Great post. However, I recall it happening quite often except on maps such as Slaughtered or Money where teams rushed heavies and arty respectively to those maps to try and get the leg up on their competition. I recall it happening on maps quite often such as Duststorm, Streets of Fire, Railway, basically any map that wasn't Slaughtered or Money where the meta had to be different to fit the needs of the map. Any high resource map allowed a team to go straight for heavies but any low resource map or standard map you couldn't risk using 1 armor or going straight for heavies or it was a loss.
there were versions where you got meds on the way, but there never was a version where you got a secondary armor or even an engine before you got heavies - at least not as strategy. and why would you, heavies are almost twice as good as meds in every shape or form.
While I can't remember the exact versions, yes there were. The reason you got meds over heavies was because heavies were: A. Expensive as hell for the resource income B. A countering med could put up a substantial fight to an enemy heavy. These were definitely reasons to get meds before heavies, especially with a secondary armor/weapons to prevent them from countering your heavy.
there is a reason you cannot remember which versions because they did not exist. there where countless attempts to do that, ultimatively it all boiled down to a single setup within a few days of release. its intrinsic to empires that its the best way to go. time is cruicial, you cannot waste several minutes on getting a 2nd set of items before you get crushed by heavies. thats why it also often was (and is) a decent choice to skip meds, because they are just something you get on the way to the real deal. not saying i like it, but thats how it its.
Or I can't remember it because I didn't give a fuck about version number/who lead the mod until about 2 months ago? I just remember how it felt playing/comming the game.
Yeah I don't mean to marginalise the efforts that have been made or there's been no progress at all. I think some of the things that were introduced might have lacked some tuning after the fact but I digress.. The important thing is that there are still people involved and working to try and improve it and that's a great thing, hopefully something we can all agree. Tank destroyers will be an interesting addition and no doubt one of the biggest changes ever. Likewise some of the less noticed things like the building placement handling recently added are (for me anyway) really notably. Anyway I feel some of us in the community(self included) might be a little too committed to our positions and ideas and I don't think that is always to the benefit of the developers and it would be nice if we could have open discussion without being standoffish.
In response to The Donald (not going to quote because it's big and I am too lazy to edit on my phone): Yeah I get the jist of what you are saying, there was more "cut and thrust" with research and counters in the past, at points. I don't disagree that commanding was loads more interesting when that was the case, intact rushing heavies was even more Fun back then because it was an all or nothing kind of a thing. Especially when Bio was a big thing. I'm not saying that the examples you recollect were never the case. It's one of the reasons I favour symmetrical heavy tanks (as far as load outs go) because I think it means we would not only be able to go back to that but push it further, unapologetically to either faction.
