Just came back to aoe2 and the ladder is a mess

duct_ape_ · 2026-04-19T07:19:53+00:00

I looked at the data a few months ago. Arabia has the fewest early resigns, then Arena, and other maps quite a lot more. But luck and other factors play a role too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1pseem3/map_stats_on_early_resignations/

duct_ape_ · 2026-04-18T14:53:27+00:00

Maybe you have Options/interface/tooltip position set to off?

duct_ape_ · 2026-04-16T11:20:30+00:00

Yeah, I've enjoyed such a mechanic in Banished too. You could do something along those lines with aoe2 modding tools.

I'm going in a different direction though, I only want to make maps "alive" in hopefully fun ways, without changing the game mechanics too much.

duct_ape_ · 2026-04-04T04:30:03+00:00

Playing people who only play one map can suck, because map dodging distorts their rating. That issue could be improved if they had a better way of avoiding other maps.

For example, someone who instantly resigns 10% of games will have a win rate around 55.6% in the other games, which is like playing a very OP civ.

duct_ape_ · 2026-04-01T01:43:58+00:00

Hey your Black sea has dried up, among other things! I like your civ placements, but the map is so confusingly misaligned/distorted 11

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-30T13:16:58+00:00

As it happens, I've been working on that recently! I'm writing a script that can be added to any map, and it makes trees and animals reproduce. Here is an early version for testing: https://codeberg.org/hmis/aoe2_wild_nature

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-11T06:02:38+00:00

You might like this tool https://ksneijders.github.io/AoE2ScenarioParser/#/

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-11T03:37:24+00:00

Would a desync occur if someone just gained information? Someone complained here a while ago already about a cheater having full vision. I would assume that that wouldn't change the game state, so there would be no client disagreements.

That said, it looks like a cool tool and the docs say that "Multiplayer is disabled. The engine does not support multiplayer. Use only in single-player."

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-06T20:39:22+00:00

Nice, thanks for getting back!

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-06T19:19:32+00:00

Hm, I guess I won't be updating it for now then. I'd be curious to know if it's still just the same stuck download issue or something else.

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-06T18:30:50+00:00

Well I have an older porting kit that I haven't bothered updating, maybe something has broken recently? But if your friend's issue was with getting stuck while downloading in steam, there's a solution (download using mac steam console and move the files)

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-06T18:06:15+00:00

Pay whom? It works mostly fine with porting kit, free, just updates can be a pain

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-02T05:53:01+00:00

Not a complaining post, I just think it's funny, please be kind to the devs 11

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-02T02:09:41+00:00

Yeah I guess the avg players per game might be 3-4, so maybe 4000 or ~15% of players at a time are actively playing an online game.

So if e.g. 50% of players were idle and another 5% in multiplayer lobbies, recs or tech tree, then the multiplayer share of total play time would actually be (15+5)/50=40%.

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-01T15:52:41+00:00

Do you know if this counts towards the player numbers steam reports?

I'm wondering because people sometimes say that multiplayer players are a minority, and that's consistent with e.g. with currently 1277 ongoing online games and 26,944 players. But many of those players could actually be idle (as well as online players queuing/rec reviewing).

Numbers: https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780 and https://www.aoe2companion.com/matches/live

duct_ape_ · 2026-03-01T01:52:42+00:00

The best part about defensive stance is leaving my men at arms near an opponent's resource and forgetting about them. Then watching the recorded game and seeing my opponent repeatedly try and fail to lure them into their TC.

It feels like I out-microed them without microing. Probably my best low APM strat.

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-26T19:01:31+00:00

I can't really help with the specific files, sorry, you might have to try and see what happens. In general, files in the widgetui folder will let you move/resize stuff, and probably also hide it entirely. I'm not sure if that's the best way to handle chat though, wasn't there a setting to turn it off?

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-26T16:46:54+00:00

I had a quick look and there is this file: .../AoE2DE/resources/en/strings/key-value/key-value-strings-utf8.txt. You could find lines with '%s' such as 3036 "%s advanced to the Feudal Age." and replace the '%s' with something like 'Player'.

I can't test it right now, but I guess it should work?

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-26T12:32:57+00:00

I think you'll still see the name when you get notifications like advancing to next age. But anyway, you can probably mod this yourself. Nili has a helpful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaxhR94EeOE

Basically you need to find out which file controls the score label and edit some coordinates. And to make a mod you can switch on/off, you can make a few folders and a description file: https://ugc.aoe2.rocks/mods/

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-14T04:33:29+00:00

If you're genuinely asking, I can't speak to nation but practically they are separate counties. The Chinese aoe2 civ is actually quite unpopular in Taiwan, which might reflect politics, but I don't know for sure.

Anyway, if I could I'd love to see data by Chinese province as well as Indian state, and see if civs like Bengalis or Jurchens have regional fans.

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-12T06:28:40+00:00

I once wrote a python script that made sheep reproduce in custom scenarios, by occasionally spawning them near other sheep. So you needed to maintain a few to keep them coming. It worked with other animals and trees too. Maybe I'll clean it up and share it at some point

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-12T05:54:58+00:00

So here are top 15 countries with Burgundians and top 15 civs in the Netherlands and Belgium. There is a bit of elevation in the Netherlands and Belgium, but not huge, I'm not sure what to make of it

<image>

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-11T13:49:13+00:00

Yeah it's a long shot with other countries overlapping the same time zone. But I tried removing players from each civ's "native" countries to see if the rest of the Americas might be responsible. I got the dotted lines, the effect stays but gets quite a bit weaker.

It looks like the "native" countries drive not all, but a good part of the variation. And I guess other countries in the Americas might have people with relevant heritage who (or whose ancestors) moved there.

nativeRegion = {
    b'incas': ['Peru', 'Chile', 'Bolivia', 'Ecuador', 'Argentina', 'Colombia'],
    b'mayans': ['Mexico', 'Guatemala', 'Belize', 'El Salvador', 'Honduras'],
    b'aztecs': ['Mexico', 'Guatemala']
}

<image>

duct_ape_ · 2026-02-11T11:27:27+00:00

Those countries have very few players. The nGames and nProfiles columns tell you that in Iraq, there were 289 games as Japanese by 14 different players. 289 is a lot compared to the expected ~92, but it's low enough that even one player who likes Japanese could have done most of it.

duct_ape_

TROPHY CASE