EE multiplayer games in NORMAL SPEED?

[[-Ts-] Tricky]

wow try explaining shit to some people and they turn into fags.

[EaglePrince]

After some time, I became allergic to "experts" in multiplayer games... Sorry if I misunderstood you message because of that!

[Arntzen]

Hello EaglePrince and welcome to the comunity.

Let me try to explain what the others are saying to u. This is my personal opinion and imma explain how I played this game for a looong time.

I got this game back in 2003 and started playing against Computers on easy. Eventually I managed to win almost all those games in 1v1 island. I made Island so the computer would not attack me before I was ready. I also played my brother and my friends on lan for a loong time. We had this long games on game speed normal, something we all thought was really really fun. We also had alot of rules, for example we used to have no civilization and no prophets. Reason for this was we didnt know how to save civilizations so that took to much time to make every game, and we didnt know how to defend against prophets. We also used a stopwatch on the lan-parties that went of after 1 hour, and then we was allowed to attack eachother. This was also alot of fun.

Then my friends started moveing to other games, but I really enjoyed this one. So I started to play online. After 1 week of playing online getting crushed every game, I realized it would be smart to join a team/clan to help me out in the games. So I did a tryout for MiddleWarriors and supriseingly got in. Middlewarriors had rankings and we used to play same ranks versus eachother to make it fair. At this point I started getting a 50% win rate. This was on very fast game speed, but we still had alot of rules. I got alittle better, but at this time I only played maybe 2hours-6hours a month. I played like this for many years. VEEEERY slow learning-curve, but fun games against people same level as me.

When servers went down I stopped playing and it took some time before I got email from MW informing about the new lobby. At this point I was alot older (15-16), and understood more. I got crushed maybe 20ish games in a row, but wanted to get better. I got friends with some players called Herik and Madara Uchiha. They started teaching me how to play Middle AOC the right way, with hotkeys and proper civilizations. Since then I've been playing almost every day maybe 2 hours a day. Reason for that? The game got aloooot more fun, I suddenly realized that EVERY "cheap trick" could be contered, like it says in the book omega linked to. I started to understand how my enemies where thinking, I learned the weaknesses of every build in Middle Ages and their strong points. Swordrushing became easy to defend against, religion was no problem because I knew temple defended against it at the same time as I started scouting my enemies. If I was going to rate the fun I was/am haveing now compared to the "fun" I had before with all this rules, I'd prolly say something like: Before with rules and other settings to take away the "cheap tricks"= 1/10
Now with no rules and high level play: 8-10/10

This is not only for this game, its not only for computergames. I've had the exact same thing with Football. I started out playing football in freetime at school, to play real and organized football on a youth-pro level.

As it says in the book: this is probably something u (the beginner) cant even imagine, but its true. Take "fun" to a whole other level and come and play to win.

[Omega]

To add on to Kazter's post, in response to EaglePrince...

Playing on 1.00 speed ("Normal" speed) doesn't increase the opportunity for tactics, or strategies. Playing on 2.50 speed ("Very Fast" speed) isn't only done because the person is "impatient" or because it "simplifies" the game.

It should be evident that making decisions takes time. The more time you have, typically, the better decision you are able to make. If you had 10,000 years to play a chess game against a grandmaster, you'd do extraordinarily better than if you had 10 hours. Increasing the time between events in any game, even a turn-based game, decreases the pressure on each player. It makes decisions less critical, becuase their consequences can be more completely assessed via careful analysis. Don't know what do to? Don't worry, you've got time. If the speed is faster however, you don't know what to do and you've got to figure it out NOW and take action. Basically, when the speed is faster, each decision matters more, there's actually urgency, and you've got pressure to make good decisions on the fly. Furthermore, when you consider the controlling your armies/micro, the faster the speed the more difficult it becomes, and the slower the speed the easier it becomes. Basically, faster speed leads to a game that's both harder as well as (and more importantly) deeper.

On the topic of you like to see diversity in a game, what you consider actual diversity is extremely narrow. So what if there are dominant strategies? There's no good reason to do something clearly inferior. The strategies that are superior, are in every setting that's even remotely worth playing, fairly varied (both in number of strategies, and iterations of each specific strategy). Want to START swords in Middle SH? There's an entire spectrum to that strategy, meaning there are literally dozens of iterations on how you can play it. Furthermore, those iterations are partly based on foundational things (i.e. civ, starting build order), but are mostly dynamic in nature, meaning you can freely and fluidly change where you are on the spectrum to adapt to the game situations. And we're not even considering making additional units to swords (i.e. mixing other units or switching to other units). Compare this to the false idea of diversity which is basically "everyone does something that's really crappy", and you've got what appears to be more diversity (you might have someone go Cataphracts and Pikemen), but what is in reality less because it's just so insanely nonviable against anyone with a half-effective start using ANY strategy you can imagine (I mean, you want to do some 'diverse' cataprhact/pikemen strategy, and you could get run over with literally anything... even Pilums).

[EaglePrince]

I must say both these posts are so convincing...

I've got only one thing to add to Omegas post. By diversity I wasn't meaning people to chose random tactics that could be suicidal! Such as for example choosing two different army types which are both vulnerable to archers for example! For example in Empire Earth I've mostly used to build armies combined of troops which would have less vulnerabilities. For example, bronze cannons themselves can easily be destroyed, and so can be bombers. In the other hand, they are highly effective against infantry, so if you kept them behind your infantry and cavalry, they would stay protected and they would be making a lot of damage to enemy troops.

I didn't mean diversity of all cost: I meant I would be nice if players taught with their own brains! Only that is impossible, when one part of players is being taught by "experts" how to play better, the other part needs to keep up with them, and then all the players share the same faith, and whole this (Empire Earth) world needs to follow that. And I know, I am speaking as an Utopian now!

But all those thing you two said is right, if I consider that his is not Utopia!

[Omega]

EaglePrince, you clearly admit that certain strategies and tactics are vastly more effective than others. Obviously, there are only a finite number of combinations in EE. If we imagine effective combinations in 3D, with the x and y axes representing possible combinations the the z axis (height) representing how effective those combinations are, you've got something that looks like a mountain range. The peaks are the most effective things, and as you go down from there things get less and less effective.

Expert players know the topography: they know where the peaks and the valleys are located. Novice players don't. The only thing training a player does is let them know the topography faster, specifically, just where the peaks are located. There's literally no point to learning where the peaks are on your own via exploration if you can get a map. You can focus the time and brainpower on learning how to play effectively (micro, tactics, et cetera) instead, since that's where the only real diversity in a game played at the highest levels actually exists.

[EaglePrince]

Yeah, but I wouldn't say that tactics can be shown in a chart like that. To some extent yes, but now entirely, in my opinion! The best way to show those thing (which tactic is stronger that which tactic) would be to show the in a directed graph.

That way is less clear, but it is more correct...

In the other hand, if we spoke about economy tactics, and maybe civilization selection: that could be showed in a chart like yours one...


These few paragraphs of mine are not about our main topic, they are more about your example, but you guys made it to clarify to me, despite that I am stubborn like a donkey!