For years, there has been substantial demand for Age of Empires to have its balance updated to reflect the imbalances revealed by the development of the metagame. The last official balance patch was 1.0c released in 2001 (although one of the game's developers revealed that there was an...
Building and repairing does not maintain 100% efficiency as the number of villagers working increases. Instead, the effective labour grows linearly, but at less than the growth of the number of villagers working. In particular, every extra villager constructing a building works at 33% efficiency...
There are three funny behaviours I see on Voobly every now and again.
The first is starting a game and finding myself on the lowest resolution. I then have to manually set the resolution back to what it was before I can continue to play. My laptop only supports medium resolution so it's not a...
One trend I notice in players is a tendency not to make extra mills for their farms after their town centres and initial mills have been depleted. The result is that farms end up being displaced into secondary (and sometimes tertiary) layers, which greatly increases the average pathlength per...
I would like to congratulate Memb on reaching one million views on his Twitch channel. We've had plenty of crazy times over the last few years, and hopefully many more crazy times to come. Plenty of Titanics, walls, rages and ambulance moments, and don't forget the bababooms. With Memb streaming...
Exactly as it says on the tin. I don't really buy into the idea of civilisation rankings, but it's a convenient survey format. I'm interested to see if the Arabia Invitational has changed the way people perceive the relative strengths of the civilisations.
Edit: Oh stupid me. That should have...
I have often heard it said that a boar steal is a decisive event in the game, as it not just represents a loss of around 300 food to one player, but also a gain of 300 food to another player. If the result of stealing a boar were 600 food, you'd think it would be a truly game-breaking event...
So I decided to post this one here after previous HD topics that was posted here due to very few people browsing the HD fora. Also, the question of balace in general is relevant to Age of Conquerors, as the underlying principles are the same.
One of the objectives of Forgotten Empires was (in...
I may as well put this here, as I'm no doubt not the only person interested in this.
Is the prediction contest for this competition set to run in the end? The first game has been confirmed to start in one day's time, so there won't be much time for predictions.
While playing the campaigns again, the third mission of Montezuma involves coming to the aid of Tabasco when the Spanish attack. I sent monks forward and built a castle in their base, yet they're still defeated.
Tabasco deleted their town centre and started deleting their villagers, so it's not...
I decided to go back and play the campaigns, because why the hell not. On the second scenario of William Wallace (Feeding the Army), I noticed something very odd. I cannot garrison villagers in my town centre. I would click and garrison, but the game treats it as if the town centre weren't...
I occasionally see people ask, "I am such and such a rating on Steam, what rating does that make me on Voobly?" and the general answer I see is Voobly=Steam-400. However, is this actually true? Some put the rating difference at 300, others at 500 (I personally think the difference is 450, but...
Warning: The following post is long. If you would like a shorter and more succinct read, may I redirect you to Katsuni's post here.
Good evening,
As the AoCZone drama season goes into full swing again, I realise that I have been a bit inactive here recently. It's been a few months since I...
Just a brief thought that occurred to me the other day: I've always found it interesting that the Chinese have a technology discount, yet this doesn't apply to researching to advance to the next age. In one sense this allows choice for investing between economy, military and defence, but in...
I have recently seen a trend for Maya players skip loom in 1v1 arena. I wasn't aware of this until I saw Yinghua skip it against Skittle in Masters of Arena, and then again when Edie didn't do it against Stark. A quick glance at a few recorded games shows other players are doing this as well. I...
Recently I have been practising luring boars with my scout so I can prepared in case an opponent steals my boar and I have to steal one back in return. I began to consider the appropriateness of luring boars with scouts in general. There are some obvious examples of where luring a boar with a...
If well-known players were units in Age of Empires, it would only be fitting that they matched their playstyles, wouldn't it?
Daut would be a war elephant. He likes to play it slow and boom, but when he gets going, he's very hard to stop.
Chris would be a mangudai. Avoiding conflict when it's...
We have all seen a situation where one player is camping on a hill, then another player comes along with a big army and wipes them out. It's natural to ask which army truly has the advantage, because one has superior numbers, but the other has the hill advantage. More than that, it's also...
The question of when to get wheelbarrow and hand cart is a very old one. The general wisdom is that wheelbarrow should be researched around 15-18 minutes in, and hand cart whenever you can afford it. Although the economic impact is the main one considered, the increased villager speed is also...
The awkward Chinese start is the bane of many an inexperienced player playing random civilisations. The lack of starting food and random sheep generation can make landing the Chinese villager bonus a liability rather than an asset. The Chinese start however, can be quite a boon, and it's worth a...
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.