What is the Deal With Safe Maps?
- This topic has 27 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 1 year, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Speaking from my experience:
I mostly Play team closed map and arena is my absolute favorite.
The reason for this is mostly because i find closed maps pretty chill and relaxing while open maps often require me to act faster and focus more.
On arena combat is more or less in one place so all i have to do is just fight and maintain my Eco which already thanks to walls is pretty Safe.
Additionally at least on my pretty low elo i find arena to be better place for off meta plays (fc castle drops, cuman feudal rams push, fast imp , siege tower plays etc.), while i think arabia is more meta focused and I don’t really see much strategical variety there.
Lastly I don’t find 15 minutes (it’s about 9 actually) of going to castle a bad think because i Play mostly with friends so we just talk and complain about Deer AI for the whole thing.
You’d be surprised that for a lot of the closed maps, especially in team games, the best strat often is to be aggressive.
Often you’ll see one player tower rush, drop castles, petard in or do landings on water maps because it creates disruption while their teammates boom.
Arena makes it more about who can boom the fastest, OR who can pull off an interesting strategy to get through stone walls in late feudal / usually early castle age.
I think people like it because on Arabia it’s much easier to secure a win if you are 20 seconds faster with feudal aggression and it snowballs from there.
On arena you can’t just spam knights, you’ve gotta think a little more while maintaining a flawless early game eco.
I like them both the same and am usually better on Arabia but Arena can be really cool for trying wacky strats.
You’re not alone in the Arabia enthusiast camp.
There is a reason why Arabia has been the standard 1v1 map in competitive AOE2 map for a very long time–however–it’s not the *only* map, and a lot of the competitive player base prefer to play a variety of maps.
Afterall, *RM*, stand for *Random Map*–so it makes sense that a player’s Elo rating would also be based ones performance on a variety of maps, as opposed to just grinding one map over and over again.
That being said, if you “star” Arabia, and ban the closed maps–you’ll queue for Arabia a high percentage of the time.
There have been many arguments for a separate “Arabia-only” queue–but my hesitation with this solution has always been that it would reduce the diversity of games available, and would increase queue times for other players that like to change things up (case in point, back on Voobly and HD, you pretty much only saw 1v1 Arabia games, and it was hard to host 1v1s on other maps).
That being said, usually there are other “open” maps available in the queue–so for example always have an eye out for *Valley* and *Atacama*, as well as *Steppe* and *African Clearing*.
The latter two of those maps are nomad-start…which due to resource placement and the necessity of building a TC can negate the chances of a full-on Fuedal battle, but it’s certainly a map where all-in aggression is always a possibility.
I also recommend trying out some “hybrid” maps–i.e. *Mediterranean*, *Baltic*, *Nomad*, and especially *4 Lakes*.
These maps might not always lead to lots of land aggression out of the gate, but in 1v1s you’ll always have to compete on water and on land simultaneously, creating really really messy and chaotic games that are really difficult to predict.
Just try to ignore the circus.
We’re with you.
Only water maps are really defensive out of your list and even those are pretty “open” compared to starcraft maps.
Starcraft maps are pretty much designed to safely guarantee a minimum of 2 bases, which would compareable to a fast castle.
And if you are comparing aoe to the current SC2 when looking for faster action then you should check out empire wars, which was basically made with the same idea of skipping the early early game and speeding up the game to get armies out quicker.
Arabia is indeed the best map.
I’m a big fan of feudal wars.
Tower rush is very strong on Arena.
Or monk rush.
Or castle drop into a good UU.
There are aggressive options.
African Clearing actually plays a lot like a normal open map
There are minorities in most of societies.
In aoe2 we refer to them as clowns, and they make up around 25% of the population.
While we still have not fully discovered their way of living, we go along with them if the allmighty queueing god tasks us to and accept a loss here and there in their environment for the greater good.
Honestly it’s a pacing perspective issue.
There’s definitely certain game types that have a faster pace than usual but generally for AOE most matches average 25-45min.
I play Starcraft too but they are completely different experiences.
I jump into starcraft for those 10-20min matches.
While the majority of AOE is long term economic strategy and defense.
> Why are these maps so popular for the ladder / competitive scene?
Oddly enough, at a high level it’s usually due to more variety in strategy.
Hear me out.
Specifically Arena actually has a lot of variety in possible strategies since there are far more options in early Castle Age than in Feudal Age.
This is even more pronounced in team games since open map team games are almost invariably a knights+xbows mirror.
Arena along with closed maps like BF follow a pattern of allowing for a safe(ish) boom into late game units, which is something a lot of people like as well.
The rest of the maps are just unique, but if the distance between players is long or the map is relatively closed, then fast castle becomes a viable strategy again.
Sounds like you might be a fellow socotra enjoyer.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
