Meleeing the Enemy Explorer : Lame or Legit?

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

There is a fine line between legitimate strategy and "lameness." On the one extreme, we say "anything that beats me is lame." On the other, we can rightly complain that some features in AOE3 are downright annoying. For example, I think that it's "cheap" to melee your opponent's explorer. Do you think ES did this by design? When your explorer gets meleed, he slows down, and the other guy can just keep hitting you until you die. Basically, if you have less HP when he gets the first hit, you're done, unless you have some help close by. What do you think? Fair or foul?

[rufio_eht]

Fair.

Explorer Micro. It does exist in many ways, and this is one of them. If you time it right, you can get fired shots off which do more damage, in between melee hits, can you not? I believe this is right. If not, I still think its fair, because you should be watching your explorer, imho.

[TheRam]

It's not lame in my view, if your explorer is weaker than your oponents they SHOULD be able to kill you, for being careless - it's punishment for bad micro on treasures and gives you something to pay attention to when you're in that boring discovery period. Also, unless you're on like no life you can just run to your TC generally, and if your oponents explorer dies in YOUR base they lose scouting capabilities for pretty much the whole game, generally.

[IndyBrit]

Definitely legit.

The lame/legit line is a tough one to draw, and I err on legit. Usually, lame strategies are really only the last cool thing that somebody discovered and will be superseded by the *next* lame strategy. But if the other guy picks scissors when you pick paper, that's not lame just life.

[Soccerman771]

Legit, however I'm not so sure about the "ransom" paid for the explorer. It should be market-driven. I have someone's explorer stopped in my base in colonial at 7:00 mins. The game goes long and they can't build TC's b/c they chose a Euro civ (insert tangent to other legit conversation) and now the game goes in your favor. They SHOULD be able to get their EXPL back, it should just cost more than $100... IMO.

[I__CHAOS__I]

legit, explorers are fairly easy to ransom
also, it only really works if you put the explorer in melee mode, otherwise it's not too difficult to get away with it

one more tip: if your explorer is too far from your TC, run toward some big treasure and shoot a guardian. They will gun down your poor old man but at least the xp will be given to mother nature and she will also get the ransom instead of your opponent

[GeneralMichael]

I also say legit. It's not like they die very quickly so you could have your explorer run. Though if he does die 100 gold is extremely cheap. Also if they d die then you have to have a villager build the trade posts which will then you lose the possible resources that they might have gathered. Also by killing the other guys explorer you stop the other guy from taking trade posts on your side of the map unless they want to risk losing a villager. Though I agree with soccerman maybe every 10 minutes the explorers price could increase by 100 gold until it reaches a max of 600 gold
[quote=""rufio_eht""]Fair.

Explorer Micro. It does exist in many ways, and this is one of them. If you time it right, you can get fired shots off which do more damage, in between melee hits, can you not? I believe this is right. If not, I still think its fair, because you should be watching your explorer, imho.[/quote]

I don't think you can do this really easily unless you have a monk since the explorer when switching between melee to ranged has to load his gun which gives the other guy time to take a hit or two on you.

[danno527]

Nice idia chaos, i didnt know that the other player didnt get the ransom if mother nature killed you. I did know that mother nature got the xp though. i will have to try this next time.

[Sporting_Lisbon]

You guys have some weird complexes with lameness It is possible to outmicro with the explorer so that:

Your explorer mellees my damaged explorer -> Mine gets slower -> I mellee your explorer and I run -> Yours get slower -> Depending on timing, your explorer won't reach mine

[36drew]

^That's nuts -- i've never even thought of that.

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

I agree that you should be punished for poor micro against treasures, but the thing that bothers me about the explorer melee is that it seems to exploit a programming error. Why does your explorer slow down? And why does the other explorer keep right up with him? If you shoot him, he easily gets away. Agreed, if you catch the other explorer with 50 HP, by all means, try to kill him. But when you have 350 and he has 340, and you luckily get a melee hit on him, why should that entitle you to kill him? That's my main complaint.

[I__CHAOS__I]

[quote=""Sporting_Lisbon""]You guys have some weird complexes with lameness It is possible to outmicro with the explorer so that:

Your explorer mellees my damaged explorer -> Mine gets slower -> I mellee your explorer and I run -> Yours get slower -> Depending on timing, your explorer won't reach mine[/quote]

that doesn't work when you put your explorer in melee mode afaik, unless possibly maybe with an uber fast computer/connection you might be able to pull it off, but i doubt it

[IndyBrit]

[quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]I agree that you should be punished for poor micro against treasures, but the thing that bothers me about the explorer melee is that it seems to exploit a programming error. Why does your explorer slow down? And why does the other explorer keep right up with him? If you shoot him, he easily gets away. Agreed, if you catch the other explorer with 50 HP, by all means, try to kill him. But when you have 350 and he has 340, and you luckily get a melee hit on him, why should that entitle you to kill him? That's my main complaint.[/quote]

I guess I assumed it wasn't a bug. Perhaps it's a strategy bug (ie it works the way intended, but they didn't consider the effects). Exploiting a strategy bug is, to me, the essence of laming.

[TheRam]

[quote=""I__CHAOS__I""][quote=""Sporting_Lisbon""]You guys have some weird complexes with lameness It is possible to outmicro with the explorer so that:

Your explorer mellees my damaged explorer -> Mine gets slower -> I mellee your explorer and I run -> Yours get slower -> Depending on timing, your explorer won't reach mine[/quote]

that doesn't work when you put your explorer in melee mode afaik, unless possibly maybe with an uber fast computer/connection you might be able to pull it off, but i doubt it[/quote]
It works. I/Choco/Sporting use it to my knowledge.

[Sporting_Lisbon]

^Exactly