Are you going to publish this novel 11Because the “AoE community” is supposedly rapidly growing I will take some time out of the day to write an answer to your question but my answer is aimed at all the new players and old players who have only now started playing arena regularly because DE matchmaking forced them to. It is NOT aimed at all the well-known haters of the map because I know very well that no amount of explanation will sway them in their hatred of arena. I might repeat some of the things Dracont already mentioned but that's because I typed this before I read his post.
I started AoE multiplayer in 2013 and atleast since then arena has been the 2nd most played 1v1 map (after arabia). I have no idea which one would be 3rd (maybe nomad) but it obviously means a lot of people like arena and never got bored of it and thus its meta is well developed (in comparison to all these new hyped up maps that keep appearing and disappearing in recent tournaments and majority forgets even their names after a while) and strategically diverse.
First let me dispel some myths that are being constantly spread by people who never actually play the map:
1. “Arena is all about 1 tc monk, treb, fast-imp type of pushes.” Straight FI with any civ has been proven to be easily defendable and extremely risky strat for atleast 3 years now. Literally nobody does it and if they do it, any intermediate arena player can easily deal with it with full castle age army (and HERESY if the civ has it). Yes, it “works” when Viper manages to convert (kill) 10 heresy light cav with 10 monks and losing nothing but that doesn’t translate to the rest of us. There are many ways to make FI work, but they all involve some earlier aggression that eventually transitions into FI.
2. “Monk wars are just RNG, it involves no skill.” Then why do the same people keep winning little relic skirmishers (such as 3 light cav and 2 monks vs 4 monks and 1 spear)? It’s because we know exactly how and when to transfer conversions from the light cav to the monk or the spear, when to keep following with the monk, when to go back, when to delete it, when to deselect-micro, when to number-micro and when to shift-micro (with theocracy). There is a ton of skill involved which comes with experience just like with any other micro. Yes, there is a larger RNG factor to it (and converting got considerably stronger in DE) but over hundreds of games that eventually evens out for everybody. But sadly 90% of people actually believe they are the ones who get unlucky with the conversions more often than their opponents. So for the most part it’s people crying and complaining after they run with their 2 scouts to kill 3 monks with sanctity and get both converted while killing nothing. That literally happened a hundred times watching 2k2-2k3 open map players. It’s like me microing 5 feudal skirms vs 8 bodkin xbow and wondering why I got rekt with the counter unit. Many top players don’t even know they need to insta upgrade light cav or the amazing value of heresy vs any monk push.
3. “Arena players have no macro, if it gets to a 200 pop game, they are dead.” Yes, there are some among us for whom this holds true just like there are in any other map (Hoang on ara for example). On the other hand, players such as Melkor and Stefan are as hard to kill on arena when they’re 200 pop as any other expert who is even remotely close to their rating (this again excludes the very top of the food chain such as the Viper). Again it comes down to ARENA EXPERIENCE which involves doing proper unit choices (that often vastly differ from 200 pop arabia games), using MQ efficiently etc. If I can beat Hera or Liereyy or Laaaaan in a long game when I have (at best) half of their APM it means I’m atleast doing something right macro-wise.
Now the following is my own opinion on arena and why I love it more than any other map of AoE.
I like the strategic part of strategy games more than the execution part. You can say it’s because I’m slow but you can also say it’s because I’m smart. Either way I always prefer to win by outsmarting the opponents to winning by outplaying them (doing mirror strategy, just executing it better). I accept many people feel the opposite way and that’s fine. But among all the maps there is no better map for trying to outsmart your opponent than arena. You start walled up so you (for the most part) avoid any dark and feudal age fights and going direct FC with a considerably smaller eco than on maps where you fought in feudal, it means the values of units change and it means losing small early castle age fights can be a lot more costly. The map is very positional which means controlling two of opponent’s extra golds can win you the game even though you’re 30 vils behind. There are no hills so the snowball effect is HUGE: there’s no big hill to run back to and camp there until you recover after losing a key fight. Most likely you’ll get rolled over in the next few minutes and game will be over. Also there is wood all around which means you can’t easily relocate after being rushed and losing part of your base: you have to actually defend it. But the most important thing on arena are TIMINGS. Because of everything mentioned above it’s super important and rewarding to have tight and clean builds and always have an exact plan of what you’re trying to achieve. Yes, reaching imp 50 seconds later because you did 2nd farm upgrade or bloodlines before clicking up can lose you the game. Doing bow saw or the wrong order of infantry upgrades in azt war can lose you the game. Sometimes doing 4 TCs instead of 3 can lose you the game. Upgrading bracer instead of onager first can lose you the game. Small things like these that wouldn’t necessarily be game-deciding on other maps where you hit imp with 160 pop and have 2k of each res to do basically whatever you want. Another reason why I like arena is because I do not enjoy feudal fights. I personally find those fights extremely boring and repetitive. Some people hate microing monks (which I find to be super fun) but I hate microing some silly skirmisher army that can’t even 1-hit a damn villager. It's all a matter of preference. Also the way I play arabia (which is to do whatever little army I need to safely wall up and go castle then do the more manlier units along with the boom) there’s actually a lot less action and a lot more waiting than on arena. Of course I realize arabia can also be extremely aggressive but I believe the current meta is leaning heavily towards walled up defensive play at the highest levels. I’m no arabia expert though. And lastly some might say I only like arena because I’m better at it, it’s actually the other way around: I’m better at it because I like it and thus play it a lot. For example, I win pretty much every 1v1 BF game in DE match-making but I still believe it’s a terrible map for 1v1. Completely one-dimensional when played properly and that is the opposite of arena.
At the end I would like to share something positive and refreshing I realized in these last few months when most top experts were playing and streaming their arena games (due to DE match-making). Over the years of coming across arena bashing posts on AoEZone (from well-established haters of the map such as robo and flu) often being liked by some of the top players I actually thought that most of them really hate and despise the map. Which kind of saddened me because I always loved to play vs them on my home map and try to overcome their amazing skill with my wits and experience. Those are my favorite type of games regardless if I win or lose. Anyway now that I actually watched them play the map, they very rarely complained or cried or raged after a loss but they actually took time on stream to think about what they did wrong or why was their opponent (let’s say a high level arena player such as Dracont) faster up than them or how he countered them better with his unit choices. They weren’t just simply dismissing the game as “ah it’s arena the no-skill-map”. I was very pleasantly surprised by people such as dogao or Nicov who would normally join in on the arena-hating-bandwagon on AoEZone. So I understood that this bashing is really only coming from people who (again) don’t ever play the map and thus really have no credibility whatsoever to judge it. Only real exception among the top players is maybe Mbl but he complains about literally everything these days so it’s irrelevant.
So all you new players that have some imagination and feel like your decision making is above average (for your current level) and you’re not scared to death of being outsmarted in a strategy game, you’re welcome to begin this hard but rewarding journey of playing and learning the ways of arena that might end some day with you reaching the highest rank in Age of Empires that is to be called an Arena Clown. Many have tried it but few have succeeded. Who knows, maybe you have it in you. Good luck!