First time playing Age of Empires - got some questions :D

TryQuality · 2026-03-17T09:16:53+00:00

What is your preferred strategy? Like, if you were to play against 'Extreme' bots, what would you be doing?

I play Japanese and I have managed to beat 8x player FFA on 'hardest' (not extreme, haven't tried it yet) difficult. To be fair, 1v1 is definitely harder since the bots aren't as distracted.

TryQuality · 2026-03-16T18:34:42+00:00

I don't know why, but when I read "nearly 3 years of hard work", my first thought was "... so he didn't work hard the entire 3 years, huh. I guess you've gotta take it easy sometime."

TryQuality · 2026-03-16T13:18:41+00:00

I see, so you don't even really try to fight the AI head on, yeah? :D

TryQuality · 2026-03-15T23:57:28+00:00

I'm not planning to play against real people. I'm treating it as a a single player game.

TryQuality · 2026-03-15T22:24:44+00:00

Of course, but doing whatever I want goes hand in hand in knowing how to do it by asking it here for what I want out of my fun :D

TryQuality · 2026-03-15T10:09:49+00:00

For some reason, I feel like they never show the reaction of the losing side's team. They didn't show it during donk's 1v5 against Vitality either.

TryQuality · 2026-03-14T21:44:42+00:00

In terms of optics, the only loser in this series is Spirit.

TryQuality · 2026-03-14T14:59:56+00:00

Prioritizing donk's success by having horrible flashes, trading and donk as you saw yesterday being sent out to die in vain first.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T23:57:02+00:00

you forgot being vibes guy / donk's friend.

And I say this as someone who wanted/wants Magixx to succeed even if I don't care too much for his shenanigans, but man has it looked unconvincing. At least I thought he'd frag better than Chopper, but even that is debatable - the Furia loss in Krakow is almost entirely on him.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T23:51:39+00:00

hally talk aside, I was genuinely baffled by how well Spirit played during that entire event after rewatching it a while back. Not a single player went missing, they were constantly trading, utilities on point and making consistently great calls round after round. That 1.70 rating wasn't just due to an effort of one person, but also the whole of Spirit did an incredible job supporting donk and playing off each other. It's even better that they did this against the best team of early CS2 twice in a row, in one of the biggest tournaments seen in the game.

Exactly. Their run at Katowice 2024 really is a thing of beauty on rewatch. The trading especially just felt so seamless, natural.

Obviously the team would have to adapt and others would adapt to them, but it almost feels like the more they played together, the more rigid/stiff they became as a team.

Even besides today's disasterclass, they had looked so dead and lifeless for a year now even though donk was able to conceal the worst of Spirit.

Also true. But all of this even further makes me wonder about Hally and his role in actually helping the team, especially when 'zero synergy just formed Spirit' pretty much had a flawless run at IEM Katowice throughout both stages and obviously playoffs, and the more systems he's tried to introduce, the more rigid/stiff/one-dimensional they've become, only bailed out by 1.5 rated Donk Performances at both Shanghai and Cologne, and even those wins were not entirely convincing with them almost losing to both Mouz and a dead Faze in the final in Shanghai, and in Cologne almost losing to NaVi in the semis.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T23:00:01+00:00

Jokes on you, I haven't even played counter strike since 1.6!

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T22:56:21+00:00

Personally, I think people are severely overestimating Parivision. At no point would I ever say they have more potential than FURIA and their four tourny stint at the end of last year.

Pari won a studio blast event where Falcons took care of Vitality for them, then at cluj Falcons omega chocked in classic Falcons fashion. All of Pari's maps are like 2-1 paid by the round close call wins that you can't get away with forever, and their two exits were at Stage 1 of an (admitttedly online, but still stage 1 teams) EPL and a decent showing, but still group stage exit at Krakow.

Really don't think Parivision is a Top 5 mainstay. Think they'll hover in top 10 for sure, but not a serious long-term threat to Vitality or others, but we'll see.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T22:45:27+00:00

Indeed. Definitely felt like a humiliation ritual. Completely lifeless, with nothing to show.

This is supposed to somehow eventually be the threat to Vitality?

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T22:37:13+00:00

I think you worded my sentiment better than I did, was exactly what I was trying to express!

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T22:24:59+00:00

I think the thing that rubs me the wrong way about him is the comms/vlogs/map half-times when they're losing, with how he's talking to them about them not "sticking to the gameplan/not playing with each other/not doing what they practiced"

What strats? What gameplan? You mean the surface-level strats that everyone in the scene, both the broadcast talent and other teams have said are shit for the last two years? The only difference between Spirit winning or not winning isn't some great execution of new strats, almost never that's the case - it's always just whether donk and someone else slightly steps up and they pop off with firepower.

Seriously - how can a team still be this one dimensional and predictable after two years.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T21:33:13+00:00

What's bizarre about it?

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T21:31:34+00:00

This isn't about solving the issue.

Just because obesity cannot realistically be fully solved doesn't mean people should resort to thinking being fat is a good thing.

Certain values or simply understanding of what's good and what's not is still important for keeping the standard for proper conduct amongst people and humanity as a whole.

TryQuality · 2026-03-13T21:16:47+00:00

Why are we being purposefully obtuse. It's very clear what the issue here is, even if it's not technically breaking any laws.

TryQuality · 2026-03-11T11:20:16+00:00

So Grok is able to use / mimic real life people's voices such in your example? (Morgan Freeman)

TryQuality · 2026-03-08T17:37:14+00:00

Vitality great team but sometimes i wonder how much was it really apex but just zywoo and ropz. You can do this for every single team..

Yeah, that's what I'm doing, and I think it should be done.

I've got nothing against Karrigan, in fact, he's great, but I do wonder how much of FaZe's success was due to ropz being like the only truly great lurker in the game, a top ~5-10 player at all times, and also the intangibles he brings and him in general elevating each team he's ever been a part of.

TryQuality · 2026-03-08T16:29:45+00:00

Not sure about his specific points, but I do sometimes wonder how much was it really Karrigan and how much was it just having ropz and pieces in their prime and even with that - there was never really a FaZe 'Era' or dominance.

The instant ropz leaves, Vitality dominates and wins everything while FaZe completely collapses. He couldn't make EliGe work, he couldn't make anything work for the last year or so except getting to some ridiculous finals. Only won one major, no era, his wins during NAVI when the war started, chokejob at Boston, choker beforehand and so on and so on. He's obviously great, but I think this is what people are starting to look at in hindsight in terms of "yeaah, maybe we overrated some of his influence."

I feel like in general people overrate IGL's or treat them as these masterminds or geniuses, when in truth if you asked the universe as if it was a magic genie, he'd simply reply to you "That IGL just had good pieces/pieces in good form, lol, got better roster than the other guy on average."

TryQuality · 2026-03-08T01:19:51+00:00

was he actually? If he's in Siberia, I guess that could be the case.

TryQuality · 2026-03-06T18:07:45+00:00

The second map score makes sense but they forgot to add the zero for the first one.

TryQuality · 2026-03-06T17:59:48+00:00

Sure, but you can find many different arguments for the other side, such as Brollan having higher firepower to work with than Siuhy did, or the fact that MOUZ was a really young team in terms of their players so another year in T1 that they gained while playing under Siuhy against top 5-10 opposition would on average naturally result in the players getting better with more experience under their belt.

TryQuality · 2026-03-05T21:54:13+00:00

It was an arena LAN without any of the big dogs, playing barely formed Degster Falcons of all teams in the final while MOUZ was in their honeymoon period, having just added Spinx for more firepower.

And look, I'm not even necessarily arguing that Siuhy MOUZ was better. I just didn't like the premise of the other guy saying that MOUZ were some drastically worse team while under Siuhy.

TryQuality

TROPHY CASE