2023 AoE 2 Nations Cup [$15,808 Prize Pool Currently]

Dear AoE 2 community, this topic (Nations Cup Waiting Room) has hurt me a lot. In summer 2020, I already tried to give the community something similar with the 2020 AOElympics while waiting. Many of us believed the follow-up of the great 2017 Nations Cup would come soon, in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022... But it never came.

Therefore, I am offering you my approach. I will organise the 2023 4v4 Nations Cup, starting in around 5 weeks. Registration will be open until Saturday, January 28, 20 GMT. The qualification stage will begin in the following week.
This will be a tournament for fun and prestige. However, if anyone wants to contribute to a prize pool, you can do so via the tournament's Matcherino page: https://matcherino.com/t/nc23 where you also can see the current donation sum at all times.

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The exact rules and settings will follow soon, but some important key points are:

• The main event will consist of a group stage (8x4 teams) and a double-elimination knockout stage.
• Max. 4 teams from one nation can enter the main event.
• Teams consist of 4-10 players, substition and addition of backup players will be possible at certain stages of the tournament.
• When a team registers, they have to give list of up to 5 maps which they want to have in the tournament. The maps with the most points will be added to the map pool. So you decide a part of the map pool!
• How exactly the qualifying phase works will depend on the number of registered teams; more about that later.
• A Silver League for teams that don't qualify for the 32-team group stage will happen, if we have enough interested teams.

Staff currently are @Huehuecoyotl22, @enmipho, @paradox303, @welcometorapture and @Akkal.

Any questions and discussion, as well as the registration can start on the 2023 Nations Cup Discord now: https://discord.gg/5fBkzfqHhb

Everybody is welcome!

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Dernière question les sponsor quest vont elles encore fonctionner après les 5000 dollard

 

Dernière question les sponsor quest vont elles encore fonctionner après les 5000 dollard

@Adico Will sthe sponsor quests still work once the $5000 is reached or surpassed?

 

@Adico Will sthe sponsor quests still work once the $5000 is reached or surpassed?

yeap, it can go well beyond the goal, the goal is just a target, but you can shoot past it.

 

3k fast approaching... Thank you to everyone that's donated so far!

View attachment 204597

soooo about that...

Some anonymous person felt generous :P

 

Lets goooooooo

 

Petite question la cagnotte du tournoi se terminera quand ?

 

Petite question la cagnotte du tournoi se terminera quand ?

Fait un effort et va au moins sur google traduction stp.

 

The prize pool has skyrocketed to $10,404 after only 11 days. Aiming for S-tier?
31 teams from 22 nations registered.

 

Many thanks to the anonymous sponsors, the generosity is amazing!

 

thanks huehue & team <3

 

why

 

View attachment 204603
why

Because we arent playing aoc 1.0 alpha and go with the time.

 

Because we arent playing aoc 1.0 alpha and go with the time.

You don't have to change the patch to enable or disable instant carto. It's part of the current patch to either enable it or not. is anyone gonna come up with a good argument or is this the best yall can do?

 

If I was a participating player myself, I would not mind either way, especially because I am use to no shared exploration.
But based on some feedback we received, most players prefer shared exploration.

 

I would prefer non shared exploration as its always been in every TG tournament. Especially in all editions of Nations Cup which this tournament is trying to follow. Shared is fine for casual ranked TGs where noob-friendly features don't really matter a lot.

Here we are talking about a tournament. If your teamplay gets seriously hurt without allied vision then work on your communication with your teammates as that's a skill that can be easily improved a lot by just playing while on a voicecall on discord.

I don't really like to see 1 important skill being taking away from teamgame. We are heading in the wrong direction. There is no excuse to simplify the game so much by allowing SE other than laziness to ask for X.

 

It wouldn't make a lot of sense to have ranked TGs part of the seeding process then having it turned off ultimately.

Most TG events don't even use TG rating is part of the seeding process so we're counting this as a step forward. Not everything has to be the same as previous Nations Cup editions. If we wanted that we would have 30+ maps in the pool

For full disclosure, I am also not a massive fan of it either and it is mainly for casual TGs is where it helps best. That being it seems the most that most players do want it added.

 

There have been 3 Rage Forest tournaments with shared exploration so far - with increasing success and there is a good chance that we will have another one - so the claim that every TG tournament was played without shared exploration is wrong.

Allied vision is just an other quality of life improvement, like MQ, or shift queue and many other features and is normal in most other RTS. Why should communication be handicapped artificially until you build a market? Games will even further increase in skill with allied vision enabled, because the teamplay in early feudal will be even sharper.

There is no good argument aggainst allied vision, like aggainst many other quality of life improvements over the years, beside it's new. Sadly these kind of discussions repeat again and again, trying to conservate own advantages and keeping the game in the past.

 

Exciting news & well done to everyone working hard to make this happen! Shoutout to everyone who has contributed to the prizepool, this community is something else. While we are fortunate to have MS supporting so many events these days I think it’s awesome to see a community managed event like this.

I wanted to add that I’m in full agreement that shared exploration should not be on for a serious teamgame tournament. High level teamgames should be about high level coordination and shared exploration goes away from that. I get why the devs added it to ranked games, but tournaments are a different animal. Also… I feel even stronger about this with something as classic as Nations Cup. Nations Cup goes way back for AoE2 and tends to have a very classic feel. This change would feel out of place and likely dampen my appreciation and excitement for the games. If the goal is to “bring back” nations cup, something as important as this should be reverted to standard in my opinion. Just my two cents!!

 

There have been 3 Rage Forest tournaments with shared exploration so far - with increasing success and there is a good chance that we will have another one - so the claim that every TG tournament was played without shared exploration is wrong.

Allied vision is just an other quality of life improvement, like MQ, or shift queue and many other features and is normal in most other RTS. Why should communication be handicapped artificially until you build a market? Games will even further increase in skill with allied vision enabled, because the teamplay in early feudal will be even sharper.

There is no good argument aggainst allied vision, like aggainst many other quality of life improvements over the years, beside it's new. Sadly these kind of discussions repeat again and again, trying to conservate own advantages and keeping the game in the past.

I fully support shared exploration in ranked games as it helps lower level players/solo queuers play against full-stacked teams.

Leveling the game down in a tournament is a complete different story. Here we are supposed to see a show of skill where the players/teams with the strongest teamplay can shine the most.

MQ/shift queues are new added QoL that helped have an easier time through the game and minimize the waste of time and skip frustrating things such as having to queue up hussars out of 1000 different stables one by one in imperial.. Free carto is literally skipping a lot of team game out of laziness. You won't need to ask your teammate where to coordinate an attack/defense, you won't need to know what's your teammate going to do next because you can see it yourself without any investment. You may as well play without any voicecall at all since it will be barely needed (other than flaring X somewhere your flank/pocket/other side may have missed something).. Where is the teamgame experience?

And black forest tournaments, sorry to say, don't sound like a good parameter as its 1 very particular map. We didn't have any free carto in BoA3, Rise of the Elephants, Return of the clans in 2022.

And your last paragraph... give me a break. I have always supported modernizing the game as aoc was very arcaic back then in so many ways. But some people want to push it way too far and kill the essence of the game.

 

Exciting news & well done to everyone working hard to make this happen! Shoutout to everyone who has contributed to the prizepool, this community is something else. While we are fortunate to have MS supporting so many events these days I think it’s awesome to see a community managed event like this.

I wanted to add that I’m in full agreement that shared exploration should not be on for a serious teamgame tournament. High level teamgames should be about high level coordination and shared exploration goes away from that. I get why the devs added it to ranked games, but tournaments are a different animal. Also… I feel even stronger about this with something as classic as Nations Cup. Nations Cup goes way back for AoE2 and tends to have a very classic feel. This change would feel out of place and likely dampen my appreciation and excitement for the games. If the goal is to “bring back” nations cup, something as important as this should be reverted to standard in my opinion. Just my two cents!!

Most of the admin team have also been leaning towards the "no allied vision", but what we did unanimously agree on, is that it should be put up to vote among the participants before making a final decision on the matter.

 

There have been 3 Rage Forest tournaments with shared exploration so far - with increasing success and there is a good chance that we will have another one - so the claim that every TG tournament was played without shared exploration is wrong.

Allied vision is just an other quality of life improvement, like MQ, or shift queue and many other features and is normal in most other RTS. Why should communication be handicapped artificially until you build a market? Games will even further increase in skill with allied vision enabled, because the teamplay in early feudal will be even sharper.

There is no good argument aggainst allied vision, like aggainst many other quality of life improvements over the years, beside it's new. Sadly these kind of discussions repeat again and again, trying to conservate own advantages and keeping the game in the past.

Communication is what gets team games being more than only build orders imo, i was always against the free carto and im even more against shared vision in high level tournaments, even though im super positive about it being the main thing on ranked games. When you play a team tournament the first thing you and your team have to have is communication.

I cant talk about black forest, since i havent played much there, but other than that the last paragraph you wrote is just getting the game easier and boring(in the high level). I was always supportive on MQ and was a bit more of “scared” about shift queue but i was proven wrong. But shared vision in tournaments should NEVER be a thing IMO.

 

On a completely different note. The NC23 Matcherino fundraiser has pushed me into a top 100 partner organizers with Matcherino (If I get any special bonuses from this remains TBD, but I'll for sure put them back into NC), and it now makes up about 2/3rds of all the funds I helped raised with the site since Nov 2021, when I started.

Y'all crazy.

https://twitter.com/SebastianAdico/status/1609733017626607624

 

Till when will you be accepting donations? I mean, the deadline

 

Till when will you be accepting donations? I mean, the deadline

We will keep the donations open for as long as possible, essentially until the final or with a closing date close to the grand final, so there’s still lots of time to go for anyone who wishes to contribute.

 

Shared exploration is destroying the classic feel of nations cup? In the last 5 years we more than doubled the amount of civilisations, had tons of game behaviour changes, tons of quality of life improvements, hunderds of balance changes and yet seeing your ally in darkage/feudal + having better communication within the team, which simply also brings more enjoyment, should completly ruin the experience, because your arent forced to build a market anymore and research a tech for 100 food 100 gold? I mean this doesnt make any sense.

MQ/shift queues are new added QoL that helped have an easier time through the game and minimize the waste of time and skip frustrating things such as having to queue up hussars out of 1000 different stables one by one in imperial.. Free carto is literally skipping a lot of team game out of laziness. You won't need to ask your teammate where to coordinate an attack/defense, you won't need to know what's your teammate going to do next because you can see it yourself without any investment. You may as well play without any voicecall at all since it will be barely needed (other than flaring X somewhere your flank/pocket/other side may have missed something).. Where is the teamgame experience?

And black forest tournaments, sorry to say, don't sound like a good parameter as its 1 very particular map. We didn't have any free carto in BoA3, Rise of the Elephants, Return of the clans in 2022.

This is 100% comparable with SQ vs MQ debate. Obviously if you had extremly good macro, high speed and good hotkeys, then you had an advantage with SQ over other players, which was lost when ppl changed to MQ. In your words the lazier players could catch up and skill was lost. But that's simply how it is, the game progresses, new stuff gets implemented to make it more attractive for new players, increase the fun and diversity of strategies and units. Shared exploration as default is just the next - long overdue step in this long process. Especially in hectic situations a 4v4 on voice can be quite messy, if you need to talk every tiny movement of your army because of how limited to line of sight is. There will still be plenty of stuff to talk about of how/where/when/with what to fight, it will just be less of a mess and thus also more enjoyable - which should be especially important for a nations cup, which is made for the broad community.
Right now the only real argument is just preserving an advantage of a few top teams over others who don't know themselves for 10+ years and might have a disadvantage in late darkage/early feudal when it comes to communication.


At the end I just can hope that the other teams and players are smart enough to not fall for this, when voting for or aggainst allied vision, because the old already existing teams fear losing their edge.

And black forest tournaments, sorry to say, don't sound like a good parameter as its 1 very particular map. We didn't have any free carto in BoA3, Rise of the Elephants, Return of the clans in 2022.

Calling the most important/competitive TG map right now just one very particular map is also a very interesting take...