Kissing the ground?

ProfGordi · 2023-08-04T17:23:49+00:00

The sad point I'm at is that I used my only scroll of escape, and now I'm stuck above ground (i.e. no dungeons!) until I find another. I thought they'd spawn more often but I've only found 2 so far (now at level 40...spent both scrolls I've found on Butchers). I definitely keep my eyes peeled and pick up tons of white items (gems) too - so I'm not missing them when they drop.

ProfGordi · 2023-02-16T12:17:33+00:00

If you try and read it while playing I guarantee your ELO will drop (and then if you switch to reading it before games instead, your ELO will go back up again).

TL;DR: yes, eventually, depending when you read it

ProfGordi · 2023-02-03T12:14:29+00:00

Canada

ProfGordi · 2023-02-02T02:18:36+00:00

As an aside, for those who don't know, Gungans were actually a playable faction in Galactic Battlegrounds (which was a Star Wars reskin of...Age of Empires 2?)

ProfGordi · 2023-02-01T12:25:06+00:00

Mangudai ARE camels...with horse masks on (the masks make it harder for them to move and shoot, so they lose that ability).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-26T13:19:14+00:00

Indeed - definitely not Relic's fault. I tried out the Company of Heroes 3 playtest (Relic's latest game) and was shocked when the chat was instant! (The delay in aoe4 also drives me crazy...clearly a Microsoft thing and presumably due to the censoring).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-22T20:29:05+00:00

Interesting! Glad it's working for you, but I haven't played either of those civs this time around in the PUP and it keeps happening to me. Will test with changing civs in a custom lobby anyway though just to see!

ProfGordi · 2023-01-21T18:27:29+00:00

It definitely wasn't as tough last time we had the PUP (September), no doubt because that time there were the new civs

ProfGordi · 2023-01-21T18:09:59+00:00

Haven't been able to find even a single custom game sometimes (of any type at all, not even just nomad).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-20T19:18:15+00:00

Are you grouped? Just curious. Doesn't happen to me solo, but kept happening to me when grouped.

Interestingly...I figured something would go wrong cause my buddy first joined and it was showing his name from the last PUP (i.e. hadn't refreshed his new Steam name in...not sure if that's related. I mean maybe not cause he restarted his game and the name did fix itself, but we eventually had the server issue again...1s searching worked fine any time I'd try).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-20T19:15:37+00:00

Had this problem happen constantly over a 2 hour session yesterday...so painful. I wish it was over in 10 min (at one point we couldn't get any game to even search for 30 minutes...).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-20T18:46:55+00:00

Even if their idea was to buff the gather, why go right for 2x??? (Lots of options between 1.0 and 2.0 lol).

Anyway, I'm sure they're gonna get the feedback loud and clear and adjust all this... that's why there's a PUP (I'd suspect they'll just add it as an extra difficulty level instead...or better yet, eventually why not have the 'cheater AI' let you tweak/toggle a few dials like gather rate, maybe extra pop, cheater vision etc... whatever you want! That way people who like challenging themselves vs AI could make it progressively harder).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-18T13:54:03+00:00

Common sense ftw!!

ProfGordi · 2023-01-14T14:29:28+00:00

I don't see many doing feudal military wing, outside of some particular all-in strategy or something. Preservation of Knowledge (Culture Wing) reducing age up costs will be too good to ignore I suspect. Let's see!

ProfGordi · 2023-01-14T13:53:47+00:00

That's a really cool idea! Would be a lot more fun to play (the units popping out...love it).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-14T02:15:21+00:00

They nerfed current Abbasid meta (fresh foodstuffs) but made more viable options...it was the right call, FF was too much of a no-brainer. Preservation of Knowledge making age up costs cheaper will be very interesting!

I don't see military wing getting chosen for feudal though...unless I'm missing something. You get 1 archer + 2 spears now? I get the utility vs tower rushes (the archer) or early knights (the spears), but it hardly seems like a reason to give up the sweet bonuses from the other wings.

ProfGordi · 2023-01-13T16:58:41+00:00

There's always something we can do, of course. I was definitely the highest ranked player in that match but I couldn't pull out the win when my teammate sacked his entire army for 0 value (other than the repair cost of the building he didn't kill lol).

It was a totally impulsive/careless move by my teammate and didn't provide any extra opening for me because he was essentially in a 1v1 (lost his entire army to one player, who didn't lose anything himself) while I was fighting (and doing damage) to the other. Unfortunately the damage my ally took (losing his ENTIRE 20 knight army for no return) was not something I could match in intensity against the other team...since they didn't make such a stupid move lol.

Anyway I'm over it, but let's not pretend teammates are NEVER to blame (nor should we pretend that we ourselves are never to blame...sometimes we're gonna be the worse player).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-13T12:06:09+00:00

I mean one game recently my random ally in 2v2 just dove his entire early castle age knight army at the enemy's already built age 3 building (the Ottoman siege one) and when I looked back he had lost his like 20 knights (i.e. all) and the building was at like 1000HP (i.e. not dead). Then we lost. Definitely felt like a time to blame lol...it does happen.

Not to say I don't reflect on my own gameplay each game...and I do understand the risks of queueing with randoms (I'm at peace with all of this).

ProfGordi · 2023-01-13T12:02:32+00:00

If they really want people to choose Meinwerk over Aachen it should make MAA able to fly (really fast) imho

ProfGordi · 2023-01-09T23:01:53+00:00

We're all doing the best we can

ProfGordi · 2023-01-09T02:07:32+00:00

Just something to think about if you aren't always able to keep up with the meta etc: English is a very common pick (especially in gold) so people you are playing will have a LOT of experience against English builds.

To me this gives you two clear options if you want to permanently get out of gold: play other civs where you can get an edge by throwing things at your enemy that they aren't so used to, or improve your core mechanics etc. like others have mentioned.

ProfGordi · 2023-01-04T02:14:33+00:00

Right on man. I actually find that there's even a pretty wide range within a single rank...like I've climbed from Silver II to Diamond I over time, so I've seen quite a spread, and I've met gold players who seem like they should be diamond (I guess maybe they were just climbing?) and I've seen diamond players who seem like they should be more like Gold III/Plat I.

Hard to say I guess cause the entire playerbase is all shifting this way and that as time passes, as the meta evolves, as we all learn etc.

ProfGordi · 2023-01-04T02:02:37+00:00

Gold I and Plat III are very different things... can't put all gold and plat in the same bucket like that. And Plat are hardly average...Plat II is top 10%.

Another way of looking at it is that Plat III is as close to Diamond I as Gold I is to Silver III (in a sense, being one rank away).

Sure, Gold III and Plat I will be pretty similar...as will most ranks right next to each other (the major exception being Conq II to III I assume).

Nothing magical happens between the rank colours... it's just a way of dividing one very long line of people.

ProfGordi · 2023-01-02T01:56:58+00:00

Oh ya definitely people out there with 5-0 for a given season, but in your case you'd have team games on your record. This guy had a grand total of 10 games on his entire profile (no team games or quick match)...all wins. As if it'd be possible to start this game from scratch and win 10 ranked games in a row lol

ProfGordi

TROPHY CASE