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[ENG] Interview: Chris · Start the game already!

• 0:10
  So welcome everyone to this episode.
• 0:12
  I am honored because I have a very special guest today in this
• 0:16
  episode. And this guest is Chris or
• 0:19
  actually Chris. Do you go by Chris or I am
• 0:21
  Chris? You know, I, I go by, I am Chris
• 0:24
  on Age of Empires. But yeah, in real life, I'll go
• 0:28
  by Chris or Christopher. So is there a specific reason
• 0:31
  why you had to emphasize that you in fact are Chris?
• 0:37
  Absolutely. I mean, I think that was just a
• 0:39
  fun way of poking at my name and saying, hey, you know what,
• 0:43
  like, by the way, I'm here and you're going to have to deal
• 0:46
  with with me. As in your character or your
• 0:51
  skill in Age of Empires? A bit of both, you know, they
• 0:54
  both come through when you're when you're playing, right?
• 0:57
  Would you say you had a bit of a character?
• 0:59
  Did people know you for for being in a certain way?
• 1:03
  Yeah, definitely. I'd, I'd say especially when I
• 1:05
  was younger, I was extremely friendly and would always be
• 1:08
  saying good luck, have fun and laughing while we're playing and
• 1:11
  and using the different taunts and things like that.
• 1:14
  And I mean the whole point for me was come and have a good
• 1:17
  time. Yeah, so I'm going to say
• 1:20
  something now and it's it's going to be a little
• 1:23
  embarrassing for me because we are actually the same age.
• 1:26
  If I'm informed correctly, you must be like 38, right?
• 1:31
  Pretty close, yeah, in a few days.
• 1:33
  Oh oh, that's nice. Well then we are in fact the
• 1:36
  same age. I am 37 as well.
• 1:38
  Oh, nice. Nice, Yeah.
• 1:40
  The difference between us is you were kind of a legend and or are
• 1:46
  a legend in Age of Empires 2. Nobody knows me except for this
• 1:49
  podcast. Oh, I'll see, there's still
• 1:53
  time. Oh, I don't think so.
• 1:56
  We get better with age sometimes.
• 1:58
  Do we would you say that compared like in a relative
• 2:06
  comparison, do you think you are better now than you were back
• 2:09
  when you were a top one player? No, no, not a chance.
• 2:13
  It's I'd say, I'd say, I mean, obviously with, with very
• 2:16
  certain things in your, in your brain, they kind of develop in a
• 2:18
  way that you improve strategically as you get older.
• 2:22
  But speed, reaction time and, and even just just the focus,
• 2:27
  like the sheer focus and willpower of when you when you
• 2:31
  get into that momentum and you're playing at a high level
• 2:33
  for, for many years. Yeah, but since we are the same
• 2:37
  age, that means that 25 years ago you were 12 years old and I
• 2:42
  think you were playing competitively shortly after the
• 2:46
  game release, right? It did take yeah, I I did.
• 2:49
  I would probably came into my own when I had about 14 years
• 2:53
  old there I think. I think that was when my brain
• 2:57
  started developing a bit and, and you know, it got, it got to
• 3:02
  the point where that's where my like the first tournament I
• 3:05
  really did well in was, was kind of that World Cyber Games 2001.
• 3:09
  And I was just, I think 13 or 14 then.
• 3:11
  And that one was challenging for me.
• 3:15
  But the one after that, the Arablet Cup against Coven, that
• 3:19
  was where I kind of got used to to playing at that level.
• 3:23
  That sounds amazing for that age, to be honest.
• 3:26
  If I go back in time and try to remember what I did when I was
• 3:30
  that young, I think my mind was on soccer and girls and nothing
• 3:35
  else. I had those two in my mind back
• 3:37
  then too, so I understand that feeling.
• 3:42
  So how was communication between the professional players back
• 3:46
  then? Because we didn't have, you
• 3:48
  know, the kind of communication tools that we have today.
• 3:52
  You had to connect with other pros, I guess, to train
• 3:55
  together. How did you do that?
• 3:57
  Well, you did. I mean, I'd say there's also,
• 3:59
  there's a few unique things back then they had the Mr. Fixit
• 4:02
  online is a big forum that a few people put on passionately for
• 4:06
  free. And a lot of the top players
• 4:08
  played there through their, they had a random map ladder and you
• 4:12
  could challenge people and, and usually people would want to
• 4:15
  play you because it would help get their rating up.
• 4:17
  So for me, before I was even famous, I challenged the sheriff
• 4:22
  on there. I challenged Coven on there and
• 4:25
  they both kicked my butt. And you know, and, and I
• 4:30
  remember learning from those games.
• 4:31
  So, and then also I, I was very friendly, right?
• 4:34
  So I I had a lot of friends that were above and below my skill
• 4:38
  level. Well, those people the same age
• 4:43
  as you, or they must have been a bit older, right?
• 4:45
  All over the place. You know what, Like, yeah, I I
• 4:48
  didn't discriminate. I mean, even now I don't like
• 4:51
  people. Whether I'd say age is just a
• 4:53
  number, right? If you if you have fun or you
• 4:56
  connect in certain ways, or you have similar passions or hobbies
• 4:59
  like it, it doesn't really matter too much.
• 5:03
  Yeah, that's true. And I mean, we've seen that with
• 5:06
  players like Leary or Sebastian who also or, or dark and, and
• 5:10
  all those newcomers who are not newcomers anymore, but they were
• 5:14
  a couple of years ago and they were also very young when they
• 5:16
  started out, much like pretty much everyone, I think in the
• 5:19
  scene. Yep, they were, they were young
• 5:22
  and, and, and you can tell too, I think.
• 5:24
  I think if, if you get that passion really young and then
• 5:28
  you, I think around 1516 years old is when your brain kind of
• 5:31
  develops for these type of things.
• 5:33
  I mean, that's, that's when the Sky's the limit.
• 5:35
  You still might have to learn some of the the maturity and the
• 5:37
  strategy and stuff like that, but reaction speed is a pretty
• 5:41
  big, big part of this game. Yeah.
• 5:44
  OK. So if you can maybe tell us a
• 5:47
  bit more about you for your starters, what's your play style
• 5:52
  or what was your play style in your prime?
• 5:54
  How would you describe yourself as a player?
• 5:57
  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I so I actually wrote an
• 5:59
  article once and I I should find it for you on on how I learned
• 6:04
  from a bunch of different players so that.
• 6:06
  Would be great. So yeah, I'd say in, in one way,
• 6:09
  when I first started, I was very, very aggressive in terms
• 6:13
  of, you know, skirmish or rushing and then putting
• 6:15
  pressure on the opponents. But after I always found too, if
• 6:18
  you put a little bit of pressure on someone, you get to figure
• 6:20
  out how they react. And some people will overreact,
• 6:23
  some will, you know, go passively react.
• 6:27
  You know, if, if, and we'll get into maybe more detail of that
• 6:30
  when we talk about strategy and things like that.
• 6:32
  But I, I'd say that way you kind of dictate the pace of the game,
• 6:36
  which makes it a lot easier for you to figure out how you can
• 6:41
  keep going and, and plan around what they're doing because
• 6:44
  you're, it's very easy to see what they're up to because
• 6:46
  you're in their base, whereas they might not be able to see
• 6:49
  that in yours. So I'd say that later on, I, I
• 6:53
  learned a lot from OK, do I, do I watch, you know, do I play
• 6:57
  defensively in certain situations?
• 6:58
  Do I have a greedier approach? What?
• 7:02
  Maybe we'll get more into that after.
• 7:04
  Yeah, sure. I think what you're describing
• 7:06
  is being very adaptable and kind of analysing your enemy
• 7:10
  throughout the game and then adapt to your enemy strategy.
• 7:14
  Probably. Back then this must have been a
• 7:17
  little different to how adaptability works today,
• 7:22
  because for one, I believe the meta was probably not as figured
• 7:27
  out as today. And also there were a lot less
• 7:31
  sifts, right? So less variety and less maps
• 7:35
  that people have played. Yeah, and I'd say my style, I
• 7:39
  described it as adaptable with a constant state of pressure
• 7:43
  because it that's where where you you essentially will always
• 7:48
  think you're forcing both you and your opponent to react to
• 7:51
  non-stop. Where where if you just are
• 7:54
  adaptable, that means you're responding all the time.
• 7:58
  That isn't the a place of strength to play from.
• 8:00
  While you will win some games that way, it's it's less
• 8:03
  consistent. Yeah, I know a lot about that.
• 8:08
  I think every age of Empire's point, it doesn't matter your
• 8:10
  skill level, whether you're, I mean, if you, if you watch some
• 8:13
  of the famous good players today, I mean, I haven't watched
• 8:15
  too much lately, but you'll find that they do the same thing.
• 8:18
  They watch each other closely and they adapt frequently.
• 8:20
  Yes, I feel like the pros pretty much know each other so well,
• 8:25
  even in a tournament like Hidden Cup.
• 8:28
  They pretty much figure out right away who they're playing
• 8:31
  against just by how their enemies react and how they
• 8:37
  strategize and what sifts they pick.
• 8:38
  Even so, it's crazy to me how well players know each other.
• 8:43
  Was that a thing back then as well?
• 8:45
  Absolutely. I'd, I'd say like for the for
• 8:47
  the longest time you, if you played, you know, I think the
• 8:49
  guy who won the 2001 World Cyber Games was KMKM from I think it
• 8:54
  was Taiwan. And you knew 100% he was going
• 8:59
  to skirmish or rush you. There was no question about it
• 9:02
  and he was just so good at it and so fast that it it worked,
• 9:07
  you know, even if you knew it was coming.
• 9:09
  So I think it's always been a thing where we at any level you
• 9:13
  get to, you get to know the players.
• 9:15
  All right, so tell us a bit more about your career as an Age
• 9:19
  Vampires 2 player. So from 2001, from the World
• 9:23
  Cyber Games on, how did your career develop?
• 9:26
  Yeah, it, it really accelerated after that.
• 9:28
  I think I, I don't know, sometimes when you take a big
• 9:31
  step in your life and you, you, you realize that, OK, I'm
• 9:34
  passionate about this. I'm pretty good at this at the
• 9:36
  time, right? And then I went, I also have a
• 9:39
  bunch of friends doing this. And so I had taken it with
• 9:42
  combination of passion and time and a bunch of tournaments came
• 9:45
  up after that. So it gave me an outlet to focus
• 9:49
  on that. And in the next two or three
• 9:50
  years after that was where I, you know, it ended up moving up
• 9:54
  the ladder quite a bit and, and, you know, winning a decent
• 9:58
  amount of tournaments back then. And so I'd say like, you know,
• 10:03
  if, if, if there wasn't like there, there was a concern
• 10:08
  around 2001 that the game would die out when Empire Earth or, or
• 10:11
  Age of Mythology or any of his other games came out.
• 10:14
  But those ones came out and they're everyone kind of
• 10:17
  realized the strategic depths of our game is so much better that
• 10:22
  if anything, it still grew over time.
• 10:25
  I think I recently read an interview, a written interview
• 10:29
  that Doubt has given in 2001 about Age of Mythology because
• 10:34
  he dabbled into Age of Mythology and in that interview he very
• 10:39
  quickly realized that it's basically just mass army
• 10:43
  production and spamming army and no real microness, especially no
• 10:48
  macro behind it compared to Age of Empires 2.
• 10:51
  So it it quickly became clear that Age of Empires 2 had some
• 10:56
  special flair to it. It did.
• 10:59
  And you, you actually see that with almost all the top players,
• 11:01
  almost all of them in 2003 or so had had played Age of Mythology
• 11:05
  for a year or two there. And actually most of the the
• 11:08
  tournament winners from that game were Age of Empires 2 pros.
• 11:12
  But yeah, that I think the, the population limit and a few other
• 11:15
  things kind of made it so that it was, it was still fun.
• 11:18
  Don't get me wrong, it was fun for a couple years there, but
• 11:21
  just the strategic depth wasn't there at the time.
• 11:24
  Then what would you say was your best year?
• 11:27
  You know, I think it's a good question.
• 11:30
  I mean, I, I probably have to go look back at the year I won the
• 11:33
  most tournaments out of the year, but I do remember quite
• 11:39
  well kind of the early 2000s to mid 2000s where where I probably
• 11:44
  did the best in terms of earnings.
• 11:46
  I can remember that being quite young and maybe earning more
• 11:51
  than my friends did just by by gaining.
• 11:53
  So, but I'd, I'd say yeah, it's, it's, it's probably around that
• 11:57
  time frame because that was when my life was least busy.
• 12:00
  You know, I was still junior high in high school and, you
• 12:05
  know, I think once I hit university, I didn't really have
• 12:06
  the time to dedicated to it as much anymore.
• 12:10
  So from call up to 2005 or 2006 was where I had more time and
• 12:14
  then 2006 to 2010 I was still playing and I was still winning
• 12:18
  some of the tournaments, but I just didn't have the dedicated
• 12:21
  focus and time on it. Whereas I think some of my
• 12:23
  competition where that's when they kind of got, you know, like
• 12:27
  if you take doubt as an example, I think he was still playing,
• 12:30
  but you know, pretty much full time during that time.
• 12:32
  So I think if you, if you look back at our wins and losses
• 12:35
  against each other, I think I beat him more 2002 to 2005 and I
• 12:39
  think he beat me more 2006 to 2010 somewhere in that time
• 12:42
  frame. I mean, I'm not sure if that's a
• 12:44
  perfect cut off for dates, but it sounds about right to me.
• 12:48
  But taking a look at your Wikipedia page, we can actually
• 12:52
  see that you were active most of the time up until today.
• 12:56
  Of course, not as active as back then in the early 2000s, mid
• 12:59
  2000s, but still, you did play the game and you never really
• 13:04
  left it, even though you may have taken some breaks.
• 13:07
  Are you still at a level where you would say if you'd, you
• 13:12
  know, quit your job and totally focus on the game?
• 13:16
  Yeah. Do you think you could or you
• 13:18
  would still play with the top players?
• 13:22
  Well, I'd say so First off, I'd say breaking down that history
• 13:25
  is there's a there's a big difference between playing for
• 13:27
  fun and playing competitively and having the time to do that.
• 13:30
  So I'd say like till the mid 2000s were high focus, high
• 13:34
  attention, good results, 2000 and six 2010 we're less focused,
• 13:38
  still pretty good results. And then since then was kind of
• 13:41
  like, well, I worked a full time job and retired from competitive
• 13:44
  play for the most part, even though I still joined
• 13:46
  tournaments and and did decently with a with a much smaller
• 13:50
  amount of time, I would say. And I think today, like, you
• 13:53
  know, even if we look back a few years, I did come back for a
• 13:56
  couple years there and play for fun.
• 13:58
  And I was quite typically in the, you know, called the top 30
• 14:01
  to the top 50 or 60. And that was probably with
• 14:06
  playing maybe, you know, 5-5 hours a week or 10 hours a week,
• 14:09
  something like that. So.
• 14:10
  That's so crazy to me. Yeah.
• 14:13
  Well, I suspect and, and again, I suspect if it was, you know,
• 14:15
  30 or 40 hours a week, I, I'd, I'd probably be a higher, higher
• 14:20
  rank than that. I don't know how much higher,
• 14:22
  but. Yeah, I'd like to think the
• 14:24
  same. And I mean, we see that with
• 14:27
  other players like the Viper, like Doubt and so on, who put of
• 14:32
  course a lot of time into the game and they are still up there
• 14:36
  competing with all the fresh blood and the newcomers.
• 14:39
  And this leads me to wonder whether these early experiences
• 14:44
  in the game, kind of growing up with the game and developing
• 14:49
  your own play style with the development of the matter in the
• 14:52
  game, whether that is an experience that cannot really be
• 14:58
  replaced by by players who just started out with the Definitive
• 15:02
  Edition. Is there?
• 15:03
  Do you think there isn't? There's a merit in having played
• 15:07
  this game for so long and having seen how the game developed.
• 15:11
  Maybe a bit, but I mean, I think if you look at even like a good
• 15:14
  example is doubt and I25 years ago, even though we played Age
• 15:18
  of Empires, we played at a high level.
• 15:20
  Both of us played other strategy games on our in our spare time,
• 15:24
  right? And just for fun, you know, not
• 15:26
  a lot, not a lot, lot to be competitive at those.
• 15:28
  But I think you learn a way of thinking, right?
• 15:31
  You learn how how to be strategic, how to be fast on
• 15:34
  your decision making, how to memorize what, what is, what all
• 15:38
  the differences and strengths and weaknesses in the game and,
• 15:40
  and, and be adaptable. And you're not going to be
• 15:42
  perfect. But I think for new players
• 15:45
  today or even any, any skill level, it, it helps if not only
• 15:51
  you're passionate about it, but also you, you just try and turn
• 15:53
  on that strategic mind every now and then, you know, ramp, ramp
• 15:57
  that up to a, you know, 10 or 11.
• 15:59
  And even if you, even if you do it casually, where you, you'd
• 16:02
  just played a game, it was really intense.
• 16:04
  Instead of jumping into game #2 you take 5 minutes and you grab
• 16:08
  some popcorn and you watch your game and you just think about
• 16:10
  like, oh, what would I have done if I was in that player's shoes?
• 16:13
  What if I had known about this earlier?
• 16:15
  What if I, you know, switched my unit composition slightly
• 16:18
  earlier or, you know, like it it, it doesn't have to be a, it
• 16:21
  doesn't have to take a lot of time or anything, but just by
• 16:23
  asking those questions, you're going to find that you evolve
• 16:26
  quite quickly in your thinking. Since you're playing for fun
• 16:29
  these days as well, at least from time to time.
• 16:33
  Is Age of Empires too fun for you?
• 16:36
  As someone who knows the game from pretty much every era it
• 16:40
  went through. Absolutely, I'd say.
• 16:42
  And so also, so I'd say it's tons of fun.
• 16:44
  I mean, or else I would have gotten as good as I did back in
• 16:47
  the day, right? I think the, the whole part of
• 16:51
  being strategically challenging with other with your friends and
• 16:54
  with other players makes it quite deep.
• 16:58
  And if anything, I've, I've been noticing that they've been
• 17:01
  improving the balance of it. They've been adding new
• 17:03
  civilizations, new maps, even the maps that are there.
• 17:07
  They've fixed some things that were maybe out of whack a little
• 17:09
  bit. And yeah, so it keeps me coming
• 17:12
  back. I think if I didn't sit at a
• 17:14
  computer desk for my day job I'd I'd probably be gaming more.
• 17:19
  That makes perfect sense. The reason why I contacted you
• 17:24
  was because specifically I want to talk to you about the Hunt
• 17:29
  Wars. I just recently did an episode
• 17:31
  on the hunts and Hunt wars were a little topic in that episode.
• 17:35
  But I tried not to go too deep because I want to make a
• 17:39
  dedicated episode to the Hunt Wars.
• 17:41
  And now I have you, Chris, an expert on this field.
• 17:46
  Please tell me everything you know about the Hun wars.
• 17:48
  And I would like to start with the question, why did you guys
• 17:53
  play Hun Wars over and over again and not wars with any
• 17:58
  other civilizations? Oh, that's a great question.
• 18:01
  You know, and I, I think what happened was people realized
• 18:03
  they were really good. And, and, and if if you look at
• 18:07
  it just before that time frame, just a step before Chinese was
• 18:11
  the strongest sieve. They nerfed that civilization.
• 18:14
  They, they removed the starting villager and what that did was
• 18:17
  it made it so Hans were slightly better than Chinese at that
• 18:20
  point in time. And so it just got caught on as
• 18:25
  like, Oh, they're similar in nature.
• 18:26
  You've got to balance strategies and, and even at the very start,
• 18:29
  it was not clear what the best strategy was.
• 18:32
  And even, you know, today they'd say it's very situation
• 18:35
  specific. So you had, you had this dynamic
• 18:38
  where you could play the strategy you've liked.
• 18:40
  If you like going scouts, you like doing a skirm rush, you
• 18:42
  like going men at arms, you liked, you know, walling in your
• 18:47
  base, like there there were tons of things you could do with Huns
• 18:52
  and that allowed each player to pick what they liked and to do
• 18:55
  that and still be in a competitive situation throughout
• 19:00
  the games. So maybe help us a little out
• 19:03
  because we probably don't know what the civilizations were back
• 19:07
  then because you said Chinese were pretty similar to the Huns
• 19:11
  and with taking away that villager bullets from the
• 19:14
  Chinese, the Huns got slightly better.
• 19:17
  So now I'm stretching my head and wondering, wait, what?
• 19:22
  What religious did they take away and did they add them back
• 19:25
  or what happened with the Chinese?
• 19:27
  Yeah, so basically what happened is, is if you look back to very
• 19:31
  early Age of Empires 2 year 2000 is China started with three
• 19:35
  extra villagers with -150 food. And so they had they still had
• 19:40
  50 food. So at the start of the game,
• 19:41
  you, your TC, would build 1 villager and you'd basically be
• 19:44
  two villagers ahead of any other civilization.
• 19:47
  You know, by the time you got to the fetal age.
• 19:50
  And sometimes it'd be 1 village or more, sometimes it'd be 3
• 19:52
  villagers more. It was somewhere in between
• 19:54
  those, but it was enough that you'd have an edge on other
• 19:57
  civilizations. When they took that 50 food away
• 20:00
  from China, they made it so China was now 0 villagers ahead
• 20:05
  to maybe one 1 1/2 villagers ahead of other civilizations.
• 20:09
  But if you think about it, if you got to build houses and you
• 20:11
  got to get the wood to build the houses and you got to remember
• 20:13
  to do it, your your, your, your huns are already basically equal
• 20:18
  and you don't have to pay attention to building houses.
• 20:21
  So they essentially got slightly better than than China back
• 20:24
  then. And then people realized there's
• 20:27
  tons of fun to play, so. But did you play Chinese wars
• 20:33
  before the Hunt wars then when the Chinese were considered the
• 20:35
  best? Yes, absolutely lots of that.
• 20:38
  So if you if you look back when the time when Coven arch Coven
• 20:43
  from Korea was the best player in the world.
• 20:46
  He was there during the time of Chinese wars and an extremely
• 20:50
  fast player and very strategic and I think he went to the
• 20:54
  military, which is what caused him to drop off the ladder at
• 20:57
  that time. But those in those days, that
• 21:01
  was before scouts even had five attack in the feudal age.
• 21:03
  So you, you would very frequently see, you kind of seen
• 21:07
  militia and Archers or you've seen skirmisher wars in the
• 21:09
  feudal age, you've seen more towers.
• 21:12
  And back then villagers were very squishy.
• 21:14
  They didn't have the the Pierce armor that they have today.
• 21:17
  So if you have 3 Archers in your wood line and if you had no army
• 21:21
  there, you were hooked, you were done.
• 21:23
  So it used to be much more all or nothing type of type of wins
• 21:29
  or losses so and now it's a bit a bit more balanced so.
• 21:36
  Yeah, there's less snowball Y aspects, especially in the early
• 21:39
  game. Yeah, exactly.
• 21:41
  Probably compared to back then and also I think what was very
• 21:44
  different to today is how strong houses were because they had a
• 21:49
  lot more HP especially in dark age and fuel age.
• 21:52
  I think they now have the same HP as in Carthage as back then
• 21:57
  from the get go and also they had mealy armour and now they
• 22:01
  have negative armour so houses were tanks.
• 22:05
  They were tanks, but the maps were like the Arabia map was
• 22:08
  extremely open back then. Like it's not even.
• 22:11
  I mean it's even. Our most open Arabia map is
• 22:13
  still less open than you would have seen it back then.
• 22:16
  There used to be pond forests. There used to sometimes be a
• 22:20
  couple screens between you and your closest wood line.
• 22:23
  And I I, I remember the games on occasion being decided, you got
• 22:26
  your wood line tower and you didn't see it and you just went,
• 22:29
  well, that's let's go on to the next game because that's done.
• 22:33
  So I'm cooked. Yeah.
• 22:36
  So I do think we improved it in the right direction, but also
• 22:38
  like, you're right. You know, if you did wall and
• 22:41
  you were able to complete your wall, you were kind of just
• 22:43
  safe. So there was both sides of it.
• 22:46
  It was much less likely you could wall, but if you did, you
• 22:49
  were good. So this is very interesting to
• 22:51
  me because one of the reasons why Hun wars were so popular
• 22:56
  according to my research was the fact that people couldn't wall
• 23:01
  with their houses. But now this sounds like people
• 23:04
  didn't actually wall with their houses as much because the maps
• 23:08
  were just too open to wall. Yeah, you you'd still like,
• 23:11
  you'd still leave one villager off, walling one part of the map
• 23:14
  so that at least the army would attack you from the side you
• 23:16
  knew, but it just would take a bit more time than it does
• 23:20
  today, I would say. Yeah.
• 23:22
  Were there any rules for hunt wars, rules that were set by
• 23:28
  gentlemen's agreements? You know, I don't think so.
• 23:31
  I mean like I, I, I know in the original age of empires, they
• 23:35
  eventually said no scorpions because they were they were too
• 23:39
  strong at one point in time. But in age of Empires, the the
• 23:42
  age of Kings or sorry, the conquerors, we the hunt wars
• 23:47
  were actually pretty well balanced all along.
• 23:52
  I don't think there's anything like that.
• 23:54
  I mean, some people would say don't lame, don't don't take my
• 23:57
  sheep or my boar. But I mean, that's probably
• 24:01
  still a thing today on occasion. So from what I've heard, one of
• 24:06
  the things that people seemed to have agreed upon was that they
• 24:12
  would not try to full wall their base.
• 24:14
  But in other sources that I found, and my sources are mainly
• 24:18
  forums and interviews from back then, people said that they just
• 24:22
  simply couldn't wall in Hunt Wars because they were so damn
• 24:25
  aggressive. Well, I'd say it's it's funny
• 24:28
  though too, because so for a period of about six months there
• 24:31
  I had a strategy where I would go scouts and while I was going
• 24:35
  scouts, I would send 5 villagers to Stonewall in my whole base.
• 24:39
  Wow. It would work quite well in all
• 24:41
  honesty, because after that you can never be attacked right.
• 24:44
  So you were 100% focused on attacking your enemy and you can
• 24:48
  choose if if they build enough army to defend, you could just
• 24:51
  stop attacking and just boom right?
• 24:53
  And and they might not be able to do much damage.
• 24:55
  And if they didn't build enough army, you just go one TC full
• 24:58
  army and you take them out. So there were some unique
• 25:03
  strategies like that that existed.
• 25:05
  I would say another one was on occasion you would skirmish or
• 25:07
  rush your opponent and while skirmish rush thing I would do
• 25:11
  like, you know, 10 skirmishers, 3 villagers, I'd build a tower.
• 25:14
  I'd keep them all in that area at the same time as mining stone
• 25:17
  with those villagers and stonewalling a home.
• 25:19
  Again, not not commonly, but if you do that every now and then,
• 25:24
  your enemy is going full army. They're thinking you're
• 25:26
  attacking them non-stop, but you just kind of said it was full
• 25:29
  attack. Now it's full peace mode and
• 25:32
  you're going to make it to castle age way ahead of them.
• 25:35
  So if you, and that's what I mean by watching your opponent,
• 25:38
  right, as if, if you aren't aware of what they're up to, you
• 25:42
  can be really surprised by things like that.
• 25:43
  And I used to love doing those type of surprises.
• 25:47
  That's so interesting because when I think of Hun wars and
• 25:51
  when I saw the couple of videos from back then that are that
• 25:55
  just kind of kept alive on YouTube, Hun wars were usually
• 26:01
  opening with either militia or mainly with scouts transitioning
• 26:05
  in feudal agent to Archers. And then basically you added
• 26:09
  everything that you had to your disposal in feudal age.
• 26:12
  Then somehow in, I don't know, minute 40, you went to castle
• 26:16
  age. You started with Knights, you
• 26:18
  counted it with Cav Archers. Then maybe you even played
• 26:21
  Tarkins. So it was a lot of going back
• 26:25
  and forth between units. But now you you even put stone
• 26:30
  walls up and. Play the peace mode.
• 26:33
  And again, the whole point though, is that you do that one
• 26:35
  out of 10 games, right? You don't do that every game.
• 26:37
  You're you're you're essentially like, let's say your base
• 26:40
  scenario is, is you go feudal, rush skirmisher, rush your
• 26:43
  opponent, decider scouts or skirmishers.
• 26:46
  If they do scouts, they're putting pressure on you while
• 26:47
  you put pressure on them. If they go skirmishers, you're
• 26:50
  kind of just skirmishing at their base.
• 26:53
  And very often that would turn into a few full feudal army type
• 26:56
  scenario where there's like you say, there's scouts, there's
• 26:59
  Archers, skirmishers, Spears, there's towers.
• 27:02
  And like you say, if, if you're the one putting the pressure on,
• 27:05
  you can decide when to go to Castle age, right.
• 27:08
  Yeah. You know, if, if they try and
• 27:10
  sneak in Castle age and you go 10 extra scouts and overwhelm
• 27:12
  their base, they might get to Castle age, but they might not
• 27:15
  have anything left when they get there.
• 27:16
  So, but at the same time, if you can kind of have a couple towers
• 27:20
  offensively and kind of, you know, build a bit of army, trick
• 27:25
  them into thinking you're going full feudal and then hit castle
• 27:28
  age ahead of them and get those few nights out, that might make
• 27:31
  all the difference too. So you're, you're, you're often,
• 27:35
  I would say the base strategy at the top level was full futile
• 27:38
  aggression. And whether you're doing it
• 27:40
  defensively or offensively, followed by adapting at the
• 27:43
  right point in time, which that's hard to define because
• 27:47
  it's a it really depended depend on each game.
• 27:51
  Let's go at it from a different angle because Hunt Wars have
• 27:55
  been played for many, many years, basically from Age of
• 27:59
  Conquerors times when the hunts were introduced to the game up
• 28:03
  until, I don't know, mid 2010 years I believe.
• 28:08
  So that's probably around 15 years of Hunt wars and I'm
• 28:12
  wondering because we had different version of the games
• 28:16
  in this time frame and we also had different balances of the
• 28:20
  game. So in Age of Conquerors it was a
• 28:22
  different balance than in in Woolalo Kingdom when you were
• 28:25
  playing on Woobly. And with user patch, is there a
• 28:28
  way to describe how the the way you played Hunt wars have
• 28:33
  changed over time? Yeah, I, I, I would say that, I
• 28:37
  mean, if you really think about it and you really look at the
• 28:40
  start and the end, at the start of Hunt Wars, people were, I
• 28:46
  would say still skirm, skirm spear focused at the very start.
• 28:50
  It evolved into scouts white soon after that, I would say
• 28:55
  within a few years. And, and the reason for that was
• 28:59
  just that you, you, you could still do damage and you can
• 29:04
  still win in certain situations with both strategies.
• 29:07
  But scouts were just more effective at picking off stray
• 29:10
  skirmishers or killing villagers.
• 29:11
  And you could essentially always use them for their best and
• 29:14
  highest value. Whereas in the other case, you
• 29:16
  had to be really careful about some of that stuff.
• 29:19
  I do think that it, it evolved a bit when they made houses a bit
• 29:24
  less expensive. That kind of was a buff to all
• 29:27
  other civilizations at the nerf of Huns.
• 29:31
  And then also, I would say you, you, you got a bit of a change
• 29:35
  too with just how much lag there was in the game early in the
• 29:41
  2000s, it was a bit laggier. So if you went Cav Archers and
• 29:45
  let's say someone else went nights, you can't really hit and
• 29:48
  run as effectively because you might have one second between
• 29:52
  the time you click and the time your Cav Archers retreat.
• 29:54
  So someone's patrolling their nights and they might get a few
• 29:57
  hits in before you even move. But The funny thing is, is that
• 30:01
  Cav Archers stayed the same cost, but when lag got reduced
• 30:05
  after 5 or 10 years because Internet connections were
• 30:07
  better, Cav Archers became so much stronger because you just
• 30:11
  you can maneuver them. You go to the nearest hill, you
• 30:13
  go to the choke point, you, you know, you're hitting around
• 30:16
  whatever you're going to hit and run.
• 30:18
  And if anything, that made it so we eventually had to slightly
• 30:21
  nerf the the Cav Archers to to keep it in balance.
• 30:26
  So, and then I mean, even even then, I would say you also get a
• 30:31
  lot of evolution in in the maps, right?
• 30:34
  I mean, in in the mid 2002 thousand fifteens or so, I think
• 30:37
  some of the Arabian maps turned into being a lot more closed.
• 30:41
  And the more closed you are, the less you're going to have like
• 30:45
  Mali units, right? You're going to you're going to
• 30:47
  have ranged units more often just because there's more
• 30:48
  control points and easier to wall in.
• 30:51
  So you you seem kind of shift from from nights to to more calf
• 30:55
  Archers that point in time. I'm wondering whether Archers
• 31:00
  played a role in feudal age because when everything started
• 31:04
  with scerm spear so your trash units and then it evolved into
• 31:08
  scouts. I kind of failed to hear The
• 31:12
  Archers play a role in the meta of Hunwars in the feudal age.
• 31:16
  Yeah. So I'll tell you the best use of
• 31:19
  Archers. So First off, if Archers they
• 31:21
  they slowed down the build time in very early 2000s and they
• 31:26
  still had their uses if some of them men in arms you and Archers
• 31:28
  immediately. But the best use for Archers
• 31:31
  commonly was after you did scouts.
• 31:34
  So after you did scouts, you would typically drop an archery
• 31:38
  range or two and you put 3 or 4 villagers on gold or or six or
• 31:43
  seven if you had two ranges and you'd add Archers and they were
• 31:47
  very cost effective and very powerful.
• 31:50
  And so it typically would be you, you forced your opponent
• 31:54
  into Spears and now you have the capital unit for it.
• 31:57
  Also, if they go to castle age, you have something that can
• 31:59
  really punish them with it. You know, if you just had scerms
• 32:03
  or you just had scouts, you know, they they might not lose
• 32:05
  as much on their way up to the next stage.
• 32:08
  And so, but you often you wouldn't start, you wouldn't
• 32:11
  necessarily start off with Archers, because if you if you
• 32:14
  started in the start of fuel age with Archers, you have an open
• 32:17
  base with three spots that scouts can hit and they can't
• 32:20
  really defend all three easily. Like you have, you know, a
• 32:23
  berries and two two different lumber camps commonly.
• 32:27
  And so people often wouldn't start with Archers.
• 32:30
  There were a few like niche strategies where you you grabbed
• 32:32
  nursery range and then a quick fletching upgrade and you might
• 32:36
  surprise your opponent with two Spears and four Archers.
• 32:38
  And you know, gone occasion wouldn't the game right there.
• 32:41
  But but I'd say if they're if they're going scouts, they
• 32:45
  usually know exactly what you're up to anyway.
• 32:47
  So they usually wouldn't be surprised by that.
• 32:49
  And often too is if you looked at So usually the way it worked
• 32:52
  is at the start of fuselage. You both went scouts, you both
• 32:54
  added a couple Spears to defend against the enemy scouts.
• 32:58
  And then often if the enemy didn't add their own archery
• 33:03
  range and you did, then the first two Archers and a couple
• 33:06
  Spearman, you could attack and do some damage.
• 33:09
  And it would probably do more damage than it would cost you to
• 33:11
  do that now. But the hard part is, is that if
• 33:15
  the other person sees you're doing that and they drop an
• 33:17
  archery range and they build a couple skirmishers, they don't
• 33:20
  even build a mining camp. And just, you know, enough
• 33:23
  Spears and scouts, they could count, they could destroy your
• 33:27
  attack, while also also, because they didn't invest in a mining
• 33:30
  camp, they'd have more farms than you did, and therefore they
• 33:34
  would probably hit castle age a minute before you.
• 33:36
  So there was this like advanced chicken egg strategy at a really
• 33:40
  high level for some of the top players where you watch your
• 33:44
  enemy really closely and you might be able to just respond
• 33:47
  exactly to what they're doing. And there was AI, can't remember
• 33:50
  which tournament. It was one of the Arbola cups.
• 33:52
  I played against a famous Chinese player named Ding and he
• 33:56
  was a monster at the time. Very good.
• 33:57
  I was kind of glad he he kind of retired after that because he
• 34:00
  was definitely coming from my #1 rank.
• 34:02
  But we had we had a best of seven in the finals and it was
• 34:07
  three to three. I won three games, he won three
• 34:09
  games and the last game was a Hun war.
• 34:12
  I think it was on Gold Rush or something very similar to Arabia
• 34:15
  type map and I spotted what he was doing.
• 34:18
  He was doing exactly what we described there scouts into
• 34:20
  Archers, you know, definitely going offensive.
• 34:23
  You know, he didn't want to, didn't want to wait for me to do
• 34:25
  something. And I spotted that he did this.
• 34:27
  I spotted with a low endpoint scout and I seen, OK, I know
• 34:30
  he's going to attack me. I know he's doing this strategy.
• 34:33
  I, I essentially got the upgrades and I just did enough
• 34:37
  army at home to wipe his army out.
• 34:39
  And because he had to walk across the map, I had a few
• 34:42
  extra units on him and I had them all patrolled.
• 34:44
  I had them, you know, the right control groups.
• 34:46
  I you know, I did, he did good micro.
• 34:48
  I had to good micro, but I had a few more units.
• 34:50
  So I won that fight and right after winning that fight, he was
• 34:53
  worried, right, because he thought I'd come attack his base
• 34:55
  and you know, and I figured he would think that.
• 34:58
  So the second I cleaned up his army, I, I stopped building all
• 35:04
  units and I went to castle age and because his army was wiped
• 35:09
  out, he he didn't do that and he didn't want to attack again
• 35:11
  because he thought I had more army and he thought it was
• 35:13
  coming to his base. And that actually ended up
• 35:16
  winning that game and that tournament back back then.
• 35:19
  So I think it's a, and often what, what you do in the Archer
• 35:26
  sense of things is you would often keep building Archers, but
• 35:30
  you stop building scouts because you, you need the food to pile
• 35:34
  up to, to make to the next stage.
• 35:36
  So, and then essentially once you hit tassel age, the the
• 35:39
  crossbow upgrade used to be a lot more inexpensive.
• 35:41
  So you, you would also still do those timed Archer attacks that
• 35:45
  you see even more frequently today and, and maybe in the last
• 35:48
  five years where you know, essentially the the best time to
• 35:53
  attack is right, as you have an army that's about to be
• 35:56
  upgraded. Like that's a strategic decision
• 35:59
  because that way even if your enemy has more army than you,
• 36:03
  but there are 30 seconds slower to upgrading, you might have 30
• 36:06
  seconds worth of free damage, right?
• 36:08
  And and that's enough to swing a game sometimes, so.
• 36:12
  That is very true today as well. You make use of your timing, of
• 36:16
  your better timing, something Leary is so famous for.
• 36:20
  It's also interesting because my whole view of Han Wars was
• 36:26
  people were going mad, they were fighting and they did not stop
• 36:30
  fighting. It was relentless building of
• 36:33
  army and clashing. And what you're bringing to the
• 36:37
  table now is that there was actually a lot of mind gaming
• 36:40
  involved as well. Yeah.
• 36:42
  And I think that's a, that's probably a function of player
• 36:46
  rating, right, or, or skill level.
• 36:48
  I I think if you looked at, you know, let's say the top 1000,
• 36:52
  you know, if that thousandth highest rated player, honestly,
• 36:56
  it probably would have been that more often than not, you know,
• 36:59
  they probably build a tower too, and they probably go full army
• 37:02
  and, and both of them keep doing it until one of them lands
• 37:05
  victorious, right. And, and in certain
• 37:09
  circumstances that, and I would say in a lot of circumstances,
• 37:12
  that could have been the best strategy.
• 37:15
  Yeah. So I'd say I for all your
• 37:18
  listeners too, is, is this, these, these type of things are
• 37:22
  what can take you to the next level, right?
• 37:24
  And it's not hard to do. I mean, I know, I know sometimes
• 37:26
  strategy sounds complicated, but that's why if you think about it
• 37:30
  after the fact, not when you're in the heat of the moment, but
• 37:32
  after the fact, what could I have done differently?
• 37:34
  You answer that question and you realize, oh, there was like 5
• 37:37
  options there that were slightly different than I might have
• 37:39
  thought of. So, you know, keep that in mind.
• 37:43
  Yeah. But also keep in mind that it's
• 37:45
  way easier to do it afterwards, or if you're using Capture H,
• 37:48
  then when you're in the game and having to make these assumptions
• 37:52
  and also scouting the right information at the right time
• 37:56
  and deducing the right things from that, I think that's very
• 37:59
  hard. Absolutely.
• 38:00
  And that's what makes the game so much fun though, right, Is
• 38:02
  even at even at the highest level, you got the top players
• 38:04
  that in some cases you'd say this player is better than that
• 38:06
  player. On occasion, that player that is
• 38:08
  worse than that other player will beat the other 140, right?
• 38:11
  And you're like, oh, what happened?
• 38:13
  They outthought them, right? And so I I've seen it happen.
• 38:17
  I've been on both sides of that so.
• 38:21
  All right, I've got to ask because there's one unit we
• 38:23
  haven't mentioned yet, and that is the Tarkin.
• 38:27
  How important was the Tarkin in the Han was?
• 38:30
  You know, I think the Tarkin came more into its own in like
• 38:33
  team games and things like that. Like it in, in one-on-one, if,
• 38:37
  if your opponent went cab Archers and, and let's say like
• 38:40
  you had an intense feudal age, it was a nuts game like that.
• 38:43
  Let's say it was pretty balanced.
• 38:44
  And then you had a castle age where one of you went Knights,
• 38:46
  the other one went cab Archers. And let's say you're the one
• 38:48
  that went Knights and you so you have all the cab upgrades, they
• 38:52
  have all the Archer upgrades. And you were, you managed to get
• 38:55
  like a full economy and A120140 villagers and you have a few
• 38:58
  castles up. So in that situation, you you
• 39:02
  definitely sometimes decided, Hey, I know that Tarkins are,
• 39:06
  you know, with their higher Pierce armor are going to smoke
• 39:08
  cat Archers, right? So sometimes you make the unit
• 39:12
  switch then. And I'd say that was probably
• 39:16
  the perfect time to do it, especially if if, let's say a
• 39:19
  mid castle age, like I found a few at nights, sometimes you'd
• 39:22
  do a bunch of siege with it. So you went manganiels and
• 39:25
  scorpions and stuff like that. And and so sometimes your
• 39:29
  opponent would, you know, do a bit of their own cavalry, right,
• 39:32
  They do some light cavalry or things like that.
• 39:33
  So you put up castles kind of to defend those raids and defend
• 39:36
  the Cava Archer raids and stuff. It became a thing where Tarkins
• 39:40
  actually produced quite quickly and they had the higher Pierce
• 39:42
  armor. So if you could surprise them,
• 39:46
  especially without them being able to get to pikeman, because
• 39:49
  if you if you just had Cavaliers or you just had, you know,
• 39:51
  Knights, Cava Archers can deal with those, but they cannot deal
• 39:55
  with especially right as you hit amp, if you get that elite
• 39:58
  Tarkin upgrade and you get the Pierce armor upgrade, even with
• 40:02
  full Cav Archer upgrades, all of a sudden those Tarkins are
• 40:04
  beasts. So I've seen scenarios where
• 40:08
  like, OK, you know, if you had, let's say you had 20 Tarkins and
• 40:12
  they have 40 or 50 Cav Archers, right?
• 40:14
  A number that you think one would beat the other.
• 40:16
  But if you split that Tarkin army into 3 and you said you
• 40:19
  know what, 8 or 10 at each Town Center?
• 40:22
  If he doesn't have units there, you're just taking that TC out
• 40:25
  and all those villagers, right? And like, you don't care at all.
• 40:28
  You're just like, well, I might lose 1 Tarkin as this TC falls,
• 40:31
  but you're losing 20 villagers. So good luck, right?
• 40:34
  And so I'd say it's similar in nature to eagles, where
• 40:40
  sometimes the best way to use some of these units is not
• 40:44
  necessarily to fight their army, it's to to ignore it entirely.
• 40:48
  And and Tarkins were one of those scenarios like that.
• 40:51
  Why do you think they were more prevalent in team games than in
• 40:55
  one once? Yeah, it's a good question.
• 40:57
  You know, I, I think, and, and maybe this is just a bias
• 41:00
  because I used to have a few teammates that love their unique
• 41:02
  units. We all have them.
• 41:06
  Yeah, yeah. And I used to play so, you know,
• 41:09
  in, in, in some of the really old days, I, I had two teammates
• 41:12
  and, and one of them, let's just say you'd, you'd sling the more
• 41:15
  powerful civilization. So if you were, let's say,
• 41:18
  Chinese, you don't have the post MP units that necessarily your
• 41:21
  Mongol teammate or your hunt teammate had.
• 41:23
  So sometimes you're, you're slinging them both.
• 41:26
  And and if Huns had a few castles up and and let's say
• 41:29
  they don't have the paladin upgrade, they they absolutely
• 41:32
  would go Tarkins in front of the Mangadi because the again, the
• 41:36
  high Pierce server, right? Like they're they're more cost
• 41:38
  effective at receiving enemy Mangadi fire.
• 41:41
  Then then cavalier would be or you know, obviously paladins are
• 41:44
  quite expensive to get to. So so I'd say that was a common
• 41:48
  situation to see in three on three Arabia where you kind of
• 41:52
  have Mangadi and you have tarkins in front or, or paladins
• 41:56
  depending. But I'd say, and also just the
• 41:58
  just the rating potential, right?
• 42:00
  I mean, you can, like I said, it's, it's very different when
• 42:04
  20 of them going to someone's base.
• 42:05
  If there's nothing there, it's like there's no units there.
• 42:08
  It's it's, there's going to be nothing there very quickly.
• 42:11
  So. Speaking of Paladins, back to
• 42:16
  one of the ones of course. And Hun Wars, Yeah.
• 42:19
  How common was it for games to develop into the Castle Age and
• 42:22
  even into Imperial Age or a post in scenario?
• 42:26
  Yeah, I'd say, you know what, you'd be surprised because I'd
• 42:28
  say at A, at a really high level, if you said, hey, take
• 42:31
  Riot or take a Viper in there early when he was, you know,
• 42:36
  much younger or you know, and myself playing them or even like
• 42:40
  Grunt or Halen or someone like that.
• 42:42
  Even just before Viper and Riot, very commonly you do both do
• 42:46
  scouts. You'd both palisade in your base
• 42:48
  with a villager or two. There might be some skirmishes
• 42:51
  in in between. You might realize, hey, we're
• 42:54
  both corn Archers or we're both not corn Archers, depending on
• 42:56
  the map. So then it would get to castle
• 42:59
  age. And in castle age you might, you
• 43:01
  might decide, OK, we're both walled in.
• 43:03
  Let's both go cat Archers. Or you might say we're both
• 43:05
  quite opened. We, we were able to partially
• 43:07
  wall, but we're not fully walled.
• 43:09
  Let's both go Knights. You know, you're not saying
• 43:10
  that, but you're, you're kind of both doing it because it's makes
• 43:13
  sense, right? So you'll, you'll find a lot of
• 43:16
  situations where you, you both did and you both did a couple
• 43:19
  town centers and, and you were booming.
• 43:22
  Sometimes those games were incredibly close because you
• 43:25
  both kind of chose the optimized situation for that that
• 43:29
  particular game. And so while you think that, you
• 43:32
  know, maybe it's 100 games that go late, I would say it's
• 43:35
  probably closer to like one or two and 10:00 just because the
• 43:40
  the the skill level differences and we're not that great
• 43:44
  necessarily, and because the strategies were quite similar in
• 43:46
  those situations. And when you did go post amp you
• 43:50
  you, you really had to decide because if so, if you did Cav
• 43:54
  Archers, you'd always do like cab in front or, or halbs or
• 43:57
  something like that. But if you did paladins and you
• 44:00
  mixed it with trash units, that was an extremely powerful
• 44:02
  composition as well. So whether that's halb skirm,
• 44:06
  like cab, you know, whatever it is, the skirms to deal with any
• 44:10
  halbs that come up, because in in hunt wars, your halbs don't
• 44:13
  have the last pure server. So skirmishers do counter them.
• 44:17
  And the skirmishers, you know, are not amazing in these cab
• 44:20
  Archers. They're good in these cab
• 44:21
  Archers because they don't have their last Pierce armor.
• 44:24
  But when you put paladin in front, the skirmishers just eat
• 44:26
  the cab Archers. So I'd say it actually depended
• 44:29
  on kind of like what upgrades and what's your middle game
• 44:31
  looked like to see what you tacked into in early imp and
• 44:35
  then kind of how it would end up later.
• 44:37
  And I'll tell you if I was going Knights and castle age and then
• 44:39
  I had, you know, like and the opponent was going cab Archers,
• 44:42
  you might end up being at pallet and skirm and and they might be
• 44:45
  at cab Archer pasar type of thing.
• 44:48
  And those situations could go either way, even though in all
• 44:53
  honesty, cave Archer hussar sounds better to me because
• 44:56
  you're not losing your gold units.
• 44:58
  But again, it you can get overwhelmed, right, one or two
• 45:00
  fights or or you can't rate as effectively, you know, so it
• 45:08
  games did evolve that way sometimes.
• 45:09
  Also say something that was quite unique in hunt wars that
• 45:12
  maybe newer viewers might be less aware of is if you both
• 45:16
  might cave Archers, you also both added Rams in front.
• 45:20
  Even if you weren't ramming enemy buildings, you're using
• 45:23
  them as fodder. It's it's like the modern
• 45:26
  counter to Britain's. Exactly, exactly.
• 45:29
  You got it. So you, you and very similar
• 45:31
  right. So you, you know, I, I remember
• 45:32
  seeing one-on-one games where we both had three siege workshops
• 45:37
  and we both had 40 cave Archers, but the goal was not to build
• 45:40
  more cave Archers. The goal was to build more Rams
• 45:43
  than the enemy. So.
• 45:45
  So I'm assuming the siege workshop of Hans was as shitty
• 45:49
  as today back in the day. It was, yeah.
• 45:51
  So you're just doing Rams, You're not doing anything else.
• 45:53
  That's right. But still, two or three out of
• 45:58
  10 games going late is compared to today's gameplay quite
• 46:04
  little, I believe. Do you think that is
• 46:06
  representative that I mean the the Hun war meta or the Hun war
• 46:10
  kind of not going that often into late game as representative
• 46:14
  for other civilizations back in the day or was that something
• 46:16
  that was typical for Hunt wars? That's a good question.
• 46:19
  I actually think so. I think Hunt Wars went slightly
• 46:21
  less into late games than other sieves because other sieves you
• 46:24
  bought often both were slightly less aggressive.
• 46:26
  You had more house walls, you had a bit more walling.
• 46:29
  And so like you're more likely to get into a kind of a even if
• 46:33
  you skirmish a bunch, you still probably get into a boom
• 46:35
  scenario at some point. So I'd say it's probably like
• 46:38
  30% of games were with regular sieves and maybe like 15 or so
• 46:41
  percent with Huns would would go to Imperial.
• 46:44
  And then, you know, obviously post input that's probably less
• 46:47
  common even. But but yeah, those were
• 46:51
  definitely factors. So one thing I noticed because I
• 46:55
  was playing a couple of Hun Wars myself.
• 46:57
  Of course I am nowhere near as good as you are today or were
• 47:01
  even back then, but still I played it with someone who is
• 47:06
  pretty much my level and one thing I noticed was that I am
• 47:10
  playing a completely different way than I play with any other
• 47:14
  civilization or even with Hans when I play against a different
• 47:17
  civilization than Hans. And the main difference I
• 47:20
  noticed is that usually I very, very much try to pick one fight
• 47:28
  that is pretty much decisive. And if I don't feel like I can
• 47:32
  get that fight, I would chicken away from that fight and try to
• 47:36
  get a better angle or better unit compositions or, you know,
• 47:40
  I'm babysitting my army. And there's usually in, in a
• 47:43
  game one or maybe two big fights that are usually very decisive.
• 47:47
  Whereas in the Hunt wars I played, I went all out, I was
• 47:51
  fighting all the time, and I was adding army again and again and
• 47:56
  again, and I was fighting pretty much as often as I usually fight
• 48:00
  in 10 different games combined. That sounds about right.
• 48:04
  Yeah, I like that. Is that something that was true
• 48:08
  back then as well? A. 100 percent, 100%, I'd say.
• 48:12
  Like if, if you look at so I mean even It's funny too,
• 48:14
  because I remember too, I had two series with doubt one week
• 48:17
  apart from each other in two different tournaments and, and
• 48:19
  he won 1 and I won one. And one of them I, I, I skirm
• 48:23
  rushed him and I, I caught him by surprise.
• 48:25
  I had a, a tower, I had a couple militia, you know, and I just, I
• 48:28
  took his woodpile out and, and it was a very fast game.
• 48:31
  It was like a 13 minute game. The week after he had, he had
• 48:34
  thought through that game and he watched me closely and I didn't
• 48:38
  notice that he did this and he went scouts.
• 48:41
  His forward would look just as juicy that second time as it did
• 48:44
  the first time. And he went to my base with pure
• 48:49
  scouts, three scouts and at the same time as I attacked him
• 48:52
  pretty much all out, but he actually just that would pile.
• 48:56
  I towered and that push I did. He just he just vacated the
• 48:59
  premises. He had a backwood, he had a back
• 49:02
  berries. He threw up 1 defensive tower
• 49:04
  thereafter so that he wouldn't really have to think about home.
• 49:08
  And his three scouts went immediately to my berries.
• 49:10
  And you know, let's just say some villagers were not happy
• 49:14
  about my choices. And that was also a 13 or 14
• 49:19
  minute game as well in the opposite direction with the same
• 49:22
  strategies, just by one or two decisions differently and by the
• 49:27
  same players, right? So it really shows that like
• 49:29
  sometimes, you know, and those were both small action fights,
• 49:32
  right? So, and I'd say like in a lot of
• 49:36
  Hunt wars that evolved after that this, that was early in the
• 49:39
  Hunt war era era is you often are fighting in multiple spots
• 49:43
  at the same time because you can't really wall in as much.
• 49:45
  There's less sides that are protected and scouts are so
• 49:48
  mobile, right? So they're, they're fighting
• 49:50
  somewhere no matter what. And same with Cav Archers, same
• 49:52
  with Knights, right? So, and you're not expecting
• 49:55
  your 4 Cav Archers to go win you the game, but if they kill 3
• 49:59
  villagers and then they, they do an even fight with four other
• 50:02
  Cav Archers and you both use 4 Cav Archers, they were extremely
• 50:05
  valuable, right? So he would often see, I'll call
• 50:09
  it like a bunch of microaggression in many
• 50:12
  situations in hunt wars where you'd lose the army, but it
• 50:15
  still did its job. If I recall correctly, you said
• 50:18
  that before our conversation you were playing a couple of Hunt
• 50:22
  wars with Mentalist I think. I did, yeah.
• 50:25
  We, we loaded up. Because of this interview I
• 50:26
  decided to load one up and it was a messy game.
• 50:30
  Yeah. So I was wondering whether when
• 50:33
  you play Hunt Wars today, whether it's still the same or
• 50:36
  if it's different to you? It's funny because so if if if
• 50:39
  you are in a map where you lure deer, hunt wars has changed
• 50:43
  because you you can't really skirmish your rush as
• 50:45
  effectively because you have so much extra food.
• 50:48
  There's enough food to make an ex couple extra scouts and
• 50:50
  that's enough to kind of overwhelm A skirmish player.
• 50:54
  But in our case, in the game I played with Mentalist, there
• 50:56
  were chickens and chickens. There's less of them.
• 50:58
  They gather at a slower rate. You have to mail them.
• 51:01
  And because of that, it is quite similar to the old hunt wars.
• 51:04
  So ironically, I did skirmish rush.
• 51:06
  He did a scout scouts attack in my berries villager, you know,
• 51:10
  and he got a few villagers. I got his woodpile and turned
• 51:14
  into a messy game after that. And and I'd say, you know, that
• 51:17
  is very similar to I, I mean, if you took us and put us back 20
• 51:20
  years in time, that could have been a game from 20 years ago
• 51:24
  with the strategies that were played.
• 51:25
  So yeah, in some ways it hasn't changed at all.
• 51:30
  Did you guys wall or did you not?
• 51:32
  Not one single palisade wall in the entire game.
• 51:36
  Really. But was that again gentlemen's
• 51:38
  agreement or. Did you just?
• 51:40
  Not happen to wall. Well, I mean, I, I towered his
• 51:42
  wood pile and then I put my 3 villagers, 4 villagers on stone.
• 51:45
  So I had, I had five towers at the end of the game and he was
• 51:50
  defending with army after he killed a bunch of my villagers.
• 51:52
  He, he knew he just had to hold on because he was the head of
• 51:55
  villagers. But I also knew that I was had
• 51:58
  an army because he had sacrificed his forward scouts to
• 52:01
  kill a few villagers. So I, I kept the pressure up and
• 52:05
  got a few more of his and kept his, some of his villagers idle
• 52:08
  and towered a couple key resources.
• 52:09
  And you know, I'll, I'll tell you that I eventually,
• 52:12
  eventually got got that one out of him.
• 52:14
  So nice, kind of kind of went. Either way, it was a close game.
• 52:18
  But then I start to wonder, since I had this experience,
• 52:22
  that Hun was placed so differently and kind of played
• 52:26
  out for me the way that they are described from back in the day.
• 52:30
  And you say that at least with Chicken Arabia, it's kind of the
• 52:33
  same. Why did we stop playing Hun
• 52:36
  Wars? What made the Hun Wars
• 52:38
  disappear? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 52:40
  So, well, I'd say there's a lot of things all in kind of
• 52:44
  combination with one another. First off, I'd say the biggest
• 52:47
  thing was that every other civilization kind of got buffed
• 52:51
  over the years. Not not a lot, but enough.
• 52:55
  I mean, if you, if you said like, hey, you know what the
• 52:58
  problem with dealing with Huns in the past was even if you made
• 53:01
  Spears, the scouts were coming out so fast that you that it was
• 53:04
  tough to make enough Spears in the right spots.
• 53:06
  That was true. And then even if you didn't make
• 53:08
  enough Spears, they added the archery range and a few Archer
• 53:11
  skirmishers to take out your Spears.
• 53:13
  And it was just tough to deal with in mid feudal age because
• 53:17
  the cost of all those houses and the time it took to build them
• 53:19
  and all that type of stuff while doing everything else was too
• 53:23
  much to focus on. Also, I'd say like ironically,
• 53:26
  you, you wouldn't think this have much of an impact, but our
• 53:29
  screen resolutions are bigger, We can see more.
• 53:32
  So Hun, scout raids used to be a problem and you might see, you
• 53:36
  know, if now you're zoomed out so you can see your whole base,
• 53:40
  if you could only see a third of your base, all you see is this
• 53:43
  little red on the mini map coming in and you're like, Oh
• 53:45
  no, I don't have time to wall in my villagers or do anything
• 53:49
  right so. That makes so much sense.
• 53:51
  People make fun of doubt because he still plays so zoomed in
• 53:55
  compared to other. Players.
• 53:56
  Yeah, exactly. So funny, but you're completely
• 53:59
  right. The resolution was like 640
• 54:03
  something right? Yeah, by 480, I mean eventually
• 54:05
  it was 1024, but even then it's like you, you just can react.
• 54:09
  And even then like also there was lag.
• 54:10
  So if you said, hey, today I can click wall, I can do it
• 54:13
  instantly and anyone can do it. Why couldn't the top players do
• 54:15
  it back then? It's like, no, they all could.
• 54:17
  It's just if it takes 1.5 seconds for your villager to
• 54:20
  react, you know, it, it, it's did I double click that wall?
• 54:24
  Like you almost have to click this wall, then that wall, then
• 54:26
  that wall, all by guessing because you can't wait till the
• 54:29
  your villager actually does it. You have to click before he does
• 54:32
  it because he's going to do it for a second.
• 54:34
  And then yeah, it, it, it kind of changed the dye accident.
• 54:37
  So that's why you will see, you know, I mean, I know some
• 54:39
  players give doubt a hard time and they probably would give me
• 54:41
  a hard time too if I was still playing a bunch.
• 54:42
  Is is like our you know, for doubt it, you know, it doesn't
• 54:46
  well as much for me. My farm position is atrocious.
• 54:49
  And I'd say some of those are old habits when it it, it was
• 54:53
  more important to do something than it was like, get it dialed
• 54:57
  in right, Like so. But that doesn't really explain
• 55:01
  why the hunwar stops, does it? Oh yeah, so I can, I can tell
• 55:05
  you that a bit too. So I'd say like, so also at some
• 55:08
  point people did realize they put in your e-mail that Aztecs
• 55:11
  and Mayans were slightly better, right?
• 55:14
  Not majorly better though. That's The thing is, is also and
• 55:17
  not majorly better at an intermediate level.
• 55:20
  So if you took First off, I'd say Aztecs was better than
• 55:23
  Mayans and Huns at at that point in time, the economy bonuses
• 55:26
  were just too much to deal with. But you really you you had to do
• 55:32
  some strategies that were quite a bit unexpected even at the
• 55:35
  time, right? So you'd do 3 militia drash,
• 55:38
  there's a 5 militia drash, there's a 5 militia men at arms
• 55:41
  type of thing. And also in castle age Aztecs
• 55:46
  you you actually have the weaker army if you're going against a
• 55:49
  hunt one TC with full Cav Archers.
• 55:52
  So the way you would win those games though is you would do a
• 55:55
  defensive siege workshop, a defensive monastery.
• 55:57
  You would make just enough siege to stop the Cav Archers from
• 56:00
  killing everything. And at that time you'd go to
• 56:03
  imperil. Not even with a great economy,
• 56:05
  maybe with a market. And the second you hit the elite
• 56:08
  eagle upgrade, Cav Archers could not touch them.
• 56:12
  So there I remember games where I was on both sides of that
• 56:15
  where I had 40 village. You know, maybe the first
• 56:18
  example is I played against a guy named Russo, who was very,
• 56:21
  very famous top player back then, who went eagles against me
• 56:25
  and I was dominating in the castle.
• 56:27
  I had Huns, he had Aztecs, he had Imperial with 35 villagers.
• 56:31
  I had like 70 villagers with Huns and a bunch of Cav Archers
• 56:34
  all over his base. I was like, oh, this game's
• 56:35
  over. And he, he got elite eagles and
• 56:38
  he sent like 5 of them to kill my cavearchers.
• 56:40
  He's sent like another 10 to go to my base.
• 56:42
  And I mean, I couldn't even collect resources.
• 56:44
  I was thinking to myself like, oh, I should just switch to
• 56:46
  Knights. But like I had to do I, I would
• 56:49
  have had to make that decision 3 minutes earlier because TCS
• 56:53
  don't kill eagles, right? Let's say you, you were just, I
• 56:56
  went from 70 to 60 to 50 and you know, I don't think he made any
• 56:59
  more villagers, but he mopped the floor with me.
• 57:01
  And that that's when I realized that like, Oh yeah, you know,
• 57:05
  the counter for Huns calf Archers is just you sacrifice
• 57:10
  whatever you have to to get to the next stage and and get that
• 57:12
  illegal upgrade. And you could do that by putting
• 57:16
  a fast militia drush on your enemy at the start of the game
• 57:19
  with Aztecs. And because you had 100 gold,
• 57:22
  you didn't have to mine the gold.
• 57:23
  And your economy was so amazing that you just threw them at them
• 57:27
  and they had to deal with it. Even if they pre walled in every
• 57:30
  single resource. It was still like, how long
• 57:33
  before you build an Archer? How long before you deal with
• 57:35
  this? If you're just going to repair
• 57:37
  and go castle aid yourself, you're going to have two
• 57:38
  villagers gathering wood and one repairing just to just to pay
• 57:41
  for this. So they were just a little too
• 57:45
  strong, but they were less fun. So that's why you see.
• 57:49
  And also I would say at at an intermediate level, Huns were
• 57:51
  still better because in that mid castle a stuff a lot of people
• 57:55
  didn't realize what I just told you there.
• 57:57
  And so you could, you know, kind of take them out in castle age
• 58:01
  and you know, with cat Archers or, or with Knights or, or, you
• 58:05
  know, a lot of pressure. And that would typically be at
• 58:10
  at the intermediate level. It's just at the top level.
• 58:12
  People realized how to get around that.
• 58:14
  And so, but even when people realized that lots of
• 58:17
  tournaments would like ban Aztecs or what, or, or make it
• 58:22
  like a best of seven where you you can only pick them once or
• 58:25
  things like that just to keep it more interesting.
• 58:29
  But still, I mean, in a hunt war, you don't have to fear the
• 58:33
  Aztec eagles because there's no Aztecs.
• 58:35
  That's right. People must have stopped playing
• 58:37
  Hunt wars at some point and they it's not like they realize that
• 58:41
  Aztecs are just stronger than Hans and it's more fun to play
• 58:44
  with them and instead they started Aztec Wars.
• 58:47
  To me, it feels like when I'm when I'm trying to research the
• 58:50
  history of Hunt wars and try to figure out what make them, I
• 58:53
  don't know, disappear. To me it seems like people just
• 58:56
  got a little fatigued and bored of 15 years of Hun wars and
• 59:02
  that's why they stopped. Not because anything has changed
• 59:05
  about the Huns or the actual appeal of why Hun wars were so
• 59:10
  entertaining. Well, I think you hit the
• 59:12
  threshold. I think what happened is like DE
• 59:15
  was was when DE came out, had all the sieve changes and new
• 59:18
  sieves and that's when they rebalanced everything.
• 59:21
  Like I'd say like, you know, before that Huns maybe were
• 59:25
  like, you know, second or third best sieve on Arabia, but also
• 59:28
  like Huns were amazing on random map.
• 59:30
  They were amazing on mega random, you know, like they had
• 59:32
  so many other applications that were in your pocket in in so
• 59:35
  many team games. It's just kind of all those
• 59:39
  changed all at once. Where other Sims got stronger,
• 59:42
  they got proportionally weaker. Some of those Sims that got
• 59:46
  stronger were stronger enough that, you know, like it was no
• 59:50
  longer a thing. Houses got cheaper, right?
• 59:53
  As we were talking about previously, you know, even there
• 59:56
  was a point in time where Archers kind of got better just
• 59:59
  because there was less lag. So you can hit and run better,
• 1:00:01
  which is kind of an indirect nerf to Huns and kind of a
• 1:00:04
  direct buff to, you know, whether it's Mayans or
• 1:00:06
  Ethiopians or Britons or, or whoever it is, right?
• 1:00:09
  And so you've seen that dynamic all happen within a period of a
• 1:00:14
  couple years there. Whereas before that the maps
• 1:00:19
  were open enough that like Archers weren't as common.
• 1:00:21
  Like you couldn't just go straight up Archers.
• 1:00:23
  As frequently. So I think that was the the big
• 1:00:26
  shift in my in my mind. Yeah, that does make sense, that
• 1:00:30
  basically the game around the Huns has changed and there's
• 1:00:33
  more civilizations to play with and so on and so on.
• 1:00:36
  And the Huns pretty much stayed the same basically until today.
• 1:00:41
  And there are lots of people, including myself saying that
• 1:00:46
  Huns are one of the civilizations that are suffering
• 1:00:50
  the most of the power creep of newer civilizations or even the
• 1:00:53
  old civilizations that have been buffed throughout the time.
• 1:00:57
  Whereas Huns have basically no real changes apart from once in
• 1:01:02
  a while. The Tarkan stats have been
• 1:01:03
  changed a little, but they have no equal bonus besides not
• 1:01:08
  having to build houses, which is not really an equal bonus.
• 1:01:11
  So people are debating on whether it is time to give the
• 1:01:16
  Huns a buff or not. And I'd like to give you 2
• 1:01:21
  suggestions that the community is pondering.
• 1:01:24
  About. One is 1 is giving Hans pastures
• 1:01:29
  much like the Kitan have and the other is replacing Knights with
• 1:01:33
  step Lancers. What do you think of this?
• 1:01:36
  Interesting. So First off, this is how much
• 1:01:41
  I've played lately. I actually have not yet built a
• 1:01:43
  pasture so I don't know how big of a buff that is.
• 1:01:46
  Well, just think of it as two commer farms at the price of 100
• 1:01:51
  wood. Oh, OK, OK, very strong.
• 1:01:56
  Yeah, that is quite good. That's a that's a game changing
• 1:01:59
  amount for sure. OK.
• 1:02:01
  And yeah, OK, so think it through that it's just, I'd say,
• 1:02:04
  you know, even from playing Huns today is, is if they're not far
• 1:02:09
  off other sieves, like if, if you said to me, hey, how do we
• 1:02:12
  make Huns balanced? I mean, First off, all other
• 1:02:15
  sieves, if they had 30 wood houses today instead of 25 wood
• 1:02:18
  houses, it's such a small change, but it would make a
• 1:02:21
  little difference and it would indirectly buff them.
• 1:02:25
  But I, I, I always like buffing rather than nerfing just because
• 1:02:27
  that's more fun that way. So if I was thinking about it,
• 1:02:31
  yeah, something like pastures does when you say commer farms,
• 1:02:34
  can you build a pasture anywhere and and.
• 1:02:36
  And they automatically drop off just like commer farms.
• 1:02:40
  Oh, that's very dangerous. It's bound to be nerfed.
• 1:02:43
  I think, I think yeah. And if you said to me like, Hey,
• 1:02:45
  you know what they're like even at 120, what if you can build
• 1:02:50
  them anywhere, you're saving all the gather time of walking back
• 1:02:53
  and forth and and in mid feudal age.
• 1:02:55
  That's what you know with Huns, often you don't really build a
• 1:02:57
  second mill. You just kind of throw your
• 1:02:59
  extra farms around the TC as a second layer deep and same
• 1:03:03
  around your mill like a 22 layers deep, right?
• 1:03:05
  And and so those farms aren't as efficient.
• 1:03:08
  So it would obviously boost that quite a bit.
• 1:03:11
  It would make the all out feudal attacks a little stronger.
• 1:03:14
  That's a good question. It would definitely if I was to
• 1:03:17
  do it, I wouldn't make it 100 wood.
• 1:03:19
  I'd probably be aiming for like 120 wood, maybe 115 if you
• 1:03:25
  wanted a slight buff and even that it would it would be great
• 1:03:29
  for feudal and it'd probably be good for castle.
• 1:03:31
  It might even be slightly too strong for imp for post imp,
• 1:03:36
  your 20% faster stables with your your Hassar spamming is
• 1:03:40
  already quite strong, I would say.
• 1:03:42
  So you know, that's where I kind of like the idea of like if you
• 1:03:47
  kept it 100 wood. OK, let's say you kept it 100
• 1:03:49
  wood or 105 wood and you made it.
• 1:03:51
  You have to drop off the TC or the mill.
• 1:03:55
  That might be OK. Even even then, it might be a
• 1:03:58
  little too strong. I think it's common sense that
• 1:04:00
  pastures are just way too strong.
• 1:04:03
  So there is again, there's a a debuff bounce to be made.
• 1:04:08
  Yeah, for sure. So you know what I would do?
• 1:04:13
  I am strongly voting for making houses twice as expensive so so
• 1:04:20
  50 to 60 would but also giving twice as much pop space.
• 1:04:25
  Oh, interesting. Yes, you need less of them, hey.
• 1:04:27
  Yeah, you build less of them and I'm really bothered by the fact
• 1:04:32
  that everyone's just house quick walling everything.
• 1:04:36
  So you are basically being punished for getting into an
• 1:04:40
  enemy's economy with a couple of Knights or you know, a couple of
• 1:04:44
  scouts or anything. And you will always be out
• 1:04:47
  walled by houses. And it's just way too cheap in
• 1:04:49
  my opinion. And I kind of hate that, you
• 1:04:51
  know, when I see people doing like 10 ties of house walls just
• 1:04:54
  just to keep my scouts outside of their base or in or trap them
• 1:04:59
  inside my base, I feel it's demotivating me of even trying
• 1:05:04
  to attack. Whereas if the houses were twice
• 1:05:07
  as you know, they basically have the same value because they are
• 1:05:11
  twice as expensive, but they also give you twice as much pop
• 1:05:13
  space. You just won't be house walling
• 1:05:15
  that. You can still do it, but you
• 1:05:18
  can't build them around your base that easily.
• 1:05:21
  You won't do it. And also you will not do the
• 1:05:24
  slow house wall that we that we all do during the feudal age.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah.
• 1:05:31
  I mean, I'm just thinking that through 'cause that's, that's a
• 1:05:33
  whole topic on its own, but yes, it is.
• 1:05:35
  But I, I like, I know that that would make it good for players
• 1:05:40
  who forget the house. So you know, I'm not sure if NBL
• 1:05:44
  put you up to this or not. But no, no, no, no.
• 1:05:46
  Joking. Joking, of course, but yeah,
• 1:05:50
  you. Would still be housed by the
• 1:05:51
  way, so. Yeah, Yeah, that's probably
• 1:05:53
  true. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:56
  But no, for strategic minds thing, it's it's definitely a
• 1:06:00
  interesting idea because yes, it would would reduce the house
• 1:06:03
  wall phenomena in general. In in theory, you you would, you
• 1:06:08
  would would you change the build time on it?
• 1:06:10
  That's the question cause. Yeah, that's a good question.
• 1:06:13
  I don't know. We'd have to figure.
• 1:06:14
  Out, yeah, yeah, but I'd say yeah, yeah, it's not a bad idea
• 1:06:18
  when you're and that's always the interesting thing about
• 1:06:20
  games, right, is like if you bounce it one way, what are the
• 1:06:23
  knock on effects? And sometimes it's hard to tell
• 1:06:25
  unless you actually like think it through and test it out.
• 1:06:27
  And I think you're right. It would indirectly make it so
• 1:06:30
  people house fall less it, but house fall less sounds good when
• 1:06:35
  you're attacking, when you're defending, it says, what are my
• 1:06:39
  other options? And it changes the dynamic
• 1:06:42
  event. And again, if you you want the
• 1:06:43
  game to reward people who are attacking but not too much like
• 1:06:48
  it has to be like a balance. Because if you if you do it too
• 1:06:51
  much, the game turns into all attacking or all defending or
• 1:06:53
  all you know, all or nothing's never a good, good answer, but.
• 1:06:58
  Yeah, that's pretty much what Age of Empires 1 is.
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, yeah. And I actually made a similar
• 1:07:02
  argument to you about something like that a long time ago when
• 1:07:05
  they made Cyrus and Mark at 75. What I actually, I, I said
• 1:07:10
  something in a forum back then. I said, if you if you do that,
• 1:07:12
  I'm going to use them to wall the map and because they're too
• 1:07:16
  inexpensive and they're too good at walling feudal armies out.
• 1:07:19
  And I did that in one of the tournaments and then won my my
• 1:07:22
  round with that. So really, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:26
  Just proving your point. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:28
  But same idea. That's like the houses were too
• 1:07:30
  good to walk back then too. And then markets were even
• 1:07:32
  better, right? And the 75 would market make it
• 1:07:34
  so like, if someone's attacking the scouts and Archers, The
• 1:07:37
  Archers can't even shoot the villager that's building the
• 1:07:39
  market because it's 4 tiles away, Right.
• 1:07:41
  So. So I understand your point for
• 1:07:43
  sure. All right, It's an interesting
• 1:07:45
  idea. Yeah, they have to try it out
• 1:07:47
  and see. All right, we're nearing the end
• 1:07:51
  of my list of questions, but just briefly I would like to
• 1:07:55
  talk about the role of Hunt Wars in tournaments.
• 1:07:58
  You already mentioned that you also had to play Hunt Wars in
• 1:08:02
  tournaments. From what I've seen some
• 1:08:05
  tournaments, especially in the 2000 to 2010 years, they usually
• 1:08:10
  had Hunt Wars included in them, most often as either the 1st or
• 1:08:15
  the last game, sometimes even both.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah. I read that from today's
• 1:08:20
  perspective. I read that as the Hun wars were
• 1:08:24
  the ultimate test of skill. That's why they put it in those
• 1:08:30
  prominent positions. Is that true?
• 1:08:31
  Did you regard Hun Wars as the the way to determine the players
• 1:08:35
  skill level or was there a different reason for that?
• 1:08:38
  Well, I'm going to say disproportionately, yes.
• 1:08:40
  I didn't say if you and maybe not even my opinion, but the
• 1:08:43
  opinion of the fans of people that were just pleasurably
• 1:08:46
  watching. Most of them were playing hunt
• 1:08:48
  wars, most of them loved to watch hunt wars.
• 1:08:50
  Some of them would only watch hunt wars.
• 1:08:52
  And also they'd you know, I'd say even if you're a really good
• 1:08:56
  player, if you were a player that dodged hunt wars, people be
• 1:08:59
  like, I don't know if that fight is as good as they, you know,
• 1:09:01
  the results seem to show cause 'cause like they can't handle
• 1:09:05
  being open, no walls, fighting non-stop, right?
• 1:09:08
  Like they can only do islands or they can only do arena, right?
• 1:09:12
  So it used to be a perception back then.
• 1:09:15
  So I do think it's if, if you were to say, hey, if people were
• 1:09:19
  judging on average, like what's the most entertaining and what
• 1:09:22
  is the most skillful, I'd say that yeah, people did consider
• 1:09:25
  Hunt Wars in that in both those discussions.
• 1:09:28
  Chris, did we forget anything important in our conversation
• 1:09:32
  about the Hunt Wars? Is there anything you would like
• 1:09:34
  to add or a story to tell? Oh, you know, you've taken me
• 1:09:38
  back through time travel here. So yeah, I'll tell you.
• 1:09:41
  I'll tell you a quick 1. So I went to World Summer Games
• 1:09:44
  in 2001 and there's a player there, very famous player and a
• 1:09:47
  very brilliant player named War Grunt.
• 1:09:50
  A lot of people know him as Grunt and you know, he won the
• 1:09:54
  Microsoft $50,000 tournament and he was a very strategic person.
• 1:09:57
  And I played two games with him in that, in that time frame
• 1:10:00
  there one of them in the tournament, one of them outside
• 1:10:02
  the tournament. And in the game outside the
• 1:10:05
  tournament, I did a strategy on him that worked quite well where
• 1:10:11
  I hit my stable and he went Skurm spear and he came to my
• 1:10:17
  base with those Skurm Spears and, and he only had three
• 1:10:20
  Spearman and I had like 8 scouts with bloodlines and the 10 or 12
• 1:10:24
  skirmishers all got mopped up. And you know, he resigned there.
• 1:10:29
  And then I'll tell you that I remember thinking, oh, I'm going
• 1:10:31
  to, I'm going to beat him, get in the tournament when I, when I
• 1:10:33
  meet him there. And what I found out was he
• 1:10:36
  actually, I think he never told me this, but I'm pretty sure he
• 1:10:39
  threw that game intentionally. No way.
• 1:10:42
  I think so. You know, 'cause like.
• 1:10:45
  Mind game before the tournament. I think so, 'cause like he, you
• 1:10:49
  know, like I was like, that was an easy game, you know, and
• 1:10:51
  like, and maybe he's not as good as I thought he was And, and I
• 1:10:53
  played him in the tournament and man, I got my butt kicked.
• 1:10:58
  So, so you know what, like it tells you one thing is sometimes
• 1:11:02
  if you're playing at a high level, especially, you know,
• 1:11:04
  you're kind of a friend, kind of a not you, you know, you're,
• 1:11:07
  you're practicing, you're playing for fun.
• 1:11:09
  And sometimes, yeah, I think he taught me there even is
• 1:11:13
  sometimes it's good to show weakness as a strength and it's
• 1:11:16
  sometimes good to show strength as a weakness.
• 1:11:19
  And that was something that that idea stuck with me through my
• 1:11:24
  Age of Empire's career and helped helped me do a lot of
• 1:11:26
  things. So I just wanted to give a shout
• 1:11:28
  out to him for for putting that idea in my head back then.
• 1:11:32
  Chris, that's a great way to end this conversation.
• 1:11:35
  Thank you so much for taking your time.
• 1:11:38
  Thank you so much for telling and sharing all your knowledge
• 1:11:41
  with us. I think this was very beneficial
• 1:11:43
  both for my research and for everyone basically who are
• 1:11:47
  interested in how this game came to be the game that it is today.
• 1:11:50
  Because I think con wars were definitely a key.
• 1:11:54
  Well, it's not a momentum because it was a 15 year long
• 1:11:57
  momentum, but it was a key era of the game.
• 1:12:01
  Again, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 1:12:03
  And yeah, I hope to speak to you again someday if I have a
• 1:12:08
  different topic that you can show your knowledge in.
• 1:12:11
  Sounds good. No thanks for having me
• 1:12:12
  Christian. It's been a been a pleasure, a
• 1:12:14
  lot of fun and you've made me feel like they traveled back in
• 1:12:17
  time here a bit. So hopefully we'll see you here
• 1:12:20
  or on the battlefield. Yeah.
• 1:12:22
  Thank you A. Pleasure.