NAC 4 - Trailer

[The Bloodless]

The best in the world is a statement I wouldn't debate. The best out of 8 billion is a ridiculous statement though.

46000 is the number of accounts on the ladder according to aoe2.net. Sure you might count a few thousand more or less, but that doesnt change anything about the 8 billion statement.

128000 is the sum of ranked match players on aoe2.net, including dm, eq, and tg. If you look only at rm tg there's 77000. there are also unranked (probably an equal amount). Not to mention another possible equal amount on other platforms aside from de.

It's a lot more than I would have expected.

Does LeBron James consider himself not the best out of 8 billion in his sport?

 

[TopperHarley]

The tournament was great, we saw amazing performances by both the players and casters.

However, Flemish militia killed some of the fun. This tech is super boring and creates anticlimactic and ugly moments, hopefully this meme can be removed from the game for good ASAP

 

[USC_kiky]

Does LeBron James consider himself not the best out of 8 billion in his sport?

Nah, he is just the best of the total 450 NBA players, so like 1/450 = top 0.2% which amounts to a top 280 player in the 128000 players recorded by aoe2.net.

In the qualification stage of Redball Wololo that had 256 sign-up players, a top 280 player like LeBron James will be eliminated in the very first round

 

[Snizl]

Does LeBron James consider himself not the best out of 8 billion in his sport?

Let me phrase it like this:
If you consider every human alive, eligible for competition in your specific activity, no matter the age, no matter if they've even ever heard of the thing or shown any interest in it, why stop there? Why not claim superiority over all other live forms on planet earth?

 

[vince]

Let me phrase it like this:
If you consider every human alive, eligible for competition in your specific activity, no matter the age, no matter if they've even ever heard of the thing or shown any interest in it, why stop there? Why not claim superiority over all other live forms on planet earth?

lol wut

 

[akku]

What was the peak and average viewership of the finals? Any ideas? I think I saw 40K sometime in chat

 

[akku]

Also, the last match sucked. Flemish militia need at least 2 min of research time and should be notified at start of the research.

 

[kalpit00]

Nili mentioned this in this video, "people aren't really countering Flemish and arena clowns like Modri and Dracken would deal with it in a better way"

The problem with the tech is not the fact one can convert all of their economy units into military units in a click. It's that you don't have to mandatorily do that, and you can hide your unit comp whilst mega booming. Hence why it is so powerful on Arena where you are safe behind stone walls

That last game if Liereyy decided to "counter" Flemish from the start of imperial age
-> fortified wall 5 layers, more ranges in the back of his base and get 50-60 HCs with 5-6 bbcs to snipe trebs, he would still lose.

Because Hera will simply not click the button.

Even if he has boomed to 180-200 vils, he will have collected so many more resources in form of food and wood (and also allll of those extra golds in the middle because Liereyy will be fatslobbing inside his walls) that he can produce to a full Paladin Powerplay followed by a transition to Burgundian HCs and bbcs

We can argue all day long about how burgundians is broken on arena for the endless list of bonuses (eco ups cheaper and one age earlier, cav techs 50% cheaper, Relics generate food and Farmers generate golds). But all of these do not make the civ broken, they make the civ unique and better.

It's the "actual" stone walls on Arena that allow Burgundians to hide their gameplan and let them freely boom to 200 vils

When you combine this with the possibility of Flemish is what makes Burgundians broken.

"Damned if you do, Damned if you don't" kind of situation.

Burgundian player freely booming till 200 vils behind stone walls

-> You try to attack them with fwd castle siege and whatever comp. They click a button, all 200 vils become army push you back and win

-> You don't try to attack them and prepare to counter Flemish by turtling in your base. You still lose because they will then get all map control, extra golds, an extremely potent 200 vil boom where they can delete vils, play standard full Paladin HC play and roll you over

The best (and only play imo) vs Burgundians is to break the walls earlier in the game. You can't let them boom freely. There comes a point where the economy just booms exponentially. Like it may time 20 mins in game time to reach till 80 vils (on RF the benchmark is like 20 mins 100 vils but thats with pond), and then after that like 5 more mins to reach 160+ vils doubling the vil count

That's why you need to do something before they reach this critical point of boom. Just go 1 tc fwd castle drop or something to bust open the walls, followed by fast imp of some sorts. It's the only way to deny them from booming. -> Even this is not a guaranteed winning play, Hera vs Liereyy in group stage where Hera was Turks doing the push, Liereyy was still able to click the button with 100ish vils and push him back (Hera resigned but I think he could have won this game, Liereyy was no way near the farm set up or food bank to reboom bank into it)

 

[Lokalo]

Well I agree that it's a combination. Would say it's quite broken tech overall, especially that even in some cases you might defend it and Burgundians be back to 120 vills already, is just stupid. At least they shouldn't be able to make more vills or something like that. Overall don't think it fits aoe2, it always was about balancing stuff out and this thing is just out of control and can be used in so many different situations. And it just gives so much room to play, is hard to go halbs vs burgundians because of flemish, but how else you can stop 50% cheaper paladin power play? Is just dumb. Although at same time Nili is right that it might be not as broken if other civ would get it. For example usually no one talks about Last Crusade. But if Burgundians with their amazing eco and cheap and fast paladin play could get that tech on top it probably be super OP, because you just couldn't make halb and counter Paladins(well similar as now with flemish). You just can't give cheapest Paladins in the game, also faster researched as you get cavalier in castle age and give unreasonable halb counter.

But both those games with flemish between Hera and Liereyy just shows it's a totally nonsense tech and it always was from both balance and aoe2 theme sides and it was told thousands of times. I personally have no idea how it's even in the game for this long, that's crazy.

Also glad Nili aknowledges that it was bit too many mixed/pond maps.

 

[HappyLeaves]

What was the peak and average viewership of the finals? Any ideas? I think I saw 40K sometime in chat

peak 41298, average 34202

 

[shm0wt]

I enjoyed the tournament, but that last game sucked. Real let down after what I thought was a consistently good final up to that point, with close games and very high level of play overall. I know several top players have already weighed in during interviews etc., but from my PoV as a viewer, it sucked. I'm not one to browbeat the devs normally over balance issues but this really has to be addressed. If it's not I think the tech should be banned in future tournaments.

It's well explored enough now that I thank we can confidently say there is no real counterplay at the pro level. Everyone wants there to be an answer, but I'm not convinced by any of the suggestions I've heard.

1) Rushing doesn't work, at least on closed maps. On open maps you can obviously try and end the game before Imp, but on Arena, you give up on eco to make a castle age or fast Imp push happen and you just die to 60 flemish militia anyway. Even with "counter units" like janis.

2) Counter units don't work. There's no unit that counters flemish hard enough to clear them up before you've sustained massive damage that you can conceivably mass in time before your opponent clicks the button. Hand cannons probably are your best shot, but we saw that from Liereyy and it looked unconvincing.

3) Fortified wall doesn't work. Trebs exist. An opponent who makes the revolution has a castle and has access to trebs. Those fortified walls will crumble fast. It only needs one hole for the militia to pour in.

Plus as has been pointed out, even if you get lucky with one of these strats, you're still at a big disadvantage. The Burgundians player can always hold off on the revolution, spend the res on other army or siege, and then still do the revolution later once you've been forced into a different approach. And if they do go for it, and you manage to kill 180 flemish militia and save some of your eco, a good player will already have reboomed to 100 vils by the time you're done cleaning the fm out of your own base. It's just straight up busted unfortunately. It has to go.

 

[TheCapybara]

I don't think focusing on the strength of Flemish Revolution is all that helpful: the tech itself is not necessarily overpowered in everyday gameplay. There are instances, of course, where it is busted, in large part because it's attached to arguably the strongest closed map 1v1 civ at present.

My frustration is at how out of step with the rest of the game it is. It is, essentially, an all or nothing mechanic, typically used when a player is either confident it will end the game completely, or as a last-ditch attempt in an otherwise hopeless situation. Either way, it is likely the game will end (win or lose) very shortly after being researched. No other tech in the game has such an overwhelming impact in such a short space of time.

This is what made the final game so disappointing for me. Anticipating that, from a fairly early stage, the game was going to be decided by the success or failure of one all-in tech. No particular nuance, no ebb and flow, not even that much scope for skill expression (as there is in different types of all-ins).

The crux of it is that a tech which leads to an instant military swing results in a design crunch against the rest of the game. Nerfing the tech doesn't really change anything (except potentially means we never see it at all) - really, it needs a fundamental rework (or removal) in order to remain more in character with the game at large.