2023 AoE 2 Nations Cup [$18,622 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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I'm not entirely sure what to think about shared exploration tbh, in ranked i think it's a very good to have since it makes communication easier when voice comm is not possible but in tournament it might be too much to have (I'm thinking already on Laming being much more annoying and easy to achieve).
I'm curious if u ever played with it enabled before they implemented it here tho cause otherwise I don't understand why u are defending it so strongly.
And about black forest i think it's undeniable that is a very particular map regardless of how many people play it and I'm not sure why people started putting explored in the first place but it doesn't mean that every map should have it just like regicide fortress for some reason was always played regicide but it's not like we have to play regicide all other maps because of it

 

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

Luluulluluuull

Next will be auto vill queue so you have more time to focus in other things too making it easier your micro/macro. This is just noobfying the game, it shouldnt be enabled for any serious tournament.

 

Imo TG-Tournaments are currently not that interesting to watch (except on a few Maps) so any change is welcome I guess.
People are so quick to judge, why not have a Tournament with it and see whether it's enjoyable or not, we had portuguese tg-bonus before anyway.
Wouldn't be too surprised if this change makes TG Tournaments way more interesting and if not, it's easy to disable.

 

Most people are sharing their opinion about the matter which I think it's fair, I think u would have the same reactions if ud plan a bf tournament with no exploration tbh

 

Luluulluluuull

Next will be auto vill queue so you have more time to focus in other things too making it easier your micro/macro. This is just noobfying the game, it shouldnt be enabled for any serious tournament.

Actually, I don't see a problem there.
It could be implemented the same way as automatic farm reseeding. It wouldn't do anything for pro players, because they would queue vills according to their will but it could help the noobs and make the game more enjoyable for them.
Why is noobfying the game such a bad thing?

 

Most people are sharing their opinion about the matter which I think it's fair, I think u would have the same reactions if ud plan a bf tournament with no exploration tbh

Not sure this is comparable, didn't we already have BF Tournaments with no exploration in the past?

This is just smth. new and we don't rly know yet how it will affect the game for the better/worse, making the communication easier sounds like a good thing to me.
Personally I would have reinvented the carto-tech and removed it to the tc instead to just nerf the market, but so far I haven't seen why this change could be bad (prolly because we had no big Tournament with it yet).

I think it was great at the GL vs WWP Showmatch with viper telling Nili through palisade-foundations where he should build the mining camp + tower in early game.
This felt way more like Teamgame-communication compared to the usual.

 

I can confirm that Norway A is signed up today, the roster being: TheViper, MbL, Kellar, Buddy and Tor (aka Plogen)!

 

Honestly, it sounds like most (if not all) the top players (the ones that have shared their opinion that is) are against shared exploration (Nicov, Miguel, Dogao etc).

We should respect the top players opinions and a poll among all participants should be the decisive factor here imho.

 

We should respect the top players opinions and a poll among all participants should be the decisive factor here imho.

Great idea!

 

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

Holy **** I didn't know it was possible to be more deluded than the arena community but the black forest boys sure are getting there. Just cuz some good players are playing in black forest now doesn't mean it's suddenly not a low skill noob map that has little in common with the rest of aoe2

 

Great idea!

View attachment 204608

Thanks for this (also appreciate the sophisticated irony in „Great idea“).

I am not on this platform (assume it‘s discord). Too old for this stuff, i am only on aoezone lol

 

Damn, this Blackforest vs Arabia vs Arena thing is turning into 1.6 vs Source vs CS. I'm getting the popcorn

 

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.



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.




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

Black forest gets a couple good tournaments in the last year and suddenly such community wants to impose what's the right thing to do in competitive TG. Everyone who doesn't agree is just an old aoc conservative caveman!!! "Next long overdue step in this long progress". Says who? It was never requested in all these years until very recently by 1 particular group of players.

And no, it is nowhere comparable to SQ vs MQ. It was literally frustrating, annoying to play. There is nothing like that in TG unless you are too lazy to ask your teammate to flare stuff. Or don't want to invest in a market.

So, yes, you just want to noobify the game just because other games have shared vision from scratch. Which we shouldn't care because they are different games.

Imo TG-Tournaments are currently not that interesting to watch (except on a few Maps) so any change is welcome I guess.
People are so quick to judge, why not have a Tournament with it and see whether it's enjoyable or not, we had portuguese tg-bonus before anyway.
Wouldn't be too surprised if this change makes TG Tournaments way more interesting and if not, it's easy to disable.

Agreed. Watching 18p archers with a yolo eco everygame is an absolute snoozefest. And we want to double it down by making so much easier for players to go lame together min 0 or kill lumberjacks. All with 0 effort by not even dictating where to attack.

I don't get how shared vision would make the game more interesting for viewers/casters while removing the most important skill in teamgame.

 

Put the carto tech back in the market and double the cost. Problem solved

 

Honestly, it sounds like most (if not all) the top players (the ones that have shared their opinion that is) are against shared exploration (Nicov, Miguel, Dogao etc).

We should respect the top players opinions and a poll among all participants should be the decisive factor here imho.

Not only have we made a feedback poll for all participants which is greatly in favour of Yes vs No, I have also made a captains only poll who should get feedback from their own team. This should give us a good view of what individuals feel like (there has been some people with different view points within teams), but also more from team perspective as some teams are bigger than others.

 

democracy was a mistake

 

Not only have we made a feedback poll for all participants which is greatly in favour of Yes vs No, I have also made a captains only poll who should get feedback from their own team. This should give us a good view of what individuals feel like (there has been some people with different view points within teams), but also more from team perspective as some teams are bigger than others.

All of that is good and well, but quite frankly I get the impression that the overwhelming majority of the "Yes" voters will be out in the qualis or the early stages, while the "No" voters will end up playing the decisive rounds with shared exploration. If the BF crowd wants to keep shared exploration for BF, I don't think anyone will make a fuss, but the only argument for having shared exploration in every other map is that MS added it to ranked TGs (where it does makes sense, sort of, seeing as lots of people queue solo and communication is an issue). This, on the other hand, is a teamgame tournament where people are expected to showcase their teamwork and chemistry (or lack thereof). I really don't see how dumbing down the settings helps with that, and I very much trust the instincts and experience of people [read: Suomi, BR] who have been playing competitive high level team games for years, decades even, over 16xx BF fans on this one.

Worst case scenario, run a new poll for the main event, with the qualified teams voting whether they want to go through with these settings or not.

 

All of that is good and well, but quite frankly I get the impression that the overwhelming majority of the "Yes" voters will be out in the qualis or the early stages, while the "No" voters will end up playing the decisive rounds with shared exploration. If the BF crowd wants to keep shared exploration for BF, I don't think anyone will make a fuss, but the only argument for having shared exploration in every other map is that MS added it to ranked TGs (where it does makes sense, sort of, seeing as lots of people queue solo and communication is an issue). This, on the other hand, is a teamgame tournament where people are expected to showcase their teamwork and chemistry (or lack thereof). I really don't see how dumbing down the settings helps with that, and I very much trust the instincts and experience of people [read: Suomi, BR] who have been playing competitive high level team games for years, decades even, over 16xx BF fans on this one.

Worst case scenario, run a new poll for the main event, with the qualified teams voting whether they want to go through with these settings or not.

We can consider that. The main reason from our perspective that it's included is not the player feedback, it's that we have TG rating as part of the seeding process. Now that the devs made that change, it makes sense for the settings used in practice to be used in the competition. If the settings didn't change from the devs perspective we likely wouldn't even be having this conversation. I hope they are aware of the knock on effect they can have.

But, please note it's much more common to hear the negative vs the positive on aoe zone. From the feedback gathered so far, it's very much in favour of yes vs no, on an individual level.

And yes, there are even some players within teams that actually disagree with each other.

If players want to be part of the process in this they can first sign up, and secondly take part in the discord which they have all been pinged for.

 

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

I think pointing out BF is a specific and different situation is fair enough. For example it's played on explored and no-one (afaik) is suggesting we should implement that for every teamgame.

Personally I'm leaning towards shared vision being a good thing but BF being quite different is a reasonable point to raise in response so that example imo.

 

But, please note it's much more common to hear the negative vs the positive on aoe zone. From the feedback gathered so far, it's very much in favour of yes vs no, on an individual level.

If players want to be part of the process in this they can first sign up, and secondly take part in the discord which they have all been pinged for.

But that is literally the issue - 8 9xx elo guys can sign up as Botswana A (sorry, Botswana) and vote, and that's twice as many votes as Suomi gets for a team that will be lucky to reach feudal age vs Ecuador D (who will have probably voted for shared exploration as well). To me at least this sounds like trying to legitimise the choice of settings by putting it up to vote knowing both that the overwhelming majority of players will vote "yes" and that most of the "yes" voters will be out after the first few rounds. Not to be a purist here but if we were to put everything up to a vote to the entire community we would end up playing Nations Cup on Regicide Forest Nothing with exploding villagers.

 

But that is literally the issue - 8 9xx elo guys can sign up as Botswana A (sorry, Botswana) and vote, and that's twice as many votes as Suomi gets for a team that will be lucky to reach feudal age vs Ecuador D (who will have probably voted for shared exploration as well). To me at least this sounds like trying to legitimise the choice of settings by putting it up to vote knowing both that the overwhelming majority of players will vote "yes" and that most of the "yes" voters will be out after the first few rounds. Not to be a purist here but if we were to put everything up to a vote to the entire community we would end up playing Nations Cup on Regicide Forest Nothing with exploding villagers.

Considering that this is a community tourney, why shouldn't the vote of a team from Botswana matter as much as the vote of Finland?

Yeah I agree that the teams with lower skill level would want shared exploration on because it narrows the communication gap in their team compared to established teams which have been playing together for years. Sounds like a good thing. Unless you're an established team who'd prefer to maintain the skill gap instead of trying to think of new strategies in a strategy game.

 

if we were to put everything up to a vote to the entire community we would end up playing Nations Cup on Regicide Forest Nothing with exploding villagers.

And who can say it wouldn't be glorious?! :P

 

I'm not a player, so its not up to me, but like some here did mention, I like the thought that a TG tourney also emphasis on the team-communication and it pays off if you understand each other well.
I do see a difference between ranked play and TG tourney, like others here mentioned.
But finding a solution in a constructive way with respect for each other is most important.

 

But that is literally the issue - 8 9xx elo guys can sign up as Botswana A (sorry, Botswana) and vote, and that's twice as many votes as Suomi gets for a team that will be lucky to reach feudal age vs Ecuador D (who will have probably voted for shared exploration as well). To me at least this sounds like trying to legitimise the choice of settings by putting it up to vote knowing both that the overwhelming majority of players will vote "yes" and that most of the "yes" voters will be out after the first few rounds. Not to be a purist here but if we were to put everything up to a vote to the entire community we would end up playing Nations Cup on Regicide Forest Nothing with exploding villagers.

Can you please count how many 0xx or below 1k people signed up for this tourny so far? I guarantee there is something wrong with the elementary school math you grew up with, and I recommend a refresher course on addition. If the fact that influenza liked your comment did not tip you off on how **** this take is you might wish to learn other things as well.

 

Considering that this is a community tourney, why shouldn't the vote of a team from Botswana matter as much as the vote of Finland?

It's not because they are from Botswana, as much as you might like to imply this is somehow a race issue, but because a large number of low Elo players signing up together (which is what I explicitly said and you knowingly omitted, focusing on the countries instead), however unlikely they might be to win the event, can have a much higher impact on the settings of the entire event than a team that is actually competitive, aims to win the tournament, and whose members (at least some of them) derive their income from prize money.

Yeah I agree that the teams with lower skill level would want shared exploration on because it narrows the communication gap in their team compared to established teams which have been playing together for years. Sounds like a good thing. Unless you're an established team who'd prefer to maintain the skill gap instead of trying to think of new strategies in a strategy game.

It might be a good thing if you're playing kickabout with your mates, but it's a god awful idea if you try to organise a competitive event with a five figure prizepool. How is rewarding lower skill in this context a good thing exactly? As for the notion that high level teams are less likely to "think of new strategies" than low elo teams, I think that's not only wrong but also quite insulting to people like Rubenstock or Lyx who have historically gone out of their way to come up with crazy strats in team games - coincidentally, strats that rely on their better team communication skills and on disrupting their enemies' teamwork.