Third Age Total War Multiplayer Tournament Season 3 -TOURNAMENT 2 LIVE-

[Arrow2daknee]

~TATW Multiplayer Tournament~

SEASON 3


Original season 1-2 thread - HERE

Welcome everyone to the Third Age Total War Multiplayer Tournament Season 3! For those unfamiliar a user named AdmiralThrawn hosted 2 tournaments in 2014 (Season 2 didn't make it past the second round) that I was apart of. Those tournaments were incredibly fun so I have decided to host a third one. I highly recommend that you watch the videos and read the thread for seasons 1-2 because it will be quite similar to this, and you will know where I am coming from. I hope to make this a series of bi-weekly or monthly tournaments with rankings as I'm sure AdmiralThrawn did before it went downhill. But that's all down to how well this tournament goes. If you wish to sign up please post in this thread, and join the Steam Group because it helps with organizing tournaments.

Steam Group - MAKE SURE TO JOIN

-Tournament Rules-
- Vanilla TATW 3.2
- 12000 Gold Armies
- Large Unit Scale
- Matches are best of 3
- Single Elimination
- Contact your opponent through TWC or Steam and figure out a time you can play (try not to be late)
- Battles will be played on Grassy Plain or Pellenor Fields to prevent Hill Camping
- No Artillery/Mumakil/Sauron/Ents/Spiders/Balrog (This is partially because some of these units cause multiplayer battle crashes)
- Max of 6 cav total
- Max of 6 archers total
- Max of 2 Missile Cavalry (does not count towards archer total, but does count towards cav)
- The higher seed picks his faction first for the first battle, after that the loser of the last battle gets to choose if he picks first or second
- Once you have picked your faction for that battle, tell your opponent that you have chosen, and then he may pick his
- Once you have chosen a faction you may not switch until the next battle
- You can only play a faction once per match
- As soon as you win/lose your match send me a message on Steam/TWC immediately with the replays and results so I can update the bracket and make a match report
- Save the replay on all your battles, and send it to me through steam or TWC PM's (if you don't know how to do it look below)

-Players-
Arrow2daknee
Jmonster
Jadli
Joerock22
Narsil Shards
AdmiralThrawn
Egyptian Viking

-Bracket-


Faction Weights

Gondor: -800 Gold
Isengard: -800 Gold
Arnor: -600 Gold
Dwarves: -600 Gold
High Elves: -200 Gold
Silvan Elves: -200 Gold
Rohan: +200 Gold
Dale: +200 Gold
Eriador +200 Gold
Mordor: +400 Gold
Orcs of Gundabad: +400 Gold
Orcs of The Misty Mountains: +600 Gold
(any faction not listed will use a regular 12000 gold army)


-Old Brackets-
Tournament 1

-Prizes-
Winner of tournament 2 will receive 20$ (I think steam bux) courtesy of Jmonster, if anyone wants to donate prizes you can message me

-Help With Online battles in Medieval 2-
- Make sure you and your opponent are on the same steam server. To check click on steam in the upper left and then-settings-downloads-download region. Your download region should be the same
- We will be using the 'americas' folder for this, so be sure your TATW folder is named 'americas'
- Your replays are located in the 'replays' folder in the TATW mod folder, find the replay for the battle you played and then upload that and send it to me through steam or TWC. I only need one replay per battle so you and your opponent should figure out who will send the replay
- If you need any more assistance add me on Steam, and I can definitely make it work

Tournament 2 starts Friday, July 15th! Signups are open to anyone just post in the thread.

[Jmonstra]

Im honestly okay with expanding the map roster. More interesting terrain
makes for more interesting battles. Obvi we should avoid the more blatantly slanted
maps like Beacon of Gondor, but aside
from that I think it's fair game.

We could also consider a big siege battle at the end to close up the tourney. Helm's Deep anybody?

[Egyptian_Viking]

This sounds like a lot of fun. I have never been particularly good at online battles, but I am willing to join just for the fun of it.
Concerning the time scedule: At what time on the 10th do we start playing? Unfortunately I think I will be unable to play on the 10th since my brother graduates that day and we will host a party.
I can play the 11th or the 9th instead if my opponent is okay with that.

[Chieftain Khuzaymah]

I would really love to join, just like last time. But the problem is that my TATW version is illegal does not support multiplayer battles

[Arrow2daknee]

This sounds like a lot of fun. I have never been particularly good at online battles, but I am willing to join just for the fun of it.
Concerning the time scedule: At what time on the 10th do we start playing? Unfortunately I think I will be unable to play on the 10th since my brother graduates that day and we will host a party.
I can play the 11th or the 9th instead if my opponent is okay with that.

We start playing as soon as the bracket is posted on this thead, which will be the evening of June 9th (eastern time). Since you're in Sweden I think it'll already be the 10th, but you can play your match on the 11th, and hopefully we can also play the 2nd round then. The times are supposed to be flexible, and even if we don't get the finals done on the 12th it's not a big deal. Also if everyone can post their region (NA/EU) I'll try and get Euros against Euros and Freedoms against Freedoms.

Im honestly okay with expanding the map roster. More interesting terrain
makes for more interesting battles. Obvi we should avoid the more blatantly slanted
maps like Beacon of Gondor, but aside
from that I think it's fair game.

I'm fine with this too. If everyone else is okay with it I can make a list of maps that are decently balanced.

[Narsils_Shards]

I have been coerced into joining, do not consider my hiatus over.

[AdmiralThrawn]

I'm down! Should be fun!

[AdmiralThrawn]

PS: One thing I may suggest for this, back in Season 2 we weighted factions by how popular (read: good) they were. Not required, but it can be fun if we wanna see more factions. Otherwise everyone picks High Elves.

FACTION WEIGHTS

In order to better balance these battles we will be slightly weighting the amount of gold each faction receives. On average each faction should have been picked twice in Season 1, so we will be adding/subtracting 200 gold for each game they were away from 2 picks.

Rhun: Picked 0 times: +400 Gold
OoG: Picked 0 times: +400 Gold
OotMM: Picked 0 times: +400 Gold
Harad: Picked 0 times: +400 Gold
Mordor: Picked 1 time: +200 Gold
Dale: Picked 1 time: +200 Gold
Dwarves: Picked 2 times: No Change
Rohan: Picked 2 times: No Change
Gondor: Picked 2 times: No Change
Silvain Elves: Picked 4 times: -400 Gold
Arnor*: Picked 5 times: -600 Gold
Eriador*: Picked 5 times: -600 Gold
Isenguard: Picked 5 times: -600 Gold
High Elves: Picked 8 times: -1,200 Gold

[Arrow2daknee]

I was thinking about adding the faction weights, but I decided not to for this one. If there's a faction that is picked way more than the others than we'll put it back in for the second tournament. High Elves are fantastic, perhaps the best faction, but they're not completely dominant, and if they get picked every game we'll ban the faction or some of their units (Eldarinwe Archers). Mordor, Rhun, and Dale are very underrated and I think I'll be playing them quite a bit, and the only factions I think are complete trash are Harad (without mumakil), and OOTMM (Mordor and OOG are just better versions).

Also, what do you guys think about making finals best of 5 instead of best of 3? It would take long to play (probably over an hour) but best of 5's are a better test of skill and it will differentiate the finals from the other matches.

[joerock22]

I'm fine with not adding faction weights to the first round. I for one intend to be very diverse (i.e. unpredictable) with the factions I'm picking. I am also fine with either best of 5 or best of 3. Perhaps best of 3 for the early rounds and best of 5 for the later rounds?

[Jmonstra]

5 strikes me as too high. Best of three works fine, I think.

[Arrow2daknee]

bo5 is definitely too high for the early rounds, I was thinking of making it best of 5 for the finals though.

[Egyptian_Viking]

Since we play 2 or 3 games per match in the early rounds how about we add a rule to only allow players to pic a certain faction once per match? This would somewhat prevent spamming of the stronger factions.

[Arrow2daknee]

Since we play 2 or 3 games per match in the early rounds how about we add a rule to only allow players to pic a certain faction once per match? This would somewhat prevent spamming of the stronger factions.

Ok I agree and added this rule

You can only play a faction once per match

[Arrow2daknee]

Just a reminder to those of you that play TATW hotseats, we are using complete vanilla TATW 3.2 and I'm pretty sure TATW with the HS balance patch won't work with vanilla online since it edits unit stats (can someone confirm this?). So make sure you have a version of TATW 3.2 unedited that you can use for the tournament.

By the way since someone asked me this tournament is open for anyone to join, just post in the thread or send me a message and I will sign you up.

[AzkDaDwarf]

Seems fun, never actually been in one of these tournaments before and it will be fun to try it out.

[PandaChef]

I will play, last one was very good. However I do remember HE being pretty much unbeatable in the hands of a decent player. Their morale is crazy and so can hold down many troops without routing and take ages to die.

[ForBalin]

Hey, I'll join up as well

[Jmonstra]

I will play, last one was very good. However I do remember HE being pretty much unbeatable in the hands of a decent player. Their morale is crazy and so can hold down many troops without routing and take ages to die.

Sure you don't mean Dwarves ? As I recall Iron Guard fought to the death 90% of the time in previous tournies.

Also when do the match up become available?

[PandaChef]

Sure you don't mean Dwarves ? As I recall Iron Guard fought to the death 90% of the time in previous tournies.

Also when do the match up become available?

Didn't HE win every match no matter the opponent? It was a long time ago and I haven't played since then so I don't know if what I am saying is that true.

Just rewatched some of the videos, they're really good!