Chris, this following passage is why I think you're wrong, based on my own experiences. I'm really glad you picked cyclopean as your example. First of all I want to tell you that you are 100% correct in your analysis of cyclopean. City is in fact exactly equal to NW. The real difference is that NW is in fact easier for NF to take due to height advantages (i can explain more if you disagree) whereas city is practically equal for each team. Also, getting a rax to the East of NF main is easier for BE than it is to put one North of NF main. As you said, though, most people go to NW, so an intrepid BE comm could send his team to city and take it with little resistance. The common criticism is that city is a noob trap, where the truth is the roof rax is a noob trap, not necessarily city itself. If you set your team up for success in the city, you can quickly attack NF main with vehicles and set up a rax next to NF main. There's a lot of advantages to this. Your weaker players will spawn in to the forward rax and occupy a lot of (better) NF players. This takes pressure off of your own main and middle, and allows enterprising engineers to ninja NW (if you're lucky enough to have one, if not, it's okay too) Therefore, this is a case where for BE the best strategy is not necessarily the same as the most common strategy, since everyone rushes NW. You seem to also believe that if you were commanding, nobody would listen to you if you told them all to go city. This might be true for some, but if you are forceful/charismatic enough you can get people to agree to a plasma rush, so I don't see eye to eye with you on this one either. Now is when the theorycrafting ends. I can tell you that when I play cyclopean, I command as BE, and I use this strategy every single time. It's a little more advanced than "cap refs, kill enemies, protect base" and at least thus far it has never failed me. I have never lost using it. even when some of my team mutinies and we get a late start because I refuse to give people targets/buildings in NW until they die, spawn at main and go mid/south like I told them to in the first place. What I'm trying to tell you is that I don't share your experience with strategizing or planning ahead; I've had lots of success with it. I guess you can choose to believe me or not on what my experiences are.
I really didn't use this server much when I started playing. I just played on the most populated server and just stuck with engineer class and avoided tanking at all costs. After I was comfortable with that, I'd just ask questions if I wasn't sure and got into the other classes. A few quick reads on the wiki and I felt confident to do other things. But most people wouldn't go as far to read about a game.
Well, NW is dangerous because of its height, whichever faction have it, can easily shell opposite's team main base, and there is nothing you can do about really. On the other side, city can be attacked from everywhere, and it's a bitch to hold. I barely ever seen team that didn't have NW to win.
ever since i have gone city first as BE i have never lost. NF will never touch city if you can get a rax up on their side of the bridge. In fact they're so busy with the rax plus vehicle support coming from teh city that I usually end up with NW too - go figure
what's your sample size? I'd assume that NF could do the exact same thing to you main base at north east. Unless you concectrate 99% of forces to their main BEFORE they reach yours while they are spread thin.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that ELC is the greatest thing to happen to the Empires community in a while. I started playing a month or so back and couldn't get over how often players raged. "baww comm is researching the wrong thing" or, "baww you built an apc instead of a tank with x and x" and my favourite, "you're not repairing me fast enough! REPAIR FASTER". It's incredibly difficult to enjoy a game where seemingly everything you do is wrong. ELC lets people relax and enjoy the game (until some vet joins and starts raging). ELC made me realize that the Empires community isn't necessarily full of raging pompous assholes. tl;dr : ELC is win. Keep it. Keep it balanced.
YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! (sorry, just felt called to shout that. I agree - a laid-back server where wrong moves are expected is a good thing; people can learn in a friendly environment. All servers should be like it - being a noob is not your fault if you haven't been advised differently)
nobody has ever raged at a noob that was friendly and asked questions. ever. the only problem the 'vets' have is with new players who think they are an authority on empires. and those people still get raged at on the learning center, like they would anywhere else. in fact, nothing has changed. people talk about tlc like it's the next coming of christ, but it's really the exact same thing as any other server because it's the main active american server during certain times of the day - even sometimes more active than viper - and people play there whether or not they are 'noobs' and do whatever they want because there are barely ever any admins on (the ones that are on just abuse admin anyway).
City is fail for three reasons: 1. Its layout encourages turtling. The bridges are easy to wall, the building provide perfect vantage points for scouts, and nobody can resist a roof rax. 2. Its hard to secure. There are too many places where people can hide and nadespam/sticky/shoot buildings and vehicles. A scout has way too many places to hide after sabbing all of your buildings. 3. It is not the high ground. Doesn't matter what map it is, the high ground is better. The NW is the highest point on the map, where the city is at the same height as both mains. This is why it is easier to attack either main from the NW than the city.
The ELC is doing fine, now we need a mature gaming server without micspam, stax and spectator mode turned off.
1. already addressed in my post. did you read it? don't build a fucking roof rax. problem solved. 2. you see, the problem with cyclopean, and BE in particular, is that it's hard to get a rax up near an enemy rax. My strategy alleviates this. doing so practically eliminates ninjas on both sides, because people will go "oh cool i can just spawn there and fight i don't have to run anywhere to do anything!" nobody will ever touch you in city if you build a rax east of their main; they'll all be busy defending their main. building north of their main is simply not an option - therefore NW sucks for BE. 3. does high ground even mean anything if it's literally the entire map's distance away from anything else significant? So you have the NW high ground. now what? what can you hit from it? the dam? lulz. the city is high ground over one ref in middle, for what it's worth, and far closer for infantry to walk to middle if you build a rax in the north part of city. The most dangerous location for BE to get attacked from is the hill west of their main (which is also high ground), but NF doesn't need NW to build a rax there. anyway, your response is exactly why the prevailing strategy for BE is to rush city, quickly get a VF up and attack NF main - because the most common strategy (which i'm sure you prescribe to) is for both sides to rush NW. If you do it fast enough, you can take NF main without resistance, then they are stuck in NW. Like I said, I've never lost commanding as BE going city, even when my team mutinies and everyone goes NW at first.
what it comes down to is who can hold off the attack coming from the opposite direction, and then hold refineries around the middle til an advantage is had.
You CANNOT win the map if you only have NW or only have city. If you think you win because you have one of those, you are wrong. Cyclopean is mostly about containing the enemy into an area rather than actually taking any particular base. Same thing with all open maps. It is why it's deadly to go to ruins in emp_duststorm. It's easy to contain the ruins because it's so closed off.
On a pub game in dustorm the ruins are so deadly because it cause a large part of the team to stay in the ruins for no apart reason just for the heck of it. Even when no enemy is around you see always 3-5 engineers wander around aimlessly from one corner to an other. While in the middle, you notice that people don't linger around, and move out after enemy incursion has been repelled.
Seeing as I'm one of those "noobs" you speak of, I can attest that people do in fact rage at us for asking questions. It essentially goes like this: I ask a question They ignore me They rage at me for 'doing everything wrong, you fucking noob' I ask a question about what I'm doing wrong They ignore me some more. So sure, the raging is one degree away from the question asking, so perhaps that's what you mean when you say nobody has ever raged at a noob asking questions. The fact is, the raging is still there, and the learning never occurs. Why can't we all just get along?
because everyone's angry that empires is a shitty unbalanced game that we play anyway because it shows so much potential
