The Grand Melee - Announcement and Discussion

Some time ago, the secretive Order of the Sheep teased us The Grand Melee, an Age of Empires II: DE happening in Hannover at the DreamHack LAN event, from the 15th to the 17th of December.

We are now happy to deliver the full message to you.

Settings specifics
The whole event will be played using the DWL game mode, also known as 9 villagers start game mode. It will allow for quicker action, while keeping the openness and strategic diversity of the standard RM mode.

Main event
The Grand Melee main event will consist of a single elimination bracket, featuring a total of 8 players.
15th of December
Quarter finals best of 5
16th of December
Semi finals best of 7
17th of December
Third place match best of 7 and Grand final best of 9

Participation
Firstly, as per their performance in the RedBull Wololo: Legacy tournament, Liereyy and TaToH has been granted an invitation to the main event.

Secondly, the other 6 participants will have to come on top of the entirely open qualifiers happening on the 3rd and 4th of December. The registration is already open and you can sign up here on start.gg

Prize money reward
The monetary reward will amount to a whopping $100,000 split between the 8 main event players as followed:

1st place: $40,000
2nd place: $20,000
3rd place: $14,000
4th place: $10,000
5th to 8th: $4,000

Where to watch?
The whole event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/theorderofthesheep

On top of that, the qualifiers will be completely open to broadcast, so you can catch them live at your favourite streamer’s channel on the 3rd and 4th of December!

Details for the broadcasting policy of the main event will be announced soon. Stay tuned...

Join the Discord server now!
Chat with us and get all the latest updates regarding The Grand Melee at https://discord.gg/vT9NWJJtp5

You can also use this announcement thread to discuss about the tournament and to send your questions and feedback.

See you soon!

 

I hope Nili's poor choice of jokes won't cost him screen time in future events because that would mean there will be a a replacement filling his spot and we'll see even more of Ellie.

 

I don't think I'll ever get that kind of APM from just grinding lmao. Dude is fast AF

 

I don't think I'll ever get that kind of APM from just grinding lmao. Dude is fast AF

still not the fastest when you compare to other RTS pros, like in SC2. By far Hera is one of the fastest players in aoe2, maybe in top 3? (I know El Matador is like really fast, like his EAPM is 160-180+ on aoeinsights, while Hera Liereyy have 120-140+)

This is why the Bo101 between Nili and El Matador was so interesting, because they are polar opposites, Nili struggles most with low speed and accuracy of clicks, while his decisions, late game and overall outlook towards maps and civs are his strengths. And Nili destroyed him iirc

If you are a fast player (like in your elo range, if you feel you are faster than your opponent, in terms of reaction times, focusing in multiple spots, eco expansion, etc etc), over time you will eventually adapt and auto pilot into certain winning plays.

Like for example, something I always try to do is if both people going drush/MAA, i will never chase enemy MAA, but counter attack. make small walls, spear range and distract him in his base and very likely he runs his MAA into my TC. And this is at 1500 lvl.

Another example is use of scouts sniping monks. Higher speed helps a lot here. And in equal games, like kts monks, or xbow/skirm mango wars - if you are the faster player, you can be smarter with your gameplay, and make him react in different spots. Like for instance, I always try to save my feudal arch and hit the woodlines with xbow when I know the opponent is focusing in the front with main army. Same with knights, you can sneak knights here and there while on the front you both are microing kts + monks, and if you are good at transitions, a good pike transition puts you in a better position. Even if you are behind in eco by 10 vils, u can end up winning games. This works a lot at mid elo (15-16xx), but after that people get tryhard and want that win so bad they will never take a bad fight, so it gets increasingly harder to force the issue with just speed.

 

@kalpit00 any place where i can watch that showmatch in english or german?

 

still not the fastest when you compare to other RTS pros, like in SC2. By far Hera is one of the fastest players in aoe2, maybe in top 3? (I know El Matador is like really fast, like his EAPM is 160-180+ on aoeinsights, while Hera Liereyy have 120-140+)

This is why the Bo101 between Nili and El Matador was so interesting, because they are polar opposites, Nili struggles most with low speed and accuracy of clicks, while his decisions, late game and overall outlook towards maps and civs are his strengths. And Nili destroyed him iirc

If you are a fast player (like in your elo range, if you feel you are faster than your opponent, in terms of reaction times, focusing in multiple spots, eco expansion, etc etc), over time you will eventually adapt and auto pilot into certain winning plays.

Like for example, something I always try to do is if both people going drush/MAA, i will never chase enemy MAA, but counter attack. make small walls, spear range and distract him in his base and very likely he runs his MAA into my TC. And this is at 1500 lvl.

Another example is use of scouts sniping monks. Higher speed helps a lot here. And in equal games, like kts monks, or xbow/skirm mango wars - if you are the faster player, you can be smarter with your gameplay, and make him react in different spots. Like for instance, I always try to save my feudal arch and hit the woodlines with xbow when I know the opponent is focusing in the front with main army. Same with knights, you can sneak knights here and there while on the front you both are microing kts + monks, and if you are good at transitions, a good pike transition puts you in a better position. Even if you are behind in eco by 10 vils, u can end up winning games. This works a lot at mid elo (15-16xx), but after that people get tryhard and want that win so bad they will never take a bad fight, so it gets increasingly harder to force the issue with just speed.

Is it that he (or other fast bois in aoe2 like viper, lierrey etc) isn't as fast as them, or is it that aoe2 doesn't require that kind of speed until late game?
We see often than in games (say arena) which goes late, the APM skyrockets, and it isn't uncommon to see the top players go till like 300apm. Because there is lot of multitasking required - controlling raid groups, main army for push, build forward, queue up, balance resources, walling etc.


Yeah of course high APM leads to stronger gameplay overall. I agree.
I also think that APM isn't "trainable" until a certain level. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but me training my ass off will at most get me to like 50-60APM.
It's a lot of natural talent that is involved in APM. I was just meaning to say that this is a talent which Hera specifically excels at amongst top 4, a strong macro + micro due to APM

Also, when did the Nili vs El Matador happen? Never heard about it

 

@kalpit00 any place where i can watch that showmatch in english or german?

i couldnt find Nili's full POV on YT or twitch but here's a cast

Showmatch Bo101: Nili vs El Matador EN VIVO! - DIA 1 | Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Redes: ✅ La Vagancia en Discord: https://discord.gg/ebDEE8pqEr✅ La Vagancia tambien esta en WhatsApp ! https://chat.whatsapp.com/FEfYSJuJDRi9Oo1vvsSPXM✅ Quer...

www.youtube.com

And here's Nili's POV from GerMonday.

Best of 101 Nili vs El Matador Teil 1 deutsch

Jeden Montag Abend gibt es deutsche Age of Empires 2 oder Age of Empires 4 Action auf meinem Twitch-Kanal (GerMon Day)Schaut doch gerne mal auf meinen ander...

www.youtube.com

Best of 101 Nili vs El Matador Teil 2 deutsch

Jeden Montag Abend gibt es deutsche Age of Empires 2 oder Age of Empires 4 Action auf meinem Twitch-Kanal (GerMon Day)Schaut doch gerne mal auf meinen ander...

www.youtube.com

 

Is it that he (or other fast bois in aoe2 like viper, lierrey etc) isn't as fast as them, or is it that aoe2 doesn't require that kind of speed until late game?
We see often than in games (say arena) which goes late, the APM skyrockets, and it isn't uncommon to see the top players go till like 300apm. Because there is lot of multitasking required - controlling raid groups, main army for push, build forward, queue up, balance resources, walling etc.

My guess would be SC2 pros are probably faster than Aoe2 pros simply because they have more actions to perform. In Aoe2, you can get by minimal actions and still win as long as they are effective actions - Daut for example. I am not too familiar with the gameplay in SC2 but as far as I know, you only have 3 civs which are completely different, unlike in Aoe2 which have 42 civs which have similar tech trees and use the Rock-Paper-Scissors balance with siege and monks. So I guess in SC2 you have to focus more on microing and production than in aoe2.

Could also be that the late game is simply more complex in SC2. Like we know in aoe2, late game usually comprises of trash wars, and you usually spam hussars at all time and position arbs or skirms behind. If enemy has halb + arb comp, you try to manuever hussars to raid or snipe siege. As a defense, enemy tries to patrol and micro manage halbs in defense. All in all these actions don't really require too much apm once you have set up this position = enough farms, castles on hills, maybe some walls on the sides, production buildings, etc. Maybe in SC2 its more complex than this and requires more APM - like idk you might have similar ideas - to raid and harrass economy, but the way to defend might require more APM and precision - only 3 civs so not all have raiding units (hussar) and defend unit (halb) so it could be more than just spamming and patrolling.

 

Yeah of course high APM leads to stronger gameplay overall. I agree.
I also think that APM isn't "trainable" until a certain level. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but me training my ass off will at most get me to like 50-60APM.
It's a lot of natural talent that is involved in APM. I was just meaning to say that this is a talent which Hera specifically excels at amongst top 4, a strong macro + micro due to APM

For a beginner who's never played an RTS before, APM can be improved. Or I would rather say, the general understanding of how RTS works can be trained.

When I started out multiplayer in Voobly in 2016, I first played vs the Barbarian AI on FE. I didn't just jump right into MP settings, I learnt step by step. I was super noob back then.

DARK AGE

• Explored Map, Medium AI. Pause before every action 11
• TC + vil HK, house HK to make 2 houses, number scout, unpause
• get sheep, basic start. pause when making lumbercamp. HK for that.
• then pause around boar lure. mill. and so on

This is how I "trained" my Hotkeys and APM lol. very soon I started beating Hardest AI on unexplored and my basic RTS mechanics (try to always make vils, houses, scouting, etc) improved. Still at this point, my military skills were potato. I only knew basic feudal building, that was either scouts or archers, and thats it. If you compare this to MP elo, I was probably 1k at this point.

FEUDAL AGE

And then, I started playing without pauses. Damn that was hard. I still had to pause in the middle of feudal age because things got out of control vs the AI 11. But I was learning the right moves (defending vs AI's feudal ranged army or scouts lol, which basically meant making more skirms or spears and sending them to my resource locations). Looking back all of this is so super noob, but it taught me RTS skills

After like 3 months or so, I was beating Hardest Barbarian AI without pauses consistently. So I decided to try MP on voobly. I was winning most of my first games. Had a 23-5 win streak on RM Beginners and got banned from it 11. So I was around 1.2k elo voobly at that time.

Then came to RM-Medieval Siege, played there for like 1-2 years and eventually worked my way to 14-1500 elo. This is where I learnt all about strategies, decision making. This is also where I was watching pros like Viper and MBL on a daily basis. Mostly MBL tho, this was the time during NAC 1-2 when he was streaming full time and was a beast. I picked up a lot of late game prowess from him, like hussar raiding, cockroaching it out 11 (No jokes, I always felt I was faster than other people in my elo range because I had practiced my hotkeys so much, so there were games I would just go 3 TC boom, make defensive mangos to shut down any pressure, and even if i lost some vils here and there, I would get to 120+ vils, drop farms and hussar my way to victory - the opponents simply did not punish my greed enough at that level. Nowadays in DE, the level has improved so much you can't even commit to 3 TC)

BETTER FEUDAL & CASTLE AGE

Eventually players became stronger, punished my greed. So I adapted into an aggressive player who likes to boom behind pressure. Even if u are behind in eco, you learn transitions, focusing into multiple spots, fighting in enemy base and macroing in ur base, better understanding of civ matchups and positions.


TL;DR
You cannot train APM per say, but you can learn hotkeys and became a more precise player if you play a lot of games, vs AI or vs opponents. It's all about playing 1000+ games 11

 

Not looking to go too in-depth, but I actually believe APM can be trained like anything else. The brain grows to accommodate a person that pushes themselves, especially with everything that’s done in repetition. There’s been experiments like that conducted. I think there’s training within a limit, then there’s training to break one. Depends how a person goes about it since thoughts alone are creating actual changes in the brain.

And not that this is a rant of sorts, but it always makes me sad whenever someone thinks something is unachievable. I think most limits are self-imposed. A lot of people just don’t seem dedicated enough to get what they want out of life in general. It’s not just limited to aoe.

 

positive note about the tournament:
The games were amazing, players were well prepared and we have seen a well deserved winner.

Streaming policy was horrible (Memb was basically excluded from the tournament. This had NAC 3 vibes all over it).

In general, the tournament didnt feel special at all. I think the two reasons are: 1) Red Bull LAN had just happened recently which had such an amazing production quality and 2) Warlords happened just before with very similar settings.

I don‘t want to comment on the quality of players interviews, it was even way below my already low expectations. But hey, what can you do without any form of relevant knowledge about the game?

Do we have an idea about peak (and average) viewership?

 

Not looking to go too in-depth, but I actually believe APM can be trained like anything else.

Of course it can. Saying it can't is bs. I remember early WC3 days following Grubby, where he ctrl-grouped his starting peons and buildings and then always spammed in the beginning of the game through them for a few minutes to warm up his apm, where nothing was happening other than creating first buildings.
You do this ctrl group spamming for 5-8 hours a day, it becomes automatic with time and together with other hotkeys + trying to speed up your mouse movement, thats APM training and it will get better. But the majority of people find it too exhausting, so they don't spam up to the point to get actually faster.

 

Of course it can. Saying it can't is bs. I remember early WC3 days following Grubby, where he ctrl-grouped his starting peons and buildings and then always spammed in the beginning of the game through them for a few minutes to warm up his apm, where nothing was happening other than creating first buildings.
You do this ctrl group spamming for 5-8 hours a day, it becomes automatic with time and together with other hotkeys + trying to speed up your mouse movement, thats APM training and it will get better. But the majority of people find it too exhausting, so they don't spam up to the point to get actually faster.

Never had an interest in Warcraft (so dunno the guy other than a quick read), but that almost sounds like some Dreams APM training regimen when he also blasted Maria - Scooter in the background. Don’t disagree btw, but I only ever did that sort of thing when I was mostly adjusting to new hotkeys.

Just in terms of training, reminds me of an old story of how Grunt practiced BOs for 6-8 hours as some preparation. Interesting to learn how a strong player from another game trains.

 

Any clarity yet on who this order of sheep are and what do they want to do further?

It feels like another EscapeAoe while having some more money to waste

 

Any clarity yet on who this order of sheep are

They are GL.

what do they want to do further?

Don't think there was any confirmed "future plans" by them, but you don't just make and force a new twitch-channel for a one-tournament thingy, imo.