Hidden Cup 3 Main Event is here!

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I'm excited to announce Hidden Cup 3 will be casted using an overlay created by the Capture Age team! The Hidden Cup 3 overlay was designed and built specifically for Hidden Cup 3 and I have been funding the development time. They are hoping to make a more generally usable version of the overlay available to others at some time in the future, but they cannot make any guarantees. I will be posting videos using this over the next few days and feedback is very much appreciated as we close in on Hidden Cup 3!

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Players​

ACCM
Antagonist
BacT
DauT
dogao
F1Re
Hera
Liereyy
MbL
Nicov
TaToH
TheMax
TheViper
Villese
Vivi
Yo

Spoiler: Hero Names

Charlemagne
King Sancho
Joan The Maid
Bad Neighbor
Leif Erikson
Princess Yodit
Kotyan Khan
Sheriff of Nottingham
Saladin
Friar Tuck
Alaric The Goth
Vlad Dracula
Henry The Lion
William The Conqueror
Charles Martel
Emperor in a Barrel

Bracket​

https://challonge.com/hiddencup3

You can place a prediction for which heroes you think will make it through and win here!

There will be a guessing competition on the final day where you can place your guesses as to which player is which Hero!!

Timeline​

Thursday 19th: 14gmt Ro16
Friday 20th: 14gmt Ro16
Saturday 21st: 14gmt Quarterfinals
Sunday 22nd: 14gmt Semifinals & Live Grand Final

Prizepool​

Total = $56,830

Main Event
1st = $13,560
2nd = $8,540
3rd/4th = $4,520
5th-8th = $2,260
9th-16th = $1,256

Qualifiers
Top 8 = $300
9th-16th = $200
17th-32nd = $100

Showmatches
5 showmatches for $200 each

Event Funding​

Microsoft = $50,000
Oracle455 = $1,000
Anonymous = $2,000
fathertres = $5,000
MattJustSalsa = $1,500
T90Official =1$ for each Twitch Subscriber (total subcount at conclusion of HC3)

Spoiler: Funding

From Microsoft's contribution $35,000 will be used towards the prizepool and the remaining amount will cover costs & promotions for the event. For HC2 I spent roughly $10,000 out of pocket and Microsoft's generosity will ensure all parties involved in HC3 get paid for their work without extreme stress on my part. I am contributing $1 per Twitch Subscriber at conclusion of HC3 (minimum of $5,000), meaning current and future supporters of the channel contribute towards the event.

 

Overhyped and quite boring event with scripted brackets, I hope 50k viewers of aoe on twitch will generate some better events in the future

Uninteresting and quite boring hate bot post, i hope you will generate no posts anymore.

 

One don't need a closed stream tourney to hit the record. Good job. Perhap less mirror games and less water involving next time.

 

How those brackets were possible? TheViper as seed #1 facing the last ACCM #16 was sooo obvious LOL

 

How those brackets were possible? TheViper as seed #1 facing the last ACCM #16 was sooo obvious LOL

hold on why would ACCM be #16?

 

hold on why would ACCM be #16?

He was #14 if you check the qualifier. Apart from that - c'mon guys, why do you feed the troll?

 

Congrats to T90 and all involved. This event was amazing!

 

the 3-2 games were some of the most enjoyable games for a long time!

 

Islands and Bay should be erased and forever forgotten. Very bad maps. And if anyone plans on using Slopes in the future events, better ban Indians there like it was I think in NAC3 with Mongols on Valley.

Pretty sure everyone would pick mongols then.

 

I have to agree on the seeding, hera hype has been boosted due bad seedings for mr Yo, the fact that daut almost kick out hera shows how little dominance he has over the rest, since NAC 3 the truly #2 has been mr YO, and you can tell by the quality of the games and the good fight he puts to viper.

I hope next 1x1 tournaments can make more justice for mr Yo.

Anyway dogao is the biggest surprise, i was sure it was nicov because of color and game style, who would say it, both of them have always the bad luck of facing viper to stop their progress.

 

Overhyped and quite boring event with scripted brackets, I hope 50k viewers of aoe on twitch will generate some better events in the future

Shut the **** up, dude.

 

Man DauT and TaToH with those amazing strategies, clearly great preparation, and really SHOWED UP. Especially DauT, one cup away from beating Hera himself. Liereyy only a cup away as well, you could say.

Dogao with the BEASTLY water play.

Mr_Yo proving that conqs can still dominate.

MbL only an auto-queue farm button away from making the semis.

What a tournament!

 

I too think the brackets were not fully random, but I don't see the problem with that
quarter finals were amazing

big thanks to the HC3 team for this event

 

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Amazing game. Daut's treb deleting itself. I remember same happening to Viper in a ranked game ( I think it was islands Incas vs Vikings ) .

 

Are we gonna get the rec's uploaded? Would really love to see some POV's

 

Super great tournament and thanks for holding it. It's always a great fun watching the hidden cup and guess the players behind. However, it seems that the recent AoE tournaments are becoming tournaments that no matter what the tournaments names are, finally Viper will become the champion. (Except the shallow one

 

The seeding is impossible to be fully random when you have that much prize money. But I really want we can do a round robin for all the semi-list since viper always win. It makes a big difference about who is seeding #3 and #4 because viper always slaps #4 in the semifinals.

 

I asked earlier to Robo that he could do for the next editions the brackets in live stream picking the name of the heros so the transparency would be perfect but he didn"t really seemed confortable with this idea. It shouldn"t be a problem to do this to be honest. Same could be done by others tournament host. Because when we check the brackets, every lower seed is against a top player as if it was made to put all the big names in the top 8.

Great tourney anyway, wp to all the people who were involved with it.

 

The seeding is impossible to be fully random when you have that much prize money. But I really want we can do a round robin for all the semi-list since viper always win. It makes a big difference about who is seeding #3 and #4 because viper always slaps #4 in the semifinals.

I asked earlier to Robo that he could do for the next editions the brackets in live stream picking the name of the heros so the transparency would be perfect but he didn"t really seemed confortable with this idea. It shouldn"t be a problem to do this to be honnest. Same could be done by others tournament host. Because when we check the brackets, every lower seed is against a top player as if it was made to put all the big names in the top 8.

Why would it be impossible to be fully random ? Is it so hard to think that there is no hidden conspiracy in HC3 ? Man people really should look themselves at the mirror when wearing their tinfoil hats.

 

Yeah, with the exception of Tatoh vs Nicov, the r1 brackets were mostly exactly in the way they would be with regular seeding, eg seed1 vs seed16, seed2 vs seed15 etc, maybe with a variation of 1-2 spots (so e.g. seed1 vs seed14 instead of seed16). Also, seed1 and arguable seed4 in bottom bracket, seed2 and 3 in top bracket (so seed 1 and seed2 in separate brackets, seed1 also having the additional "advantage" of not having seed2 and seed3 in his bracket).

The chances of the matchups being exactly this way without any tinkering are extremely low. Especially since the exact same thing supposedly happened in the previous hidden cups as well.

We'll probably never know for sure, but there is no need to be naive, even if Robo is a nice guy. Obviously he and everyone runs into a big dilemma: if you make it completely random, you have the risk of losing many top favorites in r1, resulting in progressively more one sided rounds, therefore hurting the tournament a lot. But if you reveal that the seeding isnt completely random, then you hurt the hidden cup aspect a lot, because then people will be able to guess who is who much more easily.

 

Thank you T90 for this event, unlike previous editions this one really got me and I really thought about and enjoyed the guessing part. It was an awesome event and it’s great to see AoE rising like that.

I dont think laming res should be part of top level tournaments though. It’s partly due to HC3 maps, where build order/uptimes are so important to take control over key res (mostly fish), but overall the laming somewhat ruined the Finals. I don’t mind the result, but I do mind so one sided games on this level. Basically Hera lost High Tide in dark age, he had to play the way he did after and vs Vipers map he didn’t have a chance. Similar story on Cup. And those were Heras HMs he surely had good plans on those and I wanted to see it, but being so behind after first 5 mins each game, not much he could do regardless of how good his game plan was.

 

As in HC1 and HC2 the brackets were random i am pretty sure they were again, as they said it would be, if you guys dont believe Robo, then your god has to be pretty epic for you to believe in him and not in Robo...

 

Thank you T90 for this event, unlike previous editions this one really got me and I really thought about and enjoyed the guessing part. It was an awesome event and it’s great to see AoE rising like that.

I dont think laming res should be part of top level tournaments though. It’s partly due to HC3 maps, where build order/uptimes are so important to take control over key res (mostly fish), but overall the laming somewhat ruined the Finals. I don’t mind the result, but I do mind so one sided games on this level. Basically Hera lost High Tide in dark age, he had to play the way he did after and vs Vipers map he didn’t have a chance. Similar story on Cup. And those were Heras HMs he surely had good plans on those and I wanted to see it, but being so behind after first 5 mins each game, not much he could do regardless of how good his game plan was.

Or Hera should have been more active with scouting, instead of pushing deer and trying to be greedy.

Everything as part of game designed should be allowed. That's the competitive game and we don't really want to see post imperial trash wars.

This is one of the best finals I have ever seen, punishing opponent for every mistake.

 

Was an amazing event ! Viper outsmarted everyone, proving one more time is way ahead every player. By far.

.. I have the feeling the final has been spoiled by laming though.

The overlay, the visuals, the videos were at the top level. Congrats.

I questionned the choise of some maps in the pools though. Many lead to mirror, less interesting, matchs.
Very surprised Vikings were picked several time in Arabia. Melkor was used to that pick, right ? He was ahead everyone 11.

 

Even if they weren't random, what's the issue? The whole point of making them random is to make it harder to identify the players. Nevertheless, random brackets are unfair from a competitive point of view to the top players except the winner. So it would be totally valid and a genius idea to pretend making the brackets random but in the end to do almost perfect seeding.

 

I feel like laming should really be banned in these types of tournaments, Hera said it on his stream as well