2023 AoE 2 Nations Cup [$18,520 Prize Pool]

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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The final 3 maps to be added in the group stage have been voted:
Hideout
African Clearing
MegaRandom

We will be working on a slightly fairer and more interesting version of African Clearing and a custom MegaRandom to be released for testing during the next week.

Sadly no Regicide Fortress this time.

I hope the direction is to make megarandom more random. African clearing is fine as is, I would be disappointed if it turns into the old "fixed" bedouins which did not vary much. Ponds the same size, same number of fish, spaced equally apart, etc. It sounds more fair but makes it more boring

 

I hope the direction is to make megarandom more random. African clearing is fine as is, I would be disappointed if it turns into the old "fixed" bedouins which did not vary much. Ponds the same size, same number of fish, spaced equally apart, etc. It sounds more fair but makes it more boring

It will definitely not be as equally spaced and not as many fish per pond as on Bedouins, but how exactly it will look like, I can't say before it's done.
For MegaRandom we also have to test and see. What will be rather fixed will be player-assigned resources and units (3 villagers, 4 herdables in LOS, 2 "boars", scout, etc.), 6 relics in total per map.
There will be generations with a walled start, there will be Nomad starts and 2-tc starts like on MR and there will be maps that include some water. As we don't have that much time, it might be a bit less random than it could be to make sure all generations are still as competitive as possible.

 

I understand the idea of letting people vote for whatever maps they prefer, but as expected the result is an unbalanced mappool:

There are now more nomadic maps than open maps to choose from, and 3 closed maps compared to 1 open map.

Not to mention Megarandom being added simply because enough teams didn't want another open map in the mappool...

View attachment 204697

All nomadic maps and all hybrid maps are as well open maps. Mega random is mostly open As well and chaos pit is also an open map.

I don’t understand your definition of open and closed maps. In fact Arabia is more of a closed map if considering big woodlines than nomad.

 

All nomadic maps and all hybrid maps are as well open maps. Mega random is mostly open As well and chaos pit is also an open map.

I don’t understand your definition of open and closed maps. In fact Arabia is more of a closed map if considering big woodlines than nomad.

If it’s not 18 pop archers into a feudal age gg then it’s not a real map smh my head shaking

 

If it’s not 18 pop archers into a feudal age gg then it’s not a real map smh my head shaking

Those maps that aren't 18 pop arch plays are called clown maps. Screw those.

 

Why is the prize pool so low? Other big tournaments had much bigger prize pools. And with this tournament you even have to split the prize pool with your team members...

No Microsoft sponsorship?

 

Why is the prize pool so low? Other big tournaments had much bigger prize pools. And with this tournament you even have to split the prize pool with your team members...

No Microsoft sponsorship?

Yeah, the tournament is fully community funded. Which makes the amount of prize pool quite impressive.

 

To help people affected by the earthquake in Syria and Turkey, @Chuptaburger has started collecting donations here: https://www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=66TD6UEK7MTBW

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622768728407519236

We would appreciate if you mention and/or add a chat command during your streams of Nations Cup matches this week and next week. I believe we can reach a lot of people this way.

@Jordan_23 is also doing a charity stream today at 13 GMT:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622903949693952000

 

All nomadic maps and all hybrid maps are as well open maps. Mega random is mostly open As well and chaos pit is also an open map.

I don’t understand your definition of open and closed maps. In fact Arabia is more of a closed map if considering big woodlines than nomad.

I'm talking about balance between playstyles.

Arena and BF are closed maps with little potential for feudal aggression. Hideout and TA are both a good compromise (hideout on the closed side of the spectrum, TA on the open side). Then you have Chaos Pit (no gold, every game ends in a douche fest), AC which by no means plays like a standard open map, all the hybrid ones, and then megarandom which comes with a huge luck factor and potential for civ wins.

In the end, there's only one map in the pool that plays like an open land map, Arabia.

I think the initial mappool was fine, but with the added 4 maps it's not balanced anymore, imo.

I get that people can disagree with my point of view, but so far all I heard in return was "muh 18 pop archer bad", doesn't bring much to the debate. Not every open maps play the same, Frontline is a perfect example of it. No nomad start, no weird gimmicks like chaos pit, just an agressive open land map which the map pool lacks.

 

I'm talking about balance between playstyles.

Arena and BF are closed maps with little potential for feudal aggression. Hideout and TA are both a good compromise (hideout on the closed side of the spectrum, TA on the open side). Then you have Chaos Pit (no gold, every game ends in a douche fest), AC which by no means plays like a standard open map, all the hybrid ones, and then megarandom which comes with a huge luck factor and potential for civ wins.

In the end, there's only one map in the pool that plays like an open land map, Arabia.

I think the initial mappool was fine, but with the added 4 maps it's not balanced anymore, imo.

I get that people can disagree with my point of view, but so far all I heard in return was "muh 18 pop archer bad", doesn't bring much to the debate. Not every open maps play the same, Frontline is a perfect example of it. No nomad start, no weird gimmicks like chaos pit, just an agressive open land map which the map pool lacks.

what is a standard open map which is played the same as arabia? And if there is any - do we need 2 same maps in the pool.
BF and Arena are totally different maps. They have literally nothing in common.

Im also not super happy with the public vote because in my opinion AC is a **** map, also RF is much better than hideout and MR is just another random luck map like nomad. But it was a public vote and thats what we got.

 

what is a standard open map which is played the same as arabia?

Runestones :P

I still love how when the pool had both arabia and runestones, some people dodged runestones 'cos they wanted to play arabia, even though back then runestones was basically the previous arabia rms-script...

 

Runestones :P

I still love how when the pool had both arabia and runestones, some people dodged runestones 'cos they wanted to play arabia, even though back then runestones was basically the previous arabia rms-script...

Wasn't Runestones a bit more closed? Practically BF if you think about it...

 

Wasn't Runestones a bit more closed? Practically BF if you think about it...

it was quite literally an older arabia script before daddy memb made it all about 18 min market abuse xbows.

 

I'm talking about balance between playstyles.

Arena and BF are closed maps with little potential for feudal aggression. Hideout and TA are both a good compromise (hideout on the closed side of the spectrum, TA on the open side). Then you have Chaos Pit (no gold, every game ends in a douche fest), AC which by no means plays like a standard open map, all the hybrid ones, and then megarandom which comes with a huge luck factor and potential for civ wins.

In the end, there's only one map in the pool that plays like an open land map, Arabia.

I think the initial mappool was fine, but with the added 4 maps it's not balanced anymore, imo.

I get that people can disagree with my point of view, but so far all I heard in return was "muh 18 pop archer bad", doesn't bring much to the debate. Not every open maps play the same, Frontline is a perfect example of it. No nomad start, no weird gimmicks like chaos pit, just an agressive open land map which the map pool lacks.

the original 9 maps for sure were a fantastic set with every map having a unique reason to play and a different meta.
We also dont want BoA style where arabia meta dominates all the maps and it becomes very boring very fast.

However where you go wrong is that arena and BF have little potential for feudal aggression - something that watching the showmatches and early rounds for NC shows is not the case.

TA is a nice open land map that doesn't play to the arabia meta - I have seen a lot of different approaches to this map which is great to see.
I also wanted frontline, not just because MR is a pile of rng **** fest, but because its another map that plays very differently and requires strategic thought which teams won't all play out the same way.
Ideally I would not have wanted any maps added. If any then Frontline and Migration made the most sense. Don't see the need for another closed map when we have arena and BF.

The overriding argument for a balanced map pool is that every map has unique reasons to play it and a different meta. Any map that doesn't fit this should never be added as it only takes away from the quality of the tournament.

 

Only 3/56 Round 2 matches haven't been scheduled yet (and one of them is Türkiye A vs. Vietnam C which understandably is delayed).

The first round 3 match, Argentina A vs. Colombia A has also been scheduled for Sunday 23 GMT already. The round 3 matches will be added to the calendar here, but Liquipedia is tracking all qualifier matches too, so there you can see what is coming next.

And thanks to a $1000 donation from He Weisheng, we're at a $15,273 prize pool now.

 

OP, would you kindly post the full background world map without the text and trophy? Better if it's an .psd file or similar, I like the horserider drawings

 

OP, would you kindly post the full background world map without the text and trophy? Better if it's an .psd file or similar, I like the horserider drawings

I can send you some of the parts. Via Discord or where do you want to receive it?

 

The groups and brackets for Main Event, Silver, Bronze and Wood League have been released.
Main Event and Silver League will be covered here: https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Nations_Cup/2023
If you are interested in following the Bronze and Wood League schedules, I would recommend looking at the specific channels on the Nations Cup Discord server.

Main Event:

Silver League:

 

Teams that lost in the first 3 rounds of the Wood League may register for another lower division now to continue competing with their teams and similar settings.
The exact format will probably be decided later this week, depending on the amount of teams. The name is also still under discussion. Some suggestions were:

• Paper League
• Ash League
• Clay League
• Grass League
• Roots League

 

with all the content that is creating for a lot of streamers, and for the already good games and surprises, it should have more pricepool. at least some big streamers should donate something

 

NC is epic!
Have you ever imagined if your life you will watch Robo play AOE?!
Yet the Aussie team, along with other lower seeded teams are putting on a great show!

P.S. "Finland just wants to sleep" and winning 20min games is such a great meme!

 

Vivi come on!!

 

Canada marching through the winners bracket and into the great finals while Finland and China are fighting for the sdcond spot in the losers bracket is considered a surprise or not?

 

might want to spoiler the last post, just in case people read who haven't watched the winner's finals yet but to answer your question:
If you've been following the aoe2 scene for a long time you would already know/assume that Canada has always been a strong team it's just that Hera has improved the most as a team player compared to last NC, sad Canada doesn't have Ra but I don't see him much active in tournaments.

Winner's finals was a really nice watch for me, loser's semi's and loser's finals should also be a nice watch. Glad the 4 relic placement on the Team Island's game (in the WF) wasn't the deciding factor and that the other team could finish it up before wood went scarce.

Loving this tournament a lot so far and despite not having much free time I always try to watch every match of the DE stage.

 

might want to spoiler the last post, just in case people read who haven't watched the winner's finals yet but to answer your question:
If you've been following the aoe2 scene for a long time you would already know/assume that Canada has always been a strong team it's just that Hera has improved the most as a team player compared to last NC, sad Canada doesn't have Ra but I don't see him much active in tournaments.

Winner's finals was a really nice watch for me, loser's semi's and loser's finals should also be a nice watch. Glad the 4 relic placement on the Team Island's game (in the WF) wasn't the deciding factor and that the other team could finish it up before wood went scarce.

Loving this tournament a lot so far and despite not having much free time I always try to watch every match of the DE stage.

Yeah, they got second place years ago with almost the same roster. They have a very good combination between individual skills, knowledge, experience and strategy. This time Hera is one of the top 3 players in the world, but also Chris has been much more active in the ladder, and his performance in water maps has been flawless in this NC. Let's not forget that he is one of the best aoe2 players of all time, and we have seen him shining in this tourney, like 2 decades after his peak.
There are some maps they seem to be unbeatable, like migration, where each of them play their role in a perfect way.
No matter the result in the grand final, this team has provided a seal of very high quality, once again.