Latest / Start the game already! / [ENG] Magazine Ep. #08 January 2026

Transcript

[ENG] Magazine Ep. #08 January 2026 · Start the game already!

• 0:12
  Welcome back to another episode of the Age of Empires Magazine
• 0:16
  and once again I am thrilled I am joined by Daniela.
• 0:19
  Hello. Hey, Chris, Happy New Year.
• 0:22
  Happy New Years. Yes, I hope you had a great last
• 0:26
  night. Did you?
• 0:28
  Did you do anything special for New Years?
• 0:30
  Nothing really. Honestly I I think we even
• 0:33
  missed the the countdown or something.
• 0:36
  We were playing Mister Jack, a board game.
• 0:39
  So we were. Very, very, you know, immersed
• 0:42
  in the strategy there. We just.
• 0:44
  Realized like a couple of minutes later it was like, oh,
• 0:47
  happy new year. Great.
• 0:51
  It was kind of the same for us. This was the first year in so
• 0:55
  many years that we didn't celebrate with our friend group,
• 0:59
  but instead we, like each couple, spent the New Year's at
• 1:04
  home. And we came together the day
• 1:07
  after today actually, and had brunch together.
• 1:09
  Because last year when we were spending New Year's Eve
• 1:11
  together, we almost fell asleep before midnight.
• 1:15
  So we decided maybe we're tall for that now.
• 1:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was actually kind of nice.
• 1:23
  Yeah, just a chill little, you know, end of the year and
• 1:26
  nothing too big. It was just, you know, in the
• 1:28
  family. It was nice.
• 1:31
  Great, that's great. And now we've got a few exciting
• 1:36
  topics to discuss, starting of course with the 6th edition of
• 1:40
  King of the Desert, which took place in the December of last
• 1:45
  year. And there was also a update with
• 1:48
  some balance changes we can discuss.
• 1:51
  There's a couple of smaller news in between we'll be talking
• 1:54
  about, but we've also got a couple of franchise news because
• 1:58
  the South America DLC for Age of Empires 2 has been announced,
• 2:01
  and it's coming to the game in February 2026.
• 2:05
  And as is the theme with our franchise, if one game gets
• 2:07
  something new, of course the other ones have to get something
• 2:10
  as well. And that is the Caves this time
• 2:13
  as well. We'll also finish up the episode
• 2:16
  with some emails and the tournament outlook for January
• 2:20
  2026, where we'll talk about the Red Bull Wallolo Ladder
• 2:24
  Qualifier and TTL Season 5. So let's get into the news.
• 2:33
  King of the Desert 6 was the main event of December and this
• 2:38
  was the 6th edition of this Arabia only tournament hosted by
• 2:42
  MEM TV. We've had some great games and a
• 2:45
  very entertaining finals. So if anyone stumbled into this
• 2:49
  podcast for whatever reason not knowing the result of the
• 2:53
  tournament or some of the games and does not want to get
• 2:56
  spoiled. And this is your chance to back
• 2:58
  out because we will be spoiling pretty much anything we want.
• 3:02
  No details spared. King of the Desert 6 featured 64
• 3:07
  players fighting for a total price pool of $50,000.
• 3:10
  In the semifinals, we saw Hera beating Mr. Yo and on the other
• 3:15
  side of the bracket, Viper beating Winchester, thus leading
• 3:19
  to a Hera versus a Viper final, which couldn't have been more
• 3:24
  packed with suspense. But before we talk about that,
• 3:28
  let's recap the tournament just a little bit.
• 3:30
  And I'd like to start with asking you, Daniela, how much
• 3:34
  did you actually enjoy the tournament?
• 3:37
  Quite a lot actually. Quite a lot in the sense that,
• 3:42
  you know, everyone kind of thinks of me, like I said #1
• 3:48
  hitter of Arabia. And it's understandable.
• 3:50
  Like for me, Arabia was banned for three years.
• 3:55
  I hate playing it right. But when it comes to spectating
• 3:59
  pro level games, I don't mind it that much at all.
• 4:04
  And OK, surprisingly it did. I did enjoy it way more than I
• 4:10
  expected. Like I didn't expect myself to
• 4:13
  hate it. I expect me to enjoy it.
• 4:15
  I didn't expect you to enjoy it that much.
• 4:18
  I expected that I'm going to probably binge casting until
• 4:21
  like, I don't know why. It may be quarterfinals and then
• 4:23
  like I'll just chill. No, actually I didn't stream in
• 4:26
  a couple of days because a lot of things in my personal life
• 4:30
  kind of crashed with that final weekend.
• 4:32
  But I I even casted the final but on the only model channel.
• 4:37
  So yeah, I enjoyed the tournament a lot.
• 4:41
  I think the tournament was a great success.
• 4:43
  I think Mam could not be happier with with this event given the
• 4:48
  fact that he had to prepare it in a short time.
• 4:52
  He was not expecting to host this big of a tournament.
• 4:54
  I think we know that this tournament was basically the
• 4:57
  result of the cancellation of a land event that was supposed to
• 5:02
  happen. That didn't happen anymore.
• 5:04
  So they had to, you know, put another tournament in place.
• 5:07
  Man was there to go man to organize something.
• 5:12
  He didn't have a lot of time. He did in my opinion the best he
• 5:16
  could with the with the time he had and everything was great.
• 5:20
  Props to Mem for for this tournament.
• 5:22
  Yeah I'm sure everyone agrees with that.
• 5:25
  I think the pros do and whoever was watching mem stream also got
• 5:33
  to listen to you in one at one point because you were Co
• 5:36
  casting a set with him. Yes I Co casted a great set.
• 5:40
  Actually my my history of Co casting with mem is crazy
• 5:45
  because we started Co casting together during warlords,
• 5:48
  another tournament that happened in the early part of 2025.
• 5:53
  We casted 2 sets together and both of the sets went incredibly
• 5:59
  long. Went to game #7 both were best
• 6:05
  of seven. And I, I was telling him that,
• 6:09
  oh ma'am, if you want a long final, you have to, you have to
• 6:13
  invite me as a Co caster. Like all the, all the sets that
• 6:16
  I'm casting. They go to game number 7.
• 6:18
  And man, NBLACCM was, was one of that, that, that type of sets.
• 6:25
  It went think almost 4 hours or something like that.
• 6:28
  It was crazy. Yeah.
• 6:32
  So what's your experience in Co casting with, well in this case
• 6:38
  mem? Is it any different for you than
• 6:40
  casting alone? So the entire, you know,
• 6:46
  experience having a Co caster is way easier.
• 6:52
  I feel like it in the sense that, you know, maybe I don't
• 6:56
  have to pay attention to everything.
• 6:59
  Maybe my Co caster is going to raise up a lot of good points.
• 7:03
  Maybe, you know, I have more time to think about what I how I
• 7:08
  want to phrase, what I want to say to kind of like take bigger
• 7:11
  pauses without the audience feeling uncomfortable because
• 7:15
  those pauses are filled by the Co Castor.
• 7:17
  I think Co casting with someone is easier than Co casting alone
• 7:22
  from an objective point of view. Even more so during MEMS
• 7:28
  tournament. He has an observer.
• 7:30
  So I just said back I had nothing else to focus on other
• 7:35
  than the game and discussing with someone else that shares
• 7:39
  the same passion for the game, details of what's happening,
• 7:43
  strategies, you know, joke and just enjoy a good game while,
• 7:51
  you know, enjoying each other's presence and making as
• 7:55
  entertaining as we could for the audience.
• 7:57
  I love casting with an observer. I thought I wouldn't like it as
• 8:02
  much since you can't control the camera.
• 8:05
  But of course, like he's observer vodka, he's just a
• 8:09
  professional. Like he's the one being invited
• 8:11
  as as an observer to the Asterior Land tournaments as
• 8:16
  well to the big tournaments. So it's just natural that he's
• 8:21
  going to be a professional. He's going to focus on the
• 8:23
  exact, you know, things that matter it.
• 8:27
  It was just great. The downsize of casting with
• 8:32
  someone is that you can have a very different types of energy.
• 8:38
  Your energy might not match. Now, I don't know what's the
• 8:44
  viewer's experience, but in my experience, I, I felt like I
• 8:51
  didn't have an issue Co casting with anyone really.
• 8:56
  And I felt like, I think I, I, I Co casted with mostly all the
• 9:00
  casters in the scene. So I, I don't know, you kind of
• 9:04
  have to pay attention. Maybe the first game is going to
• 9:08
  be a tiny bit more awkward, but I don't know.
• 9:11
  Once you kind of get each other's energy and each other's
• 9:16
  rhythm, I feel like afterwards is very smooth.
• 9:20
  And you know, I, I, I read a lot of comments from, from the
• 9:25
  community as well about their favorite casters, about some
• 9:29
  duos that they like, some duos that they don't like.
• 9:32
  They feel like some caster all the time interrupts the other
• 9:37
  or, or such. And of course, like naturally,
• 9:39
  especially when casting for the first time, that is going to
• 9:41
  happen. It happened to, to mem and IA
• 9:45
  couple of times as well. But I feel like every time we,
• 9:48
  we recognize that one of us, you know, let the other one finish
• 9:51
  their, their thought. And I kind of backed off a bit.
• 9:55
  We kind of we kind of had a good thing going.
• 9:58
  I honestly loved, loved the invitation, loved Co casting
• 10:03
  with him. I, I, I told him I appreciated
• 10:05
  his tournament and his invite, of course.
• 10:07
  And yeah, I'll happily accept if he ever thinks about Co casting
• 10:12
  with me again. I'm sure he does.
• 10:16
  I think it was a great success in terms of what cast us work
• 10:21
  well together. I think most established casters
• 10:25
  are just pretty good at working with each other, especially
• 10:28
  because they mostly know each other by now.
• 10:31
  But if I had to pick one caster who's particularly good at that
• 10:36
  and as an adapting to whoever he's casting with, that would be
• 10:40
  Dave for me. I think Dave is whoever, whoever
• 10:44
  he casts with. He's a different kind of Dave,
• 10:47
  and he's also different from when he casts alone, and that's
• 10:51
  something that I admire a lot about him.
• 10:54
  I think he's just very good at adapting to whoever is casting
• 10:58
  with him. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 10:59
  Dave is a Dave is a honestly, you know, I think all of the big
• 11:05
  casters are like that. I can understand your Dave
• 11:10
  preference. I I, I love Dave's type of
• 11:12
  casting as well. But you know, I kind of felt the
• 11:16
  same when I casted with with T-90.
• 11:19
  When I cast it with T-90, like my voice was shaking.
• 11:22
  Also my channel was. Because you were nervous.
• 11:24
  I was extremely nervous, yes. Like his audience is way big,
• 11:28
  way bigger by far compared to any other casters.
• 11:34
  Well, I feel like T-90 is the one that we all kind of look up
• 11:38
  to. Obviously his success is just
• 11:42
  reflecting in his numbers and in, in his viewership.
• 11:46
  So I don't know for me was imagine aspiring to get close to
• 11:53
  someone's level and then having a, a chance to collaborate with
• 11:56
  him. I, I don't know, I was a bit,
• 11:57
  you know, fan fan struck that time.
• 12:03
  I, I was so happy that he, he wanted to go cast.
• 12:07
  I, I think it was more of like a, you know, thank you from his
• 12:10
  side because I, I think I was covering a lot of the previous
• 12:16
  seasons of TTL and I think he was travelling and I think Hera
• 12:22
  had a tournament happening while he was travelling.
• 12:25
  So all the casters were casting Hera tournament, the, the one
• 12:29
  with the best of 20 ones or something like that.
• 12:31
  And there were so many good sets and no one was casting those
• 12:34
  except for me and maybe a couple of other people.
• 12:37
  We were all small streamers, but I covered a big chunk of it.
• 12:42
  So like he, he was always so grateful for that coverage.
• 12:45
  And, and I felt like that that my coverage paid off with him
• 12:50
  wanting to cocast with me. And Oh my God, I was so happy.
• 12:55
  But again, like my point was that he, I was a newer caster.
• 13:01
  I had way less experience. That was a couple of years ago
• 13:03
  even. And I felt like he made me very
• 13:07
  comfortable. He made me relax after being, I
• 13:12
  promise you my voice was shaking of how nervous I was.
• 13:16
  That was again for the 1st 30 minutes maybe of the first game
• 13:21
  and then I was good to go. Like he made me relax and just
• 13:27
  you know, his style of Co casting and taking the lead
• 13:31
  where he felt like it was needed and such.
• 13:35
  You know it. You can see that experience of
• 13:40
  decades of casting showing. Well, yes, I think I think it's
• 13:46
  undisputable that T-90 is great at giving talent some space to
• 13:52
  shine and elevating these people much like you.
• 13:55
  And I don't know, have you listened to the latest GL
• 13:58
  podcast? You've gotten a little shout out
• 14:00
  from Heron. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:02
  Oh my God, that was my nice little Christmas gift.
• 14:08
  I, I felt like, Oh my God, I, I don't know.
• 14:11
  It felt good. It just felt good to have the
• 14:16
  work recognized. Because I feel like when you're
• 14:19
  a small mid content creator, obviously a lot of the community
• 14:26
  doesn't watch your channel. Like if the majority of the
• 14:30
  community will watch your channel and they would know
• 14:33
  about you and such, you wouldn't be a small or mid creator.
• 14:40
  So anyway, I feel like it's very easy for people to minimize
• 14:47
  someone's effort in in the sense that you don't really know
• 14:51
  what's what's going on. All you can do is like look at
• 14:56
  the numbers. Yeah, maybe they're growing,
• 14:59
  maybe they're stagnating. You know, during a big STR event
• 15:07
  you open Twitch and then you, you see the numbers, you know,
• 15:10
  you see T95K Dave 2K, mem 2K. Then depends if Harry is
• 15:17
  streaming. Harry is probably a little
• 15:18
  summer 34K as well. Then there's, you know, there's
• 15:25
  the TW Danielawonlou trio with maybe something around 100 and
• 15:33
  that's his own. Like, of course, even as a, an
• 15:37
  established viewer, I don't know you're it's easy to minimize or
• 15:43
  to say like, oh, like they're they're just casting when the
• 15:45
  other ones are casting. Of course they're not going to
• 15:48
  get a lot of viewers. Like they're not doing a whole
• 15:52
  lot more efforts to to grow their channels.
• 15:55
  But and I could see them seeing like that.
• 15:58
  But again, like if you don't cast every tournament, if you
• 16:01
  don't cast even if when the big ones are casting, then you don't
• 16:06
  gain a lot of experience from casting big as your tournaments,
• 16:12
  right? So that that's kind of how your
• 16:16
  experience is forming. Then again, like I personally, I
• 16:22
  tried to cover a lot of the tournaments last year.
• 16:24
  I think I think I guessed it even more than the previous
• 16:29
  previous year, which was already a budget.
• 16:32
  But I, I try to kind of like focus on especially on events
• 16:37
  and I could see a certain growth even if the big creators were
• 16:45
  on. So like some of the work is
• 16:48
  showing, but also a lot of it like it's behind the scene, it's
• 16:53
  not visible to to the viewers. So anyway, just to finish my
• 16:57
  point as A to be recognized by someone like Hera to one of the
• 17:03
  biggest creator in the scene, if not the biggest creator, I feel
• 17:06
  like him and T-90 are the biggest 2 creators in the scene.
• 17:11
  I don't know all of that to work and recognition to be recognized
• 17:15
  by by him. It meant the world to me.
• 17:19
  Yeah, I can only imagine. Well, I was very glad for you
• 17:21
  when when I heard a shout out. And I think it's well deserved,
• 17:25
  to be honest. You've been covering lots of
• 17:28
  games. And I mean, I'm one of those
• 17:33
  viewers who are watching most tournaments and I'm always
• 17:40
  facing the challenge of choosing where to watch the tournament
• 17:44
  because it can only watch it in one place.
• 17:46
  So I have to make a decision and it's sometimes it's easy,
• 17:50
  sometimes it's very hard. And what I what I usually do is
• 17:54
  I'm actually changing in between games or sets.
• 17:58
  That's something I like to do and especially when I've yeah,
• 18:02
  because sometimes, you know, some my favorite caster may have
• 18:06
  a bad day and the, the the casting experience is not as
• 18:10
  good as I'm used to. That's that's the reason for me
• 18:13
  to maybe change and look at some what buddies else's cast and and
• 18:18
  sometimes they might collaborate and have a Co cast so I can
• 18:21
  watch both at the same time or listen to both at the same time.
• 18:24
  But it really depends on so many things and I for one naturally
• 18:31
  drift to watch T-90 or Dave in at my first position.
• 18:37
  That is just who brought me to Age of Empires 2 or who I grew
• 18:41
  up in the scene with. So they are my go to casters.
• 18:45
  If it could have been memp, but it wasn't memp, it was T-90 and
• 18:50
  before that it was some other casters, but they are not
• 18:52
  casters anymore. So I think this just
• 18:55
  historically grew and I and I'm sure this is the case for many
• 18:59
  people who just grew up with some of the casters, established
• 19:02
  casters and they just stick with them as their first choice.
• 19:06
  But I think there's so many people coming to the scene,
• 19:11
  finding the scene, the E sports scene for the first time in
• 19:15
  2025. And there it's of course, it's
• 19:19
  much easier for them to find the big casters because they have
• 19:22
  bigger numbers and more content and so on.
• 19:25
  But I think this is the target group for what you called mid
• 19:31
  mid tier casters like you are only or T West.
• 19:35
  So it's very interesting to see and I think it's very inspiring
• 19:38
  to see that you, you 3 in particular, put in so much work
• 19:42
  into the the scene. And I mean, we also have to
• 19:45
  mention that there's casters in the French community, in the
• 19:49
  Spanish speaking community, who we never mentioned because I
• 19:52
  don't watch them because they stream in their own native
• 19:55
  language and there's tons of them creating content as well
• 19:59
  for their target group. Yeah.
• 20:02
  OK, we kind of derailed here, but I was just curious on
• 20:07
  finding out what your experience was with casting this tournament
• 20:11
  and it seems like you've enjoyed it a lot.
• 20:16
  Maybe let's talk about why this iteration of King of the Desert
• 20:21
  was so enjoyable. Do you think it was the much
• 20:26
  discussed Viper doing the fast through stuff or that it felt
• 20:31
  like the bigger names are approachable by newer players?
• 20:36
  I'm thinking about, I don't know, Winchester beating Leary
• 20:41
  and Lucho having great set against Leary in the round
• 20:44
  before. Was it that we saw different
• 20:47
  kind of civilizations because of the many bands that the
• 20:50
  tournament was giving? What was it for you that made
• 20:54
  this tournament, especially for someone who doesn't enjoy
• 20:57
  playing Arabia, so enjoyable? Oh, don't get me wrong, I I love
• 21:02
  casting games that are so progressive.
• 21:03
  I I think for starters, that was it to me as a caster, feel like
• 21:09
  aggressive games are great. There's just so many things
• 21:18
  happening at at all times. There's so many things that you
• 21:22
  know are are variable and cane can change the entire, you know,
• 21:28
  path of the game for for the pun not included, not intended.
• 21:34
  Oh yeah, I get it now. Oops.
• 21:40
  You know, just the course of the entire game that there's no,
• 21:45
  there's no blank spots for me there, there's no breaks.
• 21:48
  I have to basically talk non-stop.
• 21:51
  And this is even more more so of a reason why I prefer casting
• 21:58
  those types of games, especially when I'm casting alone.
• 22:01
  Because even to just kind of go back a bit about what we were
• 22:05
  talking before about, you know, casting as such, I think people
• 22:11
  don't necessarily understand how hard it is to talk non-stop for
• 22:18
  8 hours continuously. Sometimes I literally just stop
• 22:24
  and I feel like, Oh my God, if I don't drink right now, a sip of
• 22:27
  water, I will faint or like I, I feel like I need to, you know,
• 22:33
  get a stuff and clear my throat a lot.
• 22:35
  And like, I OK, I have to give my, my voice a breath and a
• 22:40
  pause. It can get quite exhausting.
• 22:45
  But in the same time, having too many pauses, having too many,
• 22:51
  you know, as an oath and such kind of doesn't keep the viewer
• 22:59
  engaged kind of, you know, brings a certain monotone rhythm
• 23:07
  that, you know, makes the game less enjoyable to view and to me
• 23:13
  to to cast as well. Like, for instance, there were a
• 23:16
  couple of I I was so excited of watching Avengers first sets.
• 23:19
  You mentioned him before and Winchester and especially mid
• 23:24
  tournament started to just wall and three TC boom and I'm like,
• 23:32
  well OK, I wish I could Fast forward to him to see some
• 23:36
  action. There was barely something and I
• 23:41
  feel like in those type of situation that's challenging for
• 23:45
  the caster, how do you drag those, you know, 20 minutes
• 23:51
  while they just they just free booming cows because sometimes
• 23:54
  their opponent would see would scout the walls was scouted 3 TC
• 23:58
  boom and I was like, OK, I stopped producing army and Fudo.
• 24:00
  I just go up and boom as well. And you would see maybe one or
• 24:05
  two monks, maybe just a lie calf here and there trying to smipe a
• 24:09
  veal through an overtop or or or through something.
• 24:13
  So to me, what made it enjoyable is that there were few sets, few
• 24:17
  games like that when that would happen.
• 24:19
  It would just be pure aggression.
• 24:22
  Long feudals. It we haven't talked about the
• 24:26
  finals yet, but finals had three seconds of imp.
• 24:33
  We've had a a a lot of sets where we didn't see imp at all.
• 24:37
  Now again, I like I'm thinking about Hera Miguel.
• 24:40
  They were most of the actions were I think that said, didn't
• 24:44
  even see castle age where it saw it in one game.
• 24:48
  And again, it was like super aggressive even in castle age.
• 24:52
  So long feudals, lots of aggression, open maps.
• 24:56
  But I have to say this had its downsides as well because there
• 25:01
  were a couple of games in a couple of sets where those
• 25:04
  generations were tiny bit too aggressive.
• 25:07
  Well players would only have access to one single wood line
• 25:12
  and that was very bad in my opinion.
• 25:14
  Yeah, I think some of the casters made the argument that
• 25:21
  classic Arabia has always had this kind of in quotes
• 25:25
  unfairness, that map generations wouldn't be 100% symmetrical and
• 25:31
  people would have good maps or bad maps.
• 25:33
  Which kind of reminds me of the old Viper map hacks from, you
• 25:37
  know, the Vubli times. But there's also an argument to
• 25:44
  be made that it's actually a sign of professionalism that we
• 25:48
  try to work with maps that do not create these unbalanced map
• 25:53
  generations. And we did see that sometimes
• 25:56
  the maps were so unbalanced that they kind of predetermined at
• 26:02
  least what kind of play would be made and maybe even the result
• 26:07
  of a game. And it it actually had a
• 26:11
  different effect than I initially expected.
• 26:14
  I thought with these unsymmetrical maps it would lead
• 26:19
  to more suspense and make games unpredictable.
• 26:25
  But it was actually the opposite.
• 26:26
  It got more predictable and the games got a little less
• 26:30
  interesting because the only interesting thing was whether
• 26:34
  the player with a big disadvantage would actually find
• 26:37
  a way to hold on or even win the game, but that was very
• 26:42
  unlikely. But other than that, I very much
• 26:47
  appreciated the fact that the maps were very aggressive.
• 26:51
  Laming was incentivized and was used quite a lot, which I think
• 26:56
  is always great for the viewers. I'm not sure how you feel about
• 27:01
  the actual effect that the Laming did, because at some
• 27:05
  point I felt like it doesn't really matter whether they are
• 27:10
  laning or not, they can still do whatever they want.
• 27:14
  Yeah, I think Dave felt very strongly about this.
• 27:21
  He even had like some some stats when he was saying like usually
• 27:26
  the player, I don't remember what was his stance.
• 27:32
  I think he said the player who lames the boar is usually the
• 27:36
  one that loses, but if you're laming sheep, that's a different
• 27:40
  story. That's more impactful than
• 27:41
  naming a boar. Yeah, maybe something like that.
• 27:44
  Yeah, I, I, I I didn't know the full story, but I didn't have
• 27:51
  AI. Haven't I didn't have an issue
• 27:52
  with laming again, like it's just more aggressive.
• 27:57
  It was. We haven't seen it in a in a
• 28:00
  long while. Right, yes, it wasn't worth it
• 28:03
  because you had deer to push. Exactly.
• 28:06
  Well, now you kind of had deer as well.
• 28:08
  No, no, the chicken were removed.
• 28:11
  Yes. After the players and also
• 28:13
  another important fact, the predators because they they
• 28:21
  would stop the players drushes. Yeah, so in the early versions
• 28:26
  of King of the Desert 6th Arabia, there were still
• 28:29
  predators on the map, but I think because of player feedback
• 28:32
  they took them out, right? Yeah, exactly.
• 28:36
  And that sounds like a great idea because we did see some
• 28:40
  Dark Age aggression throughout the tournament.
• 28:43
  Yeah, exactly. OK, so how much did you enjoy
• 28:48
  Viper doing the phosphor Russias?
• 28:52
  Quite a lot. I was very curious about that.
• 28:56
  We're talking about the final or just.
• 28:59
  Yes, about everything. No, no, whatever you want.
• 29:01
  Yeah. So Viper has been doing them on
• 29:05
  the ladder for a while and he seemed to be enjoying those now
• 29:12
  when there was they obviously proved to be proved to be quite
• 29:17
  successful throughout the tournament.
• 29:20
  I think in every single set he did at least one phosphor rush.
• 29:26
  I think Viper would have reached the final probably with or
• 29:30
  without doing them. Viper is a top three players.
• 29:35
  He's a very solid one. Previous GOAT and Legend
• 29:40
  etcetera. Now what I was expecting to see
• 29:46
  him doing the doing them against Hero, because I feel like their
• 29:53
  stance on the phosphor rush is completely at the opposite side.
• 29:58
  Viper was talking in the interview about how, you know,
• 30:02
  basically there's not really a good way to to stop it.
• 30:05
  If you get very lucky with the map because you go up so fast,
• 30:10
  you're just taking the stone. OK, we saw Vinchester, not
• 30:15
  Winchester. Some did.
• 30:17
  Yeah. I think Winchester played
• 30:18
  against Viper. We saw Winchester trying to come
• 30:20
  forward with villagers to put a tower.
• 30:22
  Viper was talking about that. Where do you put the tower?
• 30:26
  Do you put it the wood line? Well, I'm just going to move on
• 30:28
  stragglers. Do you put it on the stone?
• 30:30
  Well, I already kind of gathered at least 400 stone.
• 30:34
  I'm just going to move to a gold and then buy it back by the
• 30:37
  remaining stone. I mean what are you going to
• 30:41
  push me off the berries? Well I already kind of have the
• 30:43
  food and I'll have sheep under my TC so the you can't just deny
• 30:48
  all the resources. By the time you mess enough
• 30:52
  Archers to put them behind every resources blah blah blah.
• 30:56
  I'll be already in castle age with a castle up that you cannot
• 30:59
  stop and whatever I'll have my unique unit that is just too
• 31:05
  strong against pure age units. So his stake is that you cannot
• 31:12
  stop it. Hera stake.
• 31:14
  And even I think MBL was talking the same.
• 31:17
  That's yeah, you absolutely. You just have to go full fuel.
• 31:20
  You have to play normal. You have to invest into
• 31:22
  military, just continue to harass to deny resources.
• 31:26
  It's just this shouldn't work. This is too much.
• 31:30
  So you see them at complete opposite side.
• 31:33
  We saw, we saw it working, we saw it not working as well.
• 31:37
  So again, I still don't know what the conclusion between them
• 31:40
  is. I think they still very strongly
• 31:42
  feel the same about their own, their own opinion.
• 31:47
  But it was definitely a very interesting final, like one of
• 31:50
  the best that we've seen in a in a while.
• 31:52
  Yes. So I think I haven't stated it
• 31:56
  yet but just for the books. So Hera won King of the desert 6
• 32:02
  but in a nail biting final to the last game.
• 32:08
  So Viper made second place but back to phosphor rushes.
• 32:12
  I am still torn. I'm not sure whether I like it
• 32:16
  or not to be honest. During the tournament I enjoyed
• 32:20
  it so much like I was. I was usually even waiting for
• 32:25
  Viper to do it just because I wanted to see it and also
• 32:27
  because I felt like he is doing them not in a Mimi way, but
• 32:33
  because he embraces the strategy and he thinks and believes it's
• 32:37
  working and he's doing it in a committed and very determined
• 32:42
  way. And that is what I want to see
• 32:44
  from players. It doesn't matter whether it's
• 32:47
  the phosphor rush or a feudal rush or whatever it is, but I
• 32:52
  love the fact that Hera is so determined to save each and
• 32:57
  every unit he has just because he has the APM and concentration
• 33:01
  for it. Or that a tattoo is determined
• 33:05
  to find the the the very off meta strategy to throw off
• 33:10
  another player from his strengths.
• 33:13
  And in this case, this has been for a long time a kind of Viper
• 33:19
  that felt like he believes in himself and his strategies.
• 33:23
  And of course, this is just coming from a viewer.
• 33:25
  So I have no idea whether what the psychological inside of
• 33:30
  Viper is, of course, whether he has always been this determined
• 33:33
  or not. But to me, it felt like a
• 33:35
  different kind of Viper. And I'm not sure whether it's
• 33:38
  just because he's so good at the phosphor rush and with that has
• 33:43
  another layer of strategies and can therefore do more with the
• 33:48
  game than other players who have not practiced this, or whether
• 33:52
  it is actually because just the phosphor rush is so OPI don't
• 33:55
  know. But I don't care.
• 33:56
  What I enjoyed was the fact that Viper was playing to his
• 33:59
  strengths. And this is the kind of Viper
• 34:01
  that I like to cheer for and that I think and and believe
• 34:05
  that he has the best chance to actually get a title off of
• 34:07
  Hera. But at the same time, Daniela, I
• 34:12
  do hate strategies that are so strong that they single handedly
• 34:20
  shape the the path as you said, or the the flow of the game.
• 34:26
  And the phosphor rush is definitely this because of the
• 34:28
  reasons that you have just mentioned.
• 34:31
  There is no way to stop someone from doing the phosphor rule.
• 34:35
  Like. Like there's nothing you can do.
• 34:38
  Yeah, I was about to say when you said I loved watching it in
• 34:43
  tournament, I wanted to interrupt you and say, yeah, you
• 34:45
  loved watching it in tournament until you queue up on ladder the
• 34:47
  next day and you're facing it. Exactly.
• 34:51
  And it's not that fun anymore. I don't know, have you faced the
• 34:55
  phosphor rush? Yes, yes, all in clothes.
• 34:58
  I I faced the initial phosphor rush with Roman scorpions.
• 35:03
  I didn't find his knee. And I'm like, guess who is
• 35:07
  facing 20 scorpions eating your TC and you can't do anything
• 35:13
  about it? Yeah, I had eight scouts.
• 35:15
  Do what? Yeah, I I have yet to face the
• 35:19
  phosphor rush, but I've seen Reddit post, I've seen some
• 35:23
  posts in the community and from friends who are all saying that
• 35:26
  ever since King of the Desert, the phosphor rushing has been
• 35:30
  going crazy on the ladder. And that is something that kind
• 35:35
  of discerns me and does not want me to play ladder anymore.
• 35:39
  Yeah, And also I don't play Arabia that much.
• 35:46
  It's very hard to execute on mega random for for example.
• 35:51
  And especially that I play mirror like there's, I play
• 35:56
  mirror because I hate playing against sieve pickers.
• 36:00
  You kind of have to force Pixiv to do a false rule.
• 36:05
  So I played a lot of games versus sieve pickers, like
• 36:10
  Portuguese, Burmese, and it turned out to be like, I don't
• 36:13
  know, a water map or like an island type of map.
• 36:17
  They tried it. But then if I go mirror, like I
• 36:19
  can just do the exact same thing while also having a fish echo or
• 36:25
  something like that. I also face a lot of people that
• 36:27
  just instantly resign when they see mirror.
• 36:33
  But yeah. OK.
• 36:35
  Yeah, So I don't know, the whole phosphor rushing thing leaves a
• 36:39
  bit of an after taste and I'm not sure I like it.
• 36:45
  I I really don't like any kind of strategy that is so powerful
• 36:48
  that it shapes the that it determines how the game has to
• 36:51
  be played, even for your opponent.
• 36:54
  So I guess I wish phosphor rushing wasn't possible, but I
• 37:01
  did enjoy Viper just just embracing the strategy and doing
• 37:06
  the best he can. That was just great to watch.
• 37:10
  Yeah, for sure. It was a great final.
• 37:13
  Were there any other players that you would like to mention
• 37:16
  that kind of shined in some way or did something that you think
• 37:21
  is worth mentioning? I feel like definitely
• 37:25
  Sebastian. I, I, I don't know what the
• 37:32
  again vibe performed against Sebastian in game seven with a
• 37:35
  phosphor rush. He was countering quite nice
• 37:39
  with the monks before devotion. Once devotion kicked in, Viper
• 37:44
  was just unstoppable. And man, I, I, I feel, I feel
• 37:47
  like I jinxed Seva. I was, I was calling Gigi for
• 37:50
  Viper. I was so happy with such a great
• 37:52
  performance for Seva and he, just like I saw him in the
• 37:55
  camera, he he could not believe what was happening.
• 38:01
  Yeah, that was a great set, actually one of the bests in the
• 38:05
  whole tournament. But there were a couple of great
• 38:08
  sets like the ones you casted ACCM versus NBA or the YO versus
• 38:14
  ACCM sets after that was also very, very entertaining.
• 38:19
  Kind of went a different way than expected because usually
• 38:22
  when these two face, you expect lots of very long games and they
• 38:25
  were long, but I think they they were just very entertaining to
• 38:29
  watch. So yeah, lots of very good
• 38:33
  games, but there was also some stuff happening that is
• 38:37
  controversial. One thing would be the siege
• 38:40
  tower fire Lancer shenanigans that we saw.
• 38:44
  So for everyone who did not catch that siege towers have
• 38:49
  been buffed lately because they've just gotten very cheap,
• 38:52
  right? That's the only thing that has
• 38:53
  changed. And the siege towers, the Castle
• 38:57
  age siege unit that you can build and you can Garrison units
• 39:03
  inside the siege tower and then basically taxi them and round.
• 39:06
  And they're usually made for getting units over a single line
• 39:11
  of walls. But since they aren't so cheap
• 39:15
  now and they're quite fast, you can Garrison your units inside
• 39:19
  and those units would be safe. So for example, what you can do,
• 39:23
  and what was happening a lot is you get a powerful infantry unit
• 39:27
  like the Fire Lancer, get them into your siege tower, and then
• 39:32
  just roll up to, for example, what counters fire lenses, like
• 39:37
  let's say Archers or crossbows. And you would just then once
• 39:42
  you're close to them, get out there, get your fire lenses to
• 39:46
  shoot and to attack. And then by the time the
• 39:49
  crossbows would actually hit you, you just get back into your
• 39:51
  siege tower. And that was something that was,
• 39:54
  in my opinion, very unpleasant to see.
• 39:57
  I don't know how you feel about that.
• 39:59
  Absolutely. Whenever I I would see the fire
• 40:04
  Lancer and siege tower. Another thing was with the
• 40:08
  Flemish Malaysias from Burgundians and siege tower.
• 40:11
  Oh my God, I was just cringing. I mean like it just, I don't
• 40:17
  know, it felt, it feels. Feels bad, you know, You're
• 40:20
  preparing your arches, you're manganiels and it's like, yeah,
• 40:23
  you can say goodbye to them. Yeah, and it's not really hard
• 40:28
  to execute. When I was seeing that, I
• 40:32
  actually booted up the game and tried it and it took me like 2
• 40:36
  or 3 attempts and I felt very competent in doing that because
• 40:40
  the reaction speed in the game is just so fast with garrisoning
• 40:44
  and UN garrisoning units. It's so much easier to do that
• 40:47
  than to actually attack the units once they jump out because
• 40:50
  as an enemy you don't know when that would happen.
• 40:53
  So this is something that needs to be changed in my opinion.
• 40:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think again, the podcast from
• 41:01
  GL covered that with Hera. I think Hera had some takes
• 41:05
  about, you know, the fire rig. You can't have them attack
• 41:10
  immediately. When they hop out of the out of
• 41:14
  the tower, you can have them shoot immediately.
• 41:17
  Yeah, or you, I, I, I think there is an argument to be made
• 41:23
  why that is important, because when you are scaling a wall, you
• 41:27
  actually need your units to fire the moment they get out of the
• 41:31
  wall. Otherwise, you know, people
• 41:33
  could just, there's no incentive to scale walls with the siege
• 41:36
  tower, but maybe there is a way to bind that together that if
• 41:42
  they are not scaling a wall when they are on garrisoning, they
• 41:45
  would get a penalty and have a little delay.
• 41:48
  But I don't know I that's probably not possible to code,
• 41:51
  but they need something like that.
• 41:53
  Imagine they tried to change that and things go all gone
• 41:57
  again. True.
• 42:02
  So the other thing that was quite obvious and that was
• 42:05
  discussed after the tournament a lot is the stand ground patrol
• 42:08
  usage. It seems like this is just
• 42:11
  something that all pros are doing now with melee units.
• 42:15
  And it led to something that I had not realized during the
• 42:20
  tournament. But that was something that I
• 42:23
  think Harrah said in the GL podcast as well, that it's
• 42:26
  actually led to fewer fights because for example, Fuel aged
• 42:32
  scouts would not fight with each other because the pros, which is
• 42:37
  both used to stand ground patrol and whoever had more units would
• 42:41
  automatically win. So instead they would just not
• 42:45
  fight at all. And this is something that I
• 42:48
  didn't realise that while I was watching the tournament, but in
• 42:52
  in retrospective, it makes a lot of sense.
• 42:55
  Yeah, there have been a couple of pros speaking against this or
• 42:59
  like being quite upset about it. The first name that comes to
• 43:02
  mind is Nikhov. He kind of started with
• 43:05
  Telesocracy, right, kind of rage quitting his his sad, but, you
• 43:09
  know, understandably so. Like I I could absolutely
• 43:12
  understand, you know, not wanting to play against a
• 43:16
  mechanic like that. Yeah, it was forever in the
• 43:21
  game. But like it, it just takes, you
• 43:23
  know, couple of people to kind of realize that they how it
• 43:29
  could be abused and then like it basically becomes a meta because
• 43:33
  it's so strong. So that that could lead, of
• 43:37
  course, to a couple of, you know, stale games, kind of weird
• 43:41
  scenarios. I don't know, It's I understand
• 43:44
  why players want to drop it. Like I I don't enjoy seeing it
• 43:48
  either. Yeah, At the same time, we had
• 43:51
  very aggressive feudal ages. So I was wondering whether this
• 43:55
  was actually a really a problem like the pros make it out to be,
• 43:59
  because for me as a viewer, I didn't realize this was
• 44:01
  happening and it was still very enjoyable.
• 44:03
  So from your perspective, is this a problem or is this
• 44:08
  something that could stay in the game?
• 44:12
  I, I, I think, I think it kind of has to change as well
• 44:16
  because, you know, OK, for the viewers, for, you know, people
• 44:21
  watching the game, maybe it's not as obvious, but if it kind
• 44:26
  of gets into the player's head, they're like, Oh my God, I, I, I
• 44:29
  can't take that fight. Even though in theory my, my
• 44:36
  units are better, I have better upgrades, more units, But just
• 44:41
  because he could abuse that mechanic, I can't even take this
• 44:45
  fight because of the way he could stack his units in a way
• 44:50
  that I, I can't reach them. It's a bit, you know, I, I feels
• 44:55
  like it takes out of their enjoyment.
• 44:58
  It takes away from their enjoyment of playing the game.
• 45:00
  Or I could see someone getting like very frustrating with how
• 45:04
  some people could drag some certain matches with that.
• 45:11
  You know, it's it's understandable that it can be
• 45:14
  very frustrating for the players.
• 45:16
  Yeah. Do you use the Stand Ground
• 45:19
  patrol when you're playing? No.
• 45:22
  No no I have like 38 PM like me. Just step pressing an additional
• 45:27
  hot key will mean the end of the world.
• 45:31
  Formation is not how we play the game.
• 45:33
  Yeah, OK. I like that attitude.
• 45:38
  I I'm hardly using formation. I'm probably only using box
• 45:43
  formation for my fuel age scouts.
• 45:45
  For four Archers. Yeah.
• 45:48
  And then I would maybe use split if I'm mic ring against
• 45:52
  magnails. But that's it for.
• 45:54
  Me. No, no, no, no, I mean.
• 45:56
  Whenever I'm trying to split, like you kind of have to move
• 45:59
  them as well and like mine are just handing and I press split
• 46:02
  and it don't split and they just flatten that magnails are like
• 46:06
  Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, like I I, but my view is a single core,
• 46:12
  you know, like I have. To.
• 46:15
  Nas splitting and moving. They are just.
• 46:17
  No, you'll. Do that.
• 46:20
  Well, I just, I am definitely not somebody who does the stand
• 46:25
  ground patrol move. I'm also too lazy to learn it
• 46:29
  because I'm usually very slow at slow at learning these kind of
• 46:32
  things and my micro isn't that good so I decided not to learn
• 46:36
  it because I was pretty sure that it would patched out of the
• 46:39
  game very very quickly. But I recently played AI
• 46:43
  recently played a game against someone who used the stand
• 46:46
  ground patrol multiple times and it was so powerful it destroyed
• 46:53
  my units. If you're not using the stand
• 46:56
  ground patrol against somebody who who's doing it, it's and
• 47:00
  that that's what what that game taught me.
• 47:02
  It is completely impossible to win a fight.
• 47:06
  We were testing this the other we were testing this the other
• 47:10
  day. You can win fights with like I I
• 47:16
  even think Viper has a new video on this.
• 47:20
  You can. Yeah, the Champions.
• 47:22
  Yeah, you can abuse the units that have, you know, trample
• 47:26
  damage so bad. And splash damage.
• 47:31
  Yeah, we, we were testing it I think with 60 halberdiers,
• 47:38
  halberdiers like he had champions in that video.
• 47:41
  We were testing it with halberdiers again, like the same
• 47:44
  amount of champions, like regular champion from another
• 47:47
  sieve and the Hal win. It's crazy like how can the
• 47:51
  halves win versus the Champions? But if you if you do that 100%.
• 47:58
  Yeah, so that is an indicator that it needs to go because it
• 48:03
  is clear that everybody has to use it to win fights.
• 48:06
  If someone does it, it's it's kind of a pain in the ass, to be
• 48:09
  honest, and I really don't want to learn it.
• 48:11
  So my solution would be to take it out of the game in some way.
• 48:16
  But yeah. OK, so these are the learnings.
• 48:19
  Anything else you want to talk about with King of the Desert 6?
• 48:24
  I think we covered a lot. Yeah, I mean, there's more
• 48:28
  things to cover. Of course, we haven't talked
• 48:29
  about the very popular Vikings pick.
• 48:32
  Oh. My God, don't don't.
• 48:33
  No no no, don't start with that. We're getting to 3 hours to get.
• 48:36
  I was so riled up again about it.
• 48:39
  Oh my God. OK, now I need to know your
• 48:41
  opinion on that. Why are you picking Vikings?
• 48:45
  Like I understand that yes, they have a great economy, great
• 48:50
  infantry line infantry was shining in this patch.
• 48:54
  Pam Pam Pam Pam. What's the win rate?
• 48:57
  What's their win rate? It was bad, and it was so
• 49:00
  heavily picked, it was crazy. It feels like, yeah, you have a
• 49:06
  great start, great echo. Early on, it feels like if you
• 49:09
  take damage, you basically just can't stabilize anywhere.
• 49:13
  You don't have units. Yeah.
• 49:17
  So I agree that they may have been a bit over hyped or not
• 49:22
  over hyped, but over like their their their success may be a bit
• 49:28
  overrated. But I think it's got more to do
• 49:32
  with when you pick them and not the fact that you pick them with
• 49:36
  this many admin bands and kind of unpredictability.
• 49:39
  And they do have a solid eco and that is in some map scenarios
• 49:45
  quite important. I think they are not a bad pick.
• 49:49
  I just wouldn't pick them in like in the 1st 50% of your
• 49:54
  picks, but maybe later. And I don't think you need to be
• 49:57
  afraid that your enemy is picking them because if they do
• 49:59
  then So what? That's it's not the end of the
• 50:01
  world. Yeah, exactly.
• 50:03
  But they were they were such a popular pick.
• 50:06
  Yes, and I think there's good reason for it.
• 50:08
  They are a good Civil Arabia. They just lack the late game.
• 50:13
  I think. I think that's what everyone
• 50:14
  said, but Hera kind of showed that you just don't have to get
• 50:19
  to the late game and you might just win with them.
• 50:22
  Honestly they did have a couple of very strong comps in the
• 50:27
  league game as well. Right?
• 50:29
  If you just go champions curb feels like it.
• 50:32
  It's very heavy to to be with their extra HP on their
• 50:36
  inventory. Yeah.
• 50:39
  I don't know, feels like their their castle age is kind of
• 50:42
  lacking a bit. But again, I also feel like it's
• 50:46
  a sale that you kind of have to you don't use your timings, use
• 50:51
  your great bonuses, great eco bonuses to hit better timings.
• 50:55
  And yeah, basically take advantage of that.
• 50:58
  But if you're ending up being the one behind and the one being
• 51:02
  pushed, we we saw that a couple of games, Daniel versus Barles,
• 51:08
  you just basically have no defense really.
• 51:12
  Yeah, it's an it's an uphill battle at some point in the
• 51:15
  game. But Daniela, I just realized, I
• 51:18
  just understood, finally understood why King of the
• 51:22
  Desert 6 was such a success. And that's because we've been
• 51:26
  talking about King of the Desert 6 now for about 40-50 minutes.
• 51:30
  But this just now was the first time we have mentioned the
• 51:34
  Skurms, even though it was Arabia we have skurms were not a
• 51:40
  factor in this tournament. And maybe that made it so
• 51:44
  entertaining. Absolutely, thank you.
• 51:47
  Yes, delete the unit from the game please.
• 51:51
  Well. I think that's too strong, but I
• 51:54
  do agree that the Scum is the least entertaining unit in.
• 51:58
  The game news fast man like I I would.
• 52:01
  Like. Hera tells Caster to cast 8
• 52:04
  hours per day. I would give me entertaining
• 52:06
  majesty cast. I open Arabia.
• 52:08
  It's just scum so fuck that. Oh, sorry, oops.
• 52:12
  I think you can swear a little, it's fine.
• 52:15
  A little OK, like I had I I reached my I reached my I see
• 52:22
  how you like prepared me like you asked me about Arabia, about
• 52:25
  the tournament. Then you kind of like sneak in
• 52:27
  the Viking things. Then you hit me with the skirm.
• 52:30
  It's like, oh. No, but honestly I think I think
• 52:34
  the skull meta is the the worst meta we've seen in in all of age
• 52:39
  of empires 2. I hate skurms to the death.
• 52:43
  I also I also think that the problem is very easily solvable.
• 52:47
  Skurms just need to do tons of bonus damage against other
• 52:50
  skurms so that the armies would kill each other much faster.
• 52:55
  That's that's a whole solution to this whole problem, because I
• 52:58
  just what I hate is when you see units, anything happening that's
• 53:02
  just so boring. That's very hard to.
• 53:05
  Balance though, because. That that's the.
• 53:07
  Case only in fuselage for instance, A scrim takes 40 hits
• 53:12
  in fuselage to kill a villager just because how much armor the
• 53:16
  villager has. Even with fletching it's still
• 53:19
  40 hits to heal to kill a villager.
• 53:21
  That's crazy from a military unit towards a vill.
• 53:25
  Now if you're in castle age, you get elite scrim and you get both
• 53:31
  in arrow. Oh, elite scum raids are
• 53:34
  actually very powerful because they can just dive the TC, dive
• 53:37
  the towers. They have a lot of Pierce armor
• 53:40
  and they kill villagers quite convincingly and units, other
• 53:44
  units, even Knights, if they don't have upgrades, you can
• 53:47
  just micro in kill the knight. So I think if the units would do
• 53:52
  more damage like yes, it's snooze fast in fuselage, but if
• 53:58
  they would do more damage in fuselage, I think they would be
• 54:01
  too strong in Castle. Yeah, but but I'm what I'm
• 54:04
  proposing is that they. Would only do bonus damage
• 54:07
  against skirmishes. So skirm, skirm not against.
• 54:12
  They should not be more. Powerful at all.
• 54:15
  The only thing they should be they should get better at is
• 54:18
  killing other Skarms. Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 54:21
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 54:22
  So. They would finish each other off
• 54:24
  faster. Because what is happening now is
• 54:27
  that everybody just builds skirms because at some point, if
• 54:30
  you have enough numbers, even a feudal age, there's nothing that
• 54:33
  really can kill them. So you would always end up with
• 54:37
  lots of skirms when you get to the Castle age and then the
• 54:41
  quite expensive lead skirmisher upgrade is still worth it.
• 54:45
  And This is why we see so many skirmishes in my opinion.
• 54:48
  Just make skirms kill each other, give them 20 bonus damage
• 54:52
  against skirmishes. Only skirmishes.
• 54:56
  So they would just Pierce each other and then be done with it.
• 55:03
  OK, I think we can close the King of the Desert 6th chapter.
• 55:07
  So Congrats to Hera once again, great tournament.
• 55:11
  Congrats to to member and all the other casters who have
• 55:14
  covered this tournament for us viewers.
• 55:16
  And now, now we get to a a little bit of a news that you
• 55:22
  have brought up in the pre talk to the show.
• 55:26
  So I'll give you the honours to to give us the news.
• 55:30
  Yeah, this was mostly related. To to what's coming next?
• 55:35
  Obviously we with King of the Desert, so it kind of that was a
• 55:41
  big event that basically covered the entire December.
• 55:44
  So we're just looking forward of what's coming up.
• 55:48
  I think players have some announcements soon.
• 55:55
  Hard to kind of send a tiny little teaser on his Discord.
• 56:01
  Obviously, he he gave everyone his happy wishes and happy new
• 56:05
  Year to everyone. He's did say that streams will
• 56:08
  come back in the next couple of days.
• 56:10
  And on top of all of that, he's got some sick news quoting
• 56:14
  coming up as well. Can't wait to share.
• 56:16
  So I think you guys should all keep an eye on harsh channel if
• 56:21
  you're looking forward to some great news regarding our E
• 56:24
  sports scene. I think he's he's going to know
• 56:27
  something. Who knows what it is?
• 56:32
  Well, the difference is you have to.
• 56:33
  Pretend not to know because you seem to know.
• 56:35
  But I I don't. I I honestly don't know.
• 56:38
  I I have assumptions. And assumptions and rumours and
• 56:47
  little bit of gossip here and. There.
• 56:50
  But that, that that's it. That's I honestly, I don't know
• 56:54
  anything for sure. Like I don't specifically know
• 56:57
  what he's referring to or what are the news.
• 57:01
  Well, if it's only assumptions and.
• 57:03
  Gossip you can share with us, right?
• 57:05
  Because it's not something. No.
• 57:07
  Possibly. No, no.
• 57:09
  Because. If they come.
• 57:10
  Out to be true, there's a. Massive leak in here.
• 57:14
  OK. Well.
• 57:16
  Again, I have no clue whatsoever, but there have been
• 57:20
  rumours about the like dynamic shifting in, in terms of teams.
• 57:27
  Newly has announced a long time ago that the next year, 2026,
• 57:31
  this year actually would be a great year for team games.
• 57:35
  There's been rumours about, I think Team Liquid joining the
• 57:37
  scene and there's also been rumours about GL maybe changing
• 57:42
  something about their roster or there were also rumours about GL
• 57:46
  disbanding. So I would assume that Hart is
• 57:50
  finding A-Team, whatever team that is, and that a bigger
• 57:54
  player is coming to the scene. And the way that you sent me a
• 57:58
  screenshot from Hart's Discord channel, what I know.
• 58:03
  About Hart, which is very little, it's.
• 58:05
  That he's usually always complaining and very grumpy.
• 58:09
  So really. Sometimes he is a little
• 58:14
  gropping. Yeah, him being excited about
• 58:17
  something must. Be something.
• 58:19
  Massive. So I'm looking forward to to
• 58:22
  seeing that this is my whole argument.
• 58:27
  OK, fair. Enough, fair enough, but once
• 58:30
  again, I know nothing. So this is.
• 58:32
  Pure speculation, but I as a fan, as a viewer, I'm expecting
• 58:37
  some big new team announcements. This is why it's kind of a shame
• 58:42
  that the fiscal year of World's Edge and Microsoft is always
• 58:45
  like from the mid of the year to the next mid.
• 58:48
  Because we still have to wait for half a year to find and to
• 58:51
  get a real update on the next tournament calendar.
• 58:55
  And if something would be added to the tournament calendar, it's
• 58:58
  it's, it's usually not visible because who looks there?
• 59:03
  It's usually just happening when a team or a host decides to
• 59:06
  announce the tournament as a as a whole.
• 59:08
  So I'm I'm very excited for Hart that he's excited and I'm
• 59:12
  looking forward to finding out more about these exciting news.
• 59:17
  Same. OK.
• 59:19
  Then. There's another.
• 59:21
  Topic. Also kind of concerning you
• 59:24
  because you've been very prominent in casting the midweek
• 59:27
  Madness games and I have this was even before you start to
• 59:33
  join me on this podcast. I have been an advocate of this
• 59:36
  tournament or or this project. I have been very fond of it.
• 59:40
  I really like the idea because I was always watching K PS version
• 59:46
  of this clip pigeons version of this for Age of Empires four and
• 59:50
  really enjoyed that. So I was so happy when you guys
• 59:54
  decided to do that for Age of Empires 2 as well.
• 59:56
  And that was actually, Daniela, what really brought me to your
• 1:00:01
  channel. I did know about you and I was
• 1:00:04
  watching you as well, but not as much as with midweek madness.
• 1:00:10
  So I thought that was a great tournament for you as a as a
• 1:00:14
  Castro as well. But the.
• 1:00:16
  But this whole project has stopped kind of suddenly and
• 1:00:21
  there was lots of. Questions asking what's
• 1:00:25
  happening and what's the future of the tournament and we hadn't
• 1:00:28
  had any news but recently you've talked a bit more about this in
• 1:00:32
  your stream yeah so for those of you that you.
• 1:00:36
  Guys don't know, this was a collaboration between me and
• 1:00:42
  Robo Boro. He is well known in the scene
• 1:00:45
  for hosting other tournaments and such a collaboration that he
• 1:00:51
  asked of me. This was not my idea, he asked
• 1:00:55
  of me. He had this idea for a long time
• 1:00:58
  and this was supposed to be weekly tournaments, separate
• 1:01:03
  tournaments basically. Starts on Monday.
• 1:01:05
  Finishes on Thursday every week, just a couple of rounds, short
• 1:01:10
  rounds, but a lot of games just to basically have content for
• 1:01:14
  the viewers during the week when there's no major tournaments
• 1:01:17
  happening. We would also kind of like
• 1:01:19
  coordinate with the World's edge calendar to not overlap over
• 1:01:24
  major tournament final weekends or weeks and and, and such.
• 1:01:32
  Yeah, in theory this project was supposed to be great.
• 1:01:37
  And I did have, yeah, very, very high hopes.
• 1:01:40
  To me, it came like a fresh mouth of air, you know, after I
• 1:01:46
  had just been rejected by Microsoft.
• 1:01:50
  You just like you were were you were talking a bit earlier
• 1:01:53
  about, you know, the tournament calendar.
• 1:01:55
  So I was quite disappointed in my project and my tournament
• 1:01:59
  idea didn't go through. But obviously understanding with
• 1:02:03
  apparently how many projects were last year brought up.
• 1:02:07
  So apparently my idea was the last one rejected and nearly put
• 1:02:12
  a lot of things into balance. And apparently this decision
• 1:02:15
  came hard to them. But my tournament was rejected,
• 1:02:18
  so I was a bit lost. So of course, yeah, I just
• 1:02:21
  hopped into this project very excited, very motivated to, you
• 1:02:25
  know, succeed. And let me tell you something,
• 1:02:29
  it was succeeding like this was supposed to start with, you
• 1:02:33
  know, the minimum amount of fund Robo did put the initial funding
• 1:02:40
  and and anyway, divided by every month, every week, it was
• 1:02:45
  supposed to be something like $50 per week.
• 1:02:48
  We were thinking like, oh, if we attract some names, some big
• 1:02:54
  names, some of the pro players. That would be great it.
• 1:02:56
  Could also be, you know, great for your for for the pro.
• 1:03:02
  Players to have. Something motivating.
• 1:03:06
  More motivating than just, you know, leather.
• 1:03:09
  Like, yeah, of course you have to play a couple of sets every
• 1:03:11
  week. But you know, and this is 50
• 1:03:13
  bucks and you're kind of competing against proper
• 1:03:17
  players. You you kind of take it, you
• 1:03:20
  know, as the whole practice experience for for a tournament.
• 1:03:23
  You go through a drafting system, you schedule you, you
• 1:03:26
  know it. It was supposed to help
• 1:03:28
  especially the up and Comer players to game tournament
• 1:03:32
  experience. It's the same with them.
• 1:03:34
  To get launched to an S tier a lot of the times they don't have
• 1:03:38
  enough ATP. They always face.
• 1:03:41
  I don't know Hera NBL heart in the first rounds they don't go
• 1:03:45
  through they they struggle. If you don't go through you
• 1:03:48
  don't grow your ATP. It's hard for the pro players
• 1:03:50
  too and for the especially for a new player to to enter the
• 1:03:53
  scene. So from our point of view, this
• 1:03:56
  was a project that was supposed to help everyone.
• 1:03:58
  And yeah, sorry, I I said like I'll, I'll give a TLDR here, but
• 1:04:03
  I kind of expanded with the description.
• 1:04:06
  It was, I think Daniella, that's a good thing.
• 1:04:10
  Just so that people have context, especially those who
• 1:04:12
  have not heard about this tournament before.
• 1:04:15
  So just go ahead and say everything you want.
• 1:04:18
  Yeah. OK, So that was the.
• 1:04:21
  Point however, when I presented the the project to my community,
• 1:04:27
  everyone knows that. I have the best.
• 1:04:29
  Community on Twitch of course, and they showed an incredible.
• 1:04:32
  Amount of support. So we basically had a crazy
• 1:04:38
  amount of support, a crazy amount of donation.
• 1:04:41
  I'm saying crazy amount because in the end it kind of summed up
• 1:04:44
  to around $5000, which was five times the amount of our initial
• 1:04:52
  funding over five times. Plus we even created a Patreon
• 1:04:57
  where people could directly support the the price pool.
• 1:05:01
  The idea with that Patreon would be that people can vote for the
• 1:05:04
  map pool. Every week would be a different
• 1:05:06
  tournament, a different map, a different setting.
• 1:05:09
  So just like it, we wouldn't get bored of casting.
• 1:05:13
  We wouldn't be bored of, you know, viewing the the same
• 1:05:16
  things all over again. It would be dynamic that way.
• 1:05:20
  And even the Patreon got to around $250 per month on top of
• 1:05:29
  the direct donations, which was to me great success to begin
• 1:05:36
  with. That, of course.
• 1:05:38
  Attracted more players to sign up, top players.
• 1:05:43
  We even in the in September, we even had to basically increase,
• 1:05:52
  we started with 16 players per week.
• 1:05:53
  We had to double it to increase it to round of 32 to 32 players
• 1:05:58
  because I had a lot of players, pro players that is asking me if
• 1:06:02
  they made it into the next week because they signed up and they
• 1:06:05
  were afraid that they're not going to make it based on the
• 1:06:07
  seating list. We had Viper and the Tata was
• 1:06:14
  travelling, but he was he was saying that he he's going to
• 1:06:18
  sign up next. Dowd as well bars a lot of the
• 1:06:23
  top players. ACCMACCMI think won most of the
• 1:06:28
  editions and I think he won the first 3 right?
• 1:06:33
  Yeah, I think he won like 5 in the end.
• 1:06:36
  Like a total we had. No, not.
• 1:06:39
  I think you're 3 or 4. He won.
• 1:06:43
  We had six editions total. We.
• 1:06:46
  Held this project for for two months and basically, yeah, I,
• 1:06:52
  we kind of had to stop. What happened was that Robo went
• 1:06:58
  completely unresponsive. And Robo was my partner, my
• 1:07:04
  admin, my host, however, the only one with access to the
• 1:07:08
  funds. And this is a very big concern
• 1:07:13
  for me and for the community in general, especially with the
• 1:07:16
  latest news that we had with cheating, with, you know, faking
• 1:07:24
  names in tournaments, with trying to cheat in the land
• 1:07:28
  event with, you know, it doesn't look good for the community.
• 1:07:33
  I feel like I don't want to go. I didn't want to, you know, draw
• 1:07:37
  conclusions and start accusing everyone left and right on the
• 1:07:40
  spot. I started to, you know, ask
• 1:07:44
  other tournament host because Robo is not someone that I just
• 1:07:47
  took from Twitch chat. A username that I saw.
• 1:07:52
  For the first time, Robo is someone that came to me with
• 1:07:54
  this project and someone that has been behind a lot of
• 1:07:58
  tournaments, big tournaments. Working with big names is
• 1:08:03
  Needless Admin, his tea 90s admin.
• 1:08:06
  He worked with probably everyone in the scene so him going.
• 1:08:15
  Unresponsive. To me was very surprising.
• 1:08:20
  Especially. With all the funds, because then
• 1:08:23
  I started to reach to other people in the community and they
• 1:08:27
  told me like, basically, yeah, he does this.
• 1:08:31
  He did struggle with getting overwhelmed in the past, so he
• 1:08:35
  just kind of shuts down and disappears.
• 1:08:37
  That's why I didn't want to talk and make this public initially.
• 1:08:42
  That's why this is coming to light three months later,
• 1:08:48
  because this was me giving him time to come back.
• 1:08:53
  Or like, I can understand someone struggling, someone
• 1:08:56
  having mental problems or like mental health problems, sorry.
• 1:09:00
  And you know, working on himself.
• 1:09:03
  Health comes first, no matter what.
• 1:09:06
  And no matter what, you know, circumstances.
• 1:09:11
  That was the word I was looking for.
• 1:09:13
  Health comes first, and you have to take care of yourself.
• 1:09:17
  Like an AOE tournament. Yeah.
• 1:09:20
  It's not worth it for you to ruin your your health over.
• 1:09:24
  And that's fine. I can understand that.
• 1:09:25
  You don't even have to say anything to me.
• 1:09:27
  You can just disappear, but you have to at least take two
• 1:09:31
  minutes while you're dealing with all of that to make a
• 1:09:34
  transfer to give me access to that account, to give me access
• 1:09:38
  to the fund to give me. So you show me that, OK, You,
• 1:09:41
  you're dealing with your own things.
• 1:09:42
  I can find other admin. I can continue myself.
• 1:09:48
  Now, if you're just disappearing with that amount of money, I had
• 1:09:53
  three months of, you know, benefit of the doubt waiting for
• 1:09:59
  him to kind of come back and do the right thing, you know, to
• 1:10:02
  come back with an explanation. But in, in this three months
• 1:10:05
  basically, I don't know, sorry. It's kind of it, it's hard for
• 1:10:12
  me. To.
• 1:10:12
  To talk about this because I, I, I've been, you know, trying to
• 1:10:17
  protect him a lot, but then I see him active on other discords
• 1:10:23
  playing the game, like acting like nothing's happening, you
• 1:10:26
  know, so he's there. He's just not responsive.
• 1:10:31
  Exactly not responsive to me. So other people.
• 1:10:37
  Reached out. To him, I was telling you
• 1:10:39
  earlier that you know, I, I talked to T-90 about it to, to
• 1:10:43
  nearly to, to everyone else and they reached out to him.
• 1:10:46
  He didn't answer to them either. Like anyone who will try to come
• 1:10:54
  in contact with him about this topic, he would just like not
• 1:10:57
  respond to them anymore. But yeah, he, he's around, he's
• 1:11:02
  in the scene, but there's just no explanation of, of, of what's
• 1:11:06
  happened. So, yeah, I mean, basically that
• 1:11:11
  that was a story. I kind of even felt like, you
• 1:11:15
  know, maybe I, I shouldn't be, I'm in a tough position, you
• 1:11:21
  know, because I, I talked with a lot of people that know him
• 1:11:24
  directly and they would absolutely assure me that Robo
• 1:11:28
  would never do something like this.
• 1:11:30
  And a part of me believes that. A part of me believes that Robo
• 1:11:34
  didn't just like steal $4000. Absolutely.
• 1:11:39
  Like, this is someone that's done a lot for the community.
• 1:11:42
  This is someone that has been in the community for a long time.
• 1:11:45
  He's a Wikipedia editor. He, he's a tournament admin.
• 1:11:48
  He he's done so much for the scene.
• 1:11:51
  Like if you look his name on on Reddit, there's like robo
• 1:11:54
  appreciation posts for all the work he's done in the
• 1:11:56
  tournaments and something this was me not going to public with
• 1:12:01
  this information earlier. This is me thinking that in the
• 1:12:04
  last hour, in the last minute, he's going to do the right thing
• 1:12:08
  and come back and say like, you know, I just needed my time.
• 1:12:13
  Sorry I didn't answer anymore, You know, years, nothing,
• 1:12:17
  nothing happened. Money are still there, funds are
• 1:12:20
  still there. I didn't just like, you know,
• 1:12:22
  take the money and and leave. But in the same time, you know,
• 1:12:30
  I have my friends and my family kind of like asking me or like
• 1:12:36
  telling me that if his intentions would have been
• 1:12:40
  genuine, there's, you know, 2 seconds to not OK, 2 seconds, 2
• 1:12:47
  minutes to log in into a PayPal account and to make a transfer.
• 1:12:51
  I, I, I don't understand how those two minutes could have
• 1:12:55
  been the end of the world, giving the, you know, gravity of
• 1:12:59
  the situation. Like you're, you're risking your
• 1:13:00
  entire reputation here, your entire integrity in the scene.
• 1:13:05
  You're kind of risking all of it.
• 1:13:08
  Or, you know, if you have problems, maybe, I don't know,
• 1:13:12
  like, these are just assumptions that I created, scenarios I
• 1:13:14
  created in my mind, losing sleep over this and, you know,
• 1:13:19
  anxiety. Attacks and and all of.
• 1:13:21
  That kind of trying to find an explanation, I don't know, maybe
• 1:13:25
  he was struggling personally, Maybe he he needed those money.
• 1:13:28
  I, I doubt that, you know, even if he would need those money on,
• 1:13:35
  on a personal level, given the fact how much he's done for the
• 1:13:40
  community, I, I, I doubt that people would not, you know,
• 1:13:46
  create a mobility to, to raise those funds and to help him.
• 1:13:50
  And he, he's been so helpful in the in the past towards this
• 1:13:53
  community and he's done so much that is crazy to me that he
• 1:13:57
  would risk. All of that.
• 1:13:58
  For just a couple thousands of dollars.
• 1:14:02
  Yeah, let me just. Give my two cents to this
• 1:14:07
  because I don't want you to. I think you're struggling with
• 1:14:12
  on the one hand explaining why you're telling this, but on the
• 1:14:15
  other hand you're kind of forced to do this.
• 1:14:18
  So I just would like to comment on this without I have no idea
• 1:14:22
  who Robo is. I mean, I know that he is an
• 1:14:25
  important figure in the scene and he's done a lot of admin
• 1:14:27
  work and stuff, but I don't know the guy.
• 1:14:31
  So on the one hand, it's the problem you're facing in my
• 1:14:37
  opinion is that you have been promoting the tournament on your
• 1:14:43
  channel in your time because you were casting it and you were
• 1:14:47
  kind of standing behind the project and you were kind of the
• 1:14:50
  face of the project, even if you would were not the main donator
• 1:14:55
  for it. And I think it was common
• 1:14:58
  perception that you were standing behind the project and
• 1:15:02
  thinking it was good. And we're excited about people
• 1:15:06
  funding it, give it like getting into the Patreon program or
• 1:15:10
  giving donations to this. So what has happened is that you
• 1:15:15
  have basically promoted something that could not keep
• 1:15:19
  its promise. So This is why I believe you
• 1:15:22
  feel like you have to talk about this because otherwise we've
• 1:15:25
  been, we talked about this like a couple of months ago when we
• 1:15:29
  decided not to talk about this because we wanted to not put
• 1:15:34
  Robo on the spot. But here's the thing, here's the
• 1:15:38
  thing with mental illness. If he is even in any shape or
• 1:15:44
  form mentally ill, because I do not know this about him.
• 1:15:48
  But if you were and if you were suffering from some kind of
• 1:15:52
  illness, and this is very hard to understand for people who do
• 1:15:57
  not have these kind of mental illnesses like me, I don't
• 1:16:01
  suffer from this. But for some people, it can
• 1:16:04
  actually be an impossible task to take two minutes or even 20
• 1:16:08
  seconds to write a message like that.
• 1:16:11
  I absolutely agree. I was.
• 1:16:13
  I was in that situation. This is another thing that I, I
• 1:16:17
  was explaining to my community. This is another thing that I was
• 1:16:20
  explaining to the people that were pushing me way earlier.
• 1:16:25
  They were like kind of trying to even force my hand.
• 1:16:28
  People around me kind of trying to force my hand to talk about
• 1:16:33
  this saying like, why are you trying to cover?
• 1:16:37
  I don't understand why you're trying to cover someone that's a
• 1:16:40
  thief that steals money. And I I was cutting them off
• 1:16:43
  Like don't don't even say that I was in that situation.
• 1:16:48
  I felt the need sometimes to completely shut off.
• 1:16:53
  I've done this with my PhD advisors, for instance.
• 1:16:58
  Like I was struggling so much with the task and I like, I, I
• 1:17:04
  talked about this a couple of times on stream.
• 1:17:07
  I, I don't want to, to go back to, to this to this topic.
• 1:17:13
  I don't want to get into to this topic too much, but I even had
• 1:17:16
  like a depressive episode at some point during my PhD and I,
• 1:17:20
  I understand 100% feeling the need to completely shut down
• 1:17:26
  from everything. This is why I didn't want to
• 1:17:30
  burden someone that might. Be suffering.
• 1:17:33
  Even more, I understand that those two minutes can can be a
• 1:17:39
  long while. That's why it can can mean, you
• 1:17:42
  know, the end of the world. I, I, there were days, for
• 1:17:46
  instance, during that depressive episode where I would not leave
• 1:17:48
  the bed, where I would not go shower for two days, where I
• 1:17:52
  wouldn't feel that like just the act of getting out of the bed
• 1:17:56
  and going to brush my teeth in the morning drain me out of my
• 1:18:00
  entire energy. So yes, I understand those two
• 1:18:02
  minutes were a lot to ask. That's why I didn't go publicly
• 1:18:07
  with this in the next week. That's why I gave the time I
• 1:18:13
  needed. But if I see that he, he is just
• 1:18:17
  like he's I, I, I saw recently he started to admin another
• 1:18:21
  community tournament in the GB discord in the British
• 1:18:26
  community. That's not those two minutes
• 1:18:30
  are, are not an effort anymore. If you can put a lot of effort
• 1:18:34
  into organizing and hosting a whole other tournament.
• 1:18:37
  So then when I saw that I feel the need to to to speak because
• 1:18:43
  at this point I'm questioning the intentions like I I might.
• 1:18:48
  Seem. Like a.
• 1:18:49
  Completely awful person right now.
• 1:18:51
  No, no, no, no, I don't think that's the case.
• 1:18:54
  I. I'm, I'm, I want, I just want to
• 1:18:56
  say that these are two separate things.
• 1:19:00
  I think you have to say this. That doesn't make you an awful
• 1:19:03
  person. And I think we all pretty much
• 1:19:05
  know that you're not an awful person because you gave him more
• 1:19:09
  than more than the time that is actually acceptable for this
• 1:19:14
  kind of situation. So that's out of the question.
• 1:19:18
  I think it's also true that somebody is not able to answer
• 1:19:24
  to this because this is already a conflict.
• 1:19:27
  Somebody's not able to face this but still has resources to do
• 1:19:31
  something else that is a possibility.
• 1:19:33
  Again, something I do 100% not understand.
• 1:19:38
  Because I am not affected. By this, but I know from my line
• 1:19:41
  of work that people are super productive in their life, but in
• 1:19:46
  certain specific things can just not lift a single finger for
• 1:19:52
  whatever reasons for for reasons that are not understandable for
• 1:19:57
  me. And once again, I am not trying
• 1:20:00
  to defend what he's doing because what he's doing is
• 1:20:03
  simply wrong. I'm just saying that there are
• 1:20:05
  explanations for this, but they do not matter in the instance of
• 1:20:11
  you or in the case of the Patreons of the project.
• 1:20:16
  So that's what I mean by these are two separate things.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah. Because I I was about to to.
• 1:20:22
  Finish my initial idea and then I, I went on a different tangent
• 1:20:29
  saying that I had two full days where I didn't answer my
• 1:20:35
  advisor's call at all like I just felt the need to just shut
• 1:20:38
  down and just, you know, let me be let me let me deal with my
• 1:20:43
  own things. I was not hoarding on my
• 1:20:45
  advisor's money and I'm saying that as in, you know, like he's
• 1:20:50
  keeping my money. He's not like I, I didn't lose
• 1:20:53
  anything. But like you said, I was the
• 1:20:57
  caster. I was promoting this event.
• 1:20:59
  My community funded this tournament.
• 1:21:02
  How can my community support me this much?
• 1:21:06
  And with what power do I go back in front of my community and
• 1:21:11
  tell them, you know, that big project that you all founded and
• 1:21:14
  it's supposed to go for six months?
• 1:21:16
  Well, it's ending. It's stopping.
• 1:21:19
  I don't know if it's coming back.
• 1:21:20
  I don't know when it's coming back.
• 1:21:22
  I can't tell you more about it. I can't tell you where the money
• 1:21:26
  are. I don't have access to that
• 1:21:28
  money. You see where it could look
• 1:21:31
  really, you know, suspicious. Like there there were.
• 1:21:37
  Important. Personas in the committee, only
• 1:21:40
  Maru donated $1000. I have collaborations, you know,
• 1:21:45
  usually I I collaborate with them on a daily basis.
• 1:21:49
  They always call me to cast on their channel.
• 1:21:52
  Like if it looks like I'm scamming them of their money.
• 1:21:57
  This is directly hurting me and my image.
• 1:22:02
  I'm not even talking about how well the tournament was doing
• 1:22:06
  for my channel. Like that's just exciting what
• 1:22:09
  we are. We are talking about, you know,
• 1:22:11
  the objective bad things that involve all all of what
• 1:22:18
  happened, not the subjective 1, not even mentioning how good the
• 1:22:23
  tournament was doing for my channel.
• 1:22:27
  September 2025 was the best month I've ever had in
• 1:22:33
  streaming. My, my, all my numbers were
• 1:22:36
  triple like the subscription, the viewership.
• 1:22:40
  Even you said that you discovered and started hanging
• 1:22:43
  out on my channel after me with madness.
• 1:22:46
  So yes, as from the position where I I was talking to you
• 1:22:51
  initially that Oh my God, I was just rejected by Microsoft
• 1:22:55
  because I don't have enough viewers and enough reach and and
• 1:22:59
  enough money. Look at that.
• 1:23:01
  I found a way to fix that and maybe if this tournament is a
• 1:23:05
  success next year, I can go to Microsoft and instead of $5000
• 1:23:10
  maybe they're going to give me 20 K and then maybe people will
• 1:23:16
  want to like. Even you said at some.
• 1:23:18
  Point that I I think before we started the podcast, there's
• 1:23:21
  someone in AOE 4 community Killer pigeon.
• 1:23:25
  Shout out to him this He was one of the people that kind of
• 1:23:28
  inspired us to start with this project.
• 1:23:30
  He's doing this with Microsoft funds every single week and his
• 1:23:35
  tournament is a success in the AOE 4 community and it could be
• 1:23:39
  in our stood again. A lot of players message me
• 1:23:43
  afterwards like Daniela, what happened with Milord Madness.
• 1:23:46
  Now Lin Yong Cup finished, I was expecting to kind of have
• 1:23:50
  something to to prepare with for QOTD or like it's content for
• 1:23:57
  their stream as well. They're they were free to stream
• 1:24:00
  their games, whatever they wanted, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:24:03
  So it was starting to be a success for me.
• 1:24:07
  And I did talk in the beginning how hard it is for for, you
• 1:24:12
  know, a, a New Castle to go into the, you know, big circle.
• 1:24:18
  And I was on my, you know, my past there, but I kind of got
• 1:24:24
  stuck in the other way. That's a That's a nice way of
• 1:24:28
  putting it. So it.
• 1:24:30
  Was it was. It was.
• 1:24:32
  Definitely frustrating. It was definitely frustrating
• 1:24:35
  because it was nothing in my control to continue it.
• 1:24:40
  Yeah, OK. So.
• 1:24:43
  Maybe one final question. To you then, because it's always
• 1:24:47
  easier to talk about something that you can actually control,
• 1:24:51
  is there? Like could you just copy paste
• 1:24:55
  the thing and make it your own? I wouldn't want to do that
• 1:24:58
  because it was his. Idea and his project I wouldn't
• 1:25:02
  want to take that from him. I I wouldn't want to like just
• 1:25:06
  steal the idea. I would like to continue with
• 1:25:09
  something very similar like maybe weekend tournaments or
• 1:25:17
  like I remember I was talking with doubt about this.
• 1:25:19
  Doubt was like I love that idea. What I don't like is the fact
• 1:25:23
  that you know it's still kind of constraining in the sense that
• 1:25:29
  it's still a week that I have to think about you know have the
• 1:25:36
  time to schedule. I I still I was still treating
• 1:25:41
  it basically like a big tournament.
• 1:25:42
  This didn't matter that it's just a weekly tournament and
• 1:25:46
  myself and the other players participating in it, we're still
• 1:25:49
  kind of treating like a, you know, serious full tournament.
• 1:25:52
  And that was my my idea behind as well.
• 1:25:55
  That was saying that I would even love a one day tournament,
• 1:25:58
  like from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PMI need to play all day.
• 1:26:05
  I don't care. I don't care for how how many
• 1:26:07
  hours, how many sets I have to play.
• 1:26:09
  I just need to know that that day I can't have anything else
• 1:26:13
  scheduled. I will play 1000 sets at
• 1:26:16
  whatever time. But you know, one day
• 1:26:19
  tournament, I'm there for it all day.
• 1:26:21
  Just let me know when and where. So there's definitely a lot of
• 1:26:25
  things that that I want to do in the future.
• 1:26:29
  After talking with my community about this, they were, you know,
• 1:26:33
  OK, then you had a bad experience.
• 1:26:35
  Don't worry about it. We understand it was nothing out
• 1:26:38
  of your control. We can still support you.
• 1:26:44
  In other. Events I was kind of, you know,
• 1:26:48
  burnt out a bit after that experience.
• 1:26:50
  I'm definitely eager to to try something else, to try something
• 1:26:53
  new. So again, this is a bit like a
• 1:26:55
  teaser from my part. Expect new events coming from
• 1:26:59
  from me and my channel and my community, but I just had to,
• 1:27:05
  you know, get over it, kind of take it off of my chest and put
• 1:27:09
  it all behind me. Leave it.
• 1:27:11
  In 2025, however, we were supposed to record this.
• 1:27:14
  We were supposed to record this a couple of days ago.
• 1:27:17
  I didn't meant to bring the mini drama in the in the new year,
• 1:27:22
  but well, it is what it is. Maybe it was for the goods, I
• 1:27:27
  think. It's great that you could maybe
• 1:27:30
  this is also kind of closure for this project for you maybe.
• 1:27:35
  Yeah, again. Like.
• 1:27:37
  I just want to say it like a final load.
• 1:27:38
  I'm sorry that All in all, I'm still hoping that Robo is fine.
• 1:27:45
  I'm still hoping that he's the nice and good person that I
• 1:27:49
  thought he is when I got into this project with him.
• 1:27:51
  And he will do the right thing and, you know, come back with an
• 1:27:55
  explanation whenever, whenever he feels like it, whenever he
• 1:27:59
  can. If he's really struggling, I
• 1:28:02
  think we will understand, but I think he does have to do the the
• 1:28:07
  right thing to come back, return the money.
• 1:28:10
  Those could be a really good price for future show matches as
• 1:28:14
  well I think. Like as a final statement, I'd
• 1:28:19
  like to say that I think he owes you an explanation and maybe the
• 1:28:24
  Patreons, but he doesn't need to make a public explanation.
• 1:28:28
  What he needs to do is to just set things right.
• 1:28:31
  And that's that's doable without a public.
• 1:28:34
  Explanation. I think absolutely, absolutely,
• 1:28:36
  absolutely, absolutely. But he he does all the people
• 1:28:42
  that supported his project and that's some from my community.
• 1:28:45
  And like you said, the Patreon members an explanation.
• 1:28:51
  Yeah. All right.
• 1:28:53
  Let's close. This chapter and open a whole
• 1:28:57
  new one, which is completely unrelated.
• 1:28:59
  Daniela, there's going to be a rough transition now, but there
• 1:29:04
  has been a balance change update at the beginning of December,
• 1:29:09
  but it was after our last magazine episode.
• 1:29:11
  So this is something we haven't talked about yet and quite,
• 1:29:15
  quite a lot of things have. Changed even though.
• 1:29:18
  They might be not as impactful, but I think it's still worth
• 1:29:20
  mentioning, especially for the people who are not following
• 1:29:23
  each and every update that meticulously.
• 1:29:27
  So this was done before King of the Desert 6 and the main reason
• 1:29:33
  for this update, as the notes have said was to actually
• 1:29:36
  implement the OR to do some preparations for the letter
• 1:29:40
  reset of the Red Bull Wallow ladder or I should say Empire
• 1:29:45
  was ladder but it basically turned into the Red Bull Wallow
• 1:29:47
  ladder. But at the same time, they did
• 1:29:50
  decide to do some balance changes for some of the
• 1:29:54
  civilizations. So there has been small changes
• 1:29:57
  that affect every civilization or are more or less general
• 1:30:01
  changes. For instance, the chicken type
• 1:30:05
  animals have now 10 more foods, making them a bit more viable.
• 1:30:09
  And they have also. Is this something that is
• 1:30:12
  actually important? Do you think that's important?
• 1:30:15
  I think so. I think so really so bad I I.
• 1:30:18
  Still don't like chicken? That's what I mean.
• 1:30:20
  I think this change is nothing. They're still bad.
• 1:30:22
  I think they're so bad, but it was, you know.
• 1:30:25
  Bad and nothing. I would agree if they would.
• 1:30:28
  Take out the neutral deer from the map, then maybe this is
• 1:30:33
  good, but they would actually have to add 10 more or 15 more
• 1:30:36
  food for me to start liking chicken.
• 1:30:41
  I agree. I agree.
• 1:30:43
  Yeah. So maybe this is just the first.
• 1:30:45
  Of many changes when it comes to the chicken type animals and
• 1:30:49
  they are trying to feel out what is a good balance.
• 1:30:53
  But anyway. So chickens are I guess a bit
• 1:30:55
  more heavier now or have 10 more food.
• 1:30:59
  And they've also reduced the cost of Eagle Warriors by 5 food
• 1:31:03
  and making them a little more affordable even though their
• 1:31:06
  cost has always been much more gold heavy.
• 1:31:09
  I played with the Eagle Warriors twice since then and did not
• 1:31:15
  feel a thing. But I am also not a pro luckier.
• 1:31:20
  We we've seen. Them a bit more in the QOTDI
• 1:31:23
  feel like and again when it comes to mezzo sieves for me I'm
• 1:31:28
  like you know how Hera talks or used to talk about humans I'm
• 1:31:33
  either losing against them or when I play them they're trash
• 1:31:39
  so no eagles for me well I. Grew up with the Aztecs, I think
• 1:31:45
  the Aztec 5 militia rush was the first build order I have ever
• 1:31:50
  learnt from Stark. From Stark from one of his
• 1:31:54
  YouTube videos in I don't know, 2016 or so.
• 1:31:58
  And that was also just because back then I was a complete noob.
• 1:32:02
  I didn't play competitive, I just played like LAN party games
• 1:32:10
  and I especially played with a friend and he knew how to drush.
• 1:32:13
  He had an actual build order that try hard and I did not.
• 1:32:17
  I didn't even have hot keys or anything.
• 1:32:20
  So he was always killing me and I had no chance whatsoever
• 1:32:23
  because he had a drush and I tried to find a way to counter
• 1:32:27
  it. And that's how I discovered the
• 1:32:28
  pro scene. That's how I discovered build
• 1:32:32
  orders and that's why I learnt the five militia rush to counter
• 1:32:35
  his stupid rush. So so.
• 1:32:39
  Aztecs have always been a. Comforts for me even though I'm
• 1:32:42
  really bad at playing them because I I believe they are
• 1:32:45
  quite complicated to play or you need to be experienced with
• 1:32:48
  them. Today is a different thing.
• 1:32:51
  I tend to still do all in eagles stuff in feudal age, which is
• 1:32:56
  which is horrible, but it worked in the back in the voobly days
• 1:32:59
  much better than it does now. So I I do pride.
• 1:33:04
  Myself in. Saying that, I have played lots
• 1:33:07
  of Eagle Warriors and in in many different situations and I think
• 1:33:12
  them costing 5 less food is definitely above, but it is not
• 1:33:17
  something that changes what kind of strategies you play with the
• 1:33:21
  mesosifs or how viable the unit is in the situations.
• 1:33:27
  This is nothing that changes. All it does is it's easier to
• 1:33:30
  get the mass a little bit, you need a bit less eco.
• 1:33:34
  But then again, food was never the issue with mesosifs.
• 1:33:39
  Yeah, yeah, can. Definitely, yeah.
• 1:33:41
  They're heavy on gold, so. OK, another general.
• 1:33:45
  Change is. That the traction trebuchets
• 1:33:47
  have been changed in a couple of ways.
• 1:33:50
  Their reload time has been increased by two seconds and
• 1:33:53
  their bonus damage against buildings was increased by a
• 1:33:56
  31%. So lots of more damage and at
• 1:34:00
  the same time at the same time their their speed has been
• 1:34:05
  reduced but incrementally from .6 to .57.
• 1:34:09
  So tell me, why do you love this change?
• 1:34:12
  I well, I'm not the entire. Change in particular, but
• 1:34:16
  especially the bonus damage against buildings.
• 1:34:17
  They were so good against other siege units, but so bad against
• 1:34:21
  buildings. However, now the bomber cannons
• 1:34:27
  definitely feel a bit stronger against them just because
• 1:34:30
  they're they're. You know, reload.
• 1:34:35
  Time was was reduced, but also the speed.
• 1:34:39
  So it's kind of harder to just run away from the bomber
• 1:34:43
  cannons. I think bomber cannons are
• 1:34:46
  faster than them, but they are also much more expensive, right?
• 1:34:50
  They're also much more expensive.
• 1:34:52
  And they have less range still like even with sea.
• 1:34:57
  Engineers you can get. To 13 range, whereas with
• 1:35:03
  traction shops you have 14 range.
• 1:35:06
  Yeah, that's that's actually incredible.
• 1:35:08
  I didn't think about that. Yeah, yeah, I for one have not
• 1:35:12
  seen. Enough of traction.
• 1:35:13
  Traps. Did I see them in King of the
• 1:35:16
  Desert? See, I think way was popular
• 1:35:20
  way. Too popular.
• 1:35:22
  Nice. OK, but.
• 1:35:27
  Overall, you'd rate this a. Good buff or or change I guess.
• 1:35:33
  Yeah, I don't mind it. It's the right.
• 1:35:35
  Direction. Yeah.
• 1:35:36
  OK. And then?
• 1:35:37
  There's been a. Few sift.
• 1:35:39
  Specific changes, we'll go by alphabetic order to make things
• 1:35:43
  easier. Start off with the Armenians.
• 1:35:46
  Warrior Priest costs reduced by 10 gold.
• 1:35:48
  So before they were 30 foot 60 gold, Now they're 30 foot 50
• 1:35:53
  gold. This I think is debatable, this
• 1:35:56
  change, because no, it's not debatable.
• 1:35:58
  It's completely busted. They didn't need any buff.
• 1:36:04
  Yeah, so. I wonder.
• 1:36:06
  What's what's the background of this change?
• 1:36:09
  Because it's not like warrior priests have been bad, but it's
• 1:36:12
  also not like they have been OP right?
• 1:36:15
  So why change the cost? Usually when you change the cost
• 1:36:21
  of a unit, there's in my opinion there's 2 two reasons.
• 1:36:24
  So 1 is that the unit itself has not been played a lot and they
• 1:36:30
  want to make it more affordable and thereby more attractive to
• 1:36:34
  play. And the other reason would be
• 1:36:38
  that the unit itself would be good, but it's simply not
• 1:36:43
  affordable. But the price is not that high.
• 1:36:48
  I don't think it was ever the reason why the the Armenians
• 1:36:52
  wouldn't use warrior priest, but it would be more situation
• 1:36:56
  specific, so I don't see a reason to change the price.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah. So actually Hera it, well I
• 1:37:05
  think it started with Seto making a video the future of AOE
• 1:37:10
  and then Hera did a react video. I think their opinion was that
• 1:37:16
  devs are just basically trying to push some units on someone's
• 1:37:21
  throat. It it's just they're they're
• 1:37:23
  just kind of trying to force you to play them.
• 1:37:26
  They like Armenian, we're priests right now.
• 1:37:28
  They're just so good. It's wild to not use them in in
• 1:37:34
  certain situations. Like they're basically kind of
• 1:37:37
  them trying to force you to to to play the unit especially.
• 1:37:42
  That doesn't make it right. Yeah.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. We're going to see some more
• 1:37:48
  changes regarding the unique units as well, which in my
• 1:37:51
  opinion did didn't need any changes, but we're going to see
• 1:37:54
  some of them here. Yeah, I'm going to bring this.
• 1:37:59
  Point a lot. And I think they're they're
• 1:38:01
  right and they're pushed some very, very good points.
• 1:38:05
  Well, if that is a kind of. Policy that they are following.
• 1:38:10
  I don't really mind it, but the moment you just do this to give
• 1:38:18
  the impression that the game is. Still being changed.
• 1:38:21
  And and and updated and therefore are changing things
• 1:38:25
  that don't need changing. That's kind of stupid, but I
• 1:38:31
  guess we'll see. Let's move on.
• 1:38:34
  Bulgarians crap. House can now train petards.
• 1:38:39
  Yeah. So I I don't know if this
• 1:38:44
  changes anything. The only thing I can think of is
• 1:38:47
  arena, or any closed map for that matter, but then again
• 1:38:53
  usually krepos and castles should be good enough to go
• 1:38:56
  through walls, so this would only speed things up a little
• 1:39:00
  bit, but by a cost. Is this ever worth it?
• 1:39:06
  I love them like now. Every time I see.
• 1:39:08
  Bulgarians. I'm only thinking about Petard.
• 1:39:10
  Really. Crap post, yes.
• 1:39:13
  OK, even. I got crap.
• 1:39:15
  Post rushed the other day and then I.
• 1:39:16
  Petarded his crap post with Petard's made made from my Crocs
• 1:39:21
  so it is worth it. It was.
• 1:39:23
  Yeah, I, I. Look, I still I still lost the.
• 1:39:25
  Game, well, still irrelevant obviously.
• 1:39:27
  I got style points for using pathards but I don't know.
• 1:39:32
  I love this honestly. Like so it gives a bit more
• 1:39:35
  variety to what the. Bulgarians can do.
• 1:39:37
  It's not like the Bulgarians are a SIP that usually can use a
• 1:39:40
  buffer or some more feature I don't know, like.
• 1:39:46
  On. Paper they're they're supposed
• 1:39:48
  to be weak, but they have so many good bonuses just and just
• 1:39:52
  so you know just that is very straightforward for me.
• 1:39:56
  I hate conics like that unit doesn't make sense to me.
• 1:39:59
  What do you? Mean I can't make.
• 1:40:01
  Pikes to kill it because when I kill them, guess what it's a
• 1:40:05
  freaking long source. They are killing my Pikes.
• 1:40:09
  So like if I can't counter that unit with another unit other
• 1:40:13
  than monks, You barely can counter it with monks as well
• 1:40:16
  because you can delete your conic and it dismounts and a
• 1:40:19
  long source is close and kills your priest.
• 1:40:22
  Well, yeah, but it's not like you're fighting against them.
• 1:40:24
  With only Pikes you usually have a second support unit and also
• 1:40:29
  exactly, but it's a unit that has 2.
• 1:40:32
  Different units that have to counter it.
• 1:40:34
  Yeah, say hi to the Ratha. But.
• 1:40:38
  But but the difference. Between for.
• 1:40:41
  Example a Ratha and the conic is that you actually have to spend
• 1:40:44
  so many resource and upgrading these two very different kind of
• 1:40:47
  units because they don't share upgrades or hardly share any.
• 1:40:53
  I think the I think they are the conics are fine to be honest.
• 1:40:58
  Yeah, I I don't think they're OP or anything but.
• 1:41:00
  Like, I don't know. It's one of the unique units
• 1:41:02
  that just gets me, gets me my nerves, OK.
• 1:41:08
  I think. I think this change to the
• 1:41:10
  Bulgarians is totally fine. It doesn't change much, but it
• 1:41:13
  gives them maybe some fun place if you if you don't forget that
• 1:41:17
  they now can train patas from Krepos.
• 1:41:20
  This is a this is a change that I will usually completely ignore
• 1:41:25
  and get surprised by if anyone does that to me, just because I
• 1:41:29
  keep forgetting that these changes happen.
• 1:41:32
  OK Next up, Burgundians movement speed of Flemish militia has
• 1:41:35
  been increased from .9 to .95. Just for reference.
• 1:41:40
  They are still slower than men at arms or Archers because they
• 1:41:43
  have a speed of .96, but they are now much better at keeping
• 1:41:46
  up with them. Buffing Flemish militia, who
• 1:41:50
  have recently already been changed and I thought evaluated
• 1:41:55
  as being pretty strong. Well, again forcing.
• 1:42:00
  People to to use Flemish militia yeah, but that.
• 1:42:05
  But weren't we already at the? Point where we found out that
• 1:42:08
  Flemish Militia and Fuel H are pretty good.
• 1:42:11
  We did. We did.
• 1:42:14
  It doesn't. Matter if people are not.
• 1:42:16
  Using less force them to use. We need more Flemish militia.
• 1:42:19
  Well. This will lead to civilizations.
• 1:42:24
  Usually what we saw in Age of Empires 2 is that the
• 1:42:27
  civilizations in the Dark Age played out pretty much the same
• 1:42:31
  in Feudal Age. You might see some differences
• 1:42:35
  depending on what kind of late game compositions you want to go
• 1:42:38
  into if you prefer to streamline your gameplay.
• 1:42:42
  And in Castle ages, where the civilizations would diverge from
• 1:42:47
  each other much more, especially because of the unique units
• 1:42:50
  starting to be available in the the the Castle age.
• 1:42:56
  So with this, maybe this is a way to make the civilizations
• 1:43:01
  even more different from one another in earlier ages.
• 1:43:04
  Maybe that's the idea behind pushing these kind of units, I
• 1:43:09
  don't know it just. Feels like basically.
• 1:43:11
  A WE community, generally speaking, feels like they they
• 1:43:17
  don't like change too much. They don't like all of this new
• 1:43:20
  units with the new gimmicks. Like can we just remember
• 1:43:24
  shortly when the A WE community heard about heroes?
• 1:43:30
  From the three cases, yeah, they were super against.
• 1:43:35
  It so that's what like I, I, I could see them not being, you
• 1:43:38
  know, the most fond of all of that Flemish militias, warrior
• 1:43:43
  priests, fire Lancers, siege towers, like shenanigans like
• 1:43:47
  this, you know, like just, yeah, let me play my scouts, skirms,
• 1:43:51
  Archers and Knights and I'm fine.
• 1:43:55
  So basically what you're saying? Is that the?
• 1:43:57
  Play base is kind of convert conservative, but the devs are
• 1:44:02
  pushing very new stuff on them Yeah, basically yeah they're
• 1:44:07
  they're. They're trying.
• 1:44:08
  They're trying. I played against by the way.
• 1:44:11
  You. You asked.
• 1:44:11
  Me if I played. Against the phosphorus, I played
• 1:44:16
  against the. Fire Lancer.
• 1:44:17
  Siege tower I I almost cried on stream.
• 1:44:21
  It was Oh my God, it was so frustrating and so annoying and
• 1:44:25
  even the viewers were like, this is boring to watch, which I
• 1:44:31
  yeah, it's a. Great way to.
• 1:44:32
  To grind the ladder. But no, it's, it's too strong, I
• 1:44:37
  think. Yeah.
• 1:44:39
  Yeah, let's continue with the Georgians.
• 1:44:41
  So they. Have a couple of changes the I
• 1:44:45
  think almost never researched imperial unique tech as now the
• 1:44:49
  cavalry or however you pronounce that I do not know has been
• 1:44:53
  buffed. So mounted units take even less
• 1:44:55
  pop space now. Instead of 15%, now 20% less pop
• 1:45:00
  space and it's also cheaper by 200 foot to research.
• 1:45:06
  I guess this is a prime example of a technology that has not
• 1:45:10
  been researched that much and now it becomes more viable with
• 1:45:12
  this, right? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:45:16
  But. Then again, Georgians I think
• 1:45:18
  they were. Recently buffed?
• 1:45:19
  Oh yeah, and they have in this one, buffed.
• 1:45:22
  Even more because the fortified churches the the effect of
• 1:45:25
  fortified churches which increases the work rate of
• 1:45:29
  nearby villages by 10%. This effect radius has been
• 1:45:34
  increased by 1 tile from 7 to 8 tiles.
• 1:45:38
  So basically an eco buff for the Georgians which they probably
• 1:45:42
  didn't need but I was wondering. If this has anything to do with.
• 1:45:48
  How big certain buildings are like farms are, or whether
• 1:45:55
  whether this is just something that has to do with the in game
• 1:45:59
  geography that it's just more realistic that that that that
• 1:46:04
  villagers are rather 8 than 7 tiles away from the, the the
• 1:46:09
  church. But I do not know, I have no
• 1:46:10
  idea. Anyway, so Georgians got better.
• 1:46:14
  I think this was much needed, right?
• 1:46:20
  Sure. Wait, we.
• 1:46:23
  Haven't even touched kittens yet or.
• 1:46:25
  Georgian. Oh my God.
• 1:46:26
  Yeah, yeah, Georgians. So.
• 1:46:30
  Their unique unit are in Pagoda has an ability that blocks
• 1:46:34
  incoming mealy armor once and this the reload time for this
• 1:46:38
  ability has now been reduced a tiny bit.
• 1:46:42
  But I think what's more important is that their bonus,
• 1:46:46
  which lets their mounted units and fire Lancers attack faster,
• 1:46:50
  has been buffed from 20% to 25%, making both fire Lancers and Cab
• 1:46:56
  Archers incredibly strong. So how you like that you?
• 1:47:00
  Want to comment? I don't.
• 1:47:02
  I. Don't know every single.
• 1:47:05
  Durjan matchup is now CA like there is strongest freaking
• 1:47:11
  Mongol. Yeah, yeah, I think they're
• 1:47:14
  there. Might be.
• 1:47:14
  Stronger because of their fire lenses, just to have that unit
• 1:47:19
  as well, which is kind of strong by itself.
• 1:47:22
  You don't need that many upgrades for it.
• 1:47:25
  Yeah, it's a it's a rough sift to play against, definitely.
• 1:47:27
  But hey, there's an even better civilization, at least for
• 1:47:31
  Arabia, and that is the Kitans. Their pastures have been changed
• 1:47:37
  in the recent balance change. So they cost 10 wood more, which
• 1:47:42
  is 110 wood per pasture, and they also need 4 seconds longer
• 1:47:46
  to be constructed. But they also have more food now
• 1:47:50
  per animal, namely 10 more food. So is this a buff or a nerve to
• 1:47:56
  the to the pasture? To the pasture well.
• 1:48:01
  The nerve comes in the extra seconds to be constructed.
• 1:48:05
  I don't think 4 seconds is enough.
• 1:48:06
  Having more food for pasture, that Definitely a nerve.
• 1:48:13
  Definitely a buff. Sorry for only the cost of 10.
• 1:48:16
  Extra wood? Not very relevant, yeah.
• 1:48:18
  It's 110 wood now, but I think we did, we did do this math
• 1:48:25
  before. It's somewhere like 10 more wood
• 1:48:31
  invested. But it's something.
• 1:48:33
  Like 30-40 more food per pasture.
• 1:48:36
  Oh, even that much I I thought the patch notes said. 10 more
• 1:48:39
  per animal, which would be well, yes, it depends on it depends on
• 1:48:45
  what upgrades you have on your pasture.
• 1:48:47
  True. Exactly.
• 1:48:49
  Yeah, I'm. Not sure what the the.
• 1:48:51
  Devs were thinking with this, but hey.
• 1:48:55
  There's more. They have a unique unit.
• 1:48:58
  They have a unique unit called the Mounted Trebuchet.
• 1:49:00
  This is a siege unit buildable in the Siege workshop starting
• 1:49:04
  in the Imperial Age, and this has also been buffed.
• 1:49:08
  The siege unit is a camel with a catapult on them and their
• 1:49:13
  projectile will leave a lingering fire on the ground
• 1:49:16
  where they where they hit the enemy.
• 1:49:19
  And this area has now been slightly increased up to .7
• 1:49:22
  tiles, just like it's duration of the fire that lingers on the
• 1:49:26
  ground, which is now 10 seconds instead of eight.
• 1:49:30
  I have to admit that I have yet to actually build this unit.
• 1:49:34
  I have never done it, but that's also because of the Kitans.
• 1:49:37
  Games that I'm playing are usually against Kitans because I
• 1:49:41
  am. Much like with the Mongols, I I
• 1:49:44
  dare not pick them because I would feel disgusted by myself.
• 1:49:49
  So I never got to the stage of the games against the guitars
• 1:49:53
  where they could actually use this unit against me, because
• 1:49:55
  it's either over because they completely wrecked me or because
• 1:49:59
  I counted them. Understandable 100%.
• 1:50:02
  So do you have any? Experience with these camels.
• 1:50:04
  With these. Catapult Camels.
• 1:50:07
  They're extremely good. Against.
• 1:50:09
  Siege, that's what I that's how they're mostly used by the pros
• 1:50:17
  as well. I personally didn't have too
• 1:50:20
  many experience too much experience with them just
• 1:50:26
  because well again, like you say, I don't play ketones
• 1:50:29
  either. When I play I completely forget
• 1:50:33
  about them. Anyway.
• 1:50:34
  I think your calvaries your siege with but.
• 1:50:40
  Yeah. Basically, basically I I see
• 1:50:44
  them a lot in pro games and they work wonders against yeah.
• 1:50:48
  Is it because of the? Fire.
• 1:50:51
  Or is like the lingering fire? Lingering fire.
• 1:50:53
  Yeah, OK. So well then of.
• 1:50:56
  Course it makes sense. To buff that.
• 1:51:01
  Anyway, moving on to the Persians.
• 1:51:03
  So they have a castle edge unique tech called Commander Ran
• 1:51:06
  which I adore. I love that technology even
• 1:51:09
  though I know it's crap but still I always like to research
• 1:51:12
  it. And this technology replaces the
• 1:51:15
  gold cost of Archers and crossbows with wood, giving them
• 1:51:19
  the nickname trash bows. And this bonus now gives them a
• 1:51:23
  significant discount because their crossbows or Archers will
• 1:51:27
  only instead of 60 wood that they have costed before with
• 1:51:31
  commander and research, now their cost has been reduced to
• 1:51:34
  50 foot, so 50 wood. So trash bows are even trashier
• 1:51:40
  I guess because they less cost, less resources.
• 1:51:43
  I I. For one, I like this change.
• 1:51:46
  It's not because. Anything has really changed.
• 1:51:49
  Usually you have enough wood for trash bows, but still, I I do
• 1:51:53
  like this change. Yeah, I don't think Persians
• 1:51:56
  needed. A freaking.
• 1:51:57
  Buff, but hey, it's their crossbows.
• 1:52:00
  It's their worst unit. Yeah, but I mean, hey, no.
• 1:52:04
  Gold. Is is there?
• 1:52:08
  Is there trash units the worst unit however you want to You
• 1:52:11
  want to call it but but but but. I think trash was underrated in
• 1:52:17
  the late. I know they are, I love them.
• 1:52:20
  It's a gold unit basically, right?
• 1:52:24
  Is doing great work. Against like.
• 1:52:26
  Calf against halves. Like.
• 1:52:32
  Trash balls and hazards. It pose them.
• 1:52:35
  For Persians is pretty damn strong.
• 1:52:38
  Yeah. I mean, it's still a Castle Age
• 1:52:40
  unit and you don't have. Bracers, so they are literally a
• 1:52:43
  Castle age unit and you had to invest quite a lot into making
• 1:52:47
  them viable by researching your unique technology.
• 1:52:51
  So there are a couple of hurdles, but I mean, trash,
• 1:52:55
  trash bows. I really enjoy playing with
• 1:52:59
  them. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:53:01
  I think they're very situational.
• 1:53:02
  So. I go this far, I'd say.
• 1:53:05
  That this buff was actually needed for the trash bots, not
• 1:53:07
  for the Persians, but for the trash bots.
• 1:53:10
  OK shoe, they have actually been nerfed.
• 1:53:13
  Their lumberjacks now generate 7% food instead of the 9%.
• 1:53:18
  So for anyone who is not familiar with the new
• 1:53:20
  civilizations, their eco bonus is that while they are chopping
• 1:53:25
  wood, they would generate food very slowly, much like the Poles
• 1:53:30
  generate gold while there are mining stone, or like the
• 1:53:34
  Vietnamese who are chopping wood and somehow finding gold between
• 1:53:39
  the the twigs. I guess this is the same kind of
• 1:53:42
  bonus. And this has now been nerfed.
• 1:53:44
  And this is, to me, pretty fair, I believe.
• 1:53:48
  Yeah, I agree. Good.
• 1:53:50
  I agree they it was a nerf that should come.
• 1:53:53
  It was a bit overpowered. A tiny, tiny bit overpowered.
• 1:53:59
  Yeah, I I still think it's probably.
• 1:54:01
  Overpowered but it's it's less OP now then the Spanish elite
• 1:54:11
  conquistadors have been buffed and the emphasis on is on elite.
• 1:54:16
  The Conks in their elite version deal one more damage now, which
• 1:54:20
  is 19 instead of 18, and researching the elite upgrade is
• 1:54:24
  more affordable because the costs have been reduced by 300
• 1:54:28
  foot from 1200 foot and 600 gold to 900 foot and 600 gold.
• 1:54:34
  Again, it's debatable whether this.
• 1:54:36
  Was needed because. Of the conks are already pretty
• 1:54:39
  strong without any upgrades and the elite I don't know is the
• 1:54:45
  elite conquistador that important?
• 1:54:49
  Only in the very late game. And again, I'll, I'll, I'll say
• 1:54:54
  again. It's death's pushing people to
• 1:54:57
  play because when are concussed there's the best in Catholic
• 1:55:00
  like most of the times people either try to counter them with
• 1:55:06
  you know CA scorpion, siege monks, squirms.
• 1:55:12
  They are the best. Counter in the end they have
• 1:55:16
  bonus damage. Most of the players shift.
• 1:55:20
  To Paladin. If they're playing Spanish, how
• 1:55:24
  many times do you see elite conquistadors?
• 1:55:26
  Yeah, but I would argue that this change is nothing.
• 1:55:28
  Because the Paladins have a very different role to the
• 1:55:32
  conquistadors, correct? Correct.
• 1:55:36
  But I think this is them trying at least to change it.
• 1:55:41
  I think this is their way of. Trying to.
• 1:55:43
  Get people to invest into the the the like the elite research,
• 1:55:51
  because people will invest in conquistadors in the castle age
• 1:55:54
  the same way they did before. And I don't think that elite
• 1:55:58
  being more accessible changes anything about the role of
• 1:56:02
  conquistadors in the castle age. People are happy to take out of
• 1:56:06
  conquistadors in the imperial age and go the paladin way as
• 1:56:10
  you've mentioned, and they still will be.
• 1:56:12
  But if you happen to have some spare conquistadors like 20 or
• 1:56:18
  30 and you want to upgrade them, now you have an extra incentive.
• 1:56:22
  And I guess that's great, but then again, people would have
• 1:56:26
  done so anyway even with the old cost.
• 1:56:30
  So what they are actually changing is that units get more
• 1:56:35
  powerful faster in the game. Now if this leads to games being
• 1:56:41
  a bit more snowballing in the late game and potentially ending
• 1:56:46
  faster, I am all for it, but if this would lead to games being
• 1:56:52
  more stalematey, I hate it. And yeah, definitely I can
• 1:56:59
  understand that. I guess this remains to.
• 1:57:00
  Be seen maybe? There haven't been enough
• 1:57:03
  changes to actually find out about that, but I'm kind of
• 1:57:07
  scared. Let's say it like this.
• 1:57:09
  OK, my favorite civilization in the game, Tatars, They they have
• 1:57:14
  gotten a buff. Their unique unit, the Kasich
• 1:57:18
  has been buffed. They have 10 more HP now and
• 1:57:21
  their elite version five more. And researching elite Kasich has
• 1:57:24
  also been significantly discounted by a third of their
• 1:57:28
  former gold cost, which I love, even though I also believe that
• 1:57:33
  this was not necessary and it's a bit too strong.
• 1:57:35
  But hey, they are my favorite civilization, so here applied
• 1:57:38
  different rules. They now need 600 gold and 700
• 1:57:43
  food instead of 900 gold and 700 food.
• 1:57:46
  Yeah, I love it, but I don't think this was necessary.
• 1:57:51
  Yeah, again, probably. Not.
• 1:57:53
  But how many cachings do you usually see?
• 1:57:55
  Not too many, Not too many. You usually see them.
• 1:57:59
  In Reach Forest. Taking the pardon role, but
• 1:58:04
  yeah, yes, I agree. So once again, I guess this
• 1:58:09
  makes the unique unit a bit more viable, but in the dynamic of
• 1:58:14
  how tars work, you usually want to go down the cavarcher.
• 1:58:19
  Roll and at least in. One re ones, it is just simply
• 1:58:21
  not possible to get Elite Cache X and your Omega Strong
• 1:58:26
  cavarchers at the same time. But you'd rather want something
• 1:58:30
  trashy in front of the the cavarchers.
• 1:58:33
  And the gimmick of the cache is that they generate gold while
• 1:58:36
  they are raiding, which I thought was always the reasoning
• 1:58:40
  why they are so expensive to upgrade.
• 1:58:44
  But since nobody uses them specifically for this task,
• 1:58:48
  maybe that's why they went down with the with the price.
• 1:58:52
  Anyway, so much for the Tatas. Buffs are always welcome in my
• 1:58:57
  opinion. Now to the Turks, who did not
• 1:59:01
  need a buff in my opinion, but they still got it.
• 1:59:03
  They're gold miners. They they're gold miners who
• 1:59:07
  have already been impressively good at mining gold and are
• 1:59:13
  probably one of the single reasons why the Turks have been
• 1:59:16
  so successful with fast Imps on on closed maps.
• 1:59:20
  They are now even harder working.
• 1:59:23
  Now they have 25% faster working rate on gold instead of the
• 1:59:28
  former 20% not needed, no. I'm not even sure.
• 1:59:34
  If this changes anything with the builds, because they are
• 1:59:38
  already so tight and so perfected that you you can't
• 1:59:45
  execute them, like 5% is not enough to have less villages and
• 1:59:49
  gold, I believe it should be it. It probably must be more than 5%
• 1:59:54
  to change the build, so you will still do the same thing, but you
• 1:59:59
  will have more gold, which you probably will use in a market I
• 2:00:03
  think. Like this is the worst for do
• 2:00:08
  you know 12113 hundred people that play against arena
• 2:00:14
  spammers, Turks fast amp. I think it's still going to be a
• 2:00:18
  bit a bit strong like or even stronger, definitely 100% so.
• 2:00:25
  An interesting change that I thought had no incentive
• 2:00:29
  whatsoever. But again, maybe they are seeing
• 2:00:32
  the bigger picture. Maybe they are trying to balance
• 2:00:34
  the sieves not for themselves, but in the in the grand scheme
• 2:00:37
  of all 50, soon to be 53 civilizations.
• 2:00:42
  But this leads us to the last sieve that has been changed in
• 2:00:45
  the recent update, and that is the woo.
• 2:00:49
  Again, their unique unit has been.
• 2:00:50
  Changed the Jian swordsman. This unit has a reputation to be
• 2:00:54
  very strong and maybe a little bit too strong when being
• 2:00:58
  spammed, especially in the Castle Age.
• 2:00:59
  So their training time has been increased by 30% from 27 seconds
• 2:01:05
  to 35 seconds. I just recently had a game where
• 2:01:08
  I tried to play all in James Holtzman in the Castle Age, and
• 2:01:12
  I did significantly feel that this got harder with this
• 2:01:17
  change. So I guess it's good because as
• 2:01:22
  much fun as it was to play with James Holtzman, it was also kind
• 2:01:25
  of opie in my opinion. So.
• 2:01:27
  So this is very good. Yeah.
• 2:01:30
  OK. So overall.
• 2:01:33
  I think we. Can say that most of the changes
• 2:01:35
  came out of nowhere and we're probably not needed.
• 2:01:40
  I have no clear opinion whether this made the game better or
• 2:01:43
  worse, so I'd go with we'll have to see.
• 2:01:46
  That's my summary of this. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:01:52
  OK then. We'll finish up the.
• 2:01:55
  News with a discovery that you have brought up.
• 2:02:00
  There is a recap of the, let's say, competitive side of Age of
• 2:02:05
  Empires Two from the Spectator dashboard.
• 2:02:10
  And this is something very interesting.
• 2:02:12
  I have not seen this just ever since you've brought it up right
• 2:02:16
  when we started this podcast. So we can take a few minutes to
• 2:02:21
  just look at the stats. We'll also link this in the
• 2:02:25
  podcast show notes so you can look at it as well.
• 2:02:28
  I think this is very interesting.
• 2:02:30
  Is there anything that stuck out to that you want to mention?
• 2:02:34
  Any of the stats? Well, we have the longest.
• 2:02:39
  The we had the longest, how do you call it longest game and I
• 2:02:44
  think. It was Hera.
• 2:02:45
  Versus ACCM? Oh my God, that long?
• 2:02:49
  Yeah. Longest tournament matches.
• 2:02:51
  Oh yeah, the lean you won versus Hera. 4 hours.
• 2:02:55
  So that was. That was pretty funny.
• 2:02:58
  There's a couple of things that set out.
• 2:02:59
  There's villagers per game. Louis had a. 100 and. 96 average
• 2:03:07
  villagers per game, an increase with 11% based on last year,
• 2:03:11
  when last year he was pretty up there as well, which is really
• 2:03:16
  freaking funny. We've also got stats.
• 2:03:19
  For the biggest sift. Pickers #1 is Huang with a 96%
• 2:03:25
  rate of force picking, which is 2614 games.
• 2:03:29
  And this is the most funny thing about the stat.
• 2:03:32
  This is actually 14% down to last year because I think he
• 2:03:37
  took. Quite a long.
• 2:03:38
  Break didn't he in 2025? 2nd place is Red Foster of
• 2:03:44
  course with a 90% pick rate which is less than I expected.
• 2:03:48
  I I thought he would have 100% pick rate but I guess not even
• 2:03:52
  even he needs some some randomness from time to time.
• 2:03:55
  I think he has another account to that he.
• 2:03:59
  But that doesn't count here, right?
• 2:04:00
  Because we've seen. Another stat.
• 2:04:01
  With people having alt accounts I'm not sure.
• 2:04:05
  Actually, I think it does. Maybe I don't, I don't know.
• 2:04:09
  OK. Also.
• 2:04:10
  Very interesting. Stats bore lame attempts #1
• 2:04:15
  again, Huang. I don't think I've ever seen him
• 2:04:18
  lame to be honest, so this surprises me.
• 2:04:23
  I'm. Watching him weigh less.
• 2:04:24
  This year, yeah. 2nd place red fosfra when does?
• 2:04:28
  He lame. Where in his build is he laming?
• 2:04:31
  I don't know. So who is this really red?
• 2:04:34
  Fosfra. But like Huang and Red Fosfra
• 2:04:38
  has so many lame attempts that this cannot be coincidence.
• 2:04:42
  Like Red Fosfra has 300 and the third place good game right
• 2:04:48
  after him is 113. So this stats, I don't know,
• 2:04:53
  it's showing. Maybe this is something that
• 2:04:56
  Ross Red Phosphorus is cooking behind the scenes, a different
• 2:05:00
  kind of phosphorus maybe. Or like again, he he did have
• 2:05:03
  that. Account where he would play
• 2:05:05
  random matches with You know with his account that where he
• 2:05:14
  was trying to get as high as possible without doing his
• 2:05:16
  rushes. I assume maybe during?
• 2:05:19
  Those. Would lame that much?
• 2:05:20
  Yeah, probably. It must be.
• 2:05:23
  Also. I think interesting.
• 2:05:26
  Stats when it comes to the maps, so this side counts the most
• 2:05:29
  popular 1V1 maps and 1st place is Arabia with 3 million and
• 2:05:36
  almost 500,000 games. Second place is Arena.
• 2:05:40
  I think these two spots are not surprising.
• 2:05:45
  They're always there and now we know it's for a.
• 2:05:47
  Reason. And I don't think the these are
• 2:05:52
  on the top 2. Spots because.
• 2:05:53
  They are always there, but because I think they are always
• 2:05:56
  there because the devs know these stats and they they know
• 2:06:00
  that these are the two most popular maps, it comes to my
• 2:06:04
  surprise that on. 3rd place is Mega.
• 2:06:06
  Random to be honest, why I think that people that don't.
• 2:06:10
  Like Caribbean? Don't like Arena?
• 2:06:12
  Like mega random. That's me.
• 2:06:15
  Hello. Yeah.
• 2:06:19
  But I think this is I think mega random must be out of the
• 2:06:26
  rotating maps from the map pool, the one that is most often in
• 2:06:30
  the map pool. Or am I wrong?
• 2:06:33
  You know, I think, I think mega random.
• 2:06:36
  Lately has always been there, so I think this also boosts the.
• 2:06:39
  Stats, but I'm not sure because 4th place is Glade and oh you
• 2:06:48
  seem to. Like that math?
• 2:06:50
  No. I much prefer Socotra over.
• 2:06:55
  Glades, but Glade has been in a couple of rotations of the map
• 2:07:01
  pool and that gives it the 4th place.
• 2:07:04
  It's it's it's higher ranked than Nomad, so I think being in
• 2:07:09
  the map will often really boost the stats.
• 2:07:12
  People do play what is in the map pool it seems.
• 2:07:16
  Can't just Speaking of this, can we?
• 2:07:18
  Change this one is so bad. It has they're like almost a
• 2:07:23
  freaking. It has a boob in it.
• 2:07:26
  It it I think it had. Lowland in it.
• 2:07:29
  I didn't get to play as much as I wanted.
• 2:07:31
  Arabia. Arabia the whole year.
• 2:07:34
  Oh yeah. Exactly because it has four.
• 2:07:36
  Arabias and three arenas. Yeah in my mega random which got
• 2:07:41
  dodged 90% of the time and I've got 3 bands so I can ban the
• 2:07:44
  three arena. Maps and I'm all good, my God.
• 2:07:49
  Oh. My.
• 2:07:50
  God, just when I thought we were.
• 2:07:54
  So alike then we start talking about the map.
• 2:07:59
  OK, just. Just like I hated this map.
• 2:08:01
  So much just some. Flashy stats.
• 2:08:05
  Before I'll hand it over to you to name some stats that you
• 2:08:08
  think is interesting. New players this year.
• 2:08:14
  So this is calculated by players who have at least played one
• 2:08:18
  multiplayer game. I'm not sure whether this means
• 2:08:22
  ranked or lobby is also involved, but this number would
• 2:08:24
  be 106,000 new players in 2025 playing at least once in the
• 2:08:30
  multiplayer and total match has played ranked and unranked
• 2:08:35
  against actual humans. So non AI is almost 15,000,000.
• 2:08:40
  I think this is a very impressive number and it has
• 2:08:43
  also gone down by only 1% compared to last year, kind of
• 2:08:47
  implying a constant player base. Not too shabby anything.
• 2:08:52
  Else that you find interesting. Not really, I just want to.
• 2:08:59
  Say that like. We were.
• 2:09:02
  Talking earlier about the best content creators, streamer
• 2:09:05
  viewers, T-90 and Hera Top 2 Nothing too nothing.
• 2:09:10
  Too. Surprising, T-90 did decrease in
• 2:09:14
  terms of average viewers 26% though, while Hera increased
• 2:09:18
  14%. So maybe, maybe next year we're
• 2:09:23
  going to see the number for one and #2 position switch.
• 2:09:27
  Hera's also putting out a lot more.
• 2:09:29
  Content. Than T-90 at least streaming a
• 2:09:32
  lot more than T-90 is. So this is not very surprising
• 2:09:35
  in my opinion. Both the T 90s number got down
• 2:09:38
  and that Hera's going up. Because this is only streaming,
• 2:09:42
  right? This is not YouTube or anything,
• 2:09:44
  this is strictly just streaming. It does make sense.
• 2:09:47
  I'm actually kind of surprised that T-90 is still on number one
• 2:09:51
  with his viewership. He is so, so such.
• 2:09:55
  A big community like he, he can relax a bit after he came back
• 2:10:00
  from from Facebook, for sure. He can now pick the events he
• 2:10:04
  wants to stream or not. Like his community is going to
• 2:10:07
  be there for him. Like he his community is so
• 2:10:09
  embedded in watching him that it's yeah.
• 2:10:13
  And I think most of his views are different.
• 2:10:15
  From me, because I am completely not interested in his community
• 2:10:20
  games. I do not watch Lower your
• 2:10:22
  Legends. I only watch T-19 when he's
• 2:10:25
  casting, but when he's casting I'm usually watching him.
• 2:10:29
  But I think most of his viewership is actually not
• 2:10:32
  caring about what kind of content he is whenever he's
• 2:10:34
  streaming, they're just watching it.
• 2:10:36
  Yeah, like a. Lot of his viewers.
• 2:10:40
  Are there for his community games like they enjoy to see
• 2:10:43
  that more than any STR happening at the same time, which a lot of
• 2:10:47
  the times he's, you know, prioritizing casting an S year
• 2:10:51
  event quarter final than doing community games on a Friday.
• 2:10:55
  But his viewers are always going to, you know, ask when are you
• 2:10:59
  returning by with the community games?
• 2:11:01
  Like yeah, I would love you casting this, but also give me
• 2:11:04
  my type of content that I enjoy. Yeah.
• 2:11:07
  But then again, he's so good at. Creating YouTube stuff so
• 2:11:10
  there's always content to watch. Yeah, I think these were very
• 2:11:14
  interesting. Stats so thanks.
• 2:11:16
  For bringing them up again, I've linked them in the show notes so
• 2:11:18
  you can take a look at the other stats that we haven't mentioned
• 2:11:21
  yourself. Just click on the link.
• 2:11:23
  Oh, by the way, there's most prolific casters.
• 2:11:26
  I just want to say I just want to say that my account was
• 2:11:33
  deleted from there. I asked happy Leafs to to delete
• 2:11:36
  my account because I well Long story short, I completely
• 2:11:41
  changed my my account, my steam account.
• 2:11:45
  So like I I let go completely of the old one.
• 2:11:49
  Like I deleted my steam account and I insisted happy leaves to
• 2:11:53
  to delete my account from the dashboard as well the old one.
• 2:11:57
  So when he did that, guess what? All my progress from 2025 was
• 2:12:02
  gone. I would have been very curious
• 2:12:06
  if I made this year top five. I do think so because I felt
• 2:12:09
  like I casted more than last year and last year I made it in
• 2:12:12
  the top five of most matches casted.
• 2:12:16
  And I would have been super interested to see if it was an
• 2:12:19
  increase or a decrease compared to last time.
• 2:12:24
  But yeah, the top three being. Mem 2.
• 2:12:25
  S and Orlo, that's not very surprising to anyone.
• 2:12:29
  Like they're casting a lot, especially ma'am, but ma'am was
• 2:12:33
  always there at #1 and it, it, it's expected.
• 2:12:37
  Maybe he, he's, he's a machine. He's a beast, I swear.
• 2:12:41
  Yeah. With this.
• 2:12:43
  Let's close the news. After more than two hours and
• 2:12:47
  move on to some other news from the franchise.
• 2:12:54
  And we'll start with. The Age of Empires two DLC
• 2:12:58
  announcement so early in December.
• 2:13:00
  The newest DLC, The Last Chieftains, has been announced,
• 2:13:03
  and it's announced to release in February 2026, introducing 3 new
• 2:13:08
  civilizations from South America, which will also be
• 2:13:11
  available for ranked play in multiplayer.
• 2:13:14
  The Mapuche, The Muiska, The 2P. There will be 3 new campaigns,
• 2:13:19
  including new hero units, though I doubt that those will be part
• 2:13:23
  of the tech tree, so they will probably not be played in
• 2:13:26
  multiplayer. This was kind of mentioned in
• 2:13:30
  the subtext of the this announcement.
• 2:13:33
  They also promised more information in January in which
• 2:13:36
  they'll probably tell us more about the three civilizations
• 2:13:39
  and their campaigns. Are you excited about these
• 2:13:43
  civilizations? Absolutely.
• 2:13:45
  Absolutely. I'm always excited.
• 2:13:47
  When there's new DLC with new sieves, I'm always like you, you
• 2:13:52
  know, the novelty, the expectations that the, the, the
• 2:13:58
  waiting. I love this kind of stuff.
• 2:14:00
  I know, I know the people that are always complaining about
• 2:14:03
  this franchise always releasing new sieves and not facing the
• 2:14:06
  patent. I understand you guys.
• 2:14:08
  I hear you. I'm still excited when they
• 2:14:11
  released these Sims, like, like a kid on the Christmas morning.
• 2:14:15
  I don't know. I, I love when they released
• 2:14:17
  these Sims. I just oh, my God.
• 2:14:19
  It's so it's so weird that I'm saying that I was so against
• 2:14:23
  Armenians and Georgians when they released them because of
• 2:14:25
  the mule cards. I almost stopped playing the
• 2:14:28
  game completely. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:14:30
  I was so against it. Oh my God.
• 2:14:33
  But now I I love. Both of those Sims.
• 2:14:36
  So yeah, like it's just I'm excited.
• 2:14:39
  I don't know. I'm sorry.
• 2:14:40
  I hope they fix pathing one day as well, but as long as they
• 2:14:44
  keep releasing sibs, I don't mind.
• 2:14:45
  Yeah. So this is very interesting that
• 2:14:48
  you. Brought up the Armenian Georgian
• 2:14:51
  DLC that it kind of turned you away from the game.
• 2:14:55
  So with my former Co host he hardly plays the game anymore
• 2:15:01
  and he stopped playing when the Three Kingdoms DLC came out with
• 2:15:06
  five new civilizations. Oh wow, there's so many actually
• 2:15:10
  people. That said, like, oh, I stopped.
• 2:15:13
  I stopped playing especially because.
• 2:15:15
  Again, like, I don't know you. Remember Reddit's rage about the
• 2:15:19
  heroes? How many heroes do you see on
• 2:15:22
  ladder? As expected, no, I I like.
• 2:15:25
  For him it's not so much. About the heroes, I believe, but
• 2:15:28
  more about the the way or the path the game is shifting
• 2:15:35
  towards because there are so many new game mechanics and with
• 2:15:42
  all the different regional units and it's, it's shaping up to
• 2:15:47
  change a lot about what was what we were so accustomed to in the
• 2:15:53
  game. So you have to kind of, and also
• 2:15:57
  there's these meta shifts with the fire Lancer stuff and with
• 2:16:00
  the with the siege towers and all these kind of thing and and
• 2:16:03
  the pastures, the overpowered Kitans, all these kind of
• 2:16:06
  things. The way I interpret what he's
• 2:16:11
  saying are not very attractive for him or giving, not very
• 2:16:15
  giving, giving him much incentive to come back to the
• 2:16:18
  game, but rather drive him away from it.
• 2:16:21
  Because there's just so much that he, even though he had
• 2:16:24
  played the game for so long and on such a high level, there
• 2:16:27
  would be just so many things that he would have to grow
• 2:16:30
  accustomed to that he just doesn't feel like it.
• 2:16:34
  So with each with each DLC that they are.
• 2:16:37
  Releasing there's potentially. More people who could feel this
• 2:16:40
  way. This is a very interesting
• 2:16:41
  dynamic. That's why I brought earlier.
• 2:16:45
  About death. Kind of like forcing people to
• 2:16:47
  play weird in it while the AOI community.
• 2:16:51
  Feels. So strongly about their, you
• 2:16:53
  know, their classic units. The the.
• 2:16:58
  Classic meta. The classic aspect of the game.
• 2:17:00
  No weird dynamics, no reflecting bonus damage, no bleeding
• 2:17:12
  mechanics, no, you know, fire damage.
• 2:17:17
  We need some not fire damage of. Fire lingering from.
• 2:17:20
  The fire. Lingering damage.
• 2:17:22
  There we go. Thank you.
• 2:17:24
  Well, there's still potential. We need poison.
• 2:17:26
  We. Need ice?
• 2:17:27
  We need wind. Treason by poison Earthquakes.
• 2:17:32
  What else is there? Yeah.
• 2:17:35
  Tsunamis. Give some love to water, please.
• 2:17:41
  There's also, you know, units could.
• 2:17:42
  Transform at will. That would be ours.
• 2:17:45
  There's so much potential. No, it's it's, it's really
• 2:17:48
  scary. I think we've reached the point
• 2:17:51
  5050 civilizations was a magical number and now that we are
• 2:17:56
  officially going over that number, there's just no end they
• 2:18:00
  can. I think the next number is 100
• 2:18:04
  and up to then. It would be no.
• 2:18:06
  Surprise for me if they keep getting new sieves into the
• 2:18:10
  game, my only hope is that they will not repeat 5 civilizations
• 2:18:15
  at once because that was just that was just too much for me at
• 2:18:18
  once. I need smaller doses of new
• 2:18:20
  sieves. 3 three is about as much as I can take.
• 2:18:24
  Yeah. Never.
• 2:18:28
  Mind wow. Moving.
• 2:18:33
  On No. Wow.
• 2:18:38
  I did not. Oh my God.
• 2:18:40
  I wanted to say I did not see this coming, but that has now a
• 2:18:43
  very different connotation. I wanted to say that's what she
• 2:18:47
  said, that's. What I wanted?
• 2:18:49
  To say OK, anything else? Do you want to mention it?
• 2:18:54
  In reference to this DLC announcement, not really.
• 2:18:59
  No, I'm just I'm. Did before the DLC announcement.
• 2:19:04
  I'm just waiting for my water rework to come out.
• 2:19:08
  I expect that to be before the before the DLC.
• 2:19:12
  They said at at beginning of new year.
• 2:19:14
  If God forbid I'm getting my water rework in March, what am I
• 2:19:18
  doing until March? Well, there's four different
• 2:19:21
  kinds of. Arabia to play?
• 2:19:25
  I hope they're going to change. This freaking map.
• 2:19:27
  Also, it must probably tomorrow we have the ladder.
• 2:19:30
  Red. Thing you know there will be a
• 2:19:32
  change soon. It always takes longer.
• 2:19:34
  During the holidays? Yeah, Lazy.
• 2:19:39
  Lazy nilly Chop chop. Also, since you mentioned lazy,
• 2:19:42
  nilly aren't. We promised a second pathing
• 2:19:46
  update. When is that due to come out?
• 2:19:48
  Lazy nilly chomp chomp. OK.
• 2:19:52
  Moving on in the franchise. News The developers have also
• 2:19:56
  teased new content for Age of Mythology, Retold and Age of
• 2:20:00
  Empires 4. AOM will get an entirely new
• 2:20:03
  pantheon with the Aztecs and a 12 mission long campaign for
• 2:20:07
  this new pantheon. They also offer a season pass
• 2:20:10
  for their next 4 releases. And this I have to admit got me
• 2:20:13
  a little bit excited because I thought they were basically
• 2:20:17
  teasing another 4 pantheons. But it turns out the season pass
• 2:20:22
  just covers some minor DLCS and the fourth of these DLCS will be
• 2:20:26
  the Aztec pantheon. Kind of the the big culmination
• 2:20:30
  at the end. Apart from the Aztec DLC, the
• 2:20:33
  season pass will include the Demeter Goth Pack, which is a
• 2:20:36
  new goddess for the Greek pantheon, the Ultimate Fan Pack
• 2:20:40
  which gives some buildings new skins and turns them golden, and
• 2:20:43
  the Blood and Bones Pack, which promises an overhaul of some
• 2:20:47
  visual features in the game, introducing A dynamic blood
• 2:20:50
  system and prismatic essences for mythical creatures.
• 2:20:54
  And my humble guesses that this is pretty much the same as the
• 2:20:59
  DLCS for pretty much every Total War game that exists that
• 2:21:02
  introduced blood to the fights. Have you ever played a Total War
• 2:21:05
  game? No.
• 2:21:11
  Just AOII tried to recently to play other games on stream like
• 2:21:16
  Hoggard's Legacy and all my chat.
• 2:21:20
  Just spent all the. Time that I was trying to play,
• 2:21:23
  just trolling me about my camera movement and how I move and
• 2:21:28
  people were like. Have you never?
• 2:21:30
  Played any other game before I was like no, how can you tell?
• 2:21:33
  No reason. OK, I I missed that I'm afraid.
• 2:21:37
  But. Well it's complicated for you,
• 2:21:40
  right? If you do play games, you
• 2:21:41
  probably want to stream them since this is your job.
• 2:21:45
  For me, it's different. I played the shit out of
• 2:21:48
  Hogwarts Legacy when it came out.
• 2:21:49
  I love that game so much. But Total War has an interesting
• 2:21:53
  concept. So they release these grand
• 2:21:55
  strategy games and you have like massive armies clashing against
• 2:21:59
  each other, hundreds of units against hundreds of units, very
• 2:22:03
  intricately animated. And it's, it's, it's a lot of
• 2:22:06
  strategy, it's a lot of tactics and it's, it's a lot of fun.
• 2:22:09
  But when these games come out, and this is something that I
• 2:22:14
  have learned from Felix, my former Co host, because he has
• 2:22:16
  played every single game of these, I have just played once
• 2:22:19
  or one or twice. When these game releases, they
• 2:22:22
  have no gore or blood effects in them, but they will always
• 2:22:26
  release ADLC which has the sole purpose of getting blood into
• 2:22:32
  the game, making the fights a bit more bloody and therefore I
• 2:22:37
  guess aesthetically more pleasing.
• 2:22:40
  And they are super. Cheap.
• 2:22:41
  They cost like 1. 99 or something so everyone gets them
• 2:22:45
  but it's like an additional way of funding for them.
• 2:22:48
  So I'm I'm wondering if the devs are doing this in?
• 2:22:53
  Age of. Mythology to see if this is
• 2:22:58
  recepted well or not. Because with Aomi believe they
• 2:23:04
  don't care that much. I'm surprised they're even doing
• 2:23:07
  another DLC. But I'm not surprised that they
• 2:23:10
  are adding something which might be a kind of test run for their
• 2:23:15
  other two games. What do you think about that?
• 2:23:18
  Maybe. Maybe.
• 2:23:21
  OK. Like you said earlier, they're
• 2:23:23
  kind of like trying stuff, you know from one game to another
• 2:23:27
  and you see something implemented in one game.
• 2:23:32
  You can you can soon. Expect.
• 2:23:35
  Or, well, soon. Eventually expect to see that
• 2:23:38
  kind of shifting to the other games, so it could be.
• 2:23:42
  It's. A potential so if they were to
• 2:23:45
  release a DLC for. Age of Empires 2 for 299 giving
• 2:23:50
  blood effects Would you buy it I.
• 2:23:55
  Don't know, probably. Probably.
• 2:24:00
  Would get it for free now that I'm amazing.
• 2:24:02
  Oh, I'm sorry. Why did I even ask?
• 2:24:09
  I wouldn't is there. Daniela.
• 2:24:12
  Yeah, I mean. There's probably no one
• 2:24:14
  listening, but is there a way for me to get that deal as well?
• 2:24:18
  I'm also kind of a content creator, you know?
• 2:24:23
  Oh. My God, it took me so long to
• 2:24:25
  the. Only I I bought all the DLCS,
• 2:24:28
  the only one that I got for free was the 3K sieves.
• 2:24:33
  Nice, that's three Ki was the that was the best.
• 2:24:35
  Deal. 5 sieves. Yes, that's what I'm saying.
• 2:24:39
  I was very happy. To be included.
• 2:24:40
  So Neely, if you're listening, maybe sign me up for that.
• 2:24:43
  Program I wouldn't mind, but then again I'm pretty sure I
• 2:24:48
  would buy. I would buy the DLC for 299, but
• 2:24:52
  it can't be much more expensive than that because I don't need
• 2:24:55
  the blood And my game is like visually I have plain green
• 2:24:59
  background when I play competitive.
• 2:25:03
  I I like when I play campaigns, I have no no mod enabled.
• 2:25:08
  But when I play ranked, I have small trees.
• 2:25:11
  I have like plain green background and all these kind of
• 2:25:15
  things. So two different kind of games.
• 2:25:17
  I think with that Blood would make it a bit more interesting,
• 2:25:22
  but it's totally unnecessary. Then again, I was also buying
• 2:25:25
  the those animated icons, not really because I need them, but
• 2:25:31
  because I felt like this was a way to support the game, and Age
• 2:25:35
  of Empires 2 is really the only game where I would do that, to
• 2:25:38
  be honest. Yeah, OK, so that's the news.
• 2:25:42
  For age of. Mythology for Age of Empires 4.
• 2:25:44
  There's also a little bit of news because the devs have
• 2:25:46
  teased 2 more DLCS for the year 2026 without giving any days.
• 2:25:51
  However, they mentioned that the DLCS will include two new base
• 2:25:54
  civilizations, so not only variants and one of these two
• 2:25:59
  civilizations will be the Vikings.
• 2:26:02
  Also, they will include a new campaign covering something
• 2:26:05
  inspired by Chinese history. They've also mentioned that
• 2:26:08
  they're working on implementing a Co-op version of the Crucible
• 2:26:12
  game mode. This is the Rogue light game
• 2:26:14
  mode, and that feedback has been so good about this game mode
• 2:26:18
  that they want to expand on that concept.
• 2:26:21
  That's it for the franchise news.
• 2:26:23
  I'm just assuming you have nothing to say to Age of Empires
• 2:26:26
  4. I don't really know.
• 2:26:29
  Lots of, lots of. Content lots.
• 2:26:30
  Of good news coming up next year yeah, I think that's overall
• 2:26:33
  good from the franchise for the. Franchise, yeah, yeah, for sure,
• 2:26:37
  for sure. Let's move on to the.
• 2:26:38
  Podcast. News and.
• 2:26:39
  The emails, there's no. Podcast news so we can go
• 2:26:45
  straight. To the emails, if you're up for
• 2:26:48
  it, we're kind of deep into the recording, but we've got a
• 2:26:51
  couple of messages. So thanks again to everyone who
• 2:26:53
  has reached out to me. If you want to do so as well and
• 2:26:57
  have your ideas and questions discussed on the show, just send
• 2:26:59
  me a message at age of cast@gmail.com.
• 2:27:03
  That's ageofcast@gmail.com. Or write me a message on
• 2:27:06
  Discord. I don't know.
• 2:27:10
  I guess we just pick and choose messages.
• 2:27:15
  There's one message that is directly addressed to you,
• 2:27:19
  Danielle. So I would like to discuss this.
• 2:27:21
  This is coming from Dennis, he said.
• 2:27:24
  We've recently lost our cat, and as I recall, you were in a
• 2:27:27
  similar situation. I was wondering how you dealt
• 2:27:29
  with the loss because it hit us way harder than we ever
• 2:27:32
  expected. Oh yeah.
• 2:27:37
  I am in a similar situation. Yeah, it was not, it was not my
• 2:27:43
  cat. It was our dog.
• 2:27:47
  It kind of hit us the same. We didn't expect it.
• 2:27:51
  We didn't know she was sick. She was feeling bad.
• 2:27:53
  We went to the vet and then we came back without her basically.
• 2:27:57
  And it had a very heavy impact on us.
• 2:28:05
  It's very important this listener is referring to us, our
• 2:28:11
  cat. So I'm assuming that it it, it
• 2:28:14
  was a family. It was a family pet.
• 2:28:17
  Then. This is incredibly important to
• 2:28:21
  have someone to grief with to, to go through in.
• 2:28:26
  In our case, I, I had my husband and he had me and we kind of
• 2:28:30
  relate on each other. It's very important to to go
• 2:28:34
  through the the stages of grief to understand.
• 2:28:40
  That yes, OK this. Is a part of the life that is a
• 2:28:44
  natural part of the life, but it's.
• 2:28:46
  Also. A very harsh one and often when
• 2:28:50
  it's sudden or like he said that we hit us harder than that they
• 2:28:56
  ever expected. That's that can only show, you
• 2:29:00
  know, the attachment that we can create with with our pets with,
• 2:29:03
  you know, the living beings around us.
• 2:29:07
  And it's. It's just important to keep
• 2:29:11
  their memory and just to be. Thankful.
• 2:29:13
  For all the nice moments you guys got to spend together and
• 2:29:16
  and then that they offered you an all the unconditional love
• 2:29:20
  and and everything. We we have another pet.
• 2:29:24
  We have the cat that honestly, I think the cat.
• 2:29:31
  The cat was. Expect it was very affected as
• 2:29:34
  well, even if they weren't very like they weren't playing
• 2:29:37
  together. They were kind of like
• 2:29:39
  respecting each other's boundaries or kind of scared of
• 2:29:42
  each other. Maybe not scared.
• 2:29:44
  They even got comfortable. They were, I don't know, all the
• 2:29:48
  time curious where the other one is.
• 2:29:50
  So it's kind of like upsetting sometimes to see the cat meowing
• 2:29:54
  around the house kind of looking for for the dog.
• 2:29:59
  Yeah, just time will eventually heal it, but it's important to
• 2:30:05
  have someone to go through their grief with to not basically
• 2:30:09
  suffer alone. My my heart goes to you.
• 2:30:11
  I can absolutely relate to to that pain.
• 2:30:15
  It was a very heavy news for for us as well.
• 2:30:19
  I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you guys can find some
• 2:30:22
  comfort in each other's love. And, you know, we when the time
• 2:30:27
  comes later on, maybe even think about getting another, another
• 2:30:33
  cat. It's not to replace the, the
• 2:30:38
  loss of your cat, but it's just, you know, if you want to again,
• 2:30:43
  feel that kind of love and that kind of warmth that a pet gives
• 2:30:49
  you. I I, I love pets.
• 2:30:50
  I yeah, can't express how how hard I feel for you right now
• 2:30:58
  because well, like, like I was saying, we were struggling a
• 2:31:02
  couple of weeks ago as well. We have two cats and just the.
• 2:31:06
  Thought of anything really happening to them is is
• 2:31:11
  unbearable so I guess lucky for me.
• 2:31:14
  I don't know how you feel, but I wish you guys all the best.
• 2:31:20
  I have no real advice on how to deal with it except for one, I
• 2:31:24
  guess from from work. Actually a couple of years ago I
• 2:31:29
  did some experimental studies where like studies on video
• 2:31:35
  games and there's a specific video game I'd like to recommend
• 2:31:38
  for you or I guess anyone who's dealing with grief.
• 2:31:41
  And that is a independent game called Grease that that is
• 2:31:45
  Spanish for grey and that is a 2D platforming game with very
• 2:31:50
  nice Aquarel colours and, and, and, and graphics.
• 2:31:54
  And that game is a abstract manifestation of the five stages
• 2:31:58
  of grief, like a like that's like a psychological theory in
• 2:32:03
  which the main and that game is completely without any
• 2:32:06
  vocalization or written text. So it's all about symbolism.
• 2:32:10
  And in in my experiments, I was letting people from any kind of
• 2:32:15
  age and educational background playing that game.
• 2:32:19
  And I was kind of trying to figure out how they respond to
• 2:32:24
  the game depending on whether they have suffered losses or are
• 2:32:28
  actually going through grief or are unfamiliar with grief.
• 2:32:32
  And what we found out in that study was that if you have no
• 2:32:39
  concept of grief because you have not ever experienced grief,
• 2:32:42
  you will not understand the game.
• 2:32:43
  But if you are grieving or have once grieved, you will very much
• 2:32:49
  understand the symbolism of the game.
• 2:32:52
  And for some people, they have even reported that the game
• 2:32:55
  helped them understand their feelings that they couldn't
• 2:33:00
  structure very well a bit better.
• 2:33:03
  So that the game was helping them in structuring their the
• 2:33:07
  way they were grieving. Even though that is something
• 2:33:09
  that is very individual and personal, the game still for
• 2:33:13
  some, at least to some extent, help them understand what was
• 2:33:18
  going on with themselves. So maybe that is my
• 2:33:20
  recommendation. Once again, a game to play.
• 2:33:24
  It's also very short. I think if you're skilled
• 2:33:28
  player, you need like 2 hours. If you're not that skilled, like
• 2:33:30
  Daniela for example, you might need 3 or 4.
• 2:33:36
  Also, there's no. Camera you can screw up so it's.
• 2:33:39
  22 dimensions. Well, I I literally just.
• 2:33:43
  Edit it to cart. Right now I see it's on.
• 2:33:45
  Yeah, it's a wonderful. It's quite old actually.
• 2:33:50
  Well, old, it's not like 20 years old, but probably 10 years
• 2:33:53
  old maybe by now. But it's a great game.
• 2:33:55
  I can just recommend it to anyone.
• 2:33:57
  Even if you're not grieving, it's still a great experience to
• 2:34:01
  have. Thank you.
• 2:34:04
  And this is actually a very. Nice, very nice advice.
• 2:34:07
  OK, let's pick. One more We've got a couple of
• 2:34:12
  questions, but I'd like to skip some of them and save them for
• 2:34:15
  the next time. Maybe we'll do a something
• 2:34:19
  that's on a lighter note from Alex.
• 2:34:23
  Alex wrote in and said everybody argues about pineapple and
• 2:34:26
  pizza, but no one talks about corn in salads.
• 2:34:30
  They usually they usually just end up at on the bottom of the
• 2:34:33
  bowl, visible only once you finish the rest of the salad.
• 2:34:37
  Not only is corn by itself not that great, it's also very
• 2:34:40
  annoying to Pierce. I guess my question is, do you
• 2:34:44
  like corn in your salad? I don't mind it is that it I?
• 2:34:52
  Like it? I just, I don't mind it.
• 2:34:55
  I don't, I don't hate it either, you know, So I don't mind.
• 2:34:58
  That's my question, my answer. Sorry, yeah.
• 2:35:02
  I see what you're. Saying about the corn kind of
• 2:35:05
  falling through the salad and being at the bottom, that's just
• 2:35:08
  a visual visualization that I instantly had in my my brain.
• 2:35:13
  So I feel it. I think corn is probably the
• 2:35:18
  least needed in a salad, but I do appreciate it if it's there.
• 2:35:24
  I also completely know. The feeling of having to Pierce
• 2:35:28
  them. For me it's not that much of A
• 2:35:31
  hassle, but I don't like the sound that my cutleries do on
• 2:35:35
  certain surfaces. So when I have to Pierce them, I
• 2:35:39
  I I would never Pierce them. I would always try to push them
• 2:35:42
  on the fork or if I have a spoon just spoon them out.
• 2:35:46
  I have goosebumps but like the bad kind.
• 2:35:48
  Of I'm sorry when you're talking about this like I just.
• 2:35:51
  Imagining the. Sound OK?
• 2:35:55
  I guess then we'll leave. It here.
• 2:35:58
  Thanks again for everyone who. Wrote in.
• 2:36:01
  And to everyone who wrote in. But we didn't get to their
• 2:36:03
  messages. We'll just get to them next
• 2:36:05
  time, I guess. RIP Rob.
• 2:36:08
  He. Will never know what to get his
• 2:36:09
  wife for Christmas. Well, well, OK, now you've put.
• 2:36:13
  Me on the spot now we need to talk about this also poor Rob so
• 2:36:19
  we're we're already late so. We can't give him.
• 2:36:21
  Good advice for this year, but now we have to.
• 2:36:26
  Now we have to say something. So OK Rob, you get your ticket.
• 2:36:30
  So he wrote in and this was really funny.
• 2:36:33
  Help. What's to get my wife for
• 2:36:35
  Christmas? She doesn't have any specific
• 2:36:37
  hobbies, doesn't play games, mostly watches Netflix and
• 2:36:39
  scrolls on social media. Thanks.
• 2:36:42
  So what to get for Rob next year?
• 2:36:47
  Get her out of the house. Don't let her scroll social
• 2:36:53
  media, actually. I'm very happy that I I kind of
• 2:36:55
  cut my social media time in the last couple of months.
• 2:36:59
  I mostly uninstalled a lot of a lot of the apps Doom scrolling
• 2:37:05
  is the new future brainwrought for me.
• 2:37:08
  I hate to come to that realization, but yeah, I I my
• 2:37:13
  vote is city break. Somewhere a weekend away.
• 2:37:19
  Always great. You can't feel with that.
• 2:37:21
  If you. Can't afford that.
• 2:37:25
  Go with that. Yeah, so.
• 2:37:29
  I mean, I'd have to know your wife in order to give your real
• 2:37:33
  advice. Not in the Daniela way, just in
• 2:37:38
  a regular. Kind of way you know, just know
• 2:37:40
  more about her. Daniela would do things to your
• 2:37:43
  wife, you. Wouldn't understand.
• 2:37:45
  But anyway, I guess I would take her to a Yeah, yeah.
• 2:37:50
  So my wife. And I love to travel.
• 2:37:51
  We travel whenever we can. This time my wife had an extra
• 2:37:57
  special idea for Christmas. I got a present, I got concert
• 2:38:01
  tickets in Amsterdam. So we're both travelling for the
• 2:38:04
  weekend and go to a concert. I think that's a great That was
• 2:38:07
  an excellent idea. I also gave her concert.
• 2:38:10
  I also gave her concert tickets but so so now if I want to.
• 2:38:16
  Travel somewhere like I should just find an event thing to get
• 2:38:22
  some tickets to an event that's like in Thailand.
• 2:38:25
  Yeah. And give that to my husband for
• 2:38:27
  his birthday, if you can afford it.
• 2:38:29
  But he's going. Well, I'll, I'll just get the.
• 2:38:31
  Tickets. The tickets.
• 2:38:33
  For the concert, you know, well now you kind of have to put a
• 2:38:36
  whole trip together for us to travel.
• 2:38:37
  My wife also booked the hotels so.
• 2:38:41
  Oh, just to put some pressure on.
• 2:38:43
  Me. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:38:46
  Yeah, yeah, I'm looking really bad because I also got her.
• 2:38:48
  Concert tickets but they are in our city so I got a better deal
• 2:38:54
  this time, yes I think. Activities.
• 2:38:59
  In general, if you, I mean if she likes music, go to a
• 2:39:02
  concert. If she loves movies, I don't
• 2:39:04
  know, get some tickets for a premium cinema.
• 2:39:08
  There's usually different kind of of cinemas just get the best
• 2:39:12
  one and make it special. OK, let's move on to.
• 2:39:17
  The last section of this. Podcast the tournament outlook
• 2:39:20
  for January 2026 and. Nothing I guess.
• 2:39:26
  Lucky us, nothing major is going on in Age of Empires 4 or Age of
• 2:39:31
  Empires 55 Age of Mythology. I'm so sorry.
• 2:39:35
  I'm looking to the future already, so we'll focus solely
• 2:39:39
  on Age of Empires 2 this time. We'll start off the year with
• 2:39:42
  some ladder action. From January 2nd until January
• 2:39:46
  18th, 17 UTC players can play on the Empire Wars ladder to earn a
• 2:39:51
  spot for the main event, and that does not include only the
• 2:39:55
  pros, but literally everyone who can play the ladder.
• 2:39:59
  The top four players on the ladder will be invited to the
• 2:40:01
  main event in London, which apparently has been sold out in
• 2:40:04
  just a few days. Players 5 to 12 on the ladder
• 2:40:08
  may not get a ticket to London, but they will be seeded into the
• 2:40:11
  Last Chance Qualifier, either the final or the second to the
• 2:40:15
  last round, giving them an advantage over other players who
• 2:40:18
  may participate in this sad Last Chance Qualifier.
• 2:40:22
  Rank 13 to 25 won't get that advantage, but we'll still
• 2:40:26
  receive a nice part of the prize pool of the Ladder Qualifier,
• 2:40:29
  which is in total $14,000. The Empire was that it will be
• 2:40:34
  reset just for this qualifier, so everyone gets a fresh start.
• 2:40:39
  Daniela, are you going to play on the Empire Wars qualifier?
• 2:40:43
  Oh no, I'm going to. Because this is a once.
• 2:40:46
  In a lifetime. Chance for, you know, regular
• 2:40:49
  players like us to compete against the pros, Yeah.
• 2:40:53
  No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.
• 2:40:56
  I joined the scene exactly around the time just before the
• 2:41:00
  Empire Wars mode was even, You know, I introduced on the ladder
• 2:41:06
  and I played against, I think bling Bling.
• 2:41:11
  He was a British player. Yeah, I was like 800 ago.
• 2:41:18
  He was a pro player. I lost that game in 52 seconds.
• 2:41:22
  Those were the most painful 52 seconds of my life.
• 2:41:26
  So like, no, Nah, I I I don't, I don't care.
• 2:41:29
  Like I don't understand people being $150.00 to pay, why would
• 2:41:36
  you want to? Get stomped like that.
• 2:41:38
  What is? Wrong with you people.
• 2:41:40
  I don't know. I don't know, I I.
• 2:41:42
  Mean I wouldn't pay money for that, but if I go into that set
• 2:41:46
  knowing that I will lose. We have faced pros on the ladder
• 2:41:50
  before. In team games.
• 2:41:52
  There's actually at a certain ELO, there's just a very high
• 2:41:55
  chance that you will meet up with the French Connection or
• 2:41:59
  some of these players. I don't know, Seto has
• 2:42:01
  surrounded my base with four different groups of Archers at
• 2:42:06
  the same time multiple times in my career.
• 2:42:09
  I got Monk crushed down by him as well.
• 2:42:13
  So I definitely understand, but if you've.
• 2:42:15
  Practiced your phosphor. Rush.
• 2:42:17
  Maybe. Well again on Empire was there's
• 2:42:20
  no phosphor ring, right? Damn it.
• 2:42:23
  Damn it. OK.
• 2:42:25
  No, I'll be casting. Though I'll be.
• 2:42:26
  Casting. Non-stop in the next Great
• 2:42:29
  that's great to hear is. There any like do you have any
• 2:42:35
  strategies for casting? Because there will be multiple
• 2:42:37
  games going on all the time, I guess.
• 2:42:39
  So will you be focusing on the top players or will you try to
• 2:42:42
  be as diverse as possible? What can we expect the the the
• 2:42:46
  latter for sure. As I'm saying that a lot of the
• 2:42:51
  times during tourney qualifiers as well, you know, those big
• 2:42:55
  days where qualifiers are open, especially to in the early
• 2:42:59
  stages, there's one day for, I don't know, 30 sets.
• 2:43:05
  Everyone is just playing in the same time and it pains me deeply
• 2:43:10
  to see 5 casters online, 4 covering the same match while
• 2:43:16
  there's five matches ongoing. It pains me.
• 2:43:19
  Of course everyone is free to cover whatever the hell they
• 2:43:23
  want is their channel, is their content.
• 2:43:25
  Of course, everyone kind of goes for the stretch.
• 2:43:28
  Like, you know, I'll cast Hera, MBL and Leary because that's
• 2:43:33
  what community loves. That's what's going to bring me
• 2:43:35
  more viewers. And I can understand that.
• 2:43:38
  But in my opinion, most of those matches, especially in early
• 2:43:42
  rounds where the schedules are packed, are storms.
• 2:43:46
  They're mostly playing against the 2K and 2K2.
• 2:43:49
  They're just, it's a quick three O and they're all like there's
• 2:43:55
  few casters that actually pay attention to what others are
• 2:43:59
  casting. Of course, like it's one extra
• 2:44:01
  things to pay attention to. But then there's like other
• 2:44:05
  matches, other players that are not getting coverage.
• 2:44:08
  I always personally try to cover the sets that are not being
• 2:44:12
  covered by other casters already.
• 2:44:15
  Everyone is free to cast whatever their own match, their
• 2:44:19
  feature, their their own players.
• 2:44:20
  Everyone is free to do what they want on their channel.
• 2:44:24
  But I think if you cast something else, you'll get more
• 2:44:28
  viewers because there's so many people joining asking like does
• 2:44:32
  anyone know who's casting that series?
• 2:44:34
  I can't see anyone online that is casting that series.
• 2:44:37
  So like a lot of the people kind of like to watch even the early
• 2:44:42
  stages of the tournament, especially if they have the
• 2:44:44
  time, kind of keep all the casters open, see, oh, what is
• 2:44:49
  everyone casting now? If you casting the same set that
• 2:44:52
  another big caster is casting, you don't know that they're
• 2:44:55
  going to stay with you. Maybe they're going to close
• 2:44:57
  your channel and they're going to go with the other caster,
• 2:45:02
  especially if the set already started and the other caster is
• 2:45:05
  already covering that set. Like no, few people are going to
• 2:45:08
  move to the caster that they're already watching to to go see
• 2:45:12
  you. But now if.
• 2:45:13
  You're covering another. Set oh wait, no one else's look,
• 2:45:16
  this caster is covering that extra set.
• 2:45:20
  I feel like that's a win, win, win for everyone.
• 2:45:22
  Like that's more viewers for the caster.
• 2:45:24
  There's more play time, more, you know, exposure time for the
• 2:45:29
  players and yeah, I feel like that's a win for everyone.
• 2:45:35
  So I personally try to cover the matches that are not already
• 2:45:39
  covered by other Yeah and I. Like everything you.
• 2:45:44
  Say is true, but my butt is not a real.
• 2:45:49
  Butt butt. So Dave does this as well.
• 2:45:54
  He's. He's very particular about
• 2:45:57
  trying to cast games that are not being casted and sometimes
• 2:46:02
  that annoys me because I was watching Dave and then there's a
• 2:46:08
  set coming up that is like definitely a more on demand set,
• 2:46:14
  let's say doubt against Viper and then there's.
• 2:46:18
  Another set. That's, I don't know, wide
• 2:46:23
  against Winchester. OK, so I want to see Viper
• 2:46:28
  against doubt, probably like most people.
• 2:46:32
  And so T-90 is going to cast that, Mems going to cast that.
• 2:46:36
  And I have been watching Dave for the past hour or two.
• 2:46:41
  So I'm kind of in the vibe of Dave and then he starts casting
• 2:46:45
  something that is really not that interesting to me
• 2:46:49
  personally, Of course, because there will be people who prefer
• 2:46:52
  that set over Viper against Doubt, but there's it's likely
• 2:46:56
  that most people would prefer the Viper against doubt set.
• 2:46:59
  And for me that is kind of annoying because he because I
• 2:47:03
  will change the channel because I'm not going to watch a game
• 2:47:06
  that is not interesting to me, even though I would have
• 2:47:09
  preferred to stay in the vibe of Dave.
• 2:47:12
  So sometimes I would just wish I I appreciate the effort of
• 2:47:16
  trying to show all the matches across all casters, but
• 2:47:21
  sometimes I would like casters like Dave or you to just say,
• 2:47:26
  well, I've done this for the past three sets that I've casted
• 2:47:30
  again, said that the major casters are or the other casters
• 2:47:33
  aren't showing. This time, however, this set is
• 2:47:35
  so prolific that I will cast it. And you know what I mean?
• 2:47:41
  Sometimes I wish Dave would just stick to the big guns instead of
• 2:47:47
  using the knife, you know? Yeah, like there were times.
• 2:47:52
  Where I cannot 100% see what you're saying.
• 2:47:56
  There were times where I even stopped casting after a game.
• 2:48:01
  So like in my case it's even worse than I was already
• 2:48:03
  committed to one set, then I saw another set started and then
• 2:48:07
  there's two other caster covering the same sets.
• 2:48:09
  So I'm like, you homies, I'm sorry, I have to stop because no
• 2:48:14
  one is covering this set and there's two other caster
• 2:48:17
  covering this one that I'm already doing.
• 2:48:19
  So I'm literally telling my viewers, like if you want to see
• 2:48:21
  the rest of the set, open that guy's stream.
• 2:48:24
  So I'm literally sending my viewers away.
• 2:48:26
  But I still think that like, OK, for for me and my channel, that
• 2:48:33
  might not be the best way I try to be to to not be selfish in
• 2:48:40
  that regard. Yeah, I I think you need a
• 2:48:43
  certain amount. Of selfishness in the business.
• 2:48:46
  Yeah, but. Also I felt.
• 2:48:48
  So, you know, I felt so good one time when I heard you were
• 2:48:56
  saying earlier about Hart always complaining.
• 2:48:59
  Hart always used to complain about his match is not being
• 2:49:02
  covered because his matches would be like a qualifying
• 2:49:06
  match, an important match. His match would be against
• 2:49:09
  Winchester, but it would be Winchester Hart in the same time
• 2:49:14
  as dalt Viper and everyone would cast Dalton Viper and hearts
• 2:49:20
  game would not be casted and it would be a hype match and would
• 2:49:23
  be crazy good and he would go live super, you know fueled
• 2:49:31
  super hyped after after win like you, we qualified for for this
• 2:49:36
  and then he's like, oh, let me see who casted my games and he's
• 2:49:39
  like wait, no one casting my games?
• 2:49:40
  What the hell? So then like.
• 2:49:44
  There's a couple of. People that actually everyone
• 2:49:47
  was casting that Daniela casted your game.
• 2:49:50
  So then I'm going to sleep. You know, OK with myself because
• 2:49:56
  OK, it's not a big exposure. I I don't have a big channel.
• 2:50:00
  I don't have MEMS or T-90 or Dave's channel but their game
• 2:50:05
  got got casted as well. Like.
• 2:50:07
  Their their work was not in vain.
• 2:50:10
  It's a small exposure, but you know, they had their, I want to
• 2:50:16
  say spotlight, but it's barely a spotlight.
• 2:50:18
  It was casted on my channel. I'm aware of that.
• 2:50:20
  But again, like, I don't know, I I feel like the important
• 2:50:25
  matches need to be covered and and saw at at a certain, you
• 2:50:30
  know, point they they kind of started being.
• 2:50:34
  Relevant like I'm not. Talking about, I don't know,
• 2:50:36
  hard playing a 1500 ELO in literally the first round of the
• 2:50:40
  tournament. Talking about like you know
• 2:50:42
  later on where important matches are not being covered because
• 2:50:46
  other big names, older names are are playing at the same time.
• 2:50:50
  Again, you're 100% right. And I.
• 2:50:53
  I, I think it's very admirable what you say and I think it's
• 2:50:57
  the right thing to do. And also, I mean, who am I just
• 2:51:00
  to tell a caster what he's supposed to do?
• 2:51:03
  And I, I, and I won't, I'm, I would never write in, in a, in
• 2:51:08
  a, in a twitch chat room that they're supposed to cast this
• 2:51:11
  set or not. I, I just silently go away and
• 2:51:14
  look somewhere else. I'm just, I'm just trying to
• 2:51:19
  encourage casters like you to sometimes pick the cherry.
• 2:51:27
  But only if it's. Only if this is something that
• 2:51:30
  you do out of passion and not because you feel like you have
• 2:51:35
  to. If you, if you don't feel like
• 2:51:36
  it, you shouldn't. Because the most important
• 2:51:38
  thing, of course, is always authenticity.
• 2:51:40
  I would not watch you if you if I wouldn't feel like you were
• 2:51:44
  authentic when you're casting. So always do what you think is
• 2:51:49
  best of. Course.
• 2:51:50
  But if if you would like to cast a super prolific game and
• 2:51:55
  somebody else is casting it as well, then I all I'm saying is
• 2:51:59
  that you don't have to feel bad if you would decide to also cast
• 2:52:03
  it. That's all OK.
• 2:52:07
  But that's not all that's happening.
• 2:52:08
  In January, there's also the start of TTL Season 5, or at
• 2:52:13
  least of the Silver and the Gold League, because the Bronze
• 2:52:15
  League has already. Well, that's over, right?
• 2:52:18
  Yeah, yeah, of course. We've covered it last time.
• 2:52:21
  So yeah, Silver and Gold League are starting in the 5th season
• 2:52:24
  of T-19 Titans League. The Silver League starts on
• 2:52:28
  January 16th. The playoffs start I think in
• 2:52:32
  February, if I'm not mistaken. Remember that the winners of the
• 2:52:37
  playoffs get a direct invitation to the Gold League of Season 6,
• 2:52:41
  which I assume will definitely happen because of the success of
• 2:52:44
  this tournament, which has not even started yet.
• 2:52:48
  You can also look up all the participants of each league on
• 2:52:51
  Wikipedia. I will not name all of them
• 2:52:53
  because then this podcast would be an hour longer than it
• 2:52:55
  already is, but you'll find that in the show notes as well.
• 2:52:59
  The Gold League starts one week later, on the 23rd of January.
• 2:53:03
  Once again, the winners of the playoffs will advance to the
• 2:53:06
  Platinum League of the next season.
• 2:53:08
  This season's Platinum League will commence in February, so
• 2:53:12
  you'll hear more about that in the next month's magazine.
• 2:53:16
  I guess I don't have to ask whether you will be covering
• 2:53:19
  this as well, but will you be focusing on a specific league or
• 2:53:24
  will you just cover whatever is coming up?
• 2:53:27
  I think I'll just cast whatever is.
• 2:53:29
  Coming up until we get to gold, gold is something.
• 2:53:36
  That. Gold is my favorite division.
• 2:53:38
  It was my favorite league. What makes gold so special for?
• 2:53:44
  You. Just.
• 2:53:46
  The matches you know. There's not.
• 2:53:50
  They're just a tier under every other S tier tournament because
• 2:53:56
  like Platinum is an S tier, right?
• 2:53:59
  So I expect to see in Platinum the same players that we usually
• 2:54:04
  see in the playoffs every single S tier tournament.
• 2:54:09
  Just a tiny bit of a tier above is, I would say the top from 8
• 2:54:17
  to 20 maybe. And that's going to be probably
• 2:54:20
  or like, I'm not sure how many groups Gold has.
• 2:54:23
  I think yeah, it's like 5 groups actually.
• 2:54:26
  So maybe, I don't know, from four groups, yeah.
• 2:54:31
  Four groups of 5-6 each. Of six each.
• 2:54:34
  OK. Yeah.
• 2:54:35
  So. 24. Players.
• 2:54:38
  So top 30, top 30 players. Yeah.
• 2:54:45
  There's some room for. Mistakes.
• 2:54:49
  But not that much room. You know, they're they're not
• 2:54:52
  like just pure perfect game where if you screwed up
• 2:54:56
  something very early on a player like Hera Leary Viper tattoo,
• 2:55:02
  they will punish the hell out of you.
• 2:55:06
  So that's why I. Like usually in SU.
• 2:55:08
  Tournaments. Most of the games are almost
• 2:55:11
  perfect, it's just a tiny bit of a tier under like and it's
• 2:55:19
  crazy. That, yeah, it feels.
• 2:55:20
  Like gold every time delivered such good matches, such good.
• 2:55:26
  You know, you, you see the grind of the players, you, you see
• 2:55:30
  them trying to be there to, to get to that tier above it's,
• 2:55:36
  it's very, very. Competitive.
• 2:55:38
  If not the most competitive league, well, I don't know,
• 2:55:43
  looking. At the the participants of the
• 2:55:45
  Gold League, I kind of feel that this season of TTL is probably
• 2:55:50
  the first season that has all the players put into the right
• 2:55:56
  league for them. Maybe this is a kind of a
• 2:55:59
  disrespect to doubt because he's in Gold League in the Platinum
• 2:56:01
  League. But other than that, if I look
• 2:56:04
  at the Platinum League, these are all the top top players you
• 2:56:08
  would see in the last every single tournament and gold
• 2:56:12
  league, I mean, there's there's AZ 40, there's my Google so
• 2:56:20
  back. These are all great players.
• 2:56:21
  And you might know them, but they are not accomplished
• 2:56:24
  players. But they are still in the gold
• 2:56:27
  League. So I don't know.
• 2:56:30
  I think like I could probably name already name the winner of
• 2:56:35
  each of the league of the groups.
• 2:56:37
  I believe I would be surprised if Group A was not won by
• 2:56:43
  Miguel. Maybe Prisma?
• 2:56:47
  But I think it should. Be Miguel, Group B.
• 2:56:50
  Yeah, I think I. Think you're going to have some?
• 2:56:54
  Crazy crazy surprises like you're saying May maybe Prisma
• 2:57:00
  you I I don't think you are aware of how much they actually
• 2:57:05
  these players actually grasses treatment last year Prisma beat
• 2:57:09
  me high, but that is not a surprise.
• 2:57:12
  I never. Expected.
• 2:57:15
  Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 2:57:16
  That's not a. Surprise to me now.
• 2:57:19
  The Argentinians are crazy. It's worse at the time, yeah,
• 2:57:24
  but. They improved a lot.
• 2:57:26
  Prisma last year in the in the last TTL edition was not at the
• 2:57:29
  level he is now. He was weaker.
• 2:57:33
  He improved a lot, like in I have him as one of the most
• 2:57:37
  improved players. Yeah, This is why I'm saying
• 2:57:39
  that he's probably likely gonna win.
• 2:57:43
  Maybe. Miguel, whereas Mihai had crazy.
• 2:57:46
  Good results before. Mihai qualified for Hidden Cup
• 2:57:49
  last year. And where is Mihai?
• 2:57:53
  It seems that would be silver. Right I'm.
• 2:57:56
  Not sure I think. Where is he?
• 2:57:59
  Is he even in this? Where is he in bronze?
• 2:58:02
  I think he has, he had. I don't think he had a great
• 2:58:06
  results in bronze, actually. I don't know.
• 2:58:08
  I don't I, I I can't find. Him still I don't know I'm not
• 2:58:11
  that excited about about the gold league, but you're more of
• 2:58:16
  an expert in this than me because you've just cast so much
• 2:58:20
  you've casted so many more games that I have even seen and you
• 2:58:25
  know these players much better than I do just looking at the
• 2:58:28
  groups. I'm not that excited but I I'm
• 2:58:32
  ready to be proved wrong and I will definitely watch the games
• 2:58:35
  in your channel to be proven wrong and if I'm not wrong then
• 2:58:40
  I'll definitely let you know. OK.
• 2:58:47
  So that's it for TTL Season 5 then.
• 2:58:52
  I'd like to mention there's a fun tournament happening within
• 2:58:55
  the German community called Noobs of the Desert 3.
• 2:58:59
  They play a new friendly version of Arabia, which means that
• 2:59:03
  there's less hills and more carpet surrounding your TC, so
• 2:59:06
  you're less likely to run into the TC.
• 2:59:10
  And this tournament starts in January.
• 2:59:12
  Rob, who is one of the admins, wants to invite you to
• 2:59:15
  participate in the tournament, which he'll tell you about in a
• 2:59:18
  moment. He was kind enough to send me in
• 2:59:21
  small audio file with his invitation.
• 2:59:23
  Just a heads up, there's basically 2 requirements for
• 2:59:26
  this tournament. 1 is that you have to have a tournament ELO
• 2:59:29
  below 1650 ELO and the other one is to be of German speaking
• 2:59:35
  competencies which is why you'll hear him speak in German.
• 2:59:39
  If you don't understand German, just skip ahead 2 minutes.
• 2:59:43
  Hello to Rob phone AOE to. Germany here as.
• 2:59:46
  Is Vida zovite noobs of the desert gate indeed Rita wonder
• 2:59:49
  does ultimate TV one We want Arabia only to near few amateur
• 2:59:53
  remit Pisto Einthos and Saxon adelo on as best ear current or
• 2:59:57
  yet Pistons, vances and melon. The tsunya zeb skid from Saxons
• 3:00:01
  Vansis nyersten with artensweiten on dawa damit azuno
• 3:00:04
  fitzen target fiens vansishtai named Duilian zestan and dry
• 3:00:08
  brackets camp phenom rumont era so VO mine price pool for
• 3:00:12
  minniecence weiland Oro naturally Schwerden be optismal
• 3:00:15
  for zukun to fillish bilvy muklich of twitch tsukasten
• 3:00:18
  Allawaiter and infos owned links Finida of AOE 2 Germany Pont
• 3:00:22
  DE/NO TD try Yezhna di Camille is at an old and maiden Mazin
• 3:00:28
  once in the Vista or Europe on the steam from AOE to Germany.
• 3:00:32
  What else is going on in January?
• 3:00:34
  There is a Taiwanese. Arena tournament happening
• 3:00:36
  called Taiwan Arena Clown Cup 5, so if you're from that region,
• 3:00:41
  this might be something for you. There's only Taiwanese players
• 3:00:45
  in the tournament naturally and the host is the same guy who
• 3:00:49
  hosted the Lisocracy Cup, so I guess it'll be a well organized
• 3:00:54
  tournament. This tournament will end on
• 3:00:56
  January 11th. And at last for Age of Empires 2
• 3:01:00
  I'd like to mention Battle of Scandinavia 2, which already
• 3:01:03
  started and features a couple of seldomly seen maps, all seemed
• 3:01:07
  around the cold N. This tournament features quite a
• 3:01:10
  lot of well known players from all around the world and is set
• 3:01:13
  to finish on the 23rd of January.
• 3:01:15
  So there's lots of stuff happening in this first, first
• 3:01:20
  month of the year and I'm excited to watch as much as I
• 3:01:24
  can. Let's go.
• 3:01:29
  So. We did it.
• 3:01:31
  I think our listeners will. Be very pleased after I've been
• 3:01:36
  sceptical about how long these episodes have been and pretty
• 3:01:39
  much everybody wrote in to say that they appreciate the length
• 3:01:43
  of these magazines. They will be happy.
• 3:01:45
  Once again, we've crossed the three hours mark.
• 3:01:50
  We're going to be finally managed to drive.
• 3:01:53
  Previous one now. I honestly.
• 3:01:56
  Thought we'd be under 2 hours. Because there weren't that many
• 3:01:59
  topics, but we once again managed to discuss them at
• 3:02:02
  length. But I am, I am really grateful
• 3:02:06
  for this. I've had a great time talking to
• 3:02:08
  you again. I'm excited to see hopefully
• 3:02:12
  lots of letter action on your channel.
• 3:02:14
  And if you want to see the letter action yourself, then
• 3:02:19
  just head over to twitch.tv/daniela under score
• 3:02:23
  AOE, That's twitch.tv/daniela under score AOE.
• 3:02:29
  I'm also linking your Twitch link in the show notes once
• 3:02:33
  again for this podcast. So everyone finds their way over
• 3:02:38
  there and can show their appreciation and support for you
• 3:02:41
  for being in this podcast. Thank you very much for being
• 3:02:44
  here again. Thank you.
• 3:02:46
  Thank you so much for having me. Chris I enjoyed this episode a
• 3:02:50
  lot. A lot of news, a lot of exciting
• 3:02:53
  things happening in the past month.
• 3:02:55
  A lot of exciting things left to come in the next 1 I think.
• 3:03:01
  I think with so much action on the Red Bull ladder in TTLI,
• 3:03:06
  think next episode you're going to have a blast as well.
• 3:03:09
  I'm looking forward to it. Have a great.
• 3:03:11
  January, everyone. You as well, Daniela.
• 3:03:13
  See you soon. See you.
• 3:03:15
  Bye. Bye.