CivBuilder FFA - Thoughts and Feedback

[T-West]

Congratulations to the winners!

Spoiler: Winners

chrizbee, Ray, and dianteforlife

Those were the most impressive Organ Guns I've ever seen! I'd like to do another one of these events, but I think we need to come up with ideas for improving the settings first.

I had banned the "new" unique units, such as the Photoman, out of a hesitancy that they would be too strong. In hindsight I probably should have done the same with the custom bonuses and unique technologies. Getting an additional 13 attack for gunpowder units by researching University technologies is pretty OP. And the Royal Battle Elephants had so much HP, especially coupled with the Sicilians bonus, that they couldn't realistically be killed in time to reset the monument timer. It might be worth experimenting with a longer countdown. Maybe 150 years would make the games more interesting, or at least give sufficient time for sniping the King of the player holding the monument.

Most players only stacked military bonuses. I was interested in whether an economic strategy, such as combining the Chinese and Lithuanian bonuses, would work on Nomad. But everyone just made Elephants and gunpowder instead. Perhaps that's just the nature of FFA KotH games though.

I think City Ruins and Cracks of Ornlu worked out well as FFA maps. I'd definitely host a map scripting contest if we do this again.

I was impressed that players were able to navigate the CivBuilder website and get their civs submitted. The accessibility of modding tools is really important. Of course it's been "possible" to run an even like this by using the Advanced Genie Editor. But the website makes it simple to pick a bunch of units and bonuses and combine them to form a civ. It's still a hassle to have to download the local mods, unzip them, and copy files around just to test a civ. Hopefully there are improvements we can make here before doing another one of these.

Here are some questions (for anyone who played or watched the games) for which I'd appreciate any feedback.

• What games modes would you want in a future event (more KotH, pure Regicide, TGs, 1v1s, etc)?
• How should the point costs of items in the technology tree change (e.g. Heresy being 1 point for Elephant civs is super cheap)?
• What bonuses and units should be allowed/disallowed?
• How did you like the maps?
• What difficulties did you have using the website?
• Any other feedback, recommendations, or changes you want to see?

 

[Modri]

I really like the whole idea of building your own civs and I think the website if very well done and all you guys are doing a great job hosting these events. Two things I think should be improved in the future:

1. The fact that it wasn’t only king of the hill (which is the selected game mode) but also regicide should have been emphasized more. I think 3 out of 8 players in the high brackets missed that vital piece of information and our civs were accordingly very poorly done. Not saying it’s not our fault for missing it (it is) but I also played a civ builder show match before that vs Hallis where both of us completely misunderstood how the civ picking was supposed to be done. I think working on better clarifications of settings would benefit these show matches greatly.

2. Some guys shouldn’t play in 8 player post imp ffas. In our game as soon as imperial age hit and big armies started spawning two players got red clock and then turtle lag persisted till the end of the game. That made ranged units useless and the whole game from that point on was just a pain. Sure I died, but I’ve died in many ffas before this and will die in many more but this game was the single most unenjoyable ffa game I’ve ever played simply due to the insane computer lag. It's 2022, if your computer can't handle it, don't sign up and ruin the experience for other players.

Besides that I’m looking forward to future civ builder events and hope to be a part of them!

 

[b1gwalt]

Thanks for hosting, it was fun. I played in the mid elo event. My thoughts (answering your points):

- I didn't like KotH Regicide. Maybe I'm just not a huge fan of KotH (I've not really played it before), but I was wanting to go for king snipes and it became apparent quickly that that would be impossible because of the KotH win condition. Maybe this is more due to the elephants camping the middle meaning the monument timer never reset, not sure. I think either have one or the other would probably be best (I vote regicide).

- I don't really have any thoughts about the points in the tech tree - it seemed pretty fair enough to me. You could design a civ that had all the techs you needed for a couple of gold and trash units with 275 points. Making individual techs like heresy cost more points wouldn't really do much to improve elephant civs.

- The elephant civs. The whole point of this is to make completely OP civs, but sicilian elephants and KotH is not a good combination. It simply takes too long to kill the elephants, even with a few players working together, so you can just camp the middle. Also the extra bonuses/techs for elephants are kind of crazy (which I did not realise when making my infantry civ 11), so maybe just limiting techs to those available in the game would balance things out a bit? This is way less fun though. The -40% cost, insane hp and 50% bonus damage reduction combination elephants masterpiece is the point of this mode. To be honest, banning the sicilian bonus is probably worth considering because of how broken it is for elephants. It would have been cool to see one person with an insane douche civ, one person with obsidian arrow chu ko nu, one with infantry, one with elephants, one monk siege, etc. but when there is a clear advantage for one particular strategy I think that shows that the balance is off.

- Not sure about Nomad for KotH regicide with 8 people... The chaos is good but it can be pretty unfair.

- I wish the website would show the civ bonuses you've selected while you're picking them without having to click your flag to go back to the tech tree screen and see the civs. Otherwise it worked fine.

-Other points: I wish I had a couple of civs to pick from... When I saw everyone had picked elephants I kind of knew there was nothing to be done for me. Maybe everyone can submit a few civs, you get a day to check them all out, then pick the civ you want to play and only that one is included in the mod pack? Or you select all 3 and make a low elo game mod, mid elo game mod and high elo game mod. This is obviously a lot more effort.

Anyway, thanks for hosting, it was fun and hopefully you do more in the future!

 

[RAY]

I would love to see a 16 team 2v2 tournament with these settings (combined max elo for balanced games?). Lag, and problems with elephants, gunpowder could be mostly solved by open maps, if not those 2 techs banned

Perhaps players could pick other civs in quarterfinals onwards to make it more fun. This way even if some strategy become dominant in the first round teams can work around it. Example:

Ro16: bo1, each team picks their own civs
Ro8 onwards: bo3, each team pick own civs for g1, hidden pick for g2 onwards

Casting recs for the ro16 and ro8 would probably be a lot easier as well

 

[eC_Gurke]

I am someone who randomly turned into the low elo ffa.
The crazy organ guns really caught my interest, so I checked out that civ. Then i got curious about what some of the high level players had though off.

In the end my interest dwindled with every bonus/upgrade that I had never heard of.

Royal battle elephants? City walls? Etc..etc..

I had no Idea where they came from and I just couldnt relate to the event anymore
So for me this would have been way more appealing if it had restricted itself to everything thats currently in the game.

Because i think a lot of players had those "what if we combine this and that" thoughts, but for me it was like you made those new things up.

 

[chrizbee]

@eC_Gurke
City Walls are actually part of the game (campaigns and scenario editor). Tbh they were not overpowered at all since there are better team bonuses than that.
I've picked them since they give me one more university tech (which means +1 attack). That tech on the other hand was quite overpowered...

Maybe next time T-West needs to release a list of techs and units that are not allowed.

Also I love @RAY s idea!

 

[DeeDarFan]

As I see it, Modri lose the game early is nothing about lag.
Back to see the record, Modri's ele archer has only 6+4 ATK, forgot to research tusk sword or Elite, while dianteforlife's royal ele has 4+4 P armor.
There's nothing to complain about. Maybe archer civ is just too weak in this game.

 

[StringerBell]

Congratulations to the winners!

Spoiler: Winners

chrizbee, Ray, and dianteforlife

Those were the most impressive Organ Guns I've ever seen! I'd like to do another one of these events, but I think we need to come up with ideas for improving the settings first.

I had banned the "new" unique units, such as the Photoman, out of a hesitancy that they would be too strong. In hindsight I probably should have done the same with the custom bonuses and unique technologies. Getting an additional 13 attack for gunpowder units by researching University technologies is pretty OP. And the Royal Battle Elephants had so much HP, especially coupled with the Sicilians bonus, that they couldn't realistically be killed in time to reset the monument timer. It might be worth experimenting with a longer countdown. Maybe 150 years would make the games more interesting, or at least give sufficient time for sniping the King of the player holding the monument.

Most players only stacked military bonuses. I was interested in whether an economic strategy, such as combining the Chinese and Lithuanian bonuses, would work on Nomad. But everyone just made Elephants and gunpowder instead. Perhaps that's just the nature of FFA KotH games though.

I think City Ruins and Cracks of Ornlu worked out well as FFA maps. I'd definitely host a map scripting contest if we do this again.

I was impressed that players were able to navigate the CivBuilder website and get their civs submitted. The accessibility of modding tools is really important. Of course it's been "possible" to run an even like this by using the Advanced Genie Editor. But the website makes it simple to pick a bunch of units and bonuses and combine them to form a civ. It's still a hassle to have to download the local mods, unzip them, and copy files around just to test a civ. Hopefully there are improvements we can make here before doing another one of these.

Here are some questions (for anyone who played or watched the games) for which I'd appreciate any feedback.

• What games modes would you want in a future event (more KotH, pure Regicide, TGs, 1v1s, etc)?
• How should the point costs of items in the technology tree change (e.g. Heresy being 1 point for Elephant civs is super cheap)?
• What bonuses and units should be allowed/disallowed?
• How did you like the maps?
• What difficulties did you have using the website?
• Any other feedback, recommendations, or changes you want to see?

6 bounes per civilization its too much. 4 ist fair enougth, it gives many more strategic possibilities, there would really be an opportunity cost choosing between the various bonuses.

Another suggestion is to make a tier list of the different bonuses. (eg 2 op bonus, 1 regular bonus, 1 mediocre). in this way much more diversity and creativity would be seen.
It would be great if a team tournament could take place in this format.

 

[Semisky]

The game is fun to watch, but I think FFA is kind of too messy to have people really appreciate their own civs. And if hosting such FFA again, we might see repetitive civ designs and it might become boring.

I suggest to prevent elephant rainbows or repetitive "meta" again we could either
1) Continue the previous 1v1s. "Fair choices"
2) TG with each team having non-repetitive bonuses
3) Add 2 random bonuses for all participants. AKA some admin constraints.

 

[MuscleChamp]

I am someone who randomly turned into the low elo ffa.
The crazy organ guns really caught my interest, so I checked out that civ. Then i got curious about what some of the high level players had though off.

In the end my interest dwindled with every bonus/upgrade that I had never heard of.

Royal battle elephants? City walls? Etc..etc..

I had no Idea where they came from and I just couldnt relate to the event anymore
So for me this would have been way more appealing if it had restricted itself to everything thats currently in the game.

Because i think a lot of players had those "what if we combine this and that" thoughts, but for me it was like you made those new things up.

Yes I agree with this one, if the idea is to make the most OP civ (great idea) then introducing new techs and units kinda kills the hype for me, because it feels like just coming up with something new, and it is not hard to think of new stuff that would be OP. Sure, maybe the techs are somewhere in the game, but it feels that way because there is no civ that has them.

Overall I enjoyed the event, I think there is much more potential though, maybe 1v1 is better suited in the future, so you have more time to introduce the civs and more strategic options. In FFA there is only lategame.

Would love to see more of it in the future

 

[flightlessbird]

I think removing units cost cheaper bonuses is probably one decent approach, of all the bonuses these are often the strongest and most abusable and can usually stack with a ton of other bonuses (also gunpowder uni one seems obviously overpowered).

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I agree with others that it doesn't make much sense to include bonuses that aren't found on a civ in a multiplayer game. The idea is to combine from the set of things that are familiar to you in that setting.

 

[Mysterious Shadow]

It's so fun! Wish I played in it because I have many creative ideas for OP civs. So I demand MOOOOOOOOOAR of this!

 

[Tree]

Finally got the time to watched the games! My thoughts as a viewer:

1. Eco bonus doesn’t work in FFAs – maybe team games

In FFA the optimal strategy is to go boom and use diplo to make other people fight themselves anyway, so the early game doesn’t really that much and it’s just how powerful your civ can be at your post-imp peak. In team games the timing would matter and eco bonus would be of much more importance.

2. Remove custom bonus & Sicilian’s -50% bonus damage

Not much has to say about removing custom bonus, they are not well designed and easily abused (what was that +1 gunpowder damage for each uni tech nonsense). As for Sicilians bonus, the reason why it works for Sicilians is because of how other aspects of the civ was designed (same goes for bonus like Malay’s cheaper elephants, they are balanced with missing 2 armor upgrades), yet till this day still quite some people consider the bonus ridiculous and Hauberk cavs unbalanced. There’s no effective way to counter Sicilian Battle Elephants or War Elephants.

3. Civ-building without restrictions may be fundamentally flawed

AoE2 itself is not fun if every unit is a walking cataphract. Army composition, strategy and macro is what makes the game fun. Yet unrestricted civ-building ultimately favors players to make invincible, unbeatable army, rather than using creativity in formulating a civ and its strategy.

Auctioning bonus/UT/UU could work, something like “All players write down their intended civ bonus. Players automatically get unrepeated ones. Repeated civ bonuses are auctioned. Then goes for another around for players who haven’t completed their civ bonus.” It forces players to reformulate their civ once they couldn’t get what they wanted, and favors creative / non-meta builds. Though it might risk the game being highly-dependent on how well a player played the auction game.

Additional rules could be made too, such as every civ should have 2 eco bonus + 2 military bonus + 1 miscellaneous bonus (e.g. free town watch and town patrol). This could make the tournament much more closer to the intended direction of civ building.

Similarly, maybe how tech-tree building is done should also be adjusted. Right now it’s quite easy to cheese by not having any tech in Barracks / Docks / Monestry / University etc. So maybe on top of the suggestions above, instead let players allocate points only to the Final upgrades of unit.
e.g. 9 points max (Arbalest 3, Elite Skirm 1, HC 2, Heavy CA 4, Hussar 2, Winged Hussar 3, Paladin 5, H.Camel 3, E.Battle Elephant 5 etc.)
Or maybe include final blacksmith and key upgrades like bloodlines, thumb ring to the list as well. This could also make civ-building more balanced and prevent overpowered meta build.

4. Game mode… I think the problem is just the unrestricted civ-building causing the middle impossible to contest. Holding a 1v6 is not supposed to happen in a FFA.

Thanks T-west for hosting the tournament! I look forward to the next few editions. See if we can get more pro players to play next time, it’ll be good for publicity and hype :D

 

[IYIyTh]

Auctioning/drafting bonuses sounds freaking lit.

Probably could have that happen in real time and then dissect on stream for hours of content tbh.