N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

They can survive colonial easily if they play it right, but once the enemy can get petards/cannons, it's really tough if you're relying on TCs for defense.

yea, that's pretty much what I mean. A dutch player will just go for fortress and get cannons / petards / better units...china player could just FF and get hand mortars and a mass of units...sioux could just go FF, wakina spam and ship AR and then siege dance you to death.... and so on.

hey drew, i was kiddin bout ports
Ports have a hard time vs almost everyting, but the FF is rather easy though (CM/700gold). The hard part is once in fortress, how do you keep your eco and military balanced.

The problem with ports is simple: you start of with the same economy as others but no villager cards = you get behind rather quickly.
The extra TC should compensate this, but to keep your economy going you have to invest even more resources in villagers, resources that you have less of than your opponent. If used correctly the TC's allow you to survive but not to dominate and that's what this game is about.
FF doesnt solve this problem. You need to have outstanding micro to keep superior forces away and booming at the same time. Only experts manage that, so they can play ports pretty well.

Ports have a great boom, that's true, but this makes them even harder to balance. Making them stronger in age 2 and giving them good cannon counters, is making them OP for PR 40+ players, who can fight and manage a killer economy. (same with brittish)

Ports kinda favor defense style play, but that's is something wacko and other strategy testers dislike. A bit unfair I think, the art of defending is just as valuable as the the art of spamming units. Ok russia sevastopol laming is terribly, but what is more fun than fighting in your base for 10 minutes, losing a tc and still winning a game?

Ports is a great civ for learning to play AOE3 without laming. To advance you just to become a better player,lol. They even nerfed besteiros, the only possibility for post to do a bit of laming.

Well said Luukje.

I think playing defensively can be fun for the player but definitely not for the opponent.

For example Seva laming or winning with 3 TCs + CM (ports, dutch) is fun but it's totally lame to lose to that.

Alrighty... whoever wants to challenge me to an unrated (or rated) game with me as ports... BRING IT ON! Hahah. But really I think it would be fun. Might get some interesting replays out of it as well.

[quote=""KingKaramazov""]or winning with 3 TCs + CM (ports, dutch) is fun but it's totally lame to lose to that.[/quote]
I completely, totally, absolutely and emphatically disagree! :twisted:

Can you tell that I disagree.

People who call this lame are people who think rushing is the only way to play the game. You have to play a to a civ's strength and some civs are better off being played defensively. If you want to call playing a civ the same way every time is lame (French double rax spam) then I guess I can agree. But the reason civs are played this way is because it is generally the best strat for that civ.

Dutch colonial militia booming is a little lame but that's because Dutch is currently OP. But the strat itself is just fine. It just bugs me how people complain when a civ is played in a manner that they don't enjoy. That doesn't make it lame.

[quote=""36drew""]Alrighty... whoever wants to challenge me to an unrated (or rated) game with me as ports... BRING IT ON! Hahah. But really I think it would be fun. Might get some interesting replays out of it as well.[/quote]

That doesn't serve much purpose. Play as Ports against people at your PR level and I'd be more interested in seeing the recordings.

Bob, the thing is when I play this game I expect (and desire) to lose to or win with armies or well planned and managed economies, not to a single card that makes a person's buildings do incredible damage and spawn a bunch of militia units practically instantaneously.

And that's your preference. Not all civs work that way. I challenge you to play your next 10 games as Ports and only rely on your army.

Well sevastopol is ***. You dont want a game where both player build a real fortress, with forts and towers and layers off wall, get to age 4/5 unharmed and then spam zounds of units at each other. Thats what treaty is for, with half map and blockade thingies.

On the other side, I dont want aoe3 to be a game where the person who can get 15 military units out quickly, get's the win. It's much more a strategy game where "thinking" should be just as important as "doing". If I see a rush coming, I should be able to play a more patient game and push my opponent back.

One of the worst things to come out of TWC was making 25 card decks, allowing for much more general decks. I used to be able to read an oppnents deck and pick a counter one. Now everybody just plays a general strat, no specific one. I see everybody building military from the moment they reach colonial. Why, because military aggression is rewarded. Defensive play not. I dont like this. Its about having both a group of (dominant) ranged infantery and shooting at each other until somebody (mostly the best player) can get the upperhand and kill the others base and barracks. BORING.

Colonial militia (from 1TC) is a one shot counter for this. As dutch/ports player, I use the card a lot, and believe me, it is as much a trap as it is a counter. If you dont get the other out of your base, youre done. From 3 tc's (Ports, dutch in fortress, it is a bit lame). Maybe the militia should only be coming from your starting TC?

I want the game to be about thinking, buidling your economy and choosing the correct military units and than microing these when the battle begins.

But that is hapenning way to little for the moment;

I see french double barracks spam, chokonu spam, ashigaru spam, abus/jannie spam, gurka and sepoy, tomahawks or forrest prowlers, longbows and muskets....brrrrrr

When nerfing and boosting, ES should consider this!

And not just balancing.

Where does the community want this game to go.

And not just the few PR 40 + players, who specialize in shooting control groups at each other..

My interpretation of lame is not specific strats. I would class "lame" as winning with no skill. This may sound a bit strange to you and it might be hard to explain but that is what I class as lame.

For example: 3v3 you attack and get pushed back, they wall up big time, you wall up a little while still trying to push but you can't get in their base and they sit back and mass cuirs and opri and then run riot through your base.
Ok, perhaps you should lose this anyway, but it is still lame.

There is no skill in this, no micro required, no management of any kind is needed. This is LAME. When something like this happens there really is not much you can do and it sucks!

Bob, while I understand that Ports have to utilize CM in order to survive, I contend that the civ would be more fun if this were not so much the case.

It's one thing to have a civ that is defensive, it's another thing to have your strategy centered around destroying enemy attacks with ridiculously powerful town centers and defensive units (militia) that are produced almost instantaneously.

I understand that different people have different play styles, but I think no matter what play style you are using you should have to use skill in order to win...and sending a card requires very little skill.

Plus, it comes down to fun. Playing a game should be chiefly about having fun, preferably for all people involved in a game. If the strategy you use is one that makes the game boring as hell or really frustrating for me, then I don't care if you find it fun - I think it's lame. That's pretty much textbook definition of lame - a strategy that is fun for the person using it but not fun at all to fight, and that requires an inordinate amount of effort to beat.

That said, CM is far more lame when used by the Dutch than with any other civ.

I sympathize with what Luukje has to say -- this game is totally dominated by large groups of ranged infantry. I do like being able to be a bit more versatile though, I wouldn't like to have to depend on 20 card decks.

[quote=""StrokeyBlofeld""]My interpretation of lame is not specific strats. I would class "lame" as winning with no skill. This may sound a bit strange to you and it might be hard to explain but that is what I class as lame.

For example: 3v3 you attack and get pushed back, they wall up big time, you wall up a little while still trying to push but you can't get in their base and they sit back and mass cuirs and opri and then run riot through your base.
Ok, perhaps you should lose this anyway, but it is still lame.

There is no skill in this, no micro required, no management of any kind is needed. This is LAME. When something like this happens there really is not much you can do and it sucks![/quote]

Are you talking for treaty games? because for regular Supremacy games this seems just to be a valid strat that is less insightful than others. It requires a fair amount of micro (depending on opponent) but not as much as an army vs. army Battle.

I can see someone considering fast movement and heavy siege (Oprish) as LAME unit and one with a high degree of reality disparity compared to the other game units. Really Fast and high siege just don't usually go together and for good reasons.

I'm mostly happy with ESO's decisions when patching AOE3. I wish other RTS's would use as much good sense but then again, who cares I've got AOE3 to play isntead of those other RTS's. Oprish are a good example of a OP/LAME/Advantage that isn't a showstopper. IOW: the community starts to refuse to play vs. them because it's so bad. I really like the idea of fixing showstopper/broken civs and only minor tweaking for the non-showstopper OPness or Strong Advantages!

:!: Maybe this line of conversation should move over into the Overall civilization consensus thread instead of the GOALS thread. Seeing as the current thread subject matter really just stems from Nav calling out KingK's goals because he was using Iro's! :mrgreen:

Lol yea, turned into a balance thread because of that.