Imo it's understable that those two semis were one sided considering that AM and GL are probably the strongest team. That's not a map problem at all. The games were realy enjoyable especially lost machos who did realy great vs GL. I think they had one or two games on their hand like the one when daut lost his wood villagers. But he did a great move by going all in one TC with berbers and killing everything then. Ggs to all!
Just to be clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that it is a map problem, quite the opposite. I just think that these maps are very unforgiving for mistakes and favor the more skilled team, making it very competitive matches (and these tend to be very one sided).
In my opinion AM and GL didn't get better, but the others played worse than in BoA2.
Call me crazy, but I believe the one sided semi finals were still the result of Aoe4 release. AoE2 ladder/competitive scene was dead for months after the release and many players didn't play much, if at all. AM and GL players on the other hand have too much raw skill in comparison to Suomi,WWP and others, so their advantage got even bigger against players, who need daily ladder to stay in shape.
Not sure to be honest. I feel out of the typical contenders for top four (Suomi, aM, WWP, and GL) Suomi and WWP are the ones that should be least affected by reduced ladder activity as they rely disproportionately much on synergies and team strategies and generally tend to play more behind closed doors. Ex ante I would have predicted the state of the ladder to hurt aM the most, but guess I was wrong