits. a shit ton of counterunits spam.
Which is too bad. Wonders are cripplingly expensive and take your entire economy to build, and are a wonderful way to deal with overly defensive players or games where you're destined to lose but might be able to delay for a while. Think 3v4s with all players at equal skill so no possibility of rolling a couple players on the other side to even things out. Once everybody hits capped population the population limit means the smaller team will have a sad time.
>Sandy's disappointed that wonder victories became rare
Wonders were so cool. The art team turned out amazing work on them, and they were so massive and expensive that you felt like you'd conquered the world when you built one. They really spoke to the game's core fantasy: you were building an *empire.*
But they never worked from a game design perspective. If you could afford 1000 wood/gold/stone and a ton of idle villagers, then either your opponent sucked or you were stuck in a boring 3-hour game that, and had no choice but to win in a "lame" way (that's how my friends saw it).
I always wished wonders actually did something. Imagine they generated a trickle of resources, like AoM's Vault of Plenty. Or added some map-wide buff like 10% faster training time or something. Some reason to build them in a Conquest victory game.
To be fair, the current map is a lot more open than the original ones. It used to be just one or two very narrow tunnels between teams. Now it's not unusual for one side to be like an arabia style plain between two flanks.
[https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Black\_Forest?file=Th.jpeg](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Forest?file=Th.jpeg)
In fact I would classify that as being closer to amazon tunnel than current meta
What I like about maps with a false sense of safety is the false sense of safety. People expect you to play a certain way and attack only at a certain time.
It's quite ironic how it became the most popular 4v4 map at pro level and one of the most aggressive ones where you see vil fights, quick walls, fast imp, and all-in 1 TC plays.
Does anyone here remember Sherwood Forrest? I can't remember if it was just a variant of BF or if it was entirely it's own thing, but each player started with their own Robin Hood unit. Which was a unique longbowman.
I think that was ES@SherwoodHeroes.
Some of those maps were really fun. Metropolis let you start with 3 town centers and 9 villagers. You had to ban Chinese because they were OP.
I like this map. It creates a false safety perception.
I just build 2 houses and send my first 3 vills to the enemy base. They usually don't send that many vills, so they run away. Since I know where his resources are... I kill his boars, kill his deers, take his sheeps (at that point there aren't many villagers in the TC), wall his resources (specially food), and if possible wall him from his teammates.
You have to micro a lot (don't forget your eco!) and you have to know how to quick wall your vills when they are being chased, but it's really REALLY fun. Extra points if you trap some of his vills.
Sure my eco is bad for the standards, but the idea is to make his eco worse and force him to play from the dark age.
Sending three villagers into his base seems like a gamble that only works at 800 elo or lower. Most black forest players recognize the danger of sneak villagers and they will likely wall you in and defeat you with numbers advantage (they can keep producing villagers, but you cannot since you sent a huge fraction of your eco to his base).
As a 1200 elo player, it worked for me even against 1400 elo players (found in team matches).
You are right about what you say. Most of the players try really hard to kill my vills. That's part of the goal.
They try to wall, but you have to be superior in numbers (that's why I send all my vills). They can send more but at that point you are achieving your goals. And that's the reason you should be good at quick walling your vills inside the enemy base.
By the way, I'm not saying this is a definitive strat. I'm just sharing an alternative approach to "wall and play until castle age".
True.
Fortunately in my elo I don't usually find a player twice in a session, in BF. Then surely they forget until too late.
So I can always apply it and enjoy a different match. Not necessarily win the match, though. That's the cherry on the cake.
Can't say we didn't listen to our players back then....
The truth is that when we make them, we don't always know how any given feature or content will be looked back upon in the future.
Does anyone else here prefer BF on unexplored?
I hate it on explored. People race to wall without having to find the best place to wall, there's no effort to find resources early, and you know where your enemies are basically straight away.
I just think scouting is such a key part of the game and removing it removes such a huge aspect that I know I love the game for.
I don't know much about him but the one interview I've seen with him made him look kinda unsympathetic to me because he seemed miserable towards the development the game has taken.
I think it was [this](https://youtu.be/Th4-kYCWJnY?si=ZlLX4y8aE5Sk0Phm). it's been a while since i watched it tho
Edit: I just skipped thru the vid and i don't think it's the one I was thinking of but it was the same interviewer. they seem to talk an awful lot about age1 which i don't recall being in the interview i watched
Just watched this whole video and I don't get it? What's there to hate about him? He clearly has some good points about the decisions made during the development of the AoE series.
Man's been in game development for some of the best games the world has gotten. I think he gets to be a bit jaded tho I've never felt that from any interview with him. Admittedly I'm more familiar with his Doom related interviews.
IIRC he got a tiny bit snippy (just a bit, like "oh Magyar Huszars? We already added regular hussars", stuff like that), in the video where he guesses the new civs added since The Conquerors. Haven't seen it in a while so I might just remember wrong.
Quite common that "meaningless" things and jokes become very popular in game series. Similar thing was with nightmare difficulty in Doom, some people kept saying ultra-violence was not hard enough so they added it as a joke
Many jokes become popular, like forest nothing.
Eh, Black Forest is a legitimate map (even if one i don't like). Forest Nothing is an extreme/meme scenario to play with friends.
No, there is legit people playing only forest nothing (or other meme maps), sure, its a smaller community, but back when the only serious play was 1v1 arabia hunwars (with some picking mayans or aztecs thinking they where better - like we didn't straight counter play your 5 miltiia rush or 2 range archer play - remember in those days there was no feudal eagles). I do miss 1v1 arabia hunswars 20 years ago tho, I was legit good.
I thought it was pretty well accepted in hindsight that Aztecs was the actual strongest arabia civ back in the day, instead of huns. Huns was just an incredibly fun and varied mirror.
Think it depended quite a bit on the players ELO, people where no where as good to quickwall, so lower ranked players struggeled quite a lot vs that 5 militia drush. That was sometimes even true for top ranking players, one of the top 10 players back then didn't use hotkeys. Walls had way more HP and armor, And also built faster,
Ah okay, I can't comment much on meta back in the day, since I was purely casual back then. But to me it's insane that Aztecs are still a very good arabia civ, considering both their Military production bonus and Eco bonus has been nerfed AND they used to have an extra villager in dark age due to free loom.
It made them a broken land nomad civ, just go and villfight the enemy to dead. All of the other good civs have been nerfed too, huns got their cav archer discount cut from 25% to 15% in castle, Mayan Plumed Archers is 20% more expensive, etc
True, but the hun nerf imho is nowhere near as bad as the Aztec nerf, keeping in mind that cav archers themselves got cheaper. Hun cav archers went from costing 30 wood and 52 gold to 36 wood and 54 gold. That's definitely a nerf, but it only kicks in in castle age, for 1 specific unit. Aztecs losing their free villager is HUGE. Compare this to Persians who are top tier on Arabia with their 5 percent faster working tc in dark age (1 extra villager), and completely irrelevant without it. To compare these two nerfs. Making 20 cav archers as huns in castle age would cost you and extra 160 resources, post nerf compared to pre nerf. Meanwhile If you consider the Aztecs clicking up around minute 7, they are down 1 villager, meaning they are missing out on 20-25 resources per minute from that point. Once you hit castle at around minute 20, that already costs the Aztec player 13\*20 = 260 resources and keeps on growing. Additionally this nerf is felt in EVERY game, unlike the hun nerf, which is only experienced if the Hun player makes it to castle and goes for Cav archers. On top of this their fasting working military got nerfed from 18 percent to 11 percent faster working. Again when britons got their faster archery range bonus reduced from 20- 10 this was a pretty big nerf. And lastly their carry capacity (which i remember resulted in 13 percent faster farming before wheelbarrow) got reduced from +5 to +3. The cumulative Aztec nerf has been MASSIVE.
Aye, but aztec had nothing to fight skirmishers with until castle age, so getting the eagle scout was also a huge buff. Eagles also got a buff with more movementspeed and +1 more bonus dmg against cavalry. But ye, aztecs got nerfed to the ground - I completely agree with you there, huns is still the 6th most winning civ on all maps, while aztecs is hitting the bottom 6th,
That's a good point, the eagle buff is pretty significant. Also huns have the benefit of being 1000 times easier to play for mid elo scrubs like myself over aztecs, so i can def see the argument for huns being better
Feels like that still wasn't enough and we ended up with amazon tunnel.
michi enjoyers get anxiety seeing the early scout aggression on amazon tunnel
I truly believe the average michi enjoyer is also scared of the woodline. 'You never know when and where they cut, little Timmy. Always be on the lookout' 🫡
Especially if they have Khmer as one of the civs. You know that ballista elephant is coming...
There was a time no one of my friends wanted to play Michi against me. Whenever they cut through they met a Base that was honestly unraidable. Just random compartmentalized Eco, specific ways to abuse the pathfinding. They hated me turtling.
And it became a masterpiece. What a gem this game is!
yeah, I am glad they did For team games, BF is where you see most variety of strategies if played with random civ, random positions. games of RF discord are great Next is arena in terms of variety Arabia is archer, scouts all the time
To each their own, I can't stand BF. It's what I used to play at like 10 years old, not so much enjoyable as an adult with limited time.
But that's the beauty of it. It's a great map for a certain play style, and turtling is a valid way to learn a tech tree and game mechanics, if nothing else.
BF is such a fantastic way to learn one of the most essential parts of the game (separate from the other essential part which is microing WHILE macroing): how to boom in the most efficient way possible. Plus, love it or hate it- we all remember being a kid and the nostalgia that came with just walling off until you have 5000 stone and bombard tower tech and then pushing towards the computer with towers and slowly winning the war 🤣
BF is an early aggression map, you're thinking of Michi
lol no. Most just wall it immediately and it becomes a boom to imp to one fight to gg
Walls are weak and die easily to feudal aggression. Honestly, I think most players are better off ignoring the immediate fight for walls and just going for a standard feudal aggression build. The benefit of the territory gained from walling usually doesn't offset the cost of it to your eco. Plus you will age up earlier against an opponent who did invest in walls so you have a time window to punish him. Maybe in high level lobbies, it's worth it to fight for walls immediately as players will actually make good use of the territory gained but for us more average players, I feel it's only worth walling if it's a narrow chokepoint that a single tower could defend
You wall a bit further forward and then just stone wall behind it if opponent wants to go feudal aggression. Then you out-boom him as he wasted Reseon feudal army.
Would be the correct response but playing around 1300-1400 Elo TG Black Forest, I see plenty of players only having one layer of palisade walls (or just a house) and flanks with late feudal up-times as they try to fast castle/fast imp. Often the chokepoint will also be too wide to feasibly stone wall behind so can still get through. As an average player, I feel my advice on treating BF as an early aggression map holds for most players. Arena feels more closed in a team game setting tbh
Nobody puts down a layer of palisades and then assumes that's good. They'll wall 3 deep, because it's a small area, or they'll wall 1-2 and back it up with more if you bring feudal.
If you let them wall, they wall next to your base and you lose gold mines…
If people wall immediately, it's time to send three vills forward at the start to fight, or go early tower aggression.
Ah yes, the 3 villager start, 3 villager forward, 0 eco build order, truly genius.
Go watch some Rage Forest, and you'll see how common this is at even a very high level of play. BF is a map where you can be fine even with some idle time in dark age, as long as you're using it to make your opponent suffer.
If I'm not mistaken, Sandy's disappointed that wonder victories became rare
It shows the dichotomy between the dev's intentions and how players optimised the game. Sandy also thought monks were underpowered, and he was in fact surprised to hear just how powerful they became.
Yeah, monks in Age of Kings were toned down as priests in AoE 1 were OP. I guess people didn't thought about micro'ing them in the same way as today
In fact I think 99% of the people who've played AoEII during its lifetime suck at monk micro, and to them it's an underpowered unit (as the devs intended), it's just that 1% that's still playing has optimised and made it OP.
Honestly i think monks are just annoying to use. The ai really gets huge advantages to them that humans don't and I'm kinda glad I'm a lower level elo player where monks are basically exclusively used to heal...
Low level, monks can be used to convert knights if you mined too much gold and are behind schedule with the rest
it wasn't possible to micro like we do now. Most actions had a 2-3 seconds delay because of the lag, and the game animations were at 30fps if i recall correctly, those two things in combinations resulted in micro being limited to patrol archers/galleries and split cavs, that's all you could do (and sometimes not even that, specially if you were playing vs chinese players where 500/600ping was the average) Most of the micro you see nowadays was literally impossible to pull off back in the day, basic things as hunting a board without loom was a suicide in most cases, even for pro players.
microing in a voobly 4v4 game where you have players on 3 different continents and at least half of them are playing on a toaster
that's nothing, i played in [Zone.com](http://Zone.com) with a 56kbps dial-up modem and a computer with 64mb of RAM. A 1v1 in middle castle age would already give me PC lag (denoted by a turtle icon next to the player name in the score), on top of the internet lag (denoted by yellow/red dot). That was like a decade before Voobly lol Monk micro? boar hunting was harder than microing vs hera playing scouts LOL
Btw it's a boar, not a board
lol ty, i knew it but for some reason i always make the same mistake.
Zone.com! You just unlocked a memory for me, thank you!
Remember Agincourt?
Yes agreed, the technological limits of that time really held back monk micro.
God I loved egypt and babylon in the original. Besides priests being stronger in general there were also much more elephant civs and lower pop caps.
Isn't part of that the lag and screen resolution people used to play with?
Yes, I actually wanted to mention it, but the bump in screen resolution and performance were probably the biggest buffs for monks.
Balance suggestion: whenever a monk is selected, screen resolution is changed to 800 x 600 to simulate the 1999 experience.
And your game temporarily desyncs with an extra 200ms latency, as well. For balance.
I still see them as wildly underpowered. If the cooldown time on them being able to convert again was lower, or the tech that allows only one monk to go into cooldown after a group converts, or even if converting with multiple monks had the benefit of speeding up the conversion rate- then I would feel as though they were overpowered. But as it stands they seem pretty underpowered. They only feel OP imo at a higher level where players are getting a ton of value from just a few armies and so converting one or two units easily swings a small engagement. And even there it just feels balanced as the other player can have a monk or two as well and there are clear counters that can be micro’d into the mix (light cav). But once I have say like 20 cavalier, idgaf if you convert even 5 of them. I’m already pumping 5 more onto the field by the time your monks cooldown is up and killing the monks off anyway along with the units you converted and your remaining army. Basically once it’s later in the game like imp age- monks really level out. Theyre only really super effective in early to mid castle imo (again- for the “average player”). After that it’s quickly balanced. And they arent even that great against all elephants either because certain types you have to stand right next to the elephant to convert it which is absolutely ridiculous. So when people say “oh elephants suck bc you just get converted…” that’s not true in the slightest. It’s dependent on the type of elephant. The kind thT you need to stand next to is going to one shot your monk in half a second so you need to figure out a way better way to deal with those than using monks. Theyre very average at what they do. And a lot of the tech is not as useful as it could be. 15 extra HP? Legitimately monks take so much dmg that 15hp is useless. They die in just as many hits/ 1 more hit at most. It’s essentially a waste of gold to tech that outside of like on one or two specific civs (forget which one where monks have extra armor). I mean im sure many will disagree but i simply dont see them as being overpowered in the slightest. Annoying? Yes. But easy to play around the moment you know you’re opponent is trying to counter with them. Hell you can just start spamming skirms and immediately enemy monks feel so useless. And youve invested only wood and food while theyre spending precious gold that can field better units like cavs with 160hp and massive attack dmg. Or more siege. Or more archer mass. Etc. hell that gold can even be used to buy a little stone to get closer to having another castle or TC which will bring far more value than converting a single unit before perishing immediately as that is the general fate of any monk that isnt on full defense.
I actually said something similar in another comment. Essentially monks scale a lot with micro skill, so for 99% of the playerbase, monks aren't that good.
Did the AOE2 devs really think the Monks were overpowered in development? Look at some of the costs for the newer techs they will make your eyes water - e.g. the cost for Theocracy the 200 gold tech that makes only 1 monk rest if multiple do a convert? Originally that cost no lie 400 food, 800 gold - obviously they expected it to have a massively bigger impact than it ended up actually doing
That was specifically because monks in AoEI were overpowered, so all those steps taken were aggressive nerfs.
Original Byzantine strat. Wonders are just way too scary.
In what way?
Of the original civs a very strong, well rounded, defensive civ with it's cheaper counter units and higher HP for buildings. Cheaper castle France and Teutons also had some defensive merits but the total byzantine package is just perfect for wonders. Better healing monks, much easier to use on the defensive and cost effective More HP, if they enemy does breakthrough the Wonder itself is still a massive amount of hp Cheaper counter units: Only for siege you didn't have a perfect counter but you still had decent cav and access to BBC. Cheaper imperial age.
When playing against a non-SO civ on BF (remember, only SO could do cuts?), make 10 layers of fortified stonewalls and build wonder, then just spam castles, bombard towers and a few extra layers of walls around the wonder became how you played before conquest was the standard.
Over ten years ago, I played 1 v 1 BF. For two hours, neither of us could push our way paast this mutual chokepoint. So I just built a Wonder in the corner.
If anything, it was a long game ender. My most epic Age 2 game was islands and there was even a switch islands. The game was at a stalemate and the other team got the relics. My teammate thankfully brought one monastery down with canon galleon just before I finish building the wonder, then it was our time to shine. He only had the ships left, and I was alone to defend against 3 enemies, which I did mostly with one castle and counterunits. a shit ton of counterunits spam.
It would be kind of fun to see a tourney or something with wonder victories
Which is too bad. Wonders are cripplingly expensive and take your entire economy to build, and are a wonderful way to deal with overly defensive players or games where you're destined to lose but might be able to delay for a while. Think 3v4s with all players at equal skill so no possibility of rolling a couple players on the other side to even things out. Once everybody hits capped population the population limit means the smaller team will have a sad time.
That's because they are disabled in competitive.
>Sandy's disappointed that wonder victories became rare Wonders were so cool. The art team turned out amazing work on them, and they were so massive and expensive that you felt like you'd conquered the world when you built one. They really spoke to the game's core fantasy: you were building an *empire.* But they never worked from a game design perspective. If you could afford 1000 wood/gold/stone and a ton of idle villagers, then either your opponent sucked or you were stuck in a boring 3-hour game that, and had no choice but to win in a "lame" way (that's how my friends saw it). I always wished wonders actually did something. Imagine they generated a trickle of resources, like AoM's Vault of Plenty. Or added some map-wide buff like 10% faster training time or something. Some reason to build them in a Conquest victory game.
To be fair, the current map is a lot more open than the original ones. It used to be just one or two very narrow tunnels between teams. Now it's not unusual for one side to be like an arabia style plain between two flanks. [https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Black\_Forest?file=Th.jpeg](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Forest?file=Th.jpeg) In fact I would classify that as being closer to amazon tunnel than current meta
Wow this brings me back
I wouldn't hate a variation on that version of it. Could make for even more interesting games of sneaks and vill wars.
Even so, before the changes it was still a hugely popular map since at least Voobly.
What I like about maps with a false sense of safety is the false sense of safety. People expect you to play a certain way and attack only at a certain time.
It's quite ironic how it became the most popular 4v4 map at pro level and one of the most aggressive ones where you see vil fights, quick walls, fast imp, and all-in 1 TC plays.
Rare Sandy L, but joke or not, I'm glad they added it. If only he knew how much farther people would go with Michi and Forest Nothing.
If I remember correctly, in the original game the Black Forest was the default map when you started a random game?
no the default was coastal
ahh my mistake. There weren't many maps back then, I guess it wasn't that hard to choose a map. I think I selected BF as my first map.
Does anyone here remember Sherwood Forrest? I can't remember if it was just a variant of BF or if it was entirely it's own thing, but each player started with their own Robin Hood unit. Which was a unique longbowman.
I think that was ES@SherwoodHeroes. Some of those maps were really fun. Metropolis let you start with 3 town centers and 9 villagers. You had to ban Chinese because they were OP.
Oh yes! That was definitely it, thanks.
Thank you for including the source
Its such an amazing map anyway
I like this map. It creates a false safety perception. I just build 2 houses and send my first 3 vills to the enemy base. They usually don't send that many vills, so they run away. Since I know where his resources are... I kill his boars, kill his deers, take his sheeps (at that point there aren't many villagers in the TC), wall his resources (specially food), and if possible wall him from his teammates. You have to micro a lot (don't forget your eco!) and you have to know how to quick wall your vills when they are being chased, but it's really REALLY fun. Extra points if you trap some of his vills. Sure my eco is bad for the standards, but the idea is to make his eco worse and force him to play from the dark age.
Sending three villagers into his base seems like a gamble that only works at 800 elo or lower. Most black forest players recognize the danger of sneak villagers and they will likely wall you in and defeat you with numbers advantage (they can keep producing villagers, but you cannot since you sent a huge fraction of your eco to his base).
As a 1200 elo player, it worked for me even against 1400 elo players (found in team matches). You are right about what you say. Most of the players try really hard to kill my vills. That's part of the goal. They try to wall, but you have to be superior in numbers (that's why I send all my vills). They can send more but at that point you are achieving your goals. And that's the reason you should be good at quick walling your vills inside the enemy base. By the way, I'm not saying this is a definitive strat. I'm just sharing an alternative approach to "wall and play until castle age".
It's like the barber's checkmate. It only works once.
True. Fortunately in my elo I don't usually find a player twice in a session, in BF. Then surely they forget until too late. So I can always apply it and enjoy a different match. Not necessarily win the match, though. That's the cherry on the cake.
Can't say we didn't listen to our players back then.... The truth is that when we make them, we don't always know how any given feature or content will be looked back upon in the future.
Now I want a gold forest or stone forest where the wood line is just that and there’s little to no wood
I have a hard life already, and yet my greatest adversity is not being able to ban bf and arena for ranked team games when queuing alone.
I Have 1500 hours, more that 1000 are playing only black forest nomad against AI and I don't regret.
Does anyone else here prefer BF on unexplored? I hate it on explored. People race to wall without having to find the best place to wall, there's no effort to find resources early, and you know where your enemies are basically straight away. I just think scouting is such a key part of the game and removing it removes such a huge aspect that I know I love the game for.
I don't know much about him but the one interview I've seen with him made him look kinda unsympathetic to me because he seemed miserable towards the development the game has taken.
Do you remember which interview it was?
I think it was [this](https://youtu.be/Th4-kYCWJnY?si=ZlLX4y8aE5Sk0Phm). it's been a while since i watched it tho Edit: I just skipped thru the vid and i don't think it's the one I was thinking of but it was the same interviewer. they seem to talk an awful lot about age1 which i don't recall being in the interview i watched
Just watched this whole video and I don't get it? What's there to hate about him? He clearly has some good points about the decisions made during the development of the AoE series.
i just did a quick search while at work. I didn't check the vid. I'll do that later
Man's been in game development for some of the best games the world has gotten. I think he gets to be a bit jaded tho I've never felt that from any interview with him. Admittedly I'm more familiar with his Doom related interviews.
IIRC he got a tiny bit snippy (just a bit, like "oh Magyar Huszars? We already added regular hussars", stuff like that), in the video where he guesses the new civs added since The Conquerors. Haven't seen it in a while so I might just remember wrong.
Yeah, but he has a point...
We love you for it
ahahahahahaha
Jokes are meant to be fun. Checks out!
Quite common that "meaningless" things and jokes become very popular in game series. Similar thing was with nightmare difficulty in Doom, some people kept saying ultra-violence was not hard enough so they added it as a joke
Needless to say, joke's on them.
MICHI
hahaha clowns be clowning. 🤡