Latest / Start the game already! / [ENG] Magazine Ep. #10 March 2026

Transcript

[ENG] Magazine Ep. #10 March 2026 · Start the game already!

• 0:11
  Welcome back to the Age of Empires Magazine.
• 0:15
  Joining me is my Co host Daniela.
• 0:17
  Hello. Hello, Chris.
• 0:19
  And I am your host, Chris. Thanks.
• 0:22
  Actually, I shouldn't have said that.
• 0:23
  You already introduced me. Damn it.
• 0:26
  No, it's fine. I am Daniela.
• 0:28
  I am so energized. I am pumped.
• 0:32
  I have been working for 12 hours.
• 0:34
  I've done, I've conducted like 15 oral exams today.
• 0:38
  I think my students hate me by now and I will do this for three
• 0:41
  days in a row now, but none of that matters.
• 0:45
  I'm actually, you know, I am sitting here in a full 3 piece
• 0:50
  suit because I just came here from work.
• 0:55
  But I was so excited to talk to you.
• 0:56
  I want to talk about Age of Empires 2.
• 0:58
  I want to do the podcast. I want to finish work and then
• 1:01
  on Sunday I am going to board a plane and fly to Japan for three
• 1:05
  weeks. Tigers.
• 1:07
  I expect a lot of pictures. Yeah, I'm, well, I usually don't
• 1:12
  post them on Discord. You can follow my Instagram.
• 1:14
  I'm going to send that to you later and you can see it on
• 1:17
  Instagram. That's that's where I post my my
• 1:20
  private stuff. Nice.
• 1:23
  Yeah, so I'm excited. There's so much to talk about,
• 1:28
  so let's talk about the program. I'm just going to talk about the
• 1:33
  topics we will be covering in this episode.
• 1:35
  So first of all, we'll talk about T-90, Titans League, and
• 1:39
  whatever's been happening the past few weeks.
• 1:42
  Then there's of course the new DLC with the three New South
• 1:46
  American civilizations and the patch that was released
• 1:49
  alongside it with some balance changes and the major naval
• 1:53
  rework. And in other news, Viper and Dat
• 1:56
  have found a new team and joined Onimaru E Sports.
• 2:00
  So dear listeners, if you haven't already, make sure to
• 2:03
  give this podcast a follow on Spotify or wherever you're
• 2:06
  listening to it. And don't forget to check out
• 2:08
  all the other episodes that are coming to the feed and are
• 2:11
  already in the feed. Danila, let's get started.
• 2:16
  Let's go. I'm hyped as well.
• 2:18
  I think this is going to be a good episode.
• 2:21
  A lot, a lot of things happen lately and can't wait to go into
• 2:26
  the details with you. News so teen ID Titans league
• 2:32
  has always been a very popular tournament, but I get the
• 2:35
  feeling this season is even increasing its popularity.
• 2:40
  I got to admit Daniela, I haven't seen too many of these
• 2:43
  games, mostly because I've been watching grubby play the ladder,
• 2:50
  but I've been really enjoying his his path.
• 2:53
  To be honest, I don't know how much you've seen.
• 2:55
  I've seen you in his. Chat around, I've seen a lot of
• 2:58
  like I I love seeing people discovering the game and
• 3:02
  especially when they're skilled and experienced in other video
• 3:06
  games. I've been experienced something
• 3:10
  similar watching CDN the 3rd going into details about AOI.
• 3:15
  Of course he's not a pro in other game, but he's pretty much
• 3:20
  experienced with other games. But I don't know, it's just it's
• 3:24
  just fun and Robbie streams were really entertaining lately and
• 3:29
  he's doing really well. He's almost my ELO.
• 3:32
  It's scary how fast he's climbing.
• 3:36
  He's also self picking so it's just half as impressive as it
• 3:40
  could have been. But, and he's like, it's
• 3:44
  surprising to me how far he's come just by committing to what
• 3:48
  little he knows about the game and by being mechanically very
• 3:52
  sound. And I'm the same ELO basically.
• 3:56
  And it's surprising me a lot. I'm, I don't know if I'm, if I'm
• 4:00
  trying to see whether he's just lucky and I'm kind of hoping
• 4:06
  that he will fall back to 1300 quickly so I don't feel so bad
• 4:10
  about myself or whether he's just so talented and I, I, I
• 4:13
  guess I have to applaud him for it.
• 4:15
  I I think he, well, first of all, it's really important to
• 4:19
  not beat ourselves up watching him play because he is an RTS
• 4:23
  pro. Like, OK, it's not, it's not
• 4:29
  AOI, but I've seen the homie migrating his manganese.
• 4:35
  No, I like, I'm not migrating my manganese like that.
• 4:41
  Yeah, it's very important to keep that in mind.
• 4:44
  Otherwise it can become very depressing watching him really
• 4:47
  quick. Props to him for being able to
• 4:51
  go into such a deep understanding of how the macro
• 4:55
  aspect works as well. Like, OK, he he has that in, in
• 5:00
  Warcraft as well, but well, I, I'm, yeah, I, I can't talk too
• 5:07
  much about Warcraft because I know 0 details about the game.
• 5:11
  I imagine it's just that simply the same.
• 5:14
  So yeah, like props, props to him.
• 5:17
  He's been doing an awesome job. He's been climbing fast.
• 5:20
  He the I, I feel like his only barrier right now is that he's
• 5:25
  playing for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I know he has been doing
• 5:29
  this with Viper a couple of years back, but there's 53 sibs
• 5:34
  at the moment. To grab the game and just climb
• 5:38
  in a couple of weeks at 1600 is absolutely insane.
• 5:41
  Like that's the only thing he's missing right now to climb even
• 5:45
  faster, even higher tag tree knowledge and sieve knowledge
• 5:51
  and match ups. And he a lot of the times he has
• 5:54
  no idea what the other sieve is good for.
• 5:56
  Or like he sees a unit and he's like, oh, what is that?
• 6:00
  Yeah, I love the fact that he just enjoys show tell warriors.
• 6:04
  He loves his Ethiopians, Malay and Marfucci.
• 6:07
  Like that's top three? Series.
• 6:11
  He's got such an how do I put this in the right way?
• 6:15
  I think he's just kind of innocent in his approach to H of
• 6:19
  M points and I really enjoy that.
• 6:22
  OK, we're deviating from Teen 90 Titans League.
• 6:24
  I just saw you messaging me about the Dota 2 collaboration,
• 6:31
  so I put that as a separate topic at the end of the new
• 6:35
  section so we can talk more about Grubby and his journey
• 6:37
  later on. OK, perfect.
• 6:39
  So back to Teen 90 Titans League.
• 6:41
  This is all my fault. I, as I told you, I'm like super
• 6:44
  excited right now for whatever reason.
• 6:47
  I have my Coke, vanilla here, I've got a Belgian beer here.
• 6:51
  This is going to be fun. Silver League.
• 6:54
  We'll start with Silver League and then move on through the
• 6:57
  different leagues. That makes it much easier.
• 6:59
  So in Silver League, the winners of the group stage are Neos, Say
• 7:03
  My Name are Cosmonaut, and Stark.
• 7:07
  Playoffs are almost coming to end and end as well.
• 7:10
  Blue has won four to one against Ozone and Combito won four to
• 7:14
  two against Antagonist. Both of them will join the
• 7:17
  winners of the group stage in the next season's Gold League.
• 7:20
  And and there's two more play offs being played.
• 7:24
  I think today, Wokel, I don't know how to pronounce that name.
• 7:29
  I don't. Know ELO it's who's the player I
• 7:32
  believe. That is, who's the L?
• 7:35
  Oh, you're so. Stupid wacko.
• 7:38
  That's exactly how I've pronounced when I started to
• 7:42
  stream. I I didn't know who he is.
• 7:44
  I don't know if he's like I, I was like, I didn't know anything
• 7:48
  about the pro player scenes. I I just started to stream and
• 7:52
  he followed me on twitch and I said something similar wacko.
• 7:57
  Thank you for the follow. And like my child was dying and
• 7:59
  I'm like wait, what did I say? You're so nice to meet.
• 8:04
  You're actually just saying that to make me feel better.
• 8:06
  No unfortunate there. I think there's even a clip
• 8:08
  somewhere if I haven't deleted yet.
• 8:13
  So who CL is playing against Dennis, that's to be played.
• 8:16
  And right now, as we're recording, Bad Qual is playing
• 8:20
  against Gabby and last I checked, Gabby was leading 2:00
• 8:24
  to 1:00. Oh, I didn't say that before,
• 8:27
  but we are going to be spoiling pretty much everything we want
• 8:32
  up until March 3rd. For sure.
• 8:34
  Oh, never mind, move on. What?
• 8:39
  Nothing. Move on.
• 8:41
  No, no, tell me what happened. No, I said for sure.
• 8:46
  OK, you you've got to explain this now.
• 8:47
  OK, well I I'll when we get there.
• 8:50
  OK, finish your. No, I'm finished.
• 8:53
  Well, Next up is talking about Silver League.
• 8:55
  I'm I'm going to say I'm going to start by saying that I have
• 8:59
  not seen a single game except for the third game from Gabi
• 9:05
  versus Bad Koala just now from the Silver League.
• 9:08
  So if you have any interesting stories or good games to
• 9:11
  recommend, please go ahead. Yes.
• 9:13
  Well, I'll, I'll be starting by saying that I agree with you
• 9:18
  when you're saying that he, it has been a very popular
• 9:21
  tournament. It's increasing its popularity.
• 9:23
  I think that was even one of the purposes behind expanding to
• 9:29
  Bronze League and making such a such a broad tournament
• 9:34
  including so many players. There's $100,000 prize pool
• 9:40
  distributed throughout the all the leagues and everything.
• 9:46
  Maybe, maybe it was the fact that it came right after Red
• 9:51
  Bull that can it diminish my enthusiasm a tiny bit.
• 9:58
  And it has nothing to do with the event itself.
• 10:00
  It it's just a personal problem. I don't know.
• 10:03
  I felt a bit mellow. I don't know why I, I, I felt a
• 10:07
  bit out of it during February, a bit burnt out.
• 10:12
  I wasn't able to follow the the games very closely as I did with
• 10:19
  previous seasons. And that also came with some
• 10:23
  problems with my my software capture is crashing a lot.
• 10:26
  So I I was quite upset. I was saving for a new GPU.
• 10:32
  I got a new GPU then it crashed even harder.
• 10:34
  So I was like, Oh my God, it was just a a mess during the last
• 10:39
  month. But the games that I expected a
• 10:44
  couple of them were were gabbies.
• 10:47
  Now you, you talked about her. A couple of them were the
• 10:52
  winners of the of the group stages like Neos.
• 10:56
  Neos, I, I got to tell you, absolutely deserved his spot
• 11:00
  there. Neos has been performing quite
• 11:04
  well lately in tournaments and it shows.
• 11:07
  Neos is the up and coming young Frenchman, right?
• 11:11
  Yeah, correct. Blue as well and the fact that
• 11:17
  he won four to one versus Ozone. Ozone who has been in the scene
• 11:21
  for a while kind of makes you pay a closer attention to Blue.
• 11:27
  Blue is an up and Comer from Taiwan that in my opinion he has
• 11:32
  some very good tournament games as well.
• 11:37
  But yeah, other than that, I'm not really sure about the games
• 11:41
  that I would recommend. Like always, I I've expected a
• 11:45
  Gabby's games. Gabby's games were absolutely
• 11:48
  entertaining and props to Cosmonaut and and Julio.
• 11:52
  Honestly, I thought Gabby's going to be the favorite in
• 11:55
  Group C, but no, she was the 3rd and she's fighting as we speak
• 12:01
  for for a place in gold. I think she deserves it, but
• 12:05
  just the fact that it was so competitive tells you, tells you
• 12:08
  something about these players preparation and you know they're
• 12:10
  hyped about being given a chance to participate in such a
• 12:16
  competitive setting. Well, you've seen Gabby's games,
• 12:22
  you've said, and Gabby is quite famous in our scene.
• 12:27
  I would say for somebody who's not actually competing in St.
• 12:31
  tournaments usually because she is so aggressive.
• 12:36
  Is that something that viewers could experience in the in the
• 12:39
  Silver League as well? Did she also play aggressive in
• 12:42
  these kind of settings? Oh, yes, yes, you did.
• 12:46
  She did. He had.
• 12:48
  She had. Oh my God.
• 12:49
  Sorry. My cat is distracting.
• 12:52
  I don't know if you can hear him, but he's yelling for his
• 12:55
  life. I, I don't.
• 12:57
  I think he just wants attention. I'm so sorry.
• 13:03
  Don't worry about it. It's cats.
• 13:06
  Cats do whatever they want to do.
• 13:08
  She was very aggressive, yeah, with some of the games.
• 13:12
  You mean the cat or? The Gabby, yeah, I think she had
• 13:23
  the perfect setting, but I think she was also nervous or well, I,
• 13:29
  I'm not sure watching her games, that's how I felt like she's a
• 13:34
  bit unsure. She she's nervous, she's
• 13:38
  pressured. Maybe she had a lot of hype,
• 13:41
  hype lately built around her. Like Hera was promoting her
• 13:46
  games, the 90 was promoting her games and like there was a lot
• 13:51
  of hype around her aggressive play style and how how she
• 13:55
  plays. And of course, everyone is super
• 13:58
  happy to to see her performance. So I I think all of that
• 14:04
  pressure might have waited a bit on her shoulders.
• 14:07
  Well, that's understandable if suddenly all eyes are on you and
• 14:12
  you have a distinctive playstyle that's quite different from
• 14:14
  other people's. Because let's face it, Age of
• 14:17
  Empires 2 is usually more about defensive gameplay, and the more
• 14:21
  successful players are usually very good at their defence, and
• 14:25
  aggression is something they just do from time to time.
• 14:28
  And if aggression is your thing, your identity, then I think
• 14:33
  you've got all the more pressure on you to promote that
• 14:35
  playstyle, be true to yourself and still get the results in.
• 14:40
  So that must be really rough for her of.
• 14:42
  Course, yeah. OK, so let's close the chapter
• 14:46
  of Silver League. Let's move on to the Gold
• 14:49
  League. Gold League has already
• 14:51
  concluded and we now know who's been promoted and relegated.
• 14:55
  So winners of the group stages are Jordan Porch, Prisma and
• 15:00
  Classic Pro and Sora Kumar. Dowd Da GAO and Stone Please
• 15:05
  have won their playoffs. These are 8 players who are
• 15:07
  promoted to Platinum League next season.
• 15:10
  On the other side, Miguel Overtaken Sobec Fire, Uzi,
• 15:15
  Ganji, Daniel and Doodleju have been relegated to the Silver
• 15:21
  League for the next season. And I think I would like to
• 15:25
  start by a set that I have actually seen and that was the
• 15:29
  final yesterday between Doubt and V Lesser.
• 15:31
  That was one of the most entertaining sets I have seen in
• 15:36
  recent months. That's, that's really nice.
• 15:40
  I actually missed it again because I stopped casting
• 15:44
  because of the crashes I experienced and I also am not
• 15:48
  feeling very well these last couple of days.
• 15:50
  I think I'm catching a cold so. Oh.
• 15:54
  If you were wondering why I I was about to bring this up
• 15:57
  earlier when you said you're super energetic, I actually feel
• 16:00
  a bit low energy. No.
• 16:02
  I'm with you. Have your Belgian beer.
• 16:05
  I have my tea. Nice.
• 16:09
  So I completely missed that set. I did see Wide Sorakuma and I
• 16:17
  think that's about it, but from the group stages I actually saw
• 16:21
  a whole lot more games and casted more as well.
• 16:24
  OK, Then maybe we'll start with the group stage then, because
• 16:27
  I've missed most of that and I can't really remember anything
• 16:31
  because like chronologically, that's first.
• 16:34
  I do remember that Jordan was having a 5-O performance and
• 16:38
  really clapping pretty much everyone.
• 16:41
  I think he lost one game in the entire group stage, one single
• 16:44
  game. So that was remarkable.
• 16:46
  And Prisma, everybody talked about Prisma being super strong.
• 16:50
  Yeah, I think what it's really important to keep in mind about
• 16:54
  Gold League, and none just necessarily about Gold League.
• 16:57
  I feel like throughout the leagues this was the case as
• 16:59
  well. You see, you're looking at the
• 17:01
  groups. I have them in front of me right
• 17:03
  now, and I'm looking group AI. See, I'm only talking about the
• 17:07
  people that are directly relegated to Platinum, for
• 17:10
  instance #1 in their group. So you have Prisma and Classic
• 17:15
  Pro both at 10 games, 110 points in their groups and then you
• 17:21
  have in Group B Kapoch with 12 points and in Group C Jordan
• 17:25
  with 14 points. It kind of gives you an idea
• 17:29
  about the level of competitiveness in their groups
• 17:33
  as well, because it feels like Group A and Group D were a bit
• 17:40
  more balanced in terms of level the their skill level.
• 17:46
  If the the players that goes through has only ten wins and
• 17:51
  he's already number one with ten wins.
• 17:56
  Yeah, they're they're way more close to each other.
• 17:58
  You see, you go to 10108764 points in Group A and then in
• 18:04
  Group B you have 12/12/11 and then you jump to six and then to
• 18:08
  three and then to 1. Like, there's feels like it
• 18:12
  feels to me that there's bigger skill gaps in Group B My point
• 18:18
  here being that in the playoffs, you had some someone from, for
• 18:23
  instance, wide Sorakumar wide finished second in Group A with
• 18:28
  10 points. Sorakumar finished third in his
• 18:32
  group, but he already had more points, so he he had won more
• 18:38
  games. Yeah.
• 18:39
  And look at that. The result was 4 to 0.
• 18:43
  It's true what you're saying, maybe the groups weren't as
• 18:48
  balanced, but I think that's just due to how the groups come
• 18:52
  together because you are. Some of these people are
• 18:56
  relegated from Platinum League from the season before and some
• 18:59
  of them are actually promoted from Silver League from the from
• 19:02
  the league before. So you basically got platinum
• 19:06
  and silver plays in one group if you compare it to the last
• 19:11
  season and that kind of. And if you get unlucky and you
• 19:14
  get into a group with Jordan, for example, who I believe
• 19:17
  Jordan had special circumstances because he was one of the
• 19:21
  players who had to get into like he get had to get selected for a
• 19:25
  league because he wasn't participating in previous TTL.
• 19:29
  And he won those selections and got into the gold league.
• 19:32
  But I think many people would argue that Jordan, as long as
• 19:36
  he's playing kind of regularly, he should always be a platinum
• 19:39
  player. So it makes sense that he's
• 19:41
  winning his group. Yeah, I get what you're saying.
• 19:45
  It does make sense for him to win his group.
• 19:47
  But yeah, definitely, definitely surprising to see him go 14 to
• 19:54
  one in terms of games lost and won and lost, 'cause it's not
• 20:00
  like he has. He had all the up and comers in
• 20:02
  his group. In his group.
• 20:03
  He had Dugao, he had Mar, Gugu, Kingstone, Gangi, maybe I would
• 20:09
  call Uzi maybe an upper Comer, but that's it.
• 20:12
  Like these are all high caliber players that could definitely
• 20:19
  challenge Jordan. It just goes to show that Jordan
• 20:22
  came prepared. Yeah, for sure.
• 20:25
  There we go. OK, so I'm going to give context
• 20:31
  now because they're going to say this whenever you say for sure.
• 20:34
  So there's this funny little, it's not really a meme, but it's
• 20:38
  just something that people have noticed when you were Co casting
• 20:41
  with T-90. And I, I'm going to use this as
• 20:44
  a segue of saying that Daniela, you did a very good job when you
• 20:48
  were Co casting with T-90. And isn't it just awesome that
• 20:52
  you're casting with the greatest castle that we have in the
• 20:54
  scene? I think for sure you should be
• 20:56
  proud of that. But this time you did it on
• 21:01
  purpose. So The funny thing is that you
• 21:06
  you, it seems like this is your catch phrase.
• 21:08
  You say for sure a lot. You know what I think it started
• 21:12
  from? I think it started from me
• 21:14
  saying surely a lot, Surely, surely.
• 21:17
  Is that? Is that a word?
• 21:19
  It, it surely is a word, but I, I think it's a, it's a meme from
• 21:24
  that movie Airplane. Like don't call me Shirley.
• 21:30
  And I think at some point Neely used to meme a lot of around it
• 21:35
  as well. But there's just this BTTV mode
• 21:41
  that's called Shirley. So a lot of people are using it.
• 21:46
  And I used to say that a lot on my stream.
• 21:49
  But no, to me it feels like when I'm casting something and, and
• 21:54
  I'm serious, I if I'm casting it on my tongue, I can just meme
• 21:57
  with chat. I can say shortly all day long,
• 22:00
  but I'm not going to say shortly in 2090.
• 22:03
  So then I'm just saying for sure.
• 22:06
  Then I ended saying for sure a lot.
• 22:09
  It was really funny and now I'm self-conscious about it.
• 22:12
  So now every time I'm saying saying it, I'm, yeah, there's
• 22:19
  like a teeny tiny light that it slid into my brain.
• 22:23
  I was like, no, you did it again.
• 22:25
  And then my brain freezes. I don't know what to do.
• 22:30
  Well, I think that'll change with more experience and casting
• 22:33
  and the more you talk about this.
• 22:36
  But you know, I think it's kind of mean because T 90s got it.
• 22:41
  I mean, he's privileged because he's US American.
• 22:44
  It's his native language. Everybody else has to grow
• 22:48
  accustomed to English being the main language of the world.
• 22:51
  So we all speak English. I am myself, am not a native
• 22:54
  speaker at all. So for us it's much harder and
• 22:57
  our vocabulary is a lot more limited, I would say.
• 23:02
  Of course, of course, of course. No, it's, you know, it's on us
• 23:07
  to improve our recoveries and everything.
• 23:10
  But like, I think this can happen like you, you can have a,
• 23:13
  a, a verbal take even if you're a native speaking like I, I
• 23:19
  think people are really mean to him as well about him saying
• 23:23
  crazy a lot. Well, he does say crazy a lot.
• 23:28
  Yeah, just like I, I don't think we can blame it on that.
• 23:30
  But like, I mean, I, I don't think it's the end of the world.
• 23:34
  It's just something that you know if you.
• 23:38
  It's one of those things that if you notice it, then you'll
• 23:41
  notice it every single time when it happens.
• 23:44
  Yeah, I miss the times when Chad made fun, when T-90 said
• 23:53
  efficient, when he was talking about fishing ships.
• 23:57
  That was, that is such a long time ago, but back then it felt
• 24:02
  funny, and now it's just a lame old joke that is worn off.
• 24:06
  Yeah. Yeah yeah, Neymar better do it
• 24:09
  than twitch chat over using a joke.
• 24:15
  But now that you brought that, that Co cast up, first of all,
• 24:18
  thank you. Second, that set was really
• 24:22
  entertaining. Like I, I don't know, I, I was
• 24:25
  privileged with having the chance to, to cocast some of the
• 24:28
  greatest sets when whenever I cast it with bigger casters,
• 24:36
  every single game had an impact in the fate of not only those
• 24:42
  two people that were playing Casa and Daniel, but also Ters,
• 24:49
  for instance, or like other people from that group.
• 24:52
  And basically Daniel needed three games to win.
• 25:01
  I think if he to win to what to stay in gold for next season.
• 25:07
  I think if he won, he would actually get into the playoffs.
• 25:11
  Or or to the playoffs, yeah, but if he loses, he's relegated,
• 25:16
  yes. So he needed.
• 25:17
  And and he wouldn't. He would only need to lose a
• 25:20
  single game out of the play. All three, not the, not the
• 25:23
  entire set. So one single loss was enough
• 25:26
  for him to get relegated. He he needed a three O and he
• 25:30
  opened the game super the set with 10 continue with two zero.
• 25:35
  He was super confident he was playing at some of the highest
• 25:38
  level I've seen him play. And then he choked in the last
• 25:42
  game. And again, props to Kasva.
• 25:44
  Like I said on T-90's channel as well, in my opinion, Kasva
• 25:48
  deserved not only that win, but Kasva deserved a chance to
• 25:52
  qualify to Platinum. Turns out he didn't get it.
• 25:59
  Dugout won the playoffs, but I don't know it it it was just his
• 26:04
  chance. Like I wanted him to get it
• 26:05
  because that man has been grinding like crazy for, I don't
• 26:09
  know, two months. He was the same with Red Bull.
• 26:12
  Let's not forget that he has. He had already hundreds of games
• 26:18
  played in only two or three days.
• 26:21
  Oh, you mean the ladder qualifier?
• 26:23
  Yeah, yeah, he was grinding like crazy for Red Bull.
• 26:25
  He was grinding for for TTL as well.
• 26:29
  He was practicing a lot. Every time I would TuneIn into
• 26:32
  Hera stream when Hera was streaming in the early days was
• 26:36
  just practice versus Kazwa on the ladder as well.
• 26:39
  It it showed, you know, his preparation and props to him for
• 26:45
  being able to kind of compose himself.
• 26:48
  Be patient, not not not tilt, because I would have lost my
• 26:51
  mind if I know my faith depends on that.
• 26:55
  I'm already down 02 in a best of three.
• 27:00
  But I guess I don't know. I guess there's still the hope
• 27:02
  that you know that you need to take one single game.
• 27:08
  I guess maybe that pushed his his.
• 27:13
  I don't know. Why push him to the limit?
• 27:17
  Yeah, I think I want to add to that and say that I've saw, I've
• 27:22
  seen that set, but the only reason was because you were
• 27:26
  actually Co casting it. And that's how I like was got my
• 27:31
  attention to it. And when I saw that you were Co
• 27:34
  casting with T-90, I felt like, oh, I got to see this.
• 27:37
  But Daniel versus Kozma was those are two players that I do
• 27:44
  not follow at all. I have no connection to them
• 27:48
  whatsoever emotionally or like their fate in these leagues is
• 27:52
  kind of I'm indifferent to them. OK, so Casper can he can be
• 27:58
  promoted or he can be relegated. Same with Daniel, I don't really
• 28:02
  care. So I was at at first, I was very
• 28:04
  disappointed in, OK, this is the set you're going to cast with
• 28:07
  T-19. Wish it was something else.
• 28:10
  So I was watching it and you 2 did such a good job about in
• 28:17
  explaining the storyline of the group because I didn't know the
• 28:20
  whole situation in the group at all, I didn't follow this.
• 28:23
  So the way you guys explained UNT 90 explained the situation
• 28:27
  and the way you brought it up from time to time and explained
• 28:30
  the consequences of each win or loss, that kind of got me hyped
• 28:35
  about something that I actually didn't care about.
• 28:38
  So I just want to give a huge compliment to both UNT 90 for
• 28:42
  making these kind of events interesting even when they are
• 28:47
  not personally interesting to me.
• 28:49
  I think you both succeeded very well there.
• 28:51
  It, it was funny because, well, first of all, I don't
• 28:56
  necessarily follow this these two players either.
• 28:59
  First of all, I think Daniel is really hard to follow because
• 29:04
  he's not really playing on letter too much.
• 29:06
  Maybe an occasional game from time to time and on an evening
• 29:11
  if I'm watching someone like Heart on it or NBL, I'll see
• 29:15
  them play against him. Then you know, actually Kasva, I
• 29:24
  think he's a full time AOE now again, Kasva is a bit chaotic to
• 29:29
  follow his old because now he's full time and now he quit AOI
• 29:33
  for a while. So I I can understand you 100%
• 29:38
  from that perspective. Daniel also was not as involved
• 29:43
  in the scene lately, so even more so.
• 29:46
  I guess I just really admired Kaspas grind in there on the Red
• 29:53
  Bull ladder in the ladder qualifiers.
• 29:55
  So that's why I, I felt like, you know what, this player
• 30:00
  deserves a better spot, a tiny bit of a spotlight, you know, he
• 30:07
  a chance to go to platinum, maybe even go if needed.
• 30:10
  Like I, I felt like he deserves that.
• 30:12
  So maybe that's why I was as invested.
• 30:15
  And it was interesting when I saw that T-90 asks me if I want
• 30:19
  to cocast without with him at that set because I know that
• 30:23
  T-90 is very good friends with Daniel.
• 30:27
  He's his practice partner. They're both from the US.
• 30:30
  They're they're close. Like I know T-90 is always
• 30:33
  rooting for Daniel. So I was like, OK, this is going
• 30:37
  to be funny because like, he's going to be rooting for Daniel
• 30:40
  and I'm going to be rooting for Kozma.
• 30:44
  Yeah, it was a. It was actually a really fun set
• 30:47
  to watch and to be honest, I'm sure most of the sets were, I
• 30:52
  just sadly missed them. But one set I did not miss
• 30:56
  Daniela was the final of the playoffs, Doubt versus V Lesser.
• 31:01
  So this was a best of seven. And as I already mentioned,
• 31:05
  Doubt was the one to be victorious in the set.
• 31:09
  But it was very, very entertaining and suspenseful.
• 31:14
  Doubt won four to three, so it went all the way to the 7th
• 31:17
  game. And there there were multiple
• 31:22
  storylines here that were interesting.
• 31:24
  And I think the first one is that the choice of the Co caster
• 31:28
  was once again very good. T-90 chose to Co cast with
• 31:31
  Jordan. And if dad's playing and Jordan
• 31:35
  is Co casting, you know there's going to be funny comments.
• 31:39
  And they were not greedy at all. They were, I think the
• 31:43
  commentary was based on E sports standards, probably not very
• 31:50
  good, but from an entertainment value, and I think that's way
• 31:54
  more important in these kind of sets.
• 31:56
  It was excellent. And so doubt was playing shaky.
• 32:03
  He was not playing very well. V Lesser also did a lot of
• 32:08
  mistakes. At times people were, or the
• 32:11
  casters were wondering whether V Lesser was actually aware of the
• 32:15
  fact that you could Garrison fishing chips.
• 32:18
  And you know, with some of these changes, I think if I remember
• 32:21
  correctly, Vilesa also instantly banned all three New South
• 32:25
  American civilizations just so he wouldn't have to deal with
• 32:28
  it. So both players were not playing
• 32:32
  their very best. In fact, they were probably
• 32:35
  playing very badly. But that just made the set even
• 32:39
  more entertaining because everything was possible.
• 32:43
  And then V Lesa actually went on and won the first two games.
• 32:47
  And this once again, it's kind of like what you did with T-90
• 32:52
  in the Daniel VS Casper set. They also picked up the
• 32:57
  storyline and went through, what if this happens?
• 33:00
  How do we feel about doubts, chances and you know, Jordan
• 33:03
  with his bantering without doubt and so on and so on.
• 33:06
  So they knew how to make this set that was from a gameplay
• 33:11
  perspective, actually not that good or not that high level, but
• 33:16
  very entertaining and in that way very good.
• 33:18
  They knew how to work with that as casters, especially T 90.
• 33:22
  So I, I didn't plan on watch the whole series.
• 33:26
  I actually planned on doing some late night work, but I had to
• 33:31
  set on my second monitor while I was writing some stuff for for
• 33:35
  my work. And at some point, I didn't even
• 33:37
  realize when it happened, but at some point I realized, oh, how
• 33:42
  did this happen? The game is on my first monitor
• 33:44
  and my document is on my second monitor.
• 33:47
  And I stopped working and I was just completely focused on the
• 33:50
  game. And that's because these games
• 33:52
  went like every game was somehow flawed and therefore more
• 34:00
  interesting. And if I had to choose one game
• 34:04
  that I would recommend for everyone to watch, it's stranded
• 34:08
  that that's the third game. And that's because Jordan
• 34:12
  started by saying he doesn't like the map.
• 34:15
  He think he thinks that's the most one-dimensional map that
• 34:19
  there that that's in the map pool of TTL.
• 34:22
  And he ended the set by saying, wow, this is the most fun map
• 34:28
  ever. And that just shows how how
• 34:32
  crazy, how chaotic that game was and how well executed it was.
• 34:38
  Well, I, I think Stranded was even voted one of the best maps
• 34:41
  by the community. I'm not sure if last year or the
• 34:44
  year prior to that, but yeah, I mean, absolutely.
• 34:49
  I feel like I I would have to go back and rewatch the set.
• 34:54
  This is one of the reasons why I told you before that gold games
• 34:58
  are some of my favorite because I'm not looking to watch
• 35:00
  professional. The time we have all the SER
• 35:03
  tournaments, we have the same top 10 competing from round of
• 35:07
  16 round of eight forward. I I can watch them anytime I
• 35:14
  want in any tournament. There are most of them are
• 35:17
  content created as well. So if I'm missing a tournament
• 35:20
  set, I'll be catching their playstyle and their shenanigans
• 35:23
  on the ladder. But this is this is where it's
• 35:27
  at. This is where it's at.
• 35:28
  And I I got to ask this question here.
• 35:32
  Is Vilesse making a comeback? Because I feel like we've been
• 35:37
  talking about Vilesse in every podcast in the last two months.
• 35:44
  And now again, like he had his for his set versus Mr. Yo, he
• 35:49
  almost won. Wasn't it Villasse in?
• 35:52
  Yes, I think so. Yeah, and now again he's pushing
• 35:55
  down to the to the last game I I got to ask the question, is he
• 36:00
  going to plan on making a huge comeback?
• 36:02
  Because when I joined the scene, Villasse was one of the top
• 36:05
  players. But I guess his real life took
• 36:10
  took over and his priorities changed.
• 36:12
  Maybe he stopped competing as much in tournaments and such,
• 36:16
  but I gotta say lately his performance is starting to to
• 36:20
  show. Well, it's hard to say because
• 36:22
  Villessa is not very public in what he does.
• 36:25
  He doesn't stream. I think in order for him to make
• 36:29
  a real comeback, I mean for him it's even harder than for most
• 36:34
  other people to make a real comeback because Be Lesser was
• 36:37
  considered top 8 for the longest time.
• 36:40
  Like for the first two to three years in DE he was top 8 and he
• 36:45
  was in every single St. tournament.
• 36:47
  And he was very often considered something of a dark horse with
• 36:52
  the potential to even snag one or two St. tournaments, even
• 36:56
  though he didn't. So for him to make a comeback,
• 36:59
  he would actually have to get back into the top 8.
• 37:01
  And for somebody to be in the top 8, just ask Lewis, you got
• 37:05
  to put some effort and time into it.
• 37:08
  And I'm I don't think somebody like the lesser who has other
• 37:12
  priorities, whatever they are, will be able to do that.
• 37:18
  And also, I mean, I got to mention Doubt said in the
• 37:22
  winners interview that he would actually he didn't really
• 37:26
  deserve to win and he felt like he played like a Silver league
• 37:31
  player and not a Platinum league player.
• 37:33
  So Villessa losing against a Doubt who himself thinks of this
• 37:39
  performance as being very bad is probably also kind of misleading
• 37:46
  when it comes to his his efforts and his results.
• 37:50
  Yeah, I can. I can understand that.
• 37:53
  But also, Can you imagine being Villessa and like knowing that
• 37:56
  you were one game away? I kind of, I kind of don't like
• 38:00
  these things being said into an interview, especially in winter
• 38:03
  interview. Like I understand if you
• 38:05
  haven't, if you didn't feel like you gave 100% of what you have,
• 38:10
  that's absolutely fine and understandable.
• 38:13
  But I feel like if you were such in a close set and you're saying
• 38:17
  that poor homie, the one that just lost the set is going to
• 38:20
  listen to the interview. I just love you.
• 38:22
  Like really man? It's it's, it's borderline
• 38:26
  disrespectful. It's true.
• 38:28
  That's what I thought when I heard the interview.
• 38:30
  And if we're at that topic, I'm like recently, I love doubts as
• 38:36
  much as everybody does, but I'm starting to get a little bit
• 38:40
  annoyed by his downer attitude. That guy needs some serious
• 38:48
  improvement in his mentality, I think.
• 38:52
  What do you mean by this? Well, I think doubt is.
• 38:57
  It's like it's very tangible that he is declining in his
• 39:01
  mentality in terms of aspiration and how he sees himself
• 39:06
  performing in tournaments and his chances.
• 39:09
  He's I hear him talking himself down more often than actually
• 39:14
  feeling hyped about his performances even if he wins and
• 39:17
  gets like promoted to to platinum league.
• 39:21
  I see what you mean, but in the same time I feel like, and I I
• 39:25
  will try to to bring this to our listener listeners as well.
• 39:32
  I also feel like the entire community feels that way against
• 39:38
  him. So not necessarily feels that
• 39:41
  way, but voices it out during a tournament game, during a show,
• 39:48
  measuring anything. It's just the chat bashing out
• 39:52
  or Viper or any other pro player.
• 39:55
  It's just, it's not just disrespectful.
• 39:58
  It it, it feels cringe to see first of all, someone just
• 40:04
  bashing a top player who you know that they could just wipe
• 40:09
  the floor and the windows with you at any time.
• 40:12
  But moving past that point it like.
• 40:16
  I understand we're getting emotionally attached to to these
• 40:20
  people, to their games, to whatever.
• 40:22
  Maybe they were your favorite players.
• 40:23
  Maybe now you don't like seeing them not performing properly.
• 40:29
  But, and I think actually doubt was one of the people that
• 40:33
  brought this up. Maybe on, I think he said that
• 40:39
  on his stream about showing up on a channel after your game has
• 40:43
  been casted and you perform poorly and seeing the entire
• 40:48
  chat just trashing you. It just leaves a very, a very
• 40:55
  weird taste, you know, So I don't know, maybe people are
• 40:59
  getting to him a bit as well with his comments.
• 41:03
  Like I, I can definitely relate to that.
• 41:06
  Like I pay way more attention to the negative comments and I
• 41:10
  think this is in the human nature than on the positive
• 41:13
  ones. Also, your theory is it's
• 41:17
  actually not doubt who's doubting himself so much, but he
• 41:21
  is seeing the doubt and integrating.
• 41:25
  That I I, I feel, I feel that way, yeah, I feel like.
• 41:28
  That's a fairpoint. I I used to, I used to listen
• 41:31
  his interviews with or like, I don't know, his collapse with
• 41:34
  Hera, his show matches, like when they were doing, you know,
• 41:40
  GL content or those podcasts and whatever.
• 41:44
  Like everyone was kind of bantering doubt everyone,
• 41:50
  everyone from the team, you mean.
• 41:51
  But he didn't seem to mind it because of course, like it's
• 41:54
  just banter between friends. But The thing is, I feel like if
• 41:59
  you promote that type of content and then you're, I don't know,
• 42:03
  casual, let's say Viper viewer or Hera viewer or GLA former GL
• 42:12
  podcast viewer, and you hear that type of banter feels like
• 42:19
  you want to be part of the team as well.
• 42:21
  You want a banter as well, like and if you allow that type of
• 42:26
  mentor, it's very easy to lose sight of the limit like.
• 42:34
  Overstepping is very easy to. Overstep.
• 42:36
  Exactly, and now anytime doubt is playing it is just like half
• 42:43
  of the chat either miming or bashing him that he's watched.
• 42:49
  It's the same now with with Viper.
• 42:51
  Felt like Viper's performance dropped a tiny bit lately.
• 42:54
  So again, it's just full on full on bashing Viper in any possible
• 43:03
  circumstance. And I do think that players are
• 43:06
  a tiny bit scared or influenced by by this kind of things
• 43:12
  because I was watching well, it's just an assumption of mine.
• 43:15
  I'm not sure if it's related to any of this or not but I was
• 43:19
  watching here a play the other day and he said something like I
• 43:23
  think I Hera has his fair amount of haters as well and anytime
• 43:28
  like he wins A tournament it's not OK because like he's just
• 43:34
  stomping everyone if he loses something.
• 43:37
  They're already kind of starting to say like oh Hera playing bad.
• 43:40
  Hera washed something like this. So now I think Hera said like if
• 43:45
  I would be to lose a tournament right now after he has like 15
• 43:50
  tournaments streak or something like this, people would just say
• 43:53
  like hero was never good actually it was just that.
• 43:58
  Is so such a stupid comment though, yeah.
• 44:01
  Yeah, yeah. So he he said that he's
• 44:04
  expecting people to say if he's going to just lose the next
• 44:07
  tournament, he's expecting people to be like hero was
• 44:10
  actually never good. So you see, they kind of do pay
• 44:14
  attention, of course, at the public's ear and they are
• 44:18
  influenced by, by the comments as well.
• 44:21
  So to wrap this up, my advice would be just don't take it too
• 44:26
  far. Think that there are people like
• 44:30
  us as well. They're, they have human
• 44:32
  emotions and they, they're affected by negativity just like
• 44:38
  any one of us. So I don't know if you can go to
• 44:42
  sleep thinking I didn't offend anyone today.
• 44:47
  I I think that's already a win. Well, I just want to point out
• 44:52
  that you made an excellent point that I have not thought about
• 44:59
  before, but it makes so much sense to me.
• 45:01
  And that's going to change how I feel about a few things when you
• 45:07
  said that, like take the cast of T-90 and Jordan as an example.
• 45:12
  In this set, dart versus V lesser.
• 45:15
  So as I mentioned, their cast wasn't really good compared to E
• 45:19
  sports standards, but it was very entertaining and some of
• 45:22
  the entertainment came from making fun of doubt.
• 45:27
  Yeah, but. And and.
• 45:29
  They would as a. Viewer as yeah, I know, but just
• 45:34
  in reference to the point you made, I think maybe it's
• 45:40
  actually not a good thing. Like I'm changing my opinion on
• 45:46
  that cast right now because I was only experiencing it's
• 45:50
  experiencing it from a viewer's perspective and I thought ha ha,
• 45:53
  this is also funny. But you're right, by doing those
• 45:58
  kind of casts, they are sort of legalizing making fun of Doubt
• 46:05
  and Chad can pick up on that vibe and they will do so.
• 46:08
  And when Doubt watches that replay, he it's, he thinks it's,
• 46:14
  it's normal to be talked about like that and that that might be
• 46:18
  hurtful. Or even if it's not hurtful
• 46:21
  because he's very resilient, it's still having an impact on
• 46:26
  how he sees his own performance. So this is making things more
• 46:32
  complicated. Yeah, because that's the thing.
• 46:35
  This is the type of banter that that I would talk about.
• 46:38
  For instance, Jordan and T-90 would probably joke like that be
• 46:45
  like that without IRL at LAN event.
• 46:48
  Like it would all be, you know, inside jokes.
• 46:52
  And that would be fine. And that would be fine.
• 46:54
  Exactly. And again, why?
• 46:57
  Why I'm saying only half of the chat?
• 46:58
  Because there's also the other half of the chat was more than
• 47:02
  two brain cells and understands that these are just, you know,
• 47:06
  banters in in between them. Like a it's not that doesn't
• 47:11
  actually suck, you know, but our scene is getting bigger.
• 47:15
  It gets more attention. There's more audience, there's a
• 47:18
  bigger player base. The bigger the player base is
• 47:21
  the like, you know, the more people will join the scene that
• 47:25
  don't know this inside jokes. They they like like you're
• 47:30
  saying it's just people that will get the feeling that OK,
• 47:34
  this player is bad and those people, those two were trashing
• 47:38
  him and I'm saying trashing him. Of course, like I'm sure they
• 47:43
  were and they were, it was just banter, but that's the vibe that
• 47:46
  he could pick up on and he will continue to do so on his own,
• 47:51
  you know, without having the playing his game sense all
• 47:56
  together. But it doesn't matter because
• 47:59
  that's what he heard the casters talking about.
• 48:02
  And this brings me to to another point that I would like to make
• 48:06
  negative casts in general. Like I, I understand that as a
• 48:11
  caster, you're kind of like your job is to tell, to show the
• 48:18
  viewers what's happening and to, you know, try to create a bit of
• 48:22
  a storyline. Why are people going into those
• 48:26
  units? What units you're expecting to
• 48:29
  see? What would be the optimal game
• 48:34
  plan and things like this. Maybe that's why it's the best
• 48:37
  to have a colour commentator, the high level player with an
• 48:41
  analysis in that regard. But well, to be fair to 90 is
• 48:47
  high enough. Yeah, it's kind of a high level
• 48:51
  player. So he's high enough to
• 48:53
  understand and to be that as well.
• 48:56
  So he he is good in both of the world's.
• 49:00
  But anyway, I'm I'm thrilling a bit.
• 49:02
  My point is that it kind of sucks a bit to listen to someone
• 49:09
  just talking negatively about the game.
• 49:12
  It's always some players fault about something.
• 49:16
  It's never, you know, the other one's praise or the other one's
• 49:22
  credit for doing a good play. It's always just that wasn't a
• 49:28
  good play, it was a mistake from the other one.
• 49:30
  If that makes any sense. No it makes perfect sense and I
• 49:34
  have an example for it that I have been annoyed by ever since
• 49:39
  it came up and that is the Titanic meme in MEMS channel.
• 49:44
  Whenever he hits that button I get so upset that I usually turn
• 49:48
  off the stream. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can
• 49:50
  understand that. It's it's completely kills my
• 49:54
  mood when I'm watching these players because I'm trying to
• 49:57
  find, it's like you said, I'm trying to find the positives and
• 50:00
  the comeback mechanics and so on.
• 50:01
  And whenever he does that, I feel like, OK, the game is over.
• 50:04
  This is done, somebody messed up really bad, bad player.
• 50:07
  I hate that vibe. So I wish he would get rid of
• 50:10
  that. It it's also, in my opinion,
• 50:12
  very contradicting the way he's casting because he's usually all
• 50:16
  about, you know, fast-paced commenting and so on.
• 50:20
  And and that that also kills his own pace, I believe.
• 50:23
  So it's, it's worse in any way, in my opinion.
• 50:26
  It got to be a meme. And I don't know, I'm maybe I'm
• 50:29
  too old for memes. But yeah, I think that's a very
• 50:32
  good example for what you're saying.
• 50:33
  I I also think like there's different, we have a lot of
• 50:37
  casters nowadays and they all have different styles.
• 50:40
  So viewers that enjoy that type of stuff like OK, that they can,
• 50:45
  they can watch that there is variety, you know, so that
• 50:50
  that's important to have a for a viewer base.
• 50:54
  You don't, not everyone needs to, to watch the same caster or
• 50:57
  the same 2 casters or whatever. Like you can you, you can pick
• 51:03
  whoever you want. Personally, I'm, I'm trying as
• 51:08
  much as possible to not criticize too much because I, I
• 51:11
  am aware that in to some extent, I'm in no position to comment on
• 51:17
  that. But in the same time, I do
• 51:20
  compare with if it's things about strategies, if I've seen
• 51:27
  Hera or Viper or Leery or you're doing something that worked and
• 51:31
  it's clearly good and then I'm seeing someone that doesn't do
• 51:36
  that. I, I will point out that, OK, I
• 51:38
  think it would have been better to approach this in a different
• 51:42
  manner and explain my way of thinking.
• 51:45
  But then again, it's important for the viewers to also know
• 51:49
  that most of our comments are of course, from our own perspective
• 51:55
  as well and on our observations. And you know, of course,
• 51:58
  everyone is. Feel free to choose their
• 52:01
  casters and their perspectives. But.
• 52:05
  Yeah, it's a it's a hard thing to master.
• 52:08
  It's to balance that, to not be too negative or you can't be too
• 52:16
  positive either. You can't just like say like
• 52:17
  everything is perfect. They play perfect one, there's
• 52:21
  clear mistakes. Can all just be sunshines and
• 52:27
  rainbows either, but yeah. OK, yeah I I completely agree.
• 52:35
  And I'm no caster so I shouldn't have a say in this, but from a
• 52:39
  viewer's perspective I also agree that pointing out mistakes
• 52:43
  is important for me as a viewer to understand what the mistake
• 52:46
  is. But I usually enjoy it when the
• 52:49
  casters explain why it's a mistake.
• 52:52
  So it's, it's, it's, it's helping me understand what's
• 52:55
  happening in the game. Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:58
  And I'll, I'll just say this one more thing.
• 53:02
  One of my biggest supporters of the channels, one of the nicest
• 53:09
  persons in my chat right now is someone that actually didn't
• 53:13
  join my stream too long ago and actually joined during
• 53:16
  Thalasocracy tournament. And he he was there throughout
• 53:22
  my entire casting of the series and he stayed there subscribe
• 53:26
  with tier three straight up. And he said the reason why he
• 53:30
  chose to stay there and to support my channel was because I
• 53:36
  changed his mind about water. He said that he wanted to watch
• 53:40
  this tournament. He did.
• 53:41
  He doesn't like water, but he wanted to watch what the changes
• 53:45
  are. He wanted to watch this
• 53:46
  tournament. And he said every other stream
• 53:51
  that he had tried so far were just people complaining and
• 53:55
  criticizing water. And he just hated that
• 53:58
  tournament. I was like, OK, so I, I, I guess
• 54:01
  I won't pay any attention to this tournament because like I,
• 54:05
  everyone agrees with me. This, this sucks.
• 54:07
  And everyone was kind of negative about the whole thing.
• 54:15
  And then he found my, my channel and I, I was the complete
• 54:20
  opposite with the, I'm praising water too much sometimes.
• 54:23
  But yeah, he chose to stay. And, and that was one of the
• 54:29
  things that made me realize how bad can it be from a viewer's
• 54:34
  perspective to only listen to something being negative.
• 54:40
  So that was kind of a wake up call to me as well, what he
• 54:44
  said. Because like, it's obviously not
• 54:47
  fun to listen to something that sounds overly negative.
• 54:51
  Yeah. Well, first of all, I think
• 54:54
  that's the biggest compliment the cast can ever get.
• 54:57
  So congratulations to that. And then I kind of feel for the
• 55:03
  guy because there is something called the confirmation bias and
• 55:09
  the more people overwhelmingly think something is negative, the
• 55:13
  more people will just take that perspective.
• 55:17
  And I got to salute that guy as well because despite having that
• 55:22
  confirmation bias, he seems to have been open minded and saw
• 55:27
  through that and then changed his perspective.
• 55:29
  So I think this is a win, win situation for both of you.
• 55:32
  Yeah. For sure for.
• 55:35
  Sure. Well OK, I think we should close
• 55:38
  this chapter. I think I want to close it by
• 55:42
  giving a recommendation. Since you said you want to
• 55:45
  rewatch that match between or the set between Doubt and
• 55:48
  Villas, I think you should do that by keeping something in
• 55:53
  mind Doubt had said in the winners interview and that is
• 55:58
  that Doubt said that the whole set was always like heading
• 56:05
  towards the last game because V Lesser.
• 56:09
  It felt like V Lesser knew what Doubt was doing in every single
• 56:13
  game up until the very last one and it's and it seems like Doubt
• 56:17
  also knew that V Lesser had studied Doubt gameplay and
• 56:21
  therefore doubt made a very crucial decision in the last
• 56:26
  game that I'm not going to spoil and that gave him a very clear
• 56:30
  win. So I think that is something to
• 56:32
  keep in mind if you want to re watch that set and and have your
• 56:35
  own storyline despite knowing the result.
• 56:37
  OK. OK, sounds good.
• 56:39
  I'll give it a check. OK, then let's move to the
• 56:44
  Platinum League because Silver and Gold League is basically
• 56:48
  concluded and the Platinum League is now getting to that
• 56:51
  stage where it's getting more and more important.
• 56:53
  Each, each and every game is getting more and more important.
• 56:57
  Three out of the five rounds of the group stage have already
• 57:00
  been played and the standings are not necessarily what
• 57:03
  everyone expected. I believe we've got Group A with
• 57:07
  Leary at the top, Burrows, Tatto, MBL and Licks in midfield
• 57:11
  and Report in last place. We've got Group B, which is the
• 57:15
  absolute killer group. I think everyone agrees on that
• 57:17
  with Hera on top, Winchester, Hart, Yo and Chiskan in midfield
• 57:22
  and Lucho at the bottom of the group.
• 57:24
  Then Group C that's the only group with two players being
• 57:28
  three O at the top and Accm and Sebastian and they are followed
• 57:33
  by Lewis, Nekov and Frick and Andy and running at the 6th
• 57:37
  place. And finally, Group D see Sito at
• 57:40
  first place, Mihai, Vivi, Viper and Dragon Star in places 2:00
• 57:44
  to 5:00 and at last final at last arc at the end of the
• 57:50
  group. So first of all, how much have
• 57:53
  you seen of the Platinum League? I've seen maybe half of the
• 57:58
  games. Oh, that's a lot that.
• 58:00
  Would be maybe a bit of a stretch, but I've seen quite a
• 58:04
  lot, yeah. OK, so my first question is just
• 58:08
  by because I haven't seen that many games.
• 58:11
  I've seen the Viper games, not even all of them, but other than
• 58:16
  that not really anything. So just looking at the standings
• 58:21
  in the groups, I think both Viper and Yo look like they're
• 58:25
  underperforming. Is that just because their
• 58:28
  groups are the way they are, or are they actually
• 58:31
  underperforming? They I think they are a bit like
• 58:36
  I said, Viper felt that he started to underperform a bit
• 58:42
  lately. I'm not sure how much that's
• 58:46
  related to the things that he has ongoing in real life.
• 58:51
  Maybe maybe it's just a bad face.
• 58:55
  But yeah, I agree with you, definitely underperforming.
• 58:58
  I don't think their groups are, you know, the ultimate strongest
• 59:02
  either. It's not like they're in the
• 59:03
  group V that's. Well, yo is right.
• 59:07
  Yeah, but. Not Viper.
• 59:10
  Not Viper, yeah. I think Viper was expected to be
• 59:13
  clear number one in his group, maybe Sito in second place.
• 59:17
  Sito playing really well honestly.
• 59:20
  So is Mihai my homie. I was a bit surprised, but
• 59:25
  pleasantly surprised. OK.
• 59:28
  Does he have any secret or is he just well prepared?
• 59:31
  I think he has just been practicing, probably with his
• 59:34
  team, and it's important because Sito and Mihai are in the same
• 59:37
  team, so now they're the first two in the group.
• 59:42
  Oh, I I yeah, I forgot about that.
• 59:44
  That actually makes sense. Yeah, I think they're just
• 59:47
  practising a lot. Wow, it's so nice to see the
• 59:50
  practice pay off though. Yeah, but they they left MBL
• 59:53
  behind. MBL is the 4th in his group.
• 59:59
  Then again, MBL is very famous for not being, you know, too
• 1:00:03
  keen on practising for tournaments.
• 1:00:05
  True, true. So maybe it's not their fault.
• 1:00:08
  Yeah, but I mean, wouldn't you like to be scrolling up and I
• 1:00:14
  see $7500 for the first place? Well yeah, but you know, getting
• 1:00:23
  back to doubt, I see doubt regularly complaining about the
• 1:00:27
  fact that players are micro ING when playing against him.
• 1:00:31
  So looking at those numbers, I feel like wouldn't you like to
• 1:00:36
  also micro your units to get a better price for?
• 1:00:40
  So sometimes I'm not really sure how motivated these players
• 1:00:44
  actually are. Imagine playing a tournament map
• 1:00:49
  and the opponent starts migrating like Oh my God man
• 1:00:53
  really? What a try hard.
• 1:00:55
  What a try hard, yeah. OK, have you seen the NBL games
• 1:01:01
  though? Let me see who we played
• 1:01:04
  against. I don't remember because we
• 1:01:07
  haven't had we we actually had a a break now of platinum as well,
• 1:01:11
  while all the playoffs from and the last rounds from silver gold
• 1:01:14
  were happening. There's such a mush in in my
• 1:01:18
  head. I swear like it's just different
• 1:01:22
  sets. I don't think I've.
• 1:01:24
  No, I was just curious whether he was playing good or not.
• 1:01:27
  No, no Bars won the set against him.
• 1:01:30
  Go bars. Because he lost.
• 1:01:34
  He won three O against Ripard, which I guess is expected.
• 1:01:37
  He also lost three O against MBL which I don't think is as
• 1:01:41
  expected. He should snag a win there.
• 1:01:44
  And then he lost against Burrows 2 to one which sounds like a
• 1:01:48
  tight set. So coming up for him is Tato and
• 1:01:54
  and and Lyx. Lyx is famously known to be a
• 1:01:57
  very chaotic player which MBL thrives on, so he should have
• 1:02:01
  good chances there. And Tatto and MB Li have no idea
• 1:02:05
  how these two players match up against each other, but
• 1:02:08
  statistically I believe Tatto should have the upper hand
• 1:02:11
  against MB L. I I can't wait for MBL licks.
• 1:02:13
  I feel like that's going to be anger, I swear.
• 1:02:16
  That's going to be awesome. I'm going to watch that for
• 1:02:18
  sure. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 1:02:24
  I got buddy I, I, I swear I got to be really careful not to take
• 1:02:27
  that as my own tick now. Oh, no, please take it.
• 1:02:31
  I don't need it, no. No, no, no, no.
• 1:02:35
  Surely I won't. Sure, I did watch some games on
• 1:02:42
  Gravid. O'Hara versus Hart was a banger.
• 1:02:48
  Ah, Hera against Hart. Well, yeah, that screams like a
• 1:02:52
  final already, yeah. It was a three O for Hera but
• 1:02:57
  every single game felt like Hart had definitely a potential to
• 1:03:02
  win. Honestly first game was onslop
• 1:03:04
  and it was Hindustani versus Maya which in my opinion Hindu
• 1:03:07
  studies are hard counter to Maya.
• 1:03:09
  So even if Hart had early advantage to some point, he
• 1:03:14
  killed so many veils from Hera it didn't matter in the late
• 1:03:17
  stage of the game, he just died to Goonans.
• 1:03:21
  It's a tough Hindu Sania, definitely a good counter
• 1:03:23
  civilization, yeah. But again, it comes to the
• 1:03:27
  skills of drafting. By the way, how do you like the
• 1:03:33
  fact that they added more bands because of the new
• 1:03:36
  civilizations? I I'm assuming it's because of
• 1:03:38
  the new civilizations. Did they?
• 1:03:42
  I think, well, I, I think Tinani likes to play with a lot of
• 1:03:48
  bands. Thinking back, I, I, I think he
• 1:03:51
  really likes to play with a lot of bands.
• 1:03:53
  But I'm, I'm not sure I think that was intended from the, from
• 1:03:59
  the beginning, that was, that was the format.
• 1:04:02
  Now the fact that the players are batting the news, that's a
• 1:04:06
  different discussion that I'm not sure if we're going to bring
• 1:04:10
  now here or when we talk about the DLC.
• 1:04:14
  Well, I, I guess we could use this as a transition to let's
• 1:04:19
  just make sure we talked about everything we need to talk about
• 1:04:22
  in Platinum League because that is still going on.
• 1:04:25
  We will get another chance to talk about the Platinum League
• 1:04:27
  in the next episode. So we don't have to go into
• 1:04:30
  great detail, but if there's anything very important that you
• 1:04:33
  want to share with us about the Platinum League, go ahead.
• 1:04:36
  Not, not really. I mean, it's a bit tough to talk
• 1:04:42
  about a definitive outcome of the groups and we still have two
• 1:04:46
  groups around 4:00 and 5:00, two group stages, I mean two group
• 1:04:51
  rounds, whatever. And then we're going to have the
• 1:04:53
  the playoffs. That will be probably the the
• 1:04:56
  pure focus in the next two weekends, the next two weeks
• 1:05:00
  even. Yeah, basically that's it about
• 1:05:04
  the detail. We we mentioned silver and gold
• 1:05:06
  finalizing today. Actually gold is actually
• 1:05:10
  finalized and silver putting an end to to it today.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah, basically the outcome there for them, it's clear if
• 1:05:22
  they win their qualifying matches or their playoffs games,
• 1:05:27
  they advance to the to the higher league or stay in gold.
• 1:05:33
  Yeah, OK, here's how we do it. I'm going to ask you a question
• 1:05:39
  for each group. So will MBL survive in Platinum
• 1:05:46
  League in Group A? Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  OK, will yo survive in Group B? Yeah, OK.
• 1:05:56
  Well, what what are we saying with survivors staying in
• 1:05:58
  platinum for the next year? Yeah, I'm talking about will he
• 1:06:02
  relegate to to Gold league or will he stay in platinum?
• 1:06:06
  Them two will stay. OK, so Group C, I'm curious
• 1:06:12
  about what you think of Lewis. How far is Lewis going to get in
• 1:06:17
  the play offs if he's getting if he is he even getting to the
• 1:06:21
  play offs? I think he's getting to play
• 1:06:23
  offs one second because if he's getting to play offs third of
• 1:06:28
  Group C. 3rd of Group C is going against second of group BB which
• 1:06:37
  is probably going to be tattoos. Run the playoffs.
• 1:06:42
  Wait a second. Actually Tattoo or Barros?
• 1:06:44
  No, I think he has chances to go one more.
• 1:06:47
  I think he's getting to quarterfinals.
• 1:06:49
  What if he plays against NBL? He's just going to take his
• 1:06:53
  revenge. I was hoping you're going to say
• 1:06:57
  that. OK, at last let's let's finish
• 1:07:02
  up with Group D. How far is my boy Vivi going to
• 1:07:06
  get? He's on 3rd place now and I'm
• 1:07:09
  hoping he's making it to the playoffs.
• 1:07:11
  Oh, I thought you were going to ask me about Viper because I
• 1:07:13
  think Viper's getting relegated. No way.
• 1:07:16
  I think he's never going to get relegated.
• 1:07:19
  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Never say never.
• 1:07:21
  OK, OK, so he's going to play against Seto.
• 1:07:25
  Yeah, I think. Who is number 1 in the group
• 1:07:27
  now? And then Mihai, who's number two
• 1:07:31
  in the group now. So on paper, by the way, to be
• 1:07:35
  fair, and on paper are the two ticks of language ticks of Viper
• 1:07:40
  if you hadn't known. So on paper Viper should lose
• 1:07:45
  both games and then he would be relegated.
• 1:07:48
  Yeah, which I think is. But I don't think that's going
• 1:07:50
  to happen. Well, are you saying I don't
• 1:07:52
  think that's going to happen knowing that Viper lost versus
• 1:07:55
  Dragon Star, who's the 5th? Yeah, but I think he's like
• 1:08:00
  what? Well, so Dragon Star is an
• 1:08:07
  interesting player because once again, this is someone I'm very
• 1:08:11
  indifferent to. But recently he started posting
• 1:08:16
  more on YouTube and talking about his journey and I'm
• 1:08:22
  watching those videos and I think it's very interesting how
• 1:08:27
  he approaches these videos and his analysis.
• 1:08:30
  So I'm kind of rooting for him now, but I I believe that Viper
• 1:08:35
  is actually going to three OC Tour.
• 1:08:39
  Well, also, I know there's another thing that I just
• 1:08:44
  remembered that I didn't see on your list.
• 1:08:47
  I, I don't think of the things to talk and I'll just mention it
• 1:08:50
  now. We're going to talk that is in
• 1:08:55
  Onimanro later on. Oh well, I've got that on the
• 1:08:58
  list. Yeah, but they're going to have
• 1:09:00
  a boot camp. Oh, true.
• 1:09:02
  And we don't have that on the list, so maybe.
• 1:09:06
  Well, now it's on the list. Now it's on the list.
• 1:09:08
  Maybe they're going to practice a bit, I don't know.
• 1:09:11
  We'll see. What you mean the Onimaru guys?
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, yeah, well, including Viper now.
• 1:09:17
  Yeah, I hope so. Imagine going to Brazil and not
• 1:09:20
  practicing. No.
• 1:09:22
  But I meant the practice from the boot camp will help him
• 1:09:27
  coming back on track. Maybe.
• 1:09:30
  Maybe. OK, so those are my final
• 1:09:35
  questions for these groups. And Vivi I didn't I?
• 1:09:38
  Didn't. Oh yeah, you're right, Vivi.
• 1:09:40
  Vivi stays in the Platinum. But is he going to get into the
• 1:09:45
  playoffs? Please say yes.
• 1:09:47
  Yes, yes, because my first time I keep I have one more.
• 1:09:56
  Thing to say I think I would enjoy it if if for Vivi to get
• 1:10:02
  into the playoffs needs Viper to be relegated to gold.
• 1:10:06
  I think I'd take that deal because I I don't know how
• 1:10:09
  important this is for Viper, but I think it would be awesome for
• 1:10:12
  Vivi. Then again, you mentioned the
• 1:10:15
  price puts actually very substantial, so maybe it would
• 1:10:19
  be very important for Viper. How the hell is he 4th place in
• 1:10:22
  an important in a tournament that's so important, Yeah.
• 1:10:27
  I don't know, now that I see Vivi here, I want to say one
• 1:10:34
  single thing before wrapping it up about TTL and it's actually
• 1:10:39
  regarding to some extent, Silver League.
• 1:10:41
  So I'm going to go back a bit. Seeing Vivi here makes me
• 1:10:47
  remember that in season 3 that was the first time I ever casted
• 1:10:51
  with T-90 and I'll forever remember that set close to my
• 1:10:55
  heart. Because it was VV versus Sobak,
• 1:10:57
  it was Platinum VV versus Sobak, and now VV is still Platinum and
• 1:11:04
  Sobak is being relegated to Silver League.
• 1:11:08
  Which is like we next Silver League is going to be a
• 1:11:12
  bloodbath because we just had Sobak, Daniel and Ganji
• 1:11:19
  relegated to Silver League. I don't think these people are
• 1:11:23
  silver material, so I I think it's just going to be an
• 1:11:25
  absolute bloodbath and that's next season.
• 1:11:28
  You know what? I'm going to answer that with
• 1:11:30
  for sure. OK.
• 1:11:33
  Let's move on to the DLC. Oh God.
• 1:11:36
  So I'm going to start with a little intro before we get into
• 1:11:40
  our discussion. On February 17th the last
• 1:11:44
  Chieftains DLC has been released for Age of Empires 2,
• 1:11:47
  introducing 3 new civilizations from South America, The Mapuche.
• 1:11:52
  They are a cavalry and counter unit focused civilization.
• 1:11:55
  The 2P focus and arch is an infantry and the Mwiska are
• 1:11:59
  labeled an Archer and monk civilization.
• 1:12:02
  How much that is true is a different topic, but it's safe
• 1:12:06
  to say that the Mwiska are definitely designed to be an
• 1:12:09
  arena civilization. Calling them a poocher cavalry
• 1:12:13
  civilization is, I think, very far fetched for them not having
• 1:12:16
  a stable still. But yeah, we'll talk about that
• 1:12:19
  soon. So each of these civilizations
• 1:12:21
  have also also got their own campaign with five scenarios,
• 1:12:25
  each telling three different stories about South American
• 1:12:28
  history with at times less history and more creative
• 1:12:32
  liberty, if I dare say so. But well, I think it's I think
• 1:12:37
  the campaigns are controversial. Some really like them, some
• 1:12:41
  don't like them. I can say I play all of them and
• 1:12:46
  legendary difficulty is a pain in the ass.
• 1:12:50
  If I it's just it's it's it was very rough at at times.
• 1:12:55
  But I believe that going to great details about each of
• 1:13:02
  these civilizations is this is not the place to do so.
• 1:13:06
  But I do want to mention that there are a couple of things
• 1:13:08
  that these 3 civilizations have in common with the Inca, who
• 1:13:12
  have now also been labeled a South American civilization.
• 1:13:15
  So these four are part of one group.
• 1:13:20
  So we should not talk about the Inca as a Mezusiv anymore.
• 1:13:24
  That's only for the Aztec and the Maya.
• 1:13:27
  So here's what separates them from the other 49 civilizations
• 1:13:30
  in the game. First, there's the settlement.
• 1:13:33
  This is a building replacing mining camps, mills, and lumber
• 1:13:36
  camps, serving as a universal drop off building for all four
• 1:13:41
  resources that we have in the game, and they also give 5 pop
• 1:13:45
  space. Then there's the Slinger,
• 1:13:47
  formerly unique unit of the Inca, now a trash unit, not a
• 1:13:51
  gold unit anymore, and it's available to all four South
• 1:13:54
  American civilizations, still serving as an infantry counter
• 1:13:57
  unit. And last but definitely not
• 1:14:00
  least, they have the Champion Line, which is the gold infantry
• 1:14:04
  unit of these 4 civilizations, replacing the Militia and Eagle
• 1:14:08
  Line, kind of being a hybrid of those two units.
• 1:14:11
  And judging by the discussions we're having in the scene, I
• 1:14:15
  think we should start with that unit.
• 1:14:18
  So what's your first impression? Oh my God, can we go back to
• 1:14:22
  talking more about TTL? Well, it's bad.
• 1:14:26
  We can use TTL because it seems like these three sieves are a
• 1:14:31
  popular ban for the tournament. Well, yeah, because people have
• 1:14:37
  been discovering that you can cheats a lot with them.
• 1:14:43
  Phosphor O'Hara, everyone already has showcases, showcases
• 1:14:48
  of these things, videos on YouTube.
• 1:14:50
  Just look up Champion Rush. My God, T-90 has been casting a
• 1:14:56
  couple of games with those. It's just, it's just ridiculous.
• 1:15:00
  It's the fact that you wanted to keep I, I, I feel like the, the
• 1:15:06
  main issue here is the fact that you wanted to keep the eagle
• 1:15:12
  like unit, which is a scouting unit.
• 1:15:14
  In dark age. You can create eagles in dark
• 1:15:17
  age. It would be broken because then
• 1:15:19
  you would have two scouts, which ends up being the issues with,
• 1:15:23
  with these things. So when you're trying to unite
• 1:15:28
  the eagle line with the militia line, which is the unit that
• 1:15:32
  you're drushing with, that you're starting your pressure
• 1:15:35
  with the unit that you can upgrade too many times and and
• 1:15:38
  so on. I, I, I, I don't know how to fix
• 1:15:42
  this now. I don't know how they can fix it
• 1:15:44
  because people have been talking about not being able to create
• 1:15:49
  champions in dark age. Well, that's not OK, because
• 1:15:52
  then like you're just dying to drushes.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah you you can do your own drushes, but if you do your own
• 1:15:57
  drush, that drush ends up something like 3 scout like
• 1:16:02
  units which is not OK either. So I, I, I don't know how they
• 1:16:07
  fix this. I think they shouldn't ASAP.
• 1:16:10
  I think everyone is asking, begging them to change the unit.
• 1:16:16
  I don't know how you change it. You make it slower.
• 1:16:18
  Well then you're going to get lamed every single game and
• 1:16:21
  you're going to just be behind in scouting, which is intended
• 1:16:24
  for dark age because your scout is slow as hell.
• 1:16:28
  Might as well scout with a skirm.
• 1:16:31
  OK, so maybe to give a little context, I think there's 2
• 1:16:37
  problems with the Champi Scout. The first thing is the laming
• 1:16:42
  potential. So it's really easy for these
• 1:16:46
  civilizations. And I believe a big part of that
• 1:16:50
  is the settlement building actually, because it's so
• 1:16:52
  convenient. You save so much wood and
• 1:16:55
  resources with it, depending on the civilization, that it's so
• 1:16:58
  easy to add the barracks. And you know, you can place a
• 1:17:01
  settlement close to your goal, which is if it happens to be
• 1:17:04
  close to wood line, you've basically already gotten the
• 1:17:07
  wood for the barracks for free. And then you can start pumping
• 1:17:11
  out those units and they are fast and they are strong and
• 1:17:14
  they will lose in the dark age against other scouts, but you
• 1:17:17
  can have two of them. So the moment you have two of
• 1:17:20
  them, you can start punishing your enemy, and the enemy has
• 1:17:24
  nothing that he can do against that because the investment to
• 1:17:27
  get militia out, which is slower than the Champi warrior, is so
• 1:17:31
  high that it's not worth it. So basically the Champi scout
• 1:17:38
  alone is not very good, but the fact that you can have, you can
• 1:17:43
  easily have two of them or even more if you're investing more
• 1:17:46
  into it, that's where the problem starts.
• 1:17:49
  So you can, you can, you can lame the enemy.
• 1:17:52
  You can take his boar and while he's trying to block your champy
• 1:17:57
  scout with it, with his own scout, you can have a second or
• 1:18:00
  even a third attacking the scout and still continue the lame.
• 1:18:03
  Or you can prevent an enemy luring in his boar by attacking
• 1:18:08
  the boar while you're also blocking.
• 1:18:12
  You can also try to steep herdable animals and so on and
• 1:18:16
  so on. And the second thing is the
• 1:18:19
  potential of an actual Dark age all in, and this is unheard of.
• 1:18:23
  You can't do that with any other unit.
• 1:18:25
  You can't do that with militias while the champion scout is en
• 1:18:31
  masse into the dark age already strong enough to to make it
• 1:18:35
  worth investing in. All in Dark age with champions.
• 1:18:40
  And that is just ridiculous. Oh man, it's just absolutely
• 1:18:47
  ridiculous. Like whenever you know, this is
• 1:18:51
  karma slapping me in the face for saying in the previous
• 1:18:53
  podcast that I'm excited about the new sieves.
• 1:18:57
  It's just every single time I see that I'm playing against
• 1:19:02
  that any of the new sieves, I'm like, oh shit, here we go again.
• 1:19:07
  Like it's going to be Champion Rush.
• 1:19:09
  There's there's no really anything else to expect.
• 1:19:15
  There's no other unit. There's no I, I haven't seen
• 1:19:18
  other units on the field other than the champion rushes.
• 1:19:22
  I don't know, no. So I think what's interesting
• 1:19:28
  about the new civilizations is that it's pretty obvious that in
• 1:19:32
  late game they are inferior to most other civilizations.
• 1:19:37
  Like if you have a gunpowder civilization and you're an imp,
• 1:19:40
  I don't think any of these civilizations stand any chance.
• 1:19:45
  Even good cavalry serves with maybe a good eco bonus and fully
• 1:19:50
  upgraded cavalry units. They are probably having a great
• 1:19:54
  time against these civilizations starting in the Castle Age.
• 1:19:58
  But up until then, these civilizations, and I'm going to
• 1:20:02
  put the Inca into this group, of course, because they might be
• 1:20:05
  just the strongest out of the four.
• 1:20:07
  These four civilizations are very front loaded.
• 1:20:10
  They are super strong early on in the longer the game goes,
• 1:20:14
  the, the worse they get. And it seems and or it seems
• 1:20:18
  like many players are experiencing that this is not
• 1:20:22
  balanced well enough because this front loadedness is just
• 1:20:26
  too strong to be to have A to have a competitive chance in
• 1:20:32
  competing with that and getting to the game into that stage
• 1:20:35
  where your civilization suddenly gets better.
• 1:20:38
  So common sense is you need to tweak the very early game so
• 1:20:42
  that that start is not as strong.
• 1:20:45
  But Daniela, then there's doubt saying the Champions are totally
• 1:20:49
  fine. People just don't know how to
• 1:20:51
  play against them. OK, skid looser then.
• 1:20:57
  Not skill issue, but rather a. They are not figured out yet, so
• 1:21:02
  why? Why doesn't he teach us?
• 1:21:04
  Where's Where's the how to counter to the champion Rush by
• 1:21:07
  Doubt on YouTube? Well so doubt did play, I think
• 1:21:12
  it was even sponsored by someone.
• 1:21:14
  I'm not sure, but he did play a couple of games against MBL in
• 1:21:18
  order to prove that the champion rush is not OP and he lost.
• 1:21:23
  I, I haven't seen all of these games.
• 1:21:25
  I lost. I, I think I saw the last game
• 1:21:27
  and saw his summary of that. And even though he lost the
• 1:21:33
  games, I believe he said that he was proven right in his point
• 1:21:39
  because MBL only won the games because he was not using the
• 1:21:43
  champion rush, which I didn't understand because that's not
• 1:21:47
  really proving anything. That just means that we don't
• 1:21:50
  know. We still don't know, but I think
• 1:21:54
  he's he made an effort in trying to prove that.
• 1:21:57
  I'm just not sure where to I guess you have to go back and
• 1:22:02
  see his Vods and and try to find that because that's not on
• 1:22:05
  YouTube. But but still I wanted to try
• 1:22:08
  and figure out if there really is a way of dealing with that.
• 1:22:13
  And I think the best way to do that is to get a fresh
• 1:22:17
  perspective on the dark Age. So what exactly are the champion
• 1:22:23
  doing to disrupt the game so much?
• 1:22:24
  They can. Lame.
• 1:22:26
  You can't prevent laming by getting your balls in earlier,
• 1:22:31
  right? Then the the champion can't
• 1:22:34
  play. Of course it messes with your
• 1:22:36
  build order a little. You're getting your ball earlier
• 1:22:38
  than you would usually do, which is not optimal because you want
• 1:22:43
  a lot of bills under the TC to reduce the the rotting of the
• 1:22:47
  the food and get more out of your bore.
• 1:22:49
  But hey, I think that's fair. That's a fair thing.
• 1:22:52
  If you've got the front loaded civilization like the the South
• 1:22:54
  American civilizations, maybe that's your bonus if you if
• 1:22:57
  you're forcing your enemy into luring your bore in earlier, it
• 1:23:01
  kind of cripples their economy a little.
• 1:23:03
  So you've got that going for you.
• 1:23:05
  And the other thing is you can overwhelm your enemy in the dark
• 1:23:08
  age with lots of jumpy scouts. So isn't the answer to just
• 1:23:13
  small wall everything? I I, I don't know.
• 1:23:20
  I can't answer. I can't answer Chris.
• 1:23:22
  I I can't answer without thinking of a game that I just
• 1:23:26
  played two hours ago. I was gorgeous versus.
• 1:23:31
  I've seen that game. Yeah.
• 1:23:32
  OK. And and to be fair, you played
• 1:23:35
  against someone I play against regularly on the ladder.
• 1:23:39
  I I I'm assume you're talking about the like when he played
• 1:23:42
  Champy Phosphorus thing with Archer follow up.
• 1:23:45
  Yeah. Yeah, so that guy only does
• 1:23:48
  cheesy strategies. He's got like thousands of games
• 1:23:52
  doing all these kind. Of it doesn't matter, it did it
• 1:23:54
  did a Strat. He overwhelmed me.
• 1:23:56
  It's like he started to to flood champies.
• 1:24:02
  I small world. I had fish.
• 1:24:05
  I made merit times because that's the counter.
• 1:24:08
  I can't keep up with them. He's just running and told you.
• 1:24:13
  Your Chad told you to build. Stone walls.
• 1:24:17
  That was so funny. OK, that was that.
• 1:24:21
  I should have done that. They're melting the buildings.
• 1:24:26
  I feel like. I think they would have in
• 1:24:28
  fiddle age walls, like he's keeping his arches behind, like
• 1:24:31
  I can't repair them. I I think he just breaks through
• 1:24:35
  them. I think they can easily
• 1:24:37
  breakthrough them. Well, they did in that game,
• 1:24:40
  definitely, yeah. And I've, I've seen countless
• 1:24:42
  other games where they did. So they are melting walls just
• 1:24:45
  because of sheer numbers. Like the damage output they have
• 1:24:49
  is just very high because you get to those numbers very
• 1:24:51
  quickly. And then again, again, you know,
• 1:24:56
  the situation was like, OK, I don't know, like everyone can
• 1:24:59
  just yap from the chat. You can build stalls.
• 1:25:02
  You can. No, I can't.
• 1:25:03
  He's not letting me. And then like there's someone
• 1:25:08
  that like the the positive chatting like you're doing
• 1:25:11
  great, you're playing this really well.
• 1:25:13
  Why am I losing? If I'm so great that if I'm
• 1:25:19
  playing this so well, why the hell am I losing?
• 1:25:24
  So I think the problem with the argument of well, then just
• 1:25:27
  small wall everything is that you're basically giving up the
• 1:25:30
  control of your own map. And at some point you won't be
• 1:25:34
  you won't be able to send out villagers for other resources.
• 1:25:37
  You'll be caged under your own TC, right?
• 1:25:41
  So I think that that is a bad argument or it's it's not
• 1:25:44
  working. It's only working if some if the
• 1:25:48
  one who's doing the champion rush and the dark age is playing
• 1:25:50
  suboptimally. You can't count on that because
• 1:25:53
  that is a very easy strategy to pull off.
• 1:25:55
  So I had a suggestion, if for some reason we don't want to
• 1:25:59
  tweak the champion scout, which we will probably do by reducing
• 1:26:03
  it's speed. But if we wouldn't want to do
• 1:26:05
  that, then I believe that it's the settlement we need to
• 1:26:10
  change. Because the settlement is just
• 1:26:12
  so strong in enabling the champion rush that if we would,
• 1:26:18
  I don't know, give them back their mining camp and villages
• 1:26:22
  could not drop off gold at a settlement.
• 1:26:26
  That would probably change everything.
• 1:26:28
  I don't know, because then I feel like if you're changing the
• 1:26:32
  settlements, if you're changing the settlement, so you're saying
• 1:26:41
  that you can only drop like food, wood and stone.
• 1:26:47
  Yeah, not gold, maybe even not even stone.
• 1:26:51
  Yeah, maybe only food and wood. I.
• 1:26:54
  Feel like that that wouldn't be that bad of an idea.
• 1:26:57
  Of course it's against what they're trying to do with them,
• 1:27:00
  but I mean, it's been proven that what they're trying to do
• 1:27:03
  is crap. So yeah, I don't know, just
• 1:27:07
  change something. At this point, I wouldn't say
• 1:27:10
  crap. I think it's a little harsh.
• 1:27:13
  No, no it's not. I've played against that and I'm
• 1:27:16
  and I'm not. I'm not even playing open maps.
• 1:27:20
  A lot of the times I'm privileged to not face this
• 1:27:24
  threat because I'm queuing for migration or for something else,
• 1:27:28
  or for a map that you kind of start with walls.
• 1:27:31
  Hideout I can just wall behind. I can't even believe that I'm
• 1:27:34
  praising hideouts right now. Oh my God I hate that map from
• 1:27:38
  the bottom of my heart. And the champion rush is
• 1:27:40
  actually making me praising praise it.
• 1:27:43
  But shouldn't the champion rush be really good on hideout?
• 1:27:46
  I could just wall behind the the palisade like they can melt the
• 1:27:51
  palisade, but just the palisade being there and the 2 champion
• 1:27:56
  rush attacking it, it gives me signal like it tells me that
• 1:28:01
  that's coming. You have enough time to.
• 1:28:03
  React buys me yeah, 5 * 5 five times 5 seconds for my brain to
• 1:28:09
  just come out from it's hibernation.
• 1:28:11
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 1:28:17
  I'm OK, I'm very obsessed with the champion.
• 1:28:20
  I can tell so listen with a settlement with my idea.
• 1:28:25
  So I came up with that idea because I was doing research on
• 1:28:30
  like for a different podcast. I was doing research on the
• 1:28:33
  historical inspiration of these kind of things and also on the
• 1:28:36
  settlement. And that was in my podcast about
• 1:28:40
  the Inca, which is a podcast that was released a week ago.
• 1:28:46
  And in that podcast, I was talking about what the function
• 1:28:49
  of the settlement actually was. And I think it's a great idea.
• 1:28:52
  I think it's a great building. So the Inca, and only the Inca
• 1:28:57
  by the way, not the other civilizations.
• 1:28:58
  But anyway, like the Inca had a building that was a both a
• 1:29:03
  communal living space with up to 100 people living in that.
• 1:29:09
  And it was also a storage space where you had your food and, you
• 1:29:13
  know, other kind of things. And you could also use it for
• 1:29:16
  trading and all these kind of things.
• 1:29:17
  So it's basically what we have in the game.
• 1:29:20
  It's a, it's a, it's a housing space where there's also
• 1:29:23
  resources. And people would build these
• 1:29:26
  settlements or these houses in places where they would gather
• 1:29:30
  resources, for example, wood from forest.
• 1:29:34
  And once they gathered the resources, they would move to a
• 1:29:36
  different place and rebuild their settlement and start
• 1:29:39
  gathering resources there. But those buildings were never
• 1:29:43
  used to gather stone or or or, you know, store your gold.
• 1:29:47
  That was still happening in mines.
• 1:29:50
  So in my opinion it would make perfect sense and would still be
• 1:29:53
  historically accurate, actually more accurate if we would give
• 1:29:57
  them back the mining camps. OK.
• 1:30:01
  Yeah. OK, it makes sense.
• 1:30:04
  Still, I don't know if that would help with the problem, but
• 1:30:07
  that would be my suggestion. Another thing about this Champi
• 1:30:13
  Scout is that the fact that they can build outposts now, is that
• 1:30:17
  something that you find troublesome or do you think do
• 1:30:19
  you agree with that ability? I like the idea but again it's
• 1:30:25
  not used properly. Like people are not using it to
• 1:30:31
  adjust place outposts around the map, people are using it with
• 1:30:34
  their 20 champies and dark age pushing your gold to afterwards.
• 1:30:40
  Surround your goal with outpost to lame it then like they blame
• 1:30:46
  your resources as well after they push you off of it.
• 1:30:49
  It's. It's like their wall in the
• 1:30:51
  resources with outposts. Yeah, well, that's quite the
• 1:30:55
  heavy investment, I believe. But then again.
• 1:30:58
  But as long as they keep you off of gold.
• 1:31:01
  Yeah, yeah. Then again, this is also
• 1:31:04
  something that I said in the The Incap podcast when I was
• 1:31:07
  thinking about this, this ability, It's true that it's
• 1:31:12
  kind of expensive to use outposts to wall in resources,
• 1:31:16
  but you're saving a lot of resources by the merit of not
• 1:31:20
  using a villager who had to walk across the whole map.
• 1:31:23
  Your ego is actually untouched. So you're spending more
• 1:31:26
  resources, but you're also getting a lot more resources,
• 1:31:28
  and maybe that's still a win. Yeah, maybe.
• 1:31:32
  Yeah. OK, let's let's try a different
• 1:31:35
  perspective on this. So let's assume that the Champy
• 1:31:41
  scout is going to be changed in a way that it's not a problem
• 1:31:45
  anymore. It's strong, but it's, you know,
• 1:31:47
  there's ways of dealing with that.
• 1:31:50
  If. If that wasn't a problem
• 1:31:52
  anymore, what do you What's your impression of the civilizations?
• 1:31:56
  Are they suddenly too weak to compete with the other
• 1:32:00
  civilizations, or do you think they would have a place in the
• 1:32:03
  matter? I I think you can definitely
• 1:32:08
  compete the The thing is with the champion and with how it
• 1:32:12
  scales throughout the ages. You're right, they're super
• 1:32:16
  stronger Dion because you can overwhelm the opponent.
• 1:32:19
  You can play it quite weird, but then the longer the game goes
• 1:32:23
  the weaker they are compared to other sieves.
• 1:32:28
  Like OK, they die tonight then that's not even that big of a
• 1:32:31
  problem late game. They even die to hussars.
• 1:32:36
  And now your rating unit as one of the sieves in late game is
• 1:32:43
  the champi. The opponent's rating unit is
• 1:32:47
  the hussars. He's not spend spending gold.
• 1:32:50
  OK, you're only paying 25 gold, not the more most expensive, but
• 1:32:55
  in the late game post imp when there's no gold left, you don't
• 1:33:01
  have a rating unit. You're going to have a very very
• 1:33:03
  slow push. And in a situation where even, I
• 1:33:07
  don't know, Malay lycab or Korean Hassar is going to raid,
• 1:33:13
  you don't basically have a A rating unit that's not.
• 1:33:17
  Trash. So then you're forced to always
• 1:33:20
  defend and in early imp when you want to raid with those units
• 1:33:25
  with the elite champion warriors, you're just going to
• 1:33:29
  die to your opponent's hussars or lycaps.
• 1:33:33
  I think it's easier for the opponent to mask the hussars or
• 1:33:37
  the the cavalry than for you to mask the Champions.
• 1:33:42
  So then I don't know. You're losing your gold units to
• 1:33:44
  treasure Nets. It's a bit.
• 1:33:48
  They are sieves of extremes, right?
• 1:33:51
  Like extremely powerful in the beginning and then probably
• 1:33:54
  extremely easy to kill off in the very late game.
• 1:33:57
  Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
• 1:33:59
  And that doesn't really suit the other civilizations who they
• 1:34:03
  also usually have strengths and certain stages of the game, but
• 1:34:08
  they are not as defined as with these civilizations.
• 1:34:12
  And again, I think Incas are a bit of a different topic because
• 1:34:17
  they are more well-rounded, I believe.
• 1:34:21
  So they are not as extreme in in in the ways that the other three
• 1:34:25
  civilizations are. But I mean, it's still very
• 1:34:29
  early to tell, right? Maybe people will figure out
• 1:34:32
  certain niche cases where they are good throughout all the
• 1:34:36
  stages. So I'm curious to find out how
• 1:34:40
  they will change them. I do want to mention, however,
• 1:34:44
  that having South American civilizations in the game is
• 1:34:48
  actually quite refreshing despite they are not like
• 1:34:53
  they're shaking up the the ranked games, the multiplayer
• 1:34:56
  games in a way that's not very healthy.
• 1:34:59
  But other than that, I think it's it's a nice touch for the
• 1:35:03
  variety in the game. No, I agree.
• 1:35:05
  I agree. I've had this this opinion about
• 1:35:09
  most of the new Sips. I always like the aspect of, you
• 1:35:14
  know, expanding the horizons when it comes to, to sieves and
• 1:35:20
  other areas of the world and even dividing some existing
• 1:35:24
  sieves that, well, you, you know, that there's potential
• 1:35:28
  like I, I keep hoping for a division of the slabs.
• 1:35:33
  So the Romanians are getting their own their own sieves like
• 1:35:38
  Blahians or something. Did you hear about the rumors of
• 1:35:42
  what the content of the next DLC will be?
• 1:35:45
  No what? Are those it's, it is rumored
• 1:35:48
  that it's going to be the Vikings who either will be split
• 1:35:52
  up or will get, you know, seems like the Swedes or the North.
• 1:35:57
  The rumors stem from the fact that, you know, with the patch,
• 1:36:01
  we've gotten these unique waypoint flags.
• 1:36:04
  Each SIF has their own waypoint and with that there are also
• 1:36:09
  flags with I believe Swedish flags or something, some
• 1:36:15
  Scandinavian civilizations. So people are believing or they
• 1:36:21
  are speculating that they already made those like
• 1:36:25
  beforehand so they wouldn't have to put them in later on.
• 1:36:30
  I love, I love how the community is doing like speculating these
• 1:36:33
  kind of things, but you never know they're.
• 1:36:35
  Crazy. So it might just be the Vikings.
• 1:36:39
  Yeah, maybe. Maybe Viper is getting his
• 1:36:42
  Norway and civilization, I don't know.
• 1:36:45
  Yeah, OK. Anything else you want to talk
• 1:36:49
  about the like, Like you want to mention with the civilizations?
• 1:36:53
  Not really, just again I hope if if someone is listening to this
• 1:36:58
  any depths, please please please change the champion.
• 1:37:01
  You do sound a bit like tired of the champion rush.
• 1:37:08
  Is that the right way of? Playing again like I'm I'm even
• 1:37:10
  escaping from it because I'm not usually playing open maps, but
• 1:37:13
  I'm I'm just it's killing my enthusiasm of the game.
• 1:37:18
  It's it's crazy. And also also the whole DLC.
• 1:37:27
  This might be just a a me issue. Whenever I'm playing against or
• 1:37:31
  especially with the new sieves, if I'm playing them it feels
• 1:37:35
  like I'm I'm playing a different game.
• 1:37:39
  It feels like I'm playing AOE 1. I don't know.
• 1:37:43
  I first of all, I like that they're kind of trying to
• 1:37:47
  integrate the new architecture, but I feel like their new
• 1:37:49
  architecture all the buildings look the same.
• 1:37:52
  Like I love the idea of a new architecture, but I can't tell
• 1:37:56
  my CG workshop from a university.
• 1:37:59
  Really. Or my blacksmith from my I.
• 1:38:01
  I do. I mean, I've been playing all
• 1:38:04
  four campaigns, all all four South American campaigns, so I
• 1:38:08
  had a lot of time to get familiarized with them, but I
• 1:38:12
  don't remember having that problem at all.
• 1:38:15
  For you. But it's killing.
• 1:38:17
  It's killing me. They have a like they're, I
• 1:38:22
  think what kind of diminishes their readability is that they
• 1:38:26
  have lots of decorations, Maybe so.
• 1:38:31
  So maybe there's just, it's just harder to realize what building
• 1:38:37
  you're looking at when you're only glancing at them.
• 1:38:39
  But you if you have a bit more time like in the campaigns, then
• 1:38:44
  I think it's easier to get accustomed to them, yeah.
• 1:38:47
  Maybe. But but have you seen South
• 1:38:51
  American fortified walls? Yeah, they're bangers.
• 1:38:54
  So I feel like those are. So beautiful.
• 1:38:56
  They change even the UI when you're playing with them.
• 1:39:00
  They have their own UI with stone around the resources.
• 1:39:03
  I I like that a lot. Wait, what?
• 1:39:06
  Yeah, yeah, they have a different.
• 1:39:07
  For instance, I'm in, I'm using some modified UI that is
• 1:39:12
  transparent, but whenever I'm playing the new sieves that is
• 1:39:16
  kind of overruled by their new UI.
• 1:39:20
  Yeah, like pay attention to that when?
• 1:39:23
  How did I not see that? Yeah, it's it's funny when
• 1:39:26
  you're playing the the new sieve.
• 1:39:28
  I think it's even included in the patch notes.
• 1:39:30
  Interesting, but they only did this for the four civilizations.
• 1:39:35
  For the for the South Americans this is.
• 1:39:38
  Oh well then they I'm not sure. I think that's weird.
• 1:39:42
  If you've got 4 civilizations with a different UI and all
• 1:39:44
  other civilizations share the same old one, this is going to
• 1:39:48
  be something that they will patch Like they will add that
• 1:39:52
  through and through, right? They have to.
• 1:39:54
  But it's it's very delicate like it, it's not something that you
• 1:39:59
  missed it for instance, like is that I.
• 1:40:01
  Totally missed it. That you easily, easily see.
• 1:40:04
  It's just a nice touch for the new Sibs.
• 1:40:08
  OK, well I'm going to take a look on that.
• 1:40:13
  It's kind of embarrassing having played so much with the Sibs and
• 1:40:16
  not having realized that it's OK, let's move on.
• 1:40:23
  So with the DLC, there was a an accompanying patch with balance
• 1:40:30
  changes and with implementing the naval rework.
• 1:40:33
  But this this is something that you experience whether you got
• 1:40:37
  the Doodle Sea or not. And this includes a couple of
• 1:40:41
  things. So first of all, the naval
• 1:40:43
  rework. And once again, I'm not going to
• 1:40:46
  go into the details. I'm just going to name a few
• 1:40:48
  things. For example, there's the new
• 1:40:50
  ship the Hulk. It's supposed to counter fire
• 1:40:53
  ships and the fire ships are going to counter galleys as
• 1:40:56
  they've already done. And the galleys are going to
• 1:40:58
  counter the Hulk because it doesn't have much Pierce armor.
• 1:41:00
  So you basically have a triangle on the water.
• 1:41:05
  Then the the units in the harbour, I'm going to say they
• 1:41:09
  have been cleaned up because they've all been placed on one
• 1:41:12
  side. There's only one tab in in the,
• 1:41:15
  in the dock. You don't have to go to a
• 1:41:17
  different page to find the, the what was there?
• 1:41:19
  The fire galley, right? Yeah, upgrading your ships has
• 1:41:23
  become easier to understand because we've got 1 upgrade for
• 1:41:26
  all the ships and most of the technologies from the dock have
• 1:41:31
  been moved to the university and the trading has also been
• 1:41:35
  changed. You can now trade on water and
• 1:41:37
  not only get gold, but you can also change that to I believe
• 1:41:42
  it's wood and food. You can you can choose what what
• 1:41:44
  resource you want to get. I believe that only stone is not
• 1:41:48
  possible. So I think those are the major
• 1:41:52
  changes, right? Or did I forget something?
• 1:41:54
  No. You're, you're right.
• 1:41:56
  I think we we talked broadly about these changes during the
• 1:42:00
  Telesocracy. Yeah.
• 1:42:02
  And so a lot of people are probably accustomed with the
• 1:42:06
  changes. So I would like to point out a
• 1:42:10
  couple of differences maybe from that patch to this one.
• 1:42:18
  It's important to to keep in mind that the devs were kind of
• 1:42:23
  receptive of the community's feedback.
• 1:42:27
  So they reduced the damage of the hulks, which was kind of
• 1:42:32
  overpowered during the tournament.
• 1:42:34
  It's still strong, but they they reduced it.
• 1:42:38
  They increased the demo ship damage, which was needed because
• 1:42:44
  the Demos were too weak during Tarasocracy.
• 1:42:46
  They're still overall weaker how they previously were before, but
• 1:42:53
  they're not as weak as in Tarasocracy.
• 1:42:56
  And what else? Turtle ships received a huge
• 1:43:02
  buff like the cost of the turtle ships now is actually if I will
• 1:43:08
  like even seen in TTL one of the games that I casted someone went
• 1:43:13
  full turtle ships on water which is something that I've never
• 1:43:17
  stone. Please, I think it was.
• 1:43:19
  I've never seen in my life before.
• 1:43:21
  And did it work? He won the game.
• 1:43:24
  Because of the turtle ships. Well, I'm not he play the map
• 1:43:29
  good overall, but I when I saw his opening turtle ships, I was
• 1:43:32
  like you're you're you're going to lose water.
• 1:43:35
  If you're going to meme already from the beginning of castle age
• 1:43:39
  with just opening turtle ships, It's not like you're adding a
• 1:43:42
  couple of them to just because you saw your opponent is not
• 1:43:47
  investing anymore. I was like, OK, yeah, he's going
• 1:43:50
  to he's going to lose water if he's going to continue in with
• 1:43:54
  turtle ships. No in was there and he had like
• 1:43:57
  20 of them. Never seen 20 turtle ships on a
• 1:43:59
  map in my life but. I'm going to have to rewatch
• 1:44:03
  that, that sounds amazing. Yeah, now it's viable.
• 1:44:08
  Awesome. So I think overall, I would also
• 1:44:12
  say that the garrisoned, the garrisoned fish and chips and
• 1:44:18
  the docks, the dock's output damage is overall higher.
• 1:44:23
  That's just my feeling. It's not something that I read
• 1:44:25
  in any of the notes, honestly. But having played a tiny bit in
• 1:44:30
  the past and haven't played now, that's my overall feeling that I
• 1:44:36
  don't know. The overall damage that dock is
• 1:44:39
  doing to the ships is higher. So what you're referring to is
• 1:44:42
  that when you Garrison fishing ships in your dock, those docks
• 1:44:47
  will start shooting at ships, right?
• 1:44:49
  Yeah. But that's only a few Garrison
• 1:44:52
  ships inside, and that damage is higher than it was in
• 1:44:55
  Thelisocracy, is what you're saying.
• 1:44:57
  That's my feeling. Now I I can't say 100% that's
• 1:45:01
  the case. That is my general feeling.
• 1:45:03
  OK, all right, I would since for me you're like the the water
• 1:45:09
  expert in the entire game. So I would like to pick your
• 1:45:12
  brain on a couple of things that I picked up when it comes to the
• 1:45:15
  naval rework. Once again, I want to reference
• 1:45:20
  Doubt. Doubt was very vocal about
• 1:45:22
  saying that this whole rework, he does not like it one bit.
• 1:45:27
  He thinks water was fine the way it was before and this makes
• 1:45:31
  things worse. And one argument that he keeps
• 1:45:37
  saying that's something that I, I just can't say whether he's
• 1:45:42
  right or not because I'm not experiencing water and I haven't
• 1:45:45
  experienced the naval rework at all, but you do.
• 1:45:49
  So I'm curious to see to, to find out what you think about
• 1:45:53
  this. Doubt says that water is less
• 1:45:56
  interesting now because you have no incentive in going
• 1:46:02
  aggressively on water, but you would rather want to have your
• 1:46:07
  opponent do the first step, see what unit he's taking into and
• 1:46:11
  then do the counter unit. So if he goes fire ships you
• 1:46:14
  will go what's that hulks if you if he goes hulks you go galleys
• 1:46:21
  and so on. So you will get punished if you
• 1:46:24
  start being aggressive when water maps.
• 1:46:27
  Is that the experience you have or is it different?
• 1:46:31
  So I I I agree that it's easier to just wait and see what the
• 1:46:34
  opponent is doing, but that's just lazy talk. 1st I kind of
• 1:46:42
  agree with him that water was fine before, but I can say this
• 1:46:47
  for for a definitive idea, you know?
• 1:46:51
  I'm aware that I'm subjective when it comes to to water maps
• 1:46:54
  and water play well. So is he.
• 1:46:56
  Everyone's subjective about this.
• 1:46:58
  There's no other way. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:47:00
  Someone that someone that didn't like water before is not going
• 1:47:06
  to like water now after this rework.
• 1:47:10
  If anything, rework complicates things rather than making them
• 1:47:15
  easier. In in what way?
• 1:47:18
  Because I think they did. They wanted to make things
• 1:47:20
  easier, right? Well they're introducing more
• 1:47:22
  ships. There's now you you can't play
• 1:47:25
  water with one unit. You need a combo.
• 1:47:29
  Now you actually need to micro water because your ships are
• 1:47:33
  going to be melted to a a counter.
• 1:47:35
  Even though hulks are a very hard counter to fire ships and
• 1:47:38
  people are saying like OK the other two are not a full counter
• 1:47:43
  to what they're intended to. You still need to micro your
• 1:47:47
  ships in in fuselage. Your hulks are going to be fine
• 1:47:54
  against two galleys. Against 4 galleys.
• 1:47:57
  If he has 6 galleys or he's starting to to mass, he can do a
• 1:48:02
  lot of damage and you have only one Pierce armor and your hulks
• 1:48:06
  are going to melt. I feel like opening galleys and
• 1:48:13
  massing them waiting it it should be a recipe for success
• 1:48:18
  because I don't want to say too much about this because then we
• 1:48:22
  do face it against people massing galleys on the ladder.
• 1:48:28
  Just kidding. So basically in today's meta, in
• 1:48:34
  today's water bew work, there's never a situation where you full
• 1:48:40
  open fires that I can say clearly that that I'm convinced
• 1:48:47
  of that because. Let me just let me just ask you
• 1:48:49
  one thing. Are you talking about full water
• 1:48:52
  maps or are you also talking about hybrid maps when you say
• 1:48:54
  that? Even.
• 1:48:55
  Because on hybrid maps. You're on hybrid maps then?
• 1:48:58
  Really. Because usually on like before
• 1:49:01
  on hybrid maps you would usually play fire ships because mostly
• 1:49:05
  on hybrid maps the ponds would be too.
• 1:49:07
  Absolutely. Correct, but now there's only
• 1:49:11
  holes. You won't see galleys, but you
• 1:49:14
  won't see fires for sure. But now you're you're just
• 1:49:17
  opening hulks on hybrid maps in the small ponds.
• 1:49:22
  It's simply as it is like it was the case in tile socracy on
• 1:49:26
  immersion as well. When there would be like small
• 1:49:29
  ponds you don't see fires. You add one or two fires because
• 1:49:35
  hulks are not doing a lot of damage against the dogs and
• 1:49:38
  fires do so. After you won the pond, you will
• 1:49:42
  add one or two fires to help you kill the dog.
• 1:49:46
  That's interesting. OK.
• 1:49:47
  But not before that. But then let me ask you a follow
• 1:49:51
  up question. I'm really curious about this
• 1:49:53
  because I like an like an old school water player that I am.
• 1:49:58
  I usually really enjoy playing fire ship versus fire ship and
• 1:50:01
  then micro back my fire ships to repair those and you know, and
• 1:50:04
  then get them back to the I like that little dancing around with
• 1:50:08
  the villagers and so on. Me too.
• 1:50:09
  If you're playing hulks now, is that still what people do?
• 1:50:15
  Because shouldn't the hulks be better at sniping the repair
• 1:50:18
  those? They are, it's just riskier now.
• 1:50:22
  Cool that. Sounds exciting.
• 1:50:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you prefer the, let's say
• 1:50:27
  Hulk meta on hybrid maps compared to the fire ship meta?
• 1:50:32
  That was before it's harder to micro.
• 1:50:35
  Ah, OK, that that makes sense for you.
• 1:50:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I would enjoy it more.
• 1:50:40
  Maybe. Interesting.
• 1:50:43
  Maybe. Maybe.
• 1:50:45
  That's very interesting. So yeah, saying that you can
• 1:50:49
  like of course it's easier to just wait to see what your
• 1:50:54
  opponent is opening. But again, like, that's just
• 1:50:58
  lazy talk of it. In my opinion, you'll always
• 1:51:02
  have double units on water if you want to play full water.
• 1:51:07
  Now I'm thinking about migration or islands or anything, full
• 1:51:11
  water maps, right? So you're my opponent.
• 1:51:17
  I'm already thinking what I want to open.
• 1:51:20
  I have two docs. You tell me what are you opening
• 1:51:23
  with? Just say any of the three 3
• 1:51:27
  units. So you're playing versus me on
• 1:51:28
  water. You you create the first unit.
• 1:51:32
  I have no idea what's going to be, but I already decided what
• 1:51:35
  I'm going to open. What's your?
• 1:51:37
  OK, so I think if it's a full water map and it's a one we won,
• 1:51:44
  I believe I would always open galley.
• 1:51:46
  OK, so. Because I want the range I I
• 1:51:49
  will be countering hulks. Yeah.
• 1:51:52
  And yeah, I'm definitely, of course, I'm definitely opening
• 1:51:56
  galleys because even though fire ships are supposed to counter
• 1:51:59
  galleys, I will micro my galleys back.
• 1:52:02
  And they, I that's what I did before as well.
• 1:52:05
  I would always win on water maps with galleys against someone
• 1:52:08
  who's going fire ships only. So yeah, definitely galleys.
• 1:52:11
  OK so right now I already decided that I'm going to open 2
• 1:52:17
  Hawks. I'm sending them forward.
• 1:52:20
  It all depends of course on the timings, but eventually when I'm
• 1:52:25
  getting close to your base or patrolling my my ships on the
• 1:52:29
  way to to your base, I will encounter your galleys.
• 1:52:32
  So at that point, I have the scouting, I have the information
• 1:52:36
  that you're going into galleys now.
• 1:52:38
  Hulks are very fast, are faster than galleys.
• 1:52:41
  I can push you back. Yes, you're going to have to
• 1:52:43
  micro them, but you only have two.
• 1:52:45
  Probably you're creating them in the same time.
• 1:52:47
  You have reinforcements on your way, but you're probably also
• 1:52:50
  spending wood on blacksmith going up.
• 1:52:53
  You're going to wait for fletching.
• 1:52:55
  There's going to be a, a, a bit of a window that I'm going to
• 1:53:00
  have to use to make up my mind. What am I doing?
• 1:53:04
  Am I switching to galis? I could I could switch to fire
• 1:53:07
  ships, which they're not that good in fuselage, but they do
• 1:53:13
  scale quite well later on. Like if I managed to keep my
• 1:53:17
  fire ships alive just to like push you back, bring them back
• 1:53:20
  repair. Then I can get to a scenario
• 1:53:24
  where I'm castle age faster. Hopefully I can put on a
• 1:53:28
  university and I can get careening and I can push you
• 1:53:32
  back. But like you also, for instance,
• 1:53:36
  if I'm choosing to go with the galley path, then it's also
• 1:53:40
  galley versus galley. And we're stuck with that maybe
• 1:53:43
  one or two fire ships to mix into micro away the arrows or to
• 1:53:48
  dodge the arrows or try to be fancy with the micro, sure.
• 1:53:51
  But if I'm picking to switch afterwards into galleys, then
• 1:53:56
  we're playing galley versus galley.
• 1:53:58
  If I'm opening fire ships, then we're I will be able to push you
• 1:54:03
  enough like yeah, I'm not going to kill anything on water, but I
• 1:54:07
  think I could be up faster and if I'm messing enough fires, if
• 1:54:13
  I managed to get to that scenario, then you'll have to
• 1:54:16
  switch. Then you'll have to add your
• 1:54:18
  hulks and then I have to add my counter to hulks.
• 1:54:22
  So then you'll have double unit. I'll have double unit, which is
• 1:54:26
  why I think the new meta is more complicated because there's
• 1:54:33
  rarely a scenario where we can stay on only one unit throughout
• 1:54:40
  the entire game, which would have been the case in the
• 1:54:42
  previous water metal, which people would complain usually
• 1:54:46
  about just galley versus galley for two hours.
• 1:54:48
  Exactly, so always every single water only map is galleys only
• 1:54:54
  because opening fire ships just means that the enemy is going to
• 1:54:59
  out micro you and get a bigger mass of galleys earlier than you
• 1:55:03
  are and you've basically lost the game.
• 1:55:05
  Yeah. So now if we're stuck in the
• 1:55:09
  scenario where I said OK, we're going to be galley versus galley
• 1:55:12
  the entire the entire feudal, whoever's going first to castle
• 1:55:17
  age will 100% sure add fire ships because the fire ships are
• 1:55:22
  now are stronger. And especially with the
• 1:55:26
  technologies from the universities, careening and
• 1:55:29
  clinger construction that they introduced, the ships move
• 1:55:32
  faster, they have more pierced armor.
• 1:55:34
  The micro with the galleys is very hard against them.
• 1:55:37
  So you'll be forced to add your second unit as well.
• 1:55:42
  In Calais, there's rarely a scenario where you will see
• 1:55:46
  someone playing water and be only on one single unit.
• 1:55:50
  If it's not halts, it's then it's the other.
• 1:55:54
  The other scenario where someone can go just go for hulks versus
• 1:55:59
  hulks against each other, and yeah, that's boring.
• 1:56:03
  But from my from my experience so far, it's always double
• 1:56:07
  units. That's so awesome.
• 1:56:10
  I was you see, This is why I was trying to to question like to
• 1:56:14
  ask you these questions, because I believe it takes someone who
• 1:56:18
  plays a lot of water maps to figure out how it's actually
• 1:56:21
  going to be a single. You know, when I play that once
• 1:56:25
  or twice and I probably play that against someone who also
• 1:56:27
  played this once or twice. You can't really deduce anything
• 1:56:31
  from that. But I believe that your
• 1:56:35
  assessment that sounds really exciting to me that this whole
• 1:56:39
  one you'd only meta is broken up and that people are going to
• 1:56:44
  double ship unit compositions sounds really cool.
• 1:56:49
  Then again, my, like I said before, might be purely
• 1:56:55
  subjective here. I might hear me talk about this
• 1:56:58
  and it would be like, that's bullshit.
• 1:57:00
  Maybe it doesn't work at, you know, top ten level.
• 1:57:04
  I don't know. That was my.
• 1:57:07
  Well that may be true, but usually we don't see full water
• 1:57:12
  maps and tournaments anyway. This.
• 1:57:15
  This whole conversation about the meta on full water maps is
• 1:57:19
  in 2026. It's mostly a discussion for
• 1:57:23
  amateur plays and casual plays on the ladder, not so much for
• 1:57:26
  tournaments. So I think it's still valid what
• 1:57:27
  you say. Yeah.
• 1:57:30
  OK, cool. Thanks for that.
• 1:57:34
  I it actually makes me kind of want to give water maps a new
• 1:57:41
  like, like try it again. At least give it a real fair
• 1:57:45
  chance, yeah? Queue up for the for migration.
• 1:57:48
  Well, Migration is just with migrations.
• 1:57:52
  I'm actually afraid of playing Migration.
• 1:57:55
  I'm of the opinion that Migration is one of the best 1V1
• 1:57:58
  maps entirely in the game, but it's also one of the hardest to
• 1:58:03
  execute and I I I would rather like to trained for that before
• 1:58:08
  I do that on the ladder because I would just get be stomped like
• 1:58:11
  I had no chance of migration I believe.
• 1:58:14
  It's a it's a really hard map it.
• 1:58:16
  Is definitely, but that's also why I think it's a great map,
• 1:58:19
  because it's I've. I've yet to see a boring
• 1:58:22
  migration map to be honest. I agree, but again, bias.
• 1:58:29
  You always say that you're biased, but this is an opinion
• 1:58:32
  based topic. I think you can't be not biased.
• 1:58:35
  Yeah. All right.
• 1:58:38
  Moving on with the balance changes and the naval rework,
• 1:58:40
  we've got some other stuff that went like that came out with the
• 1:58:43
  DLC. We've already mentioned the New
• 1:58:45
  South American architecture set. This we've discussed.
• 1:58:48
  Apparently you're having difficulties with it, with the
• 1:58:51
  readability. I've yet to encounter that.
• 1:58:54
  But overall, I think the reception is positive when it
• 1:58:58
  comes to the architecture set. Then there's some content for
• 1:59:02
  the editor matching the South American theme.
• 1:59:05
  There are new animals. I hope you're enjoying the top
• 1:59:08
  years in capybaras and the Black Panthers and the snakes and the
• 1:59:11
  whales. You are aware of my deathly
• 1:59:16
  phobia for rodents, are you? Yes I am, but capybaras are
• 1:59:22
  really huge. I, I don't, I don't think I've
• 1:59:27
  seen more than one. And it's usually well, casting
• 1:59:32
  we're like expecting other other games.
• 1:59:35
  I ask my husband to immediately make a mud to change them to
• 1:59:40
  sheep. And it's the sound.
• 1:59:43
  It's the sound that's worse than than the yeah, yeah, I, I, I can
• 1:59:48
  like, I have my all goosebumps and bad type of goosebumps.
• 1:59:53
  And the tapir. The tapir just looks like a
• 1:59:56
  giant rat to me. I'm sorry.
• 1:59:58
  I I can't, I can't look at the the mini map when I can't look
• 2:00:02
  at the map when I see it. It's I, I don't like the
• 2:00:06
  animals. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but
• 2:00:08
  I'm, I'm, I'm playing that with the highest level of anxiety
• 2:00:13
  that you could imagine. OK, well with the phobia it's
• 2:00:17
  understandable. Of course, I can't relate to
• 2:00:21
  that because I don't have that phobia.
• 2:00:24
  Let me just say that first of all, the top peers in the game
• 2:00:27
  are very huge. Much, much bigger than they are
• 2:00:31
  in real life. I know they're big.
• 2:00:33
  I've been, I, I, I, I like top peers.
• 2:00:35
  I enjoy seeing them. I've been close to them multiple
• 2:00:40
  times. They do not look like rats
• 2:00:42
  whatsoever. They are.
• 2:00:45
  They look they are closer to hippos than to rats in my
• 2:00:47
  opinion. I don't know.
• 2:00:50
  And in in game, the way they they made them look like just
• 2:00:52
  giant rats. I'm sorry, I don't do that.
• 2:00:55
  No, in in Germany we have like in Germany we have a word
• 2:00:59
  that's, that's Toydolf and that is what I associate with Tapir,
• 2:01:06
  but with the way they look. So Toydolf basically means how
• 2:01:11
  do I translate this? This word means that somebody is
• 2:01:15
  very gullible, but also kind of cute, and that is what I believe
• 2:01:22
  is the facial expression of every single tap here in the
• 2:01:26
  world. So I feel so bad when I'm
• 2:01:29
  killing them. This is the only animal that I'm
• 2:01:31
  having problems killing in the. City Oh no, how there there's
• 2:01:35
  mufflons like the mufflons are so freaking cute.
• 2:01:38
  I I'm always feeling bad when I'm killing one.
• 2:01:41
  I don't know, like I, I love those.
• 2:01:43
  They're so teeny tiny and cute. I don't know.
• 2:01:49
  Yeah, yeah, I I agree. I think all animals are kind of
• 2:01:52
  cute except for the snakes. In real life.
• 2:01:55
  I love snakes. I always wanted to snake pet,
• 2:01:59
  which I could never have because of my parents.
• 2:02:01
  They didn't allow me to have one.
• 2:02:03
  But I love snakes. But in the game these snakes are
• 2:02:08
  they are like following me, I believe.
• 2:02:10
  I don't know, They just turn up from no whale.
• 2:02:14
  Suddenly, they're there. I've lost 3 scrubs to one one
• 2:02:19
  day really and I didn't know what the hell is attacking me.
• 2:02:25
  I don't know if it's my imagination or not, but I
• 2:02:27
  believe they I think they're moving across the map, aren't
• 2:02:30
  they? Yeah, well, I think they're
• 2:02:33
  they're acting like any other predator, like just chasing you
• 2:02:37
  up to at some point, but that's it.
• 2:02:39
  I don't know. They're, I, I think they're
• 2:02:42
  annoying. They're the most annoying out of
• 2:02:44
  all the animals that we have in in the game.
• 2:02:48
  OK, so Incas have been reworked and adapted to the South
• 2:02:52
  American civilizations. So they're getting the
• 2:02:55
  settlements and the champion and all these kind of things.
• 2:02:57
  And their campaign has also been updated.
• 2:02:59
  And I've played the campaign. I can tell you that the update
• 2:03:02
  is good. It's an improvement on the old
• 2:03:04
  update especially because I'm under the impression that they
• 2:03:08
  have changed a few, that they have tweaked a few things to
• 2:03:12
  make the start of each mission a bit faster, which I always
• 2:03:16
  enjoy, making the campaigns a bit more fast-paced.
• 2:03:20
  Then there's the voice chat integrated into the game, which
• 2:03:24
  was super problematic because it was enabled by default.
• 2:03:30
  Seems like the developers have never played a game like Rocket
• 2:03:33
  League or any other game in multiplayer.
• 2:03:37
  I don't know how that could have happened, but they fixed it so
• 2:03:40
  it's not a problem anymore. Yeah, when they fix it with some
• 2:03:44
  excuse like, oh, it wasn't, it wasn't intended.
• 2:03:49
  How how is that not intended? How do you miss that?
• 2:03:52
  I think it's. It's just an oversight.
• 2:03:53
  It's a terrible oversight. Yeah.
• 2:03:56
  Yeah, it's actually very problematic.
• 2:03:58
  I could give you a whole lecture about how certain groups like to
• 2:04:06
  exploit these kind of mistakes. They only need half a day in in
• 2:04:11
  a game that is popular to get people into right wing chat
• 2:04:17
  groups and so on. They are hunting for these kind
• 2:04:21
  of things. So having that for an entire
• 2:04:24
  week, I believe, or even longer, I think that's borderline
• 2:04:29
  dangerous. So I was, I was quite, I don't
• 2:04:33
  know, shocked by the fact that this was a low priority fix in
• 2:04:37
  my opinion. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:04:41
  And people like were doxing themselves.
• 2:04:44
  They don't realize that that's on by default were telling their
• 2:04:49
  phone numbers. Someone had like an entire
• 2:04:52
  entire job interview while playing a game.
• 2:04:55
  I heard that but I don't understand how that like did the
• 2:04:59
  same person play the game and do the job interview or was that
• 2:05:03
  somebody sitting in their same room doing this the job
• 2:05:06
  interview where someone else was playing the game that I would
• 2:05:10
  understand I. Don't know.
• 2:05:13
  Sucks. OK, yeah.
• 2:05:16
  So not a fan of that. I think having that feature,
• 2:05:20
  that's just a standard thing to to have in a multiplayer game.
• 2:05:23
  So I guess it's good that we finally have that after 6 1/2
• 2:05:26
  years. But the Genesis was a bit weird.
• 2:05:31
  And at last there was also numerous civilizations and units
• 2:05:36
  that have been rebalanced. Again, we're not going to
• 2:05:39
  detail. I think the most important
• 2:05:41
  things are the fire Lancer unit has been changed and the siege
• 2:05:44
  tower unit has been changed, which were considered way too
• 2:05:47
  powerful in the previous patch. So now I think consensus is that
• 2:05:51
  they are fine now, right? Yeah, they're definitely not as
• 2:05:56
  broken as before fire answers were changed that now you can't
• 2:06:01
  transport more than 5 units, Bless HP.
• 2:06:08
  And then when it comes to fire dancers, I I think they can only
• 2:06:12
  should once in a melee engagement that you would have
• 2:06:15
  to move them for them to shoot again.
• 2:06:19
  Which is really good, especially when they are sniping siege.
• 2:06:23
  It's not harder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:06:26
  So overall good changes, right? And overall good changes, yeah.
• 2:06:30
  OK. Anything else you want to
• 2:06:32
  mention from the balance changes that is worth talking about?
• 2:06:38
  Not really, no. Right.
• 2:06:41
  I think it's overall just good as far as there were like the
• 2:06:44
  couple of things like the with the farm upgrades affecting pre
• 2:06:50
  built like already built farms. Now these kind of things, they
• 2:06:54
  all sounded very plausible to me and I have I have not heard
• 2:06:57
  anyone like talking them down or talking badly about them.
• 2:07:01
  So I just accept them and think that these must be good changes.
• 2:07:06
  Yeah. All right, next topic, Viper and
• 2:07:09
  Doubt joining Onimaru E Sports. So we were speculating in the
• 2:07:15
  last episode about where Viper and Doubt might find their new
• 2:07:18
  home and it appears we were right.
• 2:07:21
  They both have joined Onimaru E Sports as their new
• 2:07:24
  organization, their new E sports team.
• 2:07:27
  They now have a team of nine active pro players competing in
• 2:07:31
  tournaments. That's frickin Andy, Lewis,
• 2:07:34
  Dogao, Jordan, Kingston, Winchester, Miguel and since
• 2:07:39
  February Doubt and Viper. My first question is, is the
• 2:07:44
  team too big now? Yes.
• 2:07:47
  In my honest in my honest opinion, yes.
• 2:07:51
  I'm wondering what exactly is the goal of this team?
• 2:07:55
  Like why do they have so many members?
• 2:07:59
  Is that just for fun for training purposes?
• 2:08:02
  Or is that because they have a bigger plan?
• 2:08:05
  Yeah, no, it's like it's been rumored that 2026 is going to be
• 2:08:10
  a year focused on team tournaments.
• 2:08:13
  Yeah, I, I, I don't know. Now they will have practice
• 2:08:17
  teams in house, basically. Maybe they're going to be able
• 2:08:21
  to, to practice amongst each other better.
• 2:08:24
  I think if there are team tournaments, I don't know.
• 2:08:28
  I I don't really like the idea of having like freaking 3
• 2:08:33
  Onimaru ABC for for an event in a main event.
• 2:08:39
  Neither do I, Yeah, neither do I.
• 2:08:43
  So did you listen to the Only Talks podcast with Jordan Viper
• 2:08:48
  in Doubt? No, I didn't have a chance to.
• 2:08:51
  OK, so I did. I wasn't the biggest fan of it
• 2:08:58
  because it felt like something very spontaneous, not very
• 2:09:01
  thought out, not very structured and it also kind of felt like
• 2:09:07
  they are not really taking it serious.
• 2:09:10
  So just as an example, I have noted, like in our talking
• 2:09:16
  points, I've written retirement home question mark and you've
• 2:09:21
  commented on that. You, it sounds like you'll think
• 2:09:24
  that's funny, but that joke was not made by me.
• 2:09:28
  It was made by doubt when he was asked what he was thinking about
• 2:09:33
  being in the team. And then he said the usual stuff
• 2:09:36
  like, Oh yeah, it's an honour and these kind of things.
• 2:09:38
  And they were no, give us your honest opinion.
• 2:09:40
  And then he said, well, I'm in a retirement home now.
• 2:09:44
  So that joke was made by Doubt, who was just getting into the
• 2:09:48
  team. I don't know.
• 2:09:54
  Now imagine being the team leader doing this podcast in,
• 2:09:58
  you know, showcasing your new players.
• 2:10:01
  And his answer is, well, I feel like I'm in the retirement home
• 2:10:04
  now. Isn't that just, I don't know, a
• 2:10:07
  weird thing to say? Shouldn't he be more excited
• 2:10:10
  about it and have big plans and, you know, try to get back into
• 2:10:15
  the top ten or something? Yeah, so you see, that's the
• 2:10:20
  thing. Oh man, Onimaru had great
• 2:10:26
  players before you name them Lewis, Andy, Dugal.
• 2:10:32
  They even got Jordan later on. What am I missing because fire
• 2:10:39
  left? Yeah, that's freaking Andy
• 2:10:43
  Kingston. I think Kingston.
• 2:10:44
  Kingston, Kingston I was missing.
• 2:10:47
  So these are very good players as it was.
• 2:10:50
  Now you're being joined by vibrant Daud, which are half of
• 2:10:57
  the latest form of GL Jordan is going to kind of join that
• 2:11:03
  little church. I feel like those were some part
• 2:11:09
  of the, the initial roster. I I guess of GL they're only
• 2:11:13
  missing Tato which I'm not entirely sure.
• 2:11:17
  If we won't, we will miss in Onimaru because they said our
• 2:11:22
  families almost united or something like that.
• 2:11:27
  Yeah, I was going to now. OK, now I'm confused because I
• 2:11:31
  was debating on trying to put you on the spot here.
• 2:11:34
  I thought they were talking about you.
• 2:11:37
  I was sure you're going to announce at some point that
• 2:11:40
  you're joining on Imaru. They hadn't talked to me at all
• 2:11:46
  about anything. I'm again, like I, I'm not sure
• 2:11:52
  if we publicly discussed on the podcast about this or, or just
• 2:11:56
  between us. I'm really suspicious or like,
• 2:12:00
  I'll be really, really careful about joining an E sports team
• 2:12:04
  for the future after I've been involved with Wii Sports.
• 2:12:09
  I don't know. Maybe it depends on the
• 2:12:13
  conditions on, on the, you know, yeah, on the crack, on the, on
• 2:12:20
  the contract and all of that. But.
• 2:12:22
  On the crack. On the crack my #1 issue with
• 2:12:27
  this team during the initial latest roster is sustainability.
• 2:12:35
  Like how? How can you actually afford to
• 2:12:41
  keep this team to go for, you know, longer than two months?
• 2:12:48
  Yeah, well, apparently they can. This team's been around for a
• 2:12:51
  while now. Yeah, but not in this, not in
• 2:12:55
  this roster, I mean. Yes.
• 2:12:57
  I don't know. We'll we'll see.
• 2:12:59
  No, definitely they were talking about me.
• 2:13:02
  If they were I, I was not aware. Well, if anyone knew then you
• 2:13:07
  would so it. It can't be you.
• 2:13:09
  So I, I when I read that, I was like, OK, so probably tattoo is
• 2:13:14
  next me reading that, that, that was the first thing that popped
• 2:13:18
  into my head. But then why wouldn't they do
• 2:13:20
  that alongside Doubt and Viper? I don't know.
• 2:13:23
  I don't have all the answers, Chris.
• 2:13:25
  Why? I don't get it?
• 2:13:28
  Why don't you Stonewall? And why don't you have all the
• 2:13:30
  answers just. Go up, caps lock.
• 2:13:39
  Yeah, so Tato makes sense because then we have the old
• 2:13:44
  Tyrant team back together or or former like first.
• 2:13:48
  Well, except for Slam, of course.
• 2:13:50
  And Neely, I don't know, let's just see who who's coming.
• 2:13:56
  And the question is, for me, it's rather is it a player or is
• 2:13:59
  it a content creator? Because I believe they have that
• 2:14:02
  they have not shown their team as a caster and some of the one
• 2:14:07
  of the players has changed his role from being a player to a
• 2:14:10
  content creator. So I don't know, I don't know
• 2:14:13
  what's happening there. Yeah, they're, they're missing
• 2:14:16
  an English content creator, right?
• 2:14:18
  Because they have a Portuguese 1A Spanish one.
• 2:14:23
  And yeah, they're they're missing.
• 2:14:26
  Well, Viper I guess is the English content creator.
• 2:14:30
  Isn't the appropriate area. More than Well, yeah, but she's
• 2:14:33
  also a content creator. Well, yeah, but for instance, so
• 2:14:36
  is so is Goku, so is fire. And they just changed his role.
• 2:14:44
  Yeah, they, they, they changed his role, Goku's role from pro
• 2:14:48
  player to content creator. So he's what I'm, he's who I'm
• 2:14:51
  thinking of, yeah. Also, they have forks as well.
• 2:14:56
  Who's a content creator Brazilian one as well.
• 2:14:58
  I forgot about that man. They have a lot of people that
• 2:15:01
  I'm assuming they're they're paying.
• 2:15:02
  So again, you see my my point being sustainability.
• 2:15:08
  So now to go back to my initial idea, you have Jordan kind of
• 2:15:16
  forming like a like a small church with Dalton Viper
• 2:15:21
  possibly, maybe Tato in the future or not, I don't know.
• 2:15:25
  This is just my speculation. Then what?
• 2:15:29
  Then you will have the Lewis with Andy and then I'm not sure
• 2:15:36
  what's the synergy between Dukal, Kingston and these
• 2:15:39
  people. I mean I assume Dukal gets along
• 2:15:42
  well with Kingston. Not sure about how he's getting
• 2:15:46
  along with freaking Andy. Maybe freaking Andy is friends
• 2:15:50
  with them as well. Then Louis is kind of and like
• 2:15:53
  an outsider. So you're, you're thinking about
• 2:15:57
  who can pair up with whom in that group, right?
• 2:16:01
  No, I'm literally talking about even in synergy in a, in a
• 2:16:07
  professional E sports team, even about practicing, even about
• 2:16:14
  like for instance, Hera joined GL, right?
• 2:16:19
  It was very clear that it wasn't the best synergy between the,
• 2:16:24
  you know, the previous jail or like the old jail and the new
• 2:16:26
  jail, the one that had Hera. Like Hera was a young talent.
• 2:16:31
  He was eager for, you know, collabs, making content, willing
• 2:16:38
  to put in the work. Whereas, you know, the others
• 2:16:42
  don't necessarily feel like they they have that energy anymore.
• 2:16:49
  Maybe. So that kind of makes me think,
• 2:16:52
  you know, how will someone like Louis get along with them in the
• 2:16:58
  team? Like, not necessarily just for
• 2:17:00
  to participate for a tournament, just being in a team,
• 2:17:05
  practicing, getting along. I don't know.
• 2:17:08
  I it's very hard to imagine Lewis's style of jokes with
• 2:17:14
  Viper styles of jokes, for instance.
• 2:17:16
  It's really maybe, maybe with Vipers, probably not with
• 2:17:21
  doubts. I don't know.
• 2:17:23
  It just feels like there's no synergy to me.
• 2:17:27
  I completely get what you're saying.
• 2:17:29
  I don't see it either. But you know, I've always had
• 2:17:33
  the trouble with Age of Empires teams that for me they were
• 2:17:37
  never really professional teams. Probably GL being the only one.
• 2:17:43
  And I would even say that despite Vitality being a big
• 2:17:47
  name, I'm not really sure that they are doing for Age, for
• 2:17:51
  their Age of Empires two team what they are doing for
• 2:17:53
  different teams. Because for an E sport team,
• 2:17:56
  when I think of a professional E sport team, I think about
• 2:18:00
  mandatory practice, the whole team together, mandatory
• 2:18:05
  training with coaches with, I don't know, outsiders who give a
• 2:18:08
  different perspective of things, mental coaching, maybe health
• 2:18:13
  and nutrition and you know, these kind of things.
• 2:18:16
  This is what I think of when I'm talking about professional E
• 2:18:20
  sports teams because this is what professional E sports teams
• 2:18:23
  in other games do. So when I when I hear about how
• 2:18:30
  Hera and Viper didn't train together in GL and Hera was
• 2:18:35
  training with other players, that is unthinkable in a
• 2:18:40
  professional E sport team, in a different game.
• 2:18:42
  That is just not how things work.
• 2:18:45
  You have Viper and Hera in a team, probably the two of the
• 2:18:48
  best players in the world, they will have to train together.
• 2:18:52
  There is no debating this. They would have to push
• 2:18:56
  themselves to get even better than that, you know what I mean?
• 2:18:59
  And we don't have that in our team scene.
• 2:19:02
  I I agree. I mean, probably we have known
• 2:19:06
  with vitality, but again, it is just simply because they're best
• 2:19:10
  friends. Exactly.
• 2:19:12
  It's not because of vitality, it's because Hera Heart and Niri
• 2:19:15
  are keen on training together. Yeah.
• 2:19:18
  So for Onimaru, in my personal opinion, and again I know it's
• 2:19:23
  totally irrelevant, but for me better news than having Viper,
• 2:19:28
  Doubt and and maybe Jordan join the team.
• 2:19:31
  Better news would be to hire some professional coach who is
• 2:19:36
  putting in the hours of analysing the games of the
• 2:19:41
  opponent, getting your own players into good preparation
• 2:19:46
  for certain opponents, for certain sets, for certain map
• 2:19:50
  things, getting them this Intel that they can use to improve.
• 2:19:56
  And not just having a team with some players who like each other
• 2:20:00
  and then, you know, have them in the same same room.
• 2:20:03
  Which leads me to the boot camp. It sounds like a great
• 2:20:07
  experience, but it also sounds like, you know, a boot camp in
• 2:20:11
  Age of Vampires 2 sounds like what we do at work when we do
• 2:20:16
  team building. It's not what we do when we try
• 2:20:19
  to improve things, it's what we try to get better atmosphere in
• 2:20:23
  the team, you know? Yeah, but it was more of of an
• 2:20:30
  answer to, you know, you said they'll call this a retirement
• 2:20:34
  home. And you were saying, like,
• 2:20:36
  imagine the sponsor listening to this.
• 2:20:38
  Imagine the players that are already existing.
• 2:20:41
  Yeah, you're right. I didn't even think about that.
• 2:20:43
  Imagine what Lewis and Andy and Kingston are are thinking of,
• 2:20:48
  and they're like, you know, we did.
• 2:20:52
  Andy had another team before this.
• 2:20:55
  Yes, he did. He was in, wasn't he?
• 2:20:58
  Even in Wii Sports? No, no.
• 2:21:01
  No, where was Andy? I'm going to look that up.
• 2:21:04
  You can continue making a point. But yeah, anyway, like one of
• 2:21:11
  the first serious team for them paying them a salary that you
• 2:21:16
  could see their progress in this team or under this team, both in
• 2:21:22
  team games and in one V ones their growth as a players.
• 2:21:25
  And now someone comes here and and calling it a retirement
• 2:21:30
  home. I will be like dude.
• 2:21:34
  Well, if I was Lewis and doubt would were to join my team, I
• 2:21:38
  would probably think awesome. Now there's this guy who who has
• 2:21:42
  seen everything. I can benefit from his
• 2:21:45
  experience and from all the things he knows and his
• 2:21:48
  strategizing and these kind of things.
• 2:21:50
  And then he comes to the meeting room and says, well, here I am
• 2:21:52
  to chill and relax in my retirement home.
• 2:21:55
  That would be kind of demotivating.
• 2:21:57
  But maybe Dowd was just making a bad joke and he, I, I hope he
• 2:22:02
  was making a bad joke. By the way, Andy was in my
• 2:22:06
  insanity before that. True, true.
• 2:22:08
  You're right. My bad.
• 2:22:09
  My bad. OK, so I guess we'll see what
• 2:22:13
  the future holds. We'll see what Unnimaru brings
• 2:22:15
  to the table. Again, this has nothing to do
• 2:22:20
  with Onimaru. I would like for an E sports
• 2:22:24
  team to invest into the player growth by giving analysis, by
• 2:22:29
  giving a coach. I think that's far more valuable
• 2:22:32
  than adding new players to a roster.
• 2:22:34
  But yeah, not not my cup of tea. I'm just going to sit back and
• 2:22:39
  and watch them being in their retirement home or wherever they
• 2:22:42
  see themselves. Let's move on to the last two
• 2:22:46
  smaller pieces of news. I'm going to head this over to
• 2:22:49
  you. You wanted to give a shout out
• 2:22:51
  to a certain website? Yeah, there's someone that
• 2:22:54
  reached out to me on on this query and basically he kind of
• 2:23:01
  sent me his, his website iscastlerush.org and what
• 2:23:08
  they're basically trying to promote.
• 2:23:10
  There is a website where you can keep up with everything that
• 2:23:13
  happened in the scene, all the news, all the matches ongoing,
• 2:23:21
  all the streamers, they're active streamers and what
• 2:23:25
  they're, they're, you know, streaming basically what's I'm
• 2:23:31
  looking at Devier Super Kaiso. That's why I said what they're
• 2:23:34
  streaming because it's not just the AOF related, it's following
• 2:23:39
  basically most of the streamers in the scene.
• 2:23:41
  You have the news, you have the matches and what upcoming
• 2:23:44
  events, players, overview and transfers, E sports teams, the
• 2:23:49
  stats in terms in terms of maps and sieves and the community.
• 2:23:54
  Basically they're trying to introduce strata roulette,
• 2:23:58
  something like that. It is something fun for, for the
• 2:24:00
  community, but yeah, I, I kind of like the idea of a website
• 2:24:06
  like this to, to just follow up the latest news in, in the
• 2:24:11
  scene. They also asked me to do an
• 2:24:13
  interview, which I have not completed because I was super
• 2:24:16
  busy lately. It's going to be a written 1.
• 2:24:18
  So you guys want to hear some thoughts that I have on what
• 2:24:22
  they asked me. I'll, I'll post them there.
• 2:24:27
  Well, they will post it there and yeah, it's a pretty fun new
• 2:24:33
  website that I would like to give a shout out.
• 2:24:36
  Nice so the site is castle rush.org.
• 2:24:41
  It's castle rush.org. I'm going to put that in the
• 2:24:44
  show notes so you can just click the link and take a look at
• 2:24:47
  yourself. I've taken a look.
• 2:24:50
  It's I enjoy the design of the site.
• 2:24:52
  It's very clean, it's very easy to navigate.
• 2:24:55
  And I've also enjoyed that the each and every news bit is not
• 2:24:59
  too long. It's not like a three hours
• 2:25:01
  podcast, very bite sized, so you can easily go through them.
• 2:25:07
  I definitely bookmarked it for me as a as an additional source
• 2:25:11
  for age of vampires to news to look at and maybe include them
• 2:25:15
  here in this podcast. OK.
• 2:25:18
  And then at last, final piece of news.
• 2:25:21
  It's not really news, but it's something worth mentioning.
• 2:25:23
  And initially, 2 hours ago, we were talking about Grubby and
• 2:25:27
  his experience in Age of Empires 2.
• 2:25:29
  And the reason why Grubby is picking up Age of Empires 2 was
• 2:25:33
  actually a show match. He was playing because he was
• 2:25:36
  part of the seven Dota players. He's not really a Dota player,
• 2:25:42
  but he kind of is, but he's more of a, you know, RTS player in
• 2:25:46
  general. So he and six other Dota players
• 2:25:50
  were playing AS1V7 against Hera, and you've watched these games,
• 2:25:57
  I take it? Yeah.
• 2:25:59
  So tell us. They were very entertaining, I
• 2:26:02
  even casted them as well. You can either.
• 2:26:05
  How do you cast that? Oh my God.
• 2:26:07
  Yeah, it was very chaotic, very fun as well.
• 2:26:10
  Basically the idea was to be a play all three and at at the
• 2:26:17
  beginning Hera had 0 handicap basically which would be the
• 2:26:22
  equivalent of 100% which is the the the minimum that you could
• 2:26:28
  put like so 0 handicap is 100% and then 125 or 25% handicap and
• 2:26:34
  so on. So no handicap means your
• 2:26:37
  villages are just as effective as the other villages.
• 2:26:39
  Yeah, exactly. So there's the and, but not, not
• 2:26:42
  just the villagers, the units are to some extent affected by
• 2:26:48
  it as well. I'm saying to some extent
• 2:26:52
  because they could. I, I think they changed this a
• 2:26:57
  while ago, but I think their HP is, is affected.
• 2:27:03
  And I think this is that what they changed it was that you
• 2:27:07
  would do, for instance, for 25% handicap, you would do 25% more
• 2:27:13
  damage and take less bonus damage.
• 2:27:16
  But I think this was changed. I'm not 100% sure on this.
• 2:27:21
  OK, I don't know. I have no.
• 2:27:23
  Experience but yeah, so units are are changed to some extent
• 2:27:26
  as well. So you, you have more HP on, on
• 2:27:29
  your units. I I know that and yeah,
• 2:27:32
  basically that was game #1 and depending on how game number one
• 2:27:36
  goes, the handicap would be adjusted.
• 2:27:40
  Now I think the the the the minimum ELO was someone that was
• 2:27:45
  not even ranked, but other than that all the players were around
• 2:27:51
  1011 hundred 1200 and grubby having the highest ego of almost
• 2:27:58
  1500 at that time. Yeah, the hero got clapped the
• 2:28:02
  first map he was golden pit. He died in feudal age.
• 2:28:08
  Like everyone was super aggressive.
• 2:28:10
  Some people went to fast castle. They showed up with other nights
• 2:28:14
  for a castle drop. Gravy did like a dull castle
• 2:28:17
  drop. Of course he loves those.
• 2:28:19
  It's very funny to I, I think I'm I'm not even going to
• 2:28:23
  promote my my casting of this. I think if you want to have a
• 2:28:28
  lot of fun by the way, later on, T-90 ended up casting them and
• 2:28:33
  uploading a video on his channel as well.
• 2:28:35
  I'm not even recommending you to to watch that either.
• 2:28:38
  Go watch either Harrah's perspective or the player's
• 2:28:42
  perspective. It was really funny because they
• 2:28:45
  had no communication about the game.
• 2:28:49
  The seven players that is. Like they all did the most
• 2:28:53
  random thing that crossed their minds without coordinating like
• 2:28:58
  a grubby went FC and planning to do a castle job without
• 2:29:01
  coordinating with the other players.
• 2:29:03
  You know, like you know, just defend my villagers.
• 2:29:05
  No, he just took half of his villagers and send them forward
• 2:29:08
  and he lost all his veils trying to castle drop while someone
• 2:29:12
  scrums were literally 2 tiles next to him and Archers was what
• 2:29:16
  was killing him. And it was it was super funny.
• 2:29:19
  I think watching this from either harass perspective or the
• 2:29:22
  players it's really funny. They were all on boys.
• 2:29:26
  Though I can attest that so I was switching back and forth
• 2:29:31
  between Hera's point of view and Grubby's point of view, and at
• 2:29:36
  some point I just had one on the TV and the other one on the
• 2:29:38
  phone. It was, it was hilarious.
• 2:29:41
  Hera was playing out of his mind.
• 2:29:43
  He was playing really well and I believe I heard him say that
• 2:29:48
  from time to time as well, that he was actually playing his best
• 2:29:51
  he could. And it's completely out of this
• 2:29:55
  world how how awesome Hara is at this fucking game.
• 2:29:58
  But the funnier side is definitely the one from the Dota
• 2:30:03
  players. Like watching Grubby's point of
• 2:30:06
  view is a lot more funny than Hara's point of view because
• 2:30:09
  Hara was really try Harding. But Hara's point of view is
• 2:30:12
  actually more more interesting because he still commented.
• 2:30:20
  He was basically also casting his own game and giving lots of
• 2:30:24
  information and letting you know about his thought process on
• 2:30:27
  things. So it's also very educational.
• 2:30:31
  Yeah. And and what I wanted to say is
• 2:30:34
  that for the second game, they basically increased Harrah's
• 2:30:42
  handicap to 125 S 25% had handicap.
• 2:30:46
  And it was such a close game. He he ended up losing it as
• 2:30:51
  well, but it was probably the closest and her even had
• 2:30:55
  Mongols. It was that that was really fun.
• 2:31:00
  That actually went for for a long while.
• 2:31:02
  And I don't know, the whole thing show match was really fun.
• 2:31:07
  I'm not going to spoil the results of the third game if
• 2:31:10
  people are curious if her managed to to beat them or not.
• 2:31:15
  Yeah, let's, let's not spoil it. Let's just say this much.
• 2:31:19
  Hera chose the civilization that he's deemed to be the strongest.
• 2:31:24
  So he tried his best and he really put up a fight, that's
• 2:31:28
  for sure. All right, so finally, we're
• 2:31:32
  done with the news. We're going to move straight to
• 2:31:36
  some podcast news and the emails.
• 2:31:41
  I would like to start with a small piece of news concerning
• 2:31:44
  the next month. In this podcast, I will be
• 2:31:46
  travelling to Japan for three weeks.
• 2:31:47
  I already mentioned that in the intro, so I might not be
• 2:31:50
  responding to messages as fast as I usually do.
• 2:31:53
  However, you won't be going without podcast during that time
• 2:31:57
  because I've already prepared a few episodes that will be
• 2:31:59
  released while I'm away and it's not going to be a civilization
• 2:32:04
  episode like you are used to that.
• 2:32:06
  I I just didn't have the time to do so, but some other episodes
• 2:32:11
  and the next civilization episode will be coming out in
• 2:32:14
  April when I'm back. And I'm pretty sure it's going
• 2:32:16
  to be about the Japanese since I am in Japan.
• 2:32:19
  I did the same same thing with the Celts when I was in
• 2:32:22
  Scotland. I'm, I'm confident I will be
• 2:32:24
  inspired to talk about the Japanese.
• 2:32:26
  So that's my plan for the upcoming months.
• 2:32:29
  And also the past month has actually been quite quiet when
• 2:32:34
  it comes to messages from you guys out there.
• 2:32:36
  So do you want to change that and give me your controversial
• 2:32:39
  opinion on something or ask a question or just, you know, be
• 2:32:43
  annoyed by the champion? Send me a message.
• 2:32:47
  Send me a message to the podcast.
• 2:32:48
  Send it to ageofcast@gmail.com. That's ageofcast@gmail.com.
• 2:32:55
  I've received one heartwarming message from Russ from Northern
• 2:32:58
  Canada. Danielle, I've forwarded that
• 2:33:00
  message to you. Russ suffers from letter
• 2:33:04
  anxiety, and we have been talking about that topic in an
• 2:33:07
  episode before this. So he was inspired by this
• 2:33:10
  conversation, and he would like us to pick up the topic one more
• 2:33:14
  time. So he sent me a second e-mail
• 2:33:17
  just giving me some more direct questions, one of which is, do I
• 2:33:23
  need to just keep forcing it? And he means playing the game
• 2:33:27
  until I'm numb to the stress, like taking a cold plunge.
• 2:33:30
  Do you think that's good advice? Sure.
• 2:33:37
  I would disagree. I think that's horrible advice.
• 2:33:42
  I know there's a theory that you just like shock therapy, that
• 2:33:48
  you have to force yourself into a situation.
• 2:33:51
  If you do it often enough, you will get used to it and then
• 2:33:54
  it's not a problem anymore. But that is a misconception.
• 2:33:58
  That is not true at all. That's not how the human
• 2:34:02
  actually works. That's usually making things
• 2:34:05
  worse and it leads up to the point where you will like shock
• 2:34:09
  therapy usually gives you a shock and then it makes you not
• 2:34:14
  want to do that anymore and you turn your back on it.
• 2:34:17
  That's what usually shock therapy does.
• 2:34:19
  Shock therapy is not an effective way of therapy.
• 2:34:24
  There are like there are exceptions, for example, when
• 2:34:28
  you're doing behavioural therapy to let's let's use your, your
• 2:34:34
  phobia of rodents as an example. So phobias are usually treated
• 2:34:41
  with behavioural therapy as opposed to psychoanalysis and
• 2:34:44
  other kinds of therapy, and that is proven to be the most
• 2:34:48
  effective. 1 And in some sequences of behavioural
• 2:34:53
  therapy, you would be confronted with the object that is the
• 2:34:59
  object of your phobia. Spiders.
• 2:35:01
  That's heights. That's rodents, for example.
• 2:35:04
  I don't believe it does. Crap.
• 2:35:05
  No, thank you. No, no, That is very effective,
• 2:35:08
  but it is not done in shock therapy.
• 2:35:13
  It is actually very carefully prepared and very slowly done.
• 2:35:18
  So it's the exact opposite of taking a cold plunge.
• 2:35:21
  It's usually done with not the real object, but with an
• 2:35:26
  abstraction of it. Maybe AI don't know.
• 2:35:29
  If you have a phobia of spiders, you would take away the legs,
• 2:35:32
  you would take away certain parts of it and trying to figure
• 2:35:36
  out what exactly is causing the phobia and then you would slowly
• 2:35:41
  add up to that so that you haven't.
• 2:35:44
  We call that a habitualization. I hope I translated it right.
• 2:35:48
  So you get used to it step by step.
• 2:35:51
  And that's a very slow pace, very careful way of approaching
• 2:35:55
  it. It's the exact opposite of a
• 2:35:57
  shock. And that has proven to be not
• 2:36:01
  numbing, but rather it is proven to be a way of effective therapy
• 2:36:07
  that you get rid of the phobia and change your perception of
• 2:36:14
  the object that is previously giving you phobia.
• 2:36:17
  That is a useful way of doing it.
• 2:36:20
  Oh, it it all sounds nice in in theory, you know.
• 2:36:24
  Oh, it's hard work. It's, it's, it's, it's terribly
• 2:36:27
  hard work. It's not an easy thing to do.
• 2:36:31
  And yes, I agree, it is terrifying.
• 2:36:34
  That is what most patients of therapists report when they
• 2:36:38
  reflect on how these therapy sessions are going.
• 2:36:41
  But it's also important to say that they are not doing this
• 2:36:44
  alone. They are doing this supervised
• 2:36:46
  with a therapist, hopefully a licensed 1.
• 2:36:49
  So they are under supervision. This is not something you should
• 2:36:53
  do alone. If we're talking about an actual
• 2:36:57
  phobia, you know, phobia is a is a, is an anxiety disorder.
• 2:37:01
  So you need a therapy to get rid of it if you want.
• 2:37:05
  And you need, you need to have an expert in how behavioural,
• 2:37:11
  yeah, how human behaviour can be changed.
• 2:37:14
  So if we put if you, if we use that knowledge for Age of
• 2:37:18
  Empires 2, a cold plunge is not what you want to do.
• 2:37:22
  It's the exact opposite. You want to basically use that
• 2:37:24
  step by step way of approaching things to change what is causing
• 2:37:31
  a phobia or a letter anxiety into something that does not
• 2:37:36
  cause an anxiety anymore. And that is something that there
• 2:37:41
  are different ways of doing that.
• 2:37:42
  For example, let me give you an example.
• 2:37:45
  Something that many people experience when having matter
• 2:37:47
  anxiety is shaking hands. Now if you want to get rid of
• 2:37:52
  the hands shaking, you need to understand what what is causing
• 2:37:56
  shaking your hands. That is usually a mix of your
• 2:38:01
  body giving you an adrenaline rush or other kind of things.
• 2:38:07
  And those are not things you can control, right?
• 2:38:10
  You can't tell your body not to give you that adrenaline rush.
• 2:38:13
  That's just something you have to experience if your body is
• 2:38:17
  giving you that reaction. So if you want to get rid of
• 2:38:21
  that, you need to understand why a body is doing that.
• 2:38:25
  And usually it's a fight or flight reaction, an instinct
• 2:38:29
  that we have. And that instinct is always
• 2:38:32
  triggered by something. So now you need to find out what
• 2:38:35
  is, what is the trigger for that?
• 2:38:37
  And that is individual. That is something different for
• 2:38:39
  us than it is for me maybe or for somebody else who's
• 2:38:42
  listening to this podcast and identifying themselves with
• 2:38:45
  this. If you figure out what that what
• 2:38:48
  that trigger is and deal with that, then and probably only
• 2:38:55
  then, you will get rid of the Physiology of all this and maybe
• 2:39:00
  also what's causing the stress as well.
• 2:39:03
  That would be my deeper analysis on how to get rid of ladder
• 2:39:08
  anxiety. Yeah, it's such a, it's such a
• 2:39:14
  broad topic, right? Because it doesn't apply to
• 2:39:19
  everyone the same. Just like you, you pointed it
• 2:39:21
  out nicely. I I would say to try it and
• 2:39:27
  maybe play skirmisher games versus the AII.
• 2:39:31
  Like I I would probably recommend starting there.
• 2:39:35
  I know it's not as fun, not as competitive, but maybe try a
• 2:39:41
  couple of games against the AI before, like hopping straight up
• 2:39:44
  into a A rank game. You, you get used to your
• 2:39:48
  hotkeys, you get used to your to, to playing a bit.
• 2:39:52
  It's always, you know, you don't have that straight up first game
• 2:39:56
  of the day type of five and you get just stomped.
• 2:40:00
  And it it it doesn't make the idea of starting to queue for
• 2:40:06
  the next game fun. I think that's an excellent
• 2:40:09
  piece of advice that that could be one of the steps, you know,
• 2:40:12
  and when you're trying to close in on the anxiety.
• 2:40:17
  Again, people do this very differently.
• 2:40:19
  Some people would like to pretend that they are playing
• 2:40:21
  against a real player, but they still play against the AI.
• 2:40:25
  For me, that would never work, but for some people it does
• 2:40:27
  work. Another maybe practical way of
• 2:40:30
  going at this is to queue up for the first game and say the win
• 2:40:37
  condition for winning this game is not in winning the game, but
• 2:40:41
  rather in finishing it. Get stomped or you know, get
• 2:40:46
  super nervous and experience the nervousness, but with the
• 2:40:50
  mindset of this is not the game that I'm actually playing.
• 2:40:53
  This is the game where I'm playing against myself and
• 2:40:56
  getting the anxiety out of the way.
• 2:40:59
  And next game will be the same. If I'm still experiencing the
• 2:41:02
  anxiety. And you're only start to play on
• 2:41:06
  the ladder against other people, like real, like with the
• 2:41:10
  intention of actually winning. When you feel less anxiety,
• 2:41:14
  maybe that's also a way to do that.
• 2:41:16
  But I think there's different ways of doing that and you just
• 2:41:20
  got to find whatever works for you.
• 2:41:24
  Definitely. Kiss So Ross had a different
• 2:41:29
  follow up question. I think that's also very
• 2:41:31
  interesting to discuss. Let's let's try to keep it
• 2:41:34
  short. But he's asking why do we find a
• 2:41:37
  game with such intense multitasking fun?
• 2:41:40
  So you're known to love to micro 5 different groups in Dark Age
• 2:41:44
  at once, so why do you like it so much?
• 2:41:47
  I, I, I think because this is such a complex and difficult
• 2:41:52
  game, I think the satisfaction of winning a game, it's really
• 2:41:58
  high. I, I, I, I think that that high
• 2:42:03
  that you're getting after 5 winning streak, it's really hard
• 2:42:08
  to match with any other games. Of of course that's coming from
• 2:42:12
  my broad experience with other games.
• 2:42:15
  No, I only play it a week but maybe that's why I can't find
• 2:42:19
  another game that I can enjoy or that I like.
• 2:42:23
  Yeah, I would agree. I think I'm playing this game
• 2:42:27
  because I somehow, for whatever reason, I, I managed to get
• 2:42:34
  through that threshold where I understand what I'm doing and
• 2:42:38
  then multitasking is fun. And all the way up until that
• 2:42:42
  point, it was really difficult to stay at the game, to not give
• 2:42:48
  up, to keep improving. And I believe it was easier for
• 2:42:54
  me because back then we had way less civilizations to learn.
• 2:43:01
  I think now it's probably a lot more overwhelming.
• 2:43:04
  It's brutal for a new player. It, it must be so hard.
• 2:43:07
  Yeah, I'm, I'm going to be talking in a different podcast
• 2:43:11
  with a German like games. What's it called?
• 2:43:16
  Journalists who's like a professional talking about
• 2:43:19
  games. And I'm going to be talking
• 2:43:21
  about the new DLC with him in a in a few days.
• 2:43:25
  And this is someone who really enjoyed Age of Empires one back
• 2:43:28
  in the day and also played his share in Age of Empires 2, but
• 2:43:31
  only as a casual player. And he's returning to the game
• 2:43:34
  now for this podcast like 15 years later.
• 2:43:38
  And I'm so curious to, to as to whether he enjoyed the
• 2:43:43
  experience or whether he was just simply overwhelmed by it.
• 2:43:47
  But I guess that's what's making it fun to multitask.
• 2:43:51
  All right, so Daniela had to go. I'm going to finish up this
• 2:43:53
  episode with a tournament outlook for March 2026.
• 2:44:00
  So we've talked about the Platinum League of T-90 Titans
• 2:44:03
  League in the news already. But here's a little reminder for
• 2:44:06
  you. The Platinum League is the most
• 2:44:08
  prestigious of all the T-90 leagues with a total price full
• 2:44:11
  of $64,000. The group stage is well on its
• 2:44:14
  way and move they they are moving over to the playoffs on
• 2:44:18
  March 16th. There's four groups with six
• 2:44:21
  players each. Each map win scores them one
• 2:44:23
  point, so everything is played as a playoff.
• 2:44:26
  Three sets during during the group stage.
• 2:44:29
  First place of each group advances to the quarterfinals,
• 2:44:32
  Second and third advance to the round of 12. 4th PL. won't get
• 2:44:35
  to the playoffs but gets to stay in Platinum League for the next
• 2:44:39
  season, whereas the bottom two players of each group get
• 2:44:42
  relegated to Gold League for TTL 6.
• 2:44:44
  So this is going to fill up the next two weeks.
• 2:44:47
  Then. If you're German, Austrian or
• 2:44:49
  from Switzerland, so German speaking country and also want
• 2:44:52
  to compete in a professionally organized tournament, then the
• 2:44:56
  Bastion is just what you're looking for.
• 2:44:58
  It's hosted by being esports. It's a 1V1 tournament and the
• 2:45:01
  venue for the final is happening at Take TV in the German city
• 2:45:05
  Krefeld. You can sign up for the Open
• 2:45:08
  qualifier until March 7th. And if you're at it, why not
• 2:45:12
  sign up for the German speaking 1V1 league in its ninth season?
• 2:45:16
  You can sign up until March 20th.
• 2:45:19
  I've put links to both events in the show notes, or check out the
• 2:45:22
  Discord server over at AOV 2 Germany For more information.
• 2:45:27
  For Age of Empires 3, the ESOC Spring Championship 2026 is
• 2:45:32
  happening and running until April 12th.
• 2:45:35
  This is a tournament hosted by the ESO community and considered
• 2:45:39
  an STA tournament for Age of Empires 3.
• 2:45:42
  There's nothing going on for Age of Empires 4, but Age of
• 2:45:45
  Mythology is having an STA tournament called Pandora's Box
• 2:45:48
  2, which has already started and will conclude on March 29th.
• 2:45:53
  And that's it for this month's magazine.
• 2:45:56
  If you want to become a part of the podcast community, join the
• 2:45:58
  podcast Discord server and if you want to get in touch or your
• 2:46:01
  message read in the next magazine, write me an e-mail at
• 2:46:05
  ageofcast@gmail.com. Also, I'm going to give a shout
• 2:46:08
  out to my Co host Daniela. You can watch her cast games and
• 2:46:13
  play games over at Twitch TV. Daniela under score AOE Thank
• 2:46:19
  you all for listening and I'll catch you in the next episode.