A mahout there not only cost 7 pop (without card) but also around 700 resources. And not just for competitive modes but for all 1v1, team, TR, FFA. I think the AOE3 system really got it right. There are many ways and systems they can use to balance population. There are civs that France have 65% win ration for middle users. In my opinion, this is the reason Frances have the better overall statistics than every other civ in AoE2DE (I think it is near 57% wins/losses). For the middle user for example, a cavarly civ is more easy to go because the natural counter (pikemans) can be handled easily with archers. Example an archer civ has bonuses vs an infantry civ and disadvantage vs a cavalry civ. For sure there will be civs with bonuses than other civs. Obviously the second parameter can vary a lot between specific civs statistics. The overall gap wins/looses for each civ not to be very big.This gab of wins/looses not to be very big between early-middle-late game.So yeah, not totally uselessĮxactly, there are civs that have advantage in the early game and civs that have advantage in the late game. The Persian player will make tons of elephants and wreck you to death unless you have Mamleukes. In a late game situation when trade is possible, War Elephants would be a total nightmare as Population Efficiency begins to matter more than Cost Efficiency. I do hope the Developers added a population limit option to the game lobby, or else they will make more than 50% of the players sad/angry. I’m also not surprised that barely anyone voted for less than 200. I expected a few more votes for 200 and I assume in reality more lobbies will be at 200 or max population (what ever that number will be) than something inbetween. it’s the standard in AoE2 now and always has been in AoE3.it’s the standard limit the game is designed for.
I guess most people that voted for 200 did so because I’d assume if the developers would have made 300 population the standard it would probably have won this survey. So having a bit more population seems to be very popular. Half of the people want to play with more than 200 population but half of those only with about 100 more population. Having more stable FPS is of course still an advantage but that’s true for basically every game. It was a lobby setting not a player setting. Doesn’t that grant a significant advantage for a person having a better computer ?