Apr 22, 2022
Apr 20, 2022
New Game Mode Showcased to the Community
Deep Waters Pro League Season 2 finished this weekend with an exciting final day. TaToH, already qualified through the Winners’ Bracket, awaited the winner of the Losers’ Bracket final between ACCM and Nicov.
After losing to ACCM in the Quarterfinals, Nicov dropped down to the Losers’ Bracket, battling his way through the other defeated players to reach the final. In a grueling set, Nicov managed to overturn the result of their previous meeting to advance to the Grand Final vs TaToH.
Out of his 29 games up to this point, TaToH had only lost four of them. An imperious run indeed that he kept up vs Nicov, winning 4-1. Nicov endured a long day of play while TaToH had the advantage of coming in fresh. A fantastic tournament performance from both players.
Season Two introduced a double-elimination format. Once players had qualified from the group stage, they were given a second chance if they lost in the knockout stage. This format certainly benefited Nicov who initially lost in the first knockout round but was able to continue the fight into second place. ACCM was the unfortunate player to not benefit from this though, reaching the Winners’ Final but then losing both that and the Losers’ Final, finally settling for third place.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel about double-elimination as a format, it certainly adds content to a tournament but is it a fair way of deciding an event? With most of the knockout round played as best of threes, maybe a double-elimination is the best way to mitigate the cut-throat nature of these short sets.
The game mode itself has attracted a lot of attention in the community. It simulates starting ~2:30 into an RM game, with nine villagers rather than the standard three. Players have a larger amount of scouting to begin with too and access to all of their herdables. This has piqued the community’s interest, allowing for a shorter Dark Age and the ability to jump into action faster but with almost full scope for strategy (something not afforded by the Empire Wars mode).
There are still differing views on this, with some claiming that it is the way forward for the game. Others have said that it still forces you to ‘go in blind’, selecting a strategy without being able to properly scout your opponent. A possible solution for this could be to increase the area that is already scouted from the beginning to enable the players to send their starting scout forward rather than look for woodlines and other resources. But would this increase the risk of laming? With nine villagers, it is likely that one of the next two villagers out will go and collect a boar so taking one that is forward would be sensible but can the villager get there before the enemy scout? It could become a little RNG based here.
But even with these changes, does it still limit the opportunities to go for some super fast, aggressive builds? In Return of the Clans, we saw some incredible uptimes, with the Deceptive Baguettes team mastering an 18 pop Archers build. On some open maps (such as Serengeti or Atacama) this build could be absolutely devastating but in the Deep Waters game mode, it would not be possible as too many villagers are already assigned to wood. The same is true of some of the fast scouts builds (e.g. Khmer).
This is the second iteration of the game mode and Deep Waters have improved it, simulating the impact of various civ bonuses by that stage of the game. Mayans keep their extra villager but have 50 less food than standard. Lithuanians and Persians benefit from their additional starting resources. These are excellent developments and opens the mode up to more of the civs than before. But what about Chinese? They keep their three extra villagers but start with 50 less wood (not a problem) but with -100 food. Not 100 less but a negative amount. This is a massive deficit to make up and makes their start incredibly clunky. I feel this needs a rework of some kind, maybe starting with zero food, only two extra villagers but have loom already (with 50 less gold of course). This would mean they still have some idle time while they collect the 50 food needed for the next villager but once their opponent has researched loom themselves, would equate to around a 1.5-2 villager lead. That being said, they may have tested this already and found Chinese to be too strong with these changes.It is no surprise, given this, that Chinese did not get played at all through the whole tournament.
Some other civs are also disadvantaged by these settings, for example Britons and Tatars with their bonuses from herdables. The game mode simulates everyone having collected two sheep by the start point. Britons should be ~50 food ahead of their opponents by this point (or have had fewer villagers collecting from sheep so a higher wood count). Tatars miss out on having access to more food on their sheep. With two sheep collected for others, Tatars would still have ~100 food available to collect. This is equivalent to an extra sheep for any other civ, delaying when farms are needed. The Mongols are another one impacted, with the shorter Dark Age forcing scouting immediately, preventing them from pushing deer. These small impacts just make these civs slightly less powerful than in standard RM.
Would this game mode even work on every map though? We saw a lot of Baltic and Islands this time around and the mode really benefits them. But would a map like Socotra be viable with this? A map where early aggression with villagers is part of the meta needs that time at the beginning for the play to develop. Maybe I am just biased by my love for Socotra. Are there other maps where it wouldn’t work or where the map would lose its charm?
I for one certainly hope to see more tournaments from Deep Waters, I think the game mode certainly needs to be explored more. I’d like the next season to be a little more imaginative in the map pool. The community has some excellent tournament maps that provide plenty of interesting play styles and would just add a little something extra to this already intriguing format.
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