NEW DLC! And new Layoffs… | Town Center Ep. 36, ft. Red_Phosphoru
Yeah. So, well, how was it in Norway? First time for your baby, seeing the family, right? How was it? Yeah, short and sweet. It was very awesome. Um, long needed break. Uh, great travel overall. I feel very lucky with how we behaved during the whole car drive cuz I felt like it could be a lot worse, but he was exemplary. So, no, it was it was an amazing trip. The the fears I had that could be tough weren’t really didn’t really happen. So, no, just just a great experience. I’m preparing for a very similar experience. I’m going to go to Portugal on Monday and we’re going to take the car, too. Also, the first time with the kids. It’s It’s two days and that’s scaring me a little bit. Or no, wait. It’s two overnight stays, so it’s going to be three days in total. And I’m a little bit scared, but my kids are also amazing in the car. They don’t complain. They just listen to music. So, I’m very curious to see. They’re a bit older now. I imagine that helps. They’re seven. Yeah, they’re seven. That definitely helps. They’re they’re going to start school in September. It’s so hard to believe you’re going to go to school, but that’s what it is. I can’t wait. Okay. Okay. You’re good to go. I’m good to go. All right. Hello there everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I’m And I’m the Viper. And this is episode 36 of the Town Center, your podcast dedicated to all things Age of Empires. In today’s show, it feels like it was just yesterday that the Three Kingdoms DLC was released. And yet, we now have official confirmation that another DLC will be released this year. In the professional scene, the Ling Yuan Cup qualifiers are now almost complete. And among the already qualified players, there are some maybe surprising names. Later in the show, we’ll be joined by Red Fosu and get to know more about the infamous Fast Castler. If you enjoy our show, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And if you prefer to listen to us on Spotify, don’t forget to rate us five stars. All right, Orion, you have not been around for a long time, so I wonder what’s been happening. But yeah, I wonder how much have you heard about new DLC, layoffs, and this kind of stuff. How much have we heard about it? Much? Not much? Um, I heard that there were layoffs from Capture Age, the Chronicles team or something like a couple people from there. Uh, the new patch I did a review of not too long ago, so I’m up to date there as well. Okay. The only thing I care about I I did listen a little bit to your review. The only thing I care about is how you feel about the change. You know, the change I’m talking about, the one change everybody’s talking about. I know. Like I absolutely hate it. Organs were already so bad and now they got that one. You will not get a dispute for me on that one. That’s awful. But obviously I was talking about the animals being shot by TC and not spoiling. Uh no, I’m completely fine with it. Um, I did elaborate a bit more on it on my stream, but in general, I think changes like this, like I think it’s unintuitive that you don’t that the food just disappears when a military kill it. But when a villager uses a sword or a bow and arrow, then the food stays there. Obviously, it’s a thing that people will not like if you play the game for 20 years cuz you have to get used to this again now. Or ah, I finally managed to lure a bore without losing the vill to the to the bore or killing the bore with the town center, things like that. There is some uh mastering to it as well. I know I’ve been listening to the podcast as well. Amazing. Beautiful. Two people to replace me. I know. But uh yeah, you listen to my little jokes too. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And I I understand doubt and Dave’s take on it for example. But personally, I think if you’re a new player and we we shouldn’t cater completely to new players as well, right? Of course, we want H1 pros to be accessible to everyone, but not completed new players. But I think that change is so tiny. My only concern is that laming in general as a whole now seems to be kind of I wouldn’t say dead or gone, but it’s like it’s not as strong as it uh like it barely will be done anymore. I feel like cuz if you if you try to lame with a militia for example, sure you can lame and kill chicken or whatever, but the food will just slowly go away. It won’t be like insta gone. So probably the instant rush to kill the chicken will not be a thing anymore and then we’ll see laming in tournaments. I don’t know. But yeah, personally no problems with that change. Okay, interesting. Uh a little bit of a different take from the poor pro players. Everybody seems to be against it. You know what’s shocking to me? ML was so upset about the auto farm, but this apparently he’s fine with. It’s no big deal. Yeah, it’s like the auto farm is that was such a long time ago and people were were exaggerating so much with that one. Um, yeah, I I did want to talk about the Chronicles and I have a ton of thoughts here. So, please interrupt me if you have any questions about what I’m saying because I’m I’m going to be rambling otherwise. So, just ask me questions. Okay. Okay. I’ll just go to the bathroom and No, you’re not going to go to the bathroom. You got to sit tight. Okay. So, so let’s start with the basics. Okay. So on July 30th, Microsoft released a statement making sort of an assessment of how the year 2025 has been so far. And they were very self- congratulatory, I want to say. So apparently we hit a new milestone of 65 million players, all games combined. And I do wonder what percentage of that is mobile. 60%, 70%, something like that. You think it’s that much? I I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know that mobile’s got to eclipse every other We don’t know exactly how they’re counting it. Are they saying we had 20 million players this year? Is that what they’re saying? I think so. I think so. Okay. Because they’re hailing it as a record. So that means it’s more than last year. Uh or do they mean total? Well, it’s a good question actually. And no, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense because every single time it would be a record, right? If you’re just adding up, it would be a record. But still, you’re not going to announce, oh, hey, we reached 17.274 million players, but 20 million is like a significant number, so it makes Oh, that you mean Oh, could be. O, true. Could be. I don’t know. I interpret it as just being uh this year uh that amount of people have played the game. That’s how I interpreted it. But you might be you might be very very right to be fair. And again, I very much assume a large percentage of that is going to be Age of Empires Mobile. Uh but what matters most to us here in the Age of Empires 2 community is that it has now been officially confirmed the next DLC will be released this year. And it was heavily implied it will be the second chapter of the Chronicles game mode. And now at the same time, you already saw said you heard about it. Uh there were a couple of posts. I saw at least three uh that layoffs at Capture Age were hurting a couple of people and you saw a couple of level designers, if I’m not mistaken, uh were laid off. Again, this would be an indication that this is probably the last chapter of the Chronicles 2. So there’s no point keeping these people around if you’re, you know, if the project is not gonna keep going. It’s not going to move forward anymore. Uh then there were a couple of people saying that Chronicles was actually supposed to be a trilogy. Uh I confirmed that that was actually never officially claimed and the only thing that was said was that Chronicles was going to be a multi-part DLC and you know two parts is technically multi-art. Uh it was never officially confirmed that it was supposed to be a trilogy. So the person who said this either has inside information which we do not have or they just misremembered. In the same statement, there was something claimed as well, uh, that very much confirms what we talked about here before, that the three kingdoms DLC sold like crazy. Okay, so I’m going to quote it to you. In May, we welcomed new players on PlayStation 5, launched the fastest selling Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition expansion to date, The Three Kingdoms. End quote. The wording there though is like the fasting selling, fastest selling versus bestselling, right? Yes. Okay. I’m going to explain what that maybe means because of course that’s the thing that everybody was discussing what exactly this fastest selling means. So I asked around and they clarified to me that fastest selling just means most sales in a specific time frame. Okay. So I don’t know what the specific time frame is. It could be like from the moment it was announced until now. It could be like uh the first month of sales. Could be the same time frame as 20 million or Yeah. I don’t know. In any case, what they’re saying is that for that one first specific time window that they consider, which I don’t know what it is, could be one month, four weeks, I don’t know what it is. The Three Kingdoms has sold the most copies and apparently by far now. I think they’re calling it fast selling and not bestselling because there’s probably other DLCs that have sold more, but they’ve been around for much longer. Yeah. Uh and you know, they’ve gone through a lot of sales. So again, I’m interpreting this to mean that if things keep the pace, you know, if the pace of sales continues, Three Kingdoms might become the best sold DLC, which again, I think was always going to be the case just by virtue of the fact that it was released on PlayStation 5. Now, Orient, this is obviously no surprise to the uh to the Town Center audience. We spoke about this in episode 31st. By the way, I also confirmed because in their analysis that we had in that episode, I also said that according to the numbers, Return of Rome was one of the other DLCs that sold like crazy. And I’ve confirmed it with people in the know. Let’s just put it like that. Uh and you know, it’s interesting because I don’t know what feeling you had about this, but my perception before I started looking at the numbers was that this CLC completely flopped. You know, we didn’t see like a boom of Vietnamese players. I thought, you know, the ladder wasn’t like busy or anything of the sorts, but that’s apparently not the case whatsoever. It was sold like crazy, apparently, too. Yeah, but Edge Press, as we know, single player game. And also interesting, Return of Rome also has pretty bad reviews, which is a thing that The Three Kingdoms also has. And you could start wondering whether there’s like some sort of correlation that, but I’m I’m not going to do it because I don’t don’t know too much about that. Now there’s a second part of the analysis though and this from now on speculation begins. You know from speculation begins because there’s two parts to that analysis. On one hand you have the DLCs that sold very well and you have the DLC’s that sold not as well. And one way to look at that is that from the E’s whole life cycle there are two DLC’s that have not been able to reach the top 100 of the Steam sellers top sell top 100 sellers list. Uh, one of them was the Victors and Vanquished and the other one was Chronicles Chapter 1. Mhm. Okay. Which again would seem to indicate that it didn’t sell as well as the other DLC’s. Though of course there needs to be clarification here, which whether a DLC is successful, I guess also always depends on what were the expectations going into it. So if it could be the case already, I don’t know, it could be the case that Microsoft goes like so Capture Age, this is the first DLC that they were making, so we cannot set the bar as high as we’re setting it for Forgotten Empires, for example, who’s been making DLCs for 10, 12 years. So that’s possible. Could also just be a coincidence, right? You never know the the surrounding factors of time when it was released, what else is released at the same time, and so forth. That’s a point that a lot of people made when we released the episode 31, and that’s true. But I just think when the difference between placements is this big so that you have a DLC does not make it to the top 100 and you have all the other DLCs making it to 30 40 50 I believe that the difference is too big in order for you know the other games that are being released to play a row. That would be my interpretation but could be could be definitely definitely true. So here’s where the in my opinion interesting discussion could start in the community. So you have on one hand you have a three kingdom DLC that is sold like crazy but has pretty bad reviews and you know has a lot of a big portion of the player base is displeased and not happy with it. And on the other hand you have a Chronicles DLC that was universally praised. I want to say you know the voice acting was amazing. The storytelling was crazy was funny. You know level design very creative. Um I don’t know. I can only say good things about it. I’m someone who never plays campaigns. I watched it on or lose YouTube’s channel and I loved watching it. I was always waiting for the next uh for the next chapter. So I again I believe like was universally praising the community but it did not sell as well. So if you ask Microsoft what they prefer, I think it’s pretty clear they want the product that sells more. So I think it’s up to us in the community to try to figure out first why did it potentially not sell as well as the other DLC’s? And second, what can we do? Is there something that we can do to make sure that the second chapter is going to do better? And that’s where I want to hear your take on this. You played Chronicles chapter 1. I have not completed it though. I wanted to say okay, you didn’t complete. So maybe that’s the good place to begin. Uh was there something I don’t think again in terms of quality I don’t think there’s anything that you could say that is lacking or so in assuming all this is correct. What do you feel was missing potentially from the Chronicles first chapter? I honestly wouldn’t say there’s anything missing. I’m obviously still more of a multiplayer guy than a single player guy. And I know as with a lot of things with me is like at one point if I play like a single player game. I I lose interest or like just move on to play multiplayer again and then sometimes come back to it again. That is my plan with this for example. Um I can’t It was like you said very creative. The the levels were cool, the the design was cool, the voice acting was funny, as you said. I I think it was universally praised for a reason, but I I don’t I can’t tell you anything that I feel like, oh, this was missing that to like be even better. So, okay, I can give you two things that come to mind. I don’t know if they’re accurate. Two things that come to mind, maybe too different. We’re all old. We like routine. And you know, they sold the DLC on the idea that it’s actually Age of Empires 2 with different names and tiny little differences. But maybe the different names are already too much, you know, for the old uh maybe it’s just too much difference, too much stuff that’s different. Maybe I I can see that argument. Also, the whole water uh was completely overhauled, right? So, it was very hard for me as well. Uh who to like, okay, what did this ship do again, that ship, and that ship? Like, you have to really set yourself into it and try to remember everything. and then also forget everything you know from the the original water meta or like way water units work. So yeah, I could see that also suddenly we had like oysters but you like you can fish gold things like that. Yeah, there there’s definitely a potential argument there that it is too different. Uh so I can see that one. Yeah, I I could see just you know we’re old. We like routine. Speak for yourself. Well, yes, indeed. I’m a little bit older than you. Okay. And the last one, which I think you can’t ignore, Victron’s Vanquished. Again, assuming our analysis is correct here, both DLCs did not have a multiplayer release. Again, Chronicles, you in theory can play on ladder games, can play with the Sibs against other people, but there’s not a ranked ladder. So maybe despite being the minority, the, you know, the multiplayer scene does play a role in promoting maybe bigger of a role than I ever expected. and uh maybe Microsoft even expects uh in promoting the game. This one again is very speculative but could be the reason. And one thing that I think it’s interesting is that they were bringing a lot of changes to the s that are already there. You know, if you read the patch notes, there are a lot of changes and a lot of people were speculating there could be that they might be including the chronicle DLC’s in Age of Empires 2 proper call ranked. I don’t see that coming. Yeah, you’re shaking your head. I don’t see that coming. Yeah. Um, it’s that’s that’s where we definitely can say that’s going to be too different if you suddenly introduce those uh civs to to the rank. Yeah, we already have I don’t even know how many SS we have at the moment. And if you’re going to add 50 if you’re going to add how many is like three from the three possibly another three coming to guess if they are going to be like completely different as well to the first 50 we already have kind of the gap and the differences between ses have been widened over the last couple years but this one looks like you throw it all like way further over there. So yeah, I feel introducing that to ranked will be a bad idea. First of all, very hard to balance. Secondly, agree. A lot of people will be confused. What am I facing here? This ship shoots fires. My my fire ships don’t act like this, you know. Yeah, even though the idea could sound fun for a couple games. Yeah, I I I don’t see that happening. And someone had a very good point, which is a lot of the um a lot of the bonuses that the Chronicle Sieves have already exist in Age of Empires 2 for other S. So it would be repeating bonuses, which usually never happens, or I mean, you have very similar bonus, but not really identical bonuses. Um what I think might be the case is that they’re going to have a split ranked ladder only for Chronicle Saves. And if you have now like six or seven, maybe replacing the Empire Wars ladder, which nobody [ __ ] uses anyway. Uh I I could see that happening. I could see that happening. You’re shaking your head as well. How many people would play that still? People that are into multiplayer are people like me, more likely. And I don’t think I would ever play that cuz that would be why cuz it’s irrelevant to the the bigger picture. Okay. Yeah, it is like okay if you’re into weird gim like then it’s you might as well play like a mod, right? Of course, it’s always different when it’s officially represented within the game itself, right? Mhm. But yeah, it’s the same as like you can put deathmatch there, Empire Wars, whatever. No one is going to play the other thing if that makes sense. Yeah, man. Yeah. Older player base um doing too many things that are different. It’s always tough. Uh what if there was a tournament, I don’t know, 10k, 15k, would you give a crack or no chance? I’m sure I would play it, but like it’s like I’m not it’s not something again it’s it’s like you’re not going to throw a pile of money just to have one thing and then like okay let’s move on to the next thing because like after one tournament I’m sure it would not be the biggest success viewership wise and whatnot and it would just be a one tournament. I think so. Even though you know if it’s right around the release you don’t see it having decent viewer numbers. I also don’t think like if like it’s questionable if I would play and then you ask would Hera Liry would these guys play? No, I don’t think so. Too much stuff to learn, right? It’s just too many bonuses. It’s not even just about that. It’s too much to learn. It’s just you don’t have interest in learning it because there’s no longer um longer play there, right? It’s like these are some gimmicky weird ses in a weird game mode. Empire Wars is at least still we play Age of Empires 2 the way we know it. and there was like backed by like Red Bull, right? Mhm. So there that’s a big difference, right? If Microsoft just hey we’re going to have a $5,000 $10,000 tournament, which like we’re spoiled obviously since we’re saying 510,000 I can’t be bothered to play this. Um no, again it’s just too different. I can’t see myself being interested in playing a ladder with six, seven completely different ses just for the sake of it when there’s only if they kill off the other game mode, which I don’t think they would. I don’t think that’s likely to happen. Uh, in any case, just to finish things off here, I think if the community values Chronicles, they definitely need to support it by buying it, you know, telling friends about it, uh, maybe making content about it, play it on stream, whatever. Uh, that would be my my suggestion to people who might be interested in this. Okay. So, then I’d like to move on to the Linguan Cup. As we’re recording this, the second and last qualifier for the Linguan Cup is still ongoing. And just to refresh people’s memory, the Linguan Cup will be a land tournament played live in Beijing, China from October 22nd till the 26th. So, it’s only like a 5-day tournament. And I’ll put the link link in the description box. In the first qualifier, unfortunately, none of our players were not invited were able to make it. Tattle lost in the round uh Title lost in the final rounds to an incredibly wellprepared Nikov. Doubt lost in the round of 24 to Mihi. And this is the second time in recent memory that Mihi stops Doubt in his tracks. And folks, I can remember the first time is in Warlords 4 infamously. Kind of stopped him twice even. No doubt gave admin win after the well actually he indirectly stopped him in Warlords, right? Right. He stopped himself basically. Yeah, he was leading to the 21-1, but 21 automatically kept him out at the last the next stage. So, he just What was the other qualifier again where M? Well, this one that was the second time. So, the first one I mean I mean it was not a qualifier. It was just on war in Warlords. Yeah, but he also beat him in another qualifier before that may have been NAC even. I I guarantee you I remember because the the side of game the side of game was four legs doubt had Georgian against uh something and it was like supposedly free win but that managed to mess it up. So um yeah it’s it’s the third time. Okay. So it’s actually the third time. Okay there you go. U Mihi a little bit of the gatekeeper for doubt recently. The final boss for the final boss of doubts. Uh the other players who qualified in the first qualifier were ACCM and Hart and Hera and Viper are directly invited to the land so they don’t don’t need to play the qualifiers. So I want to focus a little bit here on Nikov. Uh last land for Nikov was N4. Uh he obviously did qualify for Red Bull Legacy, but you remember why he didn’t make it because was it because of CO? I I believe it was because he got CO right before uh I don’t know if he was he already at the airport or something like that. I think he was about to actually board the plane or maybe I’m just making up scenarios in my mind to make it more dramatic. But I seem to remember he was already planning to go and then unfortunately got co was then replaced by Kingston but a crazy performance by Nickov. I was actually casting that game with doubt and folks if folks are interested can go back and listen to that and doubt was very very impressed and Nickov has been around for such a long time. It’s also an interesting thing here for me which you almost feel like or you almost hoping that the new talent are the ones who are going to be more successful in tournaments but it keeps being folks like Nickov ACCM who are still making it. So like the old schooler is making a comeback in Age of Empires 2. I hope so because I’m an old school myself you know. Yeah you could include yourself there. I think people in general like if you’re more of the modern audience, you don’t realize how good or maybe you don’t know how good Nikico is. And he has had a frequent, let’s say historically frequently ran into some of the top seeds often in early rounds in tournaments. I think I’ve played Nikov a lot in tournaments in general. Um where I’ve also like I’ve also have talked about this on stream so many times where I think people don’t realize how good Nikov is. And I mean he’s in great shape now. I think he’s ranked one on the ladder even right now. Mhm. He plays a lot of ladder. Yeah. Yeah. He also got third place I believe in the tournament that was happening while I was in Norway. And he also beat Hera in uh another tournament not too long ago. So Nico has already shown obvious not not only in the past but also recently that he can be so good and I mean it shows now and I’m very happy for him. It’s always good to see him perform and he’s obviously also a great guy on top of that. So yeah, it’s obviously sad that it’s on the cost of Tat’s uh potential chances there, but yeah, so is life. Yeah, T obviously he’s got a second chance to qualify and he started the second qualifier in a pretty pretty uh difficult spot again. We were also casting that game, the three of us. Um and he just barely beats Jordan, which means for Jordan, obviously he’s now out. He doesn’t have a chance to qualify. So, you’re obviously very uh very friendly with Jordan. So, how is he feeling about the whole thing? Was that a big disappointment for him? Is he feeling fine? How was it? I honestly have not talked to him about it at all. Um I feel like I rather just let him let him be when it comes to defeat like that. Also, I mean like T against Jordan first round of a qualifier is like it’s crazy. That feels wrong. But obviously with Jordan having his uh comebacks, it means you see this where it should be and therefore you have situations like this. Um yeah, I mean but Jordan was up two zero and that being up two zero against T is also an achievement in itself. So I think if you if Jordan probably was very disappointed right after the the games, but I’m sure he’s like realizing as well in hindsight. Yeah, two three against T not so bad. So but obviously I would have loved to have both of them there. Now I just got to hope that T goes all the way. T’s been playing too much of their games, man. Satisfactory, man. He’s been streaming it like 3 weeks almost. He finished it. I saw a Twitter post. Apparently, it’s finished. I I I don’t understand those types of games. I didn’t even know he can finish a game like that. Apparently, it’s finished. He completed it. But then I saw the next game. The next day, he was streaming another random game that had nothing to do with Age of Fires 2. Man, I don’t know what the name of it was. I don’t know. Uh was not Age of Fire 2. That’s the point. So, he finished one game of Fires 2. Doesn’t that play a role? I mean, again, I don’t want to shame anybody into doing anything they don’t want to do, just to be clear. Uh but you’ve been streaming it a lot. Wouldn’t that time be better spent practicing Age of Empires 2? Yes. Okay. But also, you need sometimes to freshen your mind and just get a little bit of a break from the game. Um, I guess he’s practicing in the back, you know, behind the scenes, right? He’s not streaming it. Yeah, he is training, right? Um, yeah. I mean, it doesn’t hurt to take some breaks if you’re still playing behind, right? You don’t have to grind it. him playing four hours of feudal voy or rage forest is not going to increase his level, but him actually training behind the scenes is going to increase his level. So, I don’t think the satisfactory streams are like hurting him in any way. Um, if anything, maybe it’s a bonus that he gets a little bit more break from Age of Empires. Mhm. Interesting. Okay. So, Doubt apparently he was sick in the first qualifier. He’s sick now as well. So, he’s still feeling Is he still feeling sick? Well, you saw when we casted with him. Well, yeah. It was 2 days ago. So I hope hope he’s feeling better. But yeah, he’s sick quite often. I got to say quite often. There was one qualifier where he started taking antibiotics pre precautionally in case just so he wouldn’t get sick. That’s very weird. So who prescribed it? Because Serbia. Oh, okay. So you just paid a doctor to do that for Apparently the the guy working at the pharmacy was like some neighbor or someone that he knew. So that’s started taking antibiotics just to like preemptively and antibiotics are not supposed to work against viruses which most likely I don’t see the logic in what he did completely but he would just wonder just an example how sick like how many times he has been in quotes screwed over by getting sick at an important timing. Just do some exercise. He need just do some exercise. And does he still smoke shisha? Yes. I don’t think he smokes nearly as much as before though. So there’s at least one thing. Shisha has nicotine too, right? You mix it with nicotine. Could be without as well. It’s like flavored smoking, right? You don’t need to have nicotine, but most people do. I imagine Doubt does feel dumb talking about a grown man’s grown man’s health history. He he he can do whatever he wants. But Doubt is one of those guys that lives the most unhealthy life ever, but he’s still going to outlive all of us. No problem. It’s just one of those things. Okay, so he’s going to face Draen. We’re very much expecting him, I hope, to make it. And then Saturday, it’s the big day. So, uh, assuming that Doubt does make it versus Draen, both Tado and Doubt hopefully will be playing two rounds. And then on Sunday, the final round of um of the whole qualifier is going to be taking place. We hope to see. They’re in two separate brackets from Tattoo and Doubt. So, in theory, they could both qualify. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get to Cassid again. We’re not entirely sure. Aren’t you on holidays yourself? Yeah, we’re going to we’re going to go on Monday. We’re going to drive to Portugal on Monday. So, on Sunday, in theory, I still have the time to do it. Who needs to pack? Well, uh yeah. Well, you know, I’m almost not allowed to pack because my wife, she has like a you know, she has like a system and I I’ll break the system. I I I would, you know, put the system completely upside down and I’m not allowed to do it, which I’m not not complaining. Yeah. I only pack my own things as well essentially. Yeah. I’m not complaining. I’m not complaining. And I I’m going to get to drive the whole three days, so I deserve a bit of a break before. Okay, before we get uh Red Foster in here, quick uh shout out to the Quintessential Cookout. Oh, yeah. The Quintessential Cookout. So, that’s going to be a tournament organized and sponsored by Gamer Legion. It’s going to be happening from September 15th to the 21st. I believe only like the last three days are going to be broadcast. Everything else is going to be like uh people are free to play whenever they want, right? if I’m not mistaken. Prescheduling essentially rescheduling. Top 16 players are going to make it. Four invited players and guess who they are. Doubt got invited to something. Doubt got invited. So did Viper, Tado, and Hera. So the Gamer Legion players and uh I think there’s like a pre-round where 24 people or something are going to get the chance to qualif people qualify plus invited players makes it top 16. Signups close August 27th. So if some of the people who are interested in participating and listening to this be be fast you still have a lot of time. I’m sure there will be a link in the description or something right there will be a link in the description box. Thank you for reminding me. And a little tease a little tease. People really need to tune into the stream because some things are maybe going to be revealed and there might be some interesting things for the viewers there. So again just write down the date on your calendars my friends. From the 19th to the 21st, everything’s going to be streamed. Write it down. Be there. It’s going to be awesome. So, we’re going to prepare our call with Red Fosu. And you guys don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back. All right, everybody. We’re back and we’re now joined by Red Fosu. He’s the AoE2 dev’s most feared foe, one of the most creative players in recent memory, and you might know him from one of the countless videos featuring him on T90’s channel. Right. Foss, thank you so much for taking the time and welcome to the town center. Thanks for having me, you guys. Absolutely. Listen, this is 7:30 for you if I’m not mistaken. Well, what are you doing up so early, young man? I mean, you got to you got to comport your schedules around, you know, the little one. I know. My sister has a kid and she changes she turns her life over just for just for his schedule. Yeah. So, uh, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do for a living? people, a lot of people know you as the great player that you are, but not many people know more about Fast Castles is the answer. Fast castles. Yeah, fast castles. That’s what I do. No, I mean, it’s kind of similar. I mean, I build houses. I build build orders. I build strats. So, they’re kind of similar. Uh yeah, I’m I built this this guy that’s behind me right here. Cool. There you go. So, you you like building things. I I like building things. That was the that was the through line. Yeah. So, I listened to your interview with your f with our friends over the Start the Game Already podcast that you gave. I think it was in December, so it was like eight months ago. You said back then uh that you’re sort of a new player, so you’ve been playing for like 2 3 years or something like that, but you’ve been watching Age of Empires 2 for a long time. So, I do wonder what was your Age of Empires 2 diet like? Did you watch streams? Did you watch YouTube videos? So, uh how did you engage with the game back then? That’s easy. One word, just hang. And uh I just watched Huang on T90. That explains a lot. I have to be honest. Was it like a point where you got the virus and you were like, “Okay, I now I do want to play the game. I’ve been watching it for such a long time.” And if there was, what made you start playing the game? It was honestly I never thought I would play. Um you know, I just enjoyed watching forever. Um, and then a friend of mine was just like, uh, you know, I’m going to I’m going to play some. You should play with me. And I’m like, that sounds terrible because I’m a I came I come from like first-person shooters. That’s what I played for most of my life. So RTS sounded very scary to me because I I’ve never considered myself good at multitasking or anything like that. So yeah, uh he just roped me into it and I gave it a shot and then I kept playing and kept doing Mimi Strats and I then I somehow I got to 2K 5. I don’t know. I don’t know the points between those two lines. How do you even how do you even begin to like come across all these bugs and these things you figure out? Like do you sit for hours and hours and just try different things and then like things? I I always say like I I enjoy playing’s fun, but I just see myself as like a builder. I just like discovering things, building things, building strats. Uh and yeah, no, I spend a lot of time in the editor. Um and like you know, I’ll see something in a game, right? You’ll see something strange. Maybe it’s like a pathing thing or some units stack on each other and I just, you know, have a, you know, a recording of that. I just try to replicate it in an editor and I just grind a couple times and try to figure out and you you always just assume that it’s possible and you got to use some, you know, combination of whatever stances or formations to get there. Is there anything you have figured out that you haven’t revealed to the public yet? Actually, I’m working on a video right now and uh I sent a challenge to Feri and MVL because I those were like the two guys that came up for laming. Um it’s a laming tech that uh I’m I’m going to release it in like a week and I think uh it might it might change the laming meta like a lot. I don’t want to spoil anything. I can’t tell you what it is yet. Wow. Okay. I’m already dying to see it. If you if you want to take the challenge Viper, you can. I can send it to you. Basically, you’re just trying to get the boar as far as you can when there’s an enemy scout rightclicked on you. That’s it. Can I do it on stream or how does it have to be off stream? It doesn’t matter. You can do it on stream. Off stream. It’s nice if there’s, you know, reaction for the intro. Uh, but other than that, that’s Yeah, you can try it. Yeah. See how many tiles you can get. Okay. Okay. Okay. That sounds interesting. That sounds funny. But I I do wonder. So, do you go off the patch notes? So, when you see that the dev said, “I changed this, we changed that.” Do you go off that and go like, “Okay, so if they change this, does it mean I can try this or I can try that or just try random stuff and see what kind of bugs pop out?” I mean, maybe in the past, a long time ago, I’d just try random stuff. But no, I feel like now I have I have fairly like strong intuitions about what will be strong and not. And like we could talk about Fast Castle’s theory. Um, but uh there are like units, types of units that are really strong. Like for example, I knew the ward chariot before it got released would be one of my best FCs. Like even before I touched it, just looking at it stats, looking at his train time, things like that, I was like, “This is going to be an extremely strong unit because it has the it has the stats of like an elite organ gun.” Uh, so like and it produces on like a 27 or something like how could that not be good? Do you look at the same time at S bonuses or just that you the unit specifically or do you also okay this together with the shoe 10% food income for wood and so forth? Yeah. No, the unit is much more important. So like next patch magars will probably be a pretty solid FC even though they have no FC bonuses just because of that unit. Okay. the Magars. Magar. Sorry, it’s getting buffed a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. No, no, no. I was just saying it’s Magar is I think it’s like a B tier. I have a tier list of FC’s. It’s like a B tier right now. It’s not a bad FC, you know? It’s a gold heavy unit. We can It costs about the same as a Gulam. So, we can just go all all in on gold and it’s really fast. I mean, it’s basically a much better knight. Like, that’s how I see a Maggar. It’s like a Cranbit Ties knight. When you say you have a tier list, fast castle tier list, you mean fast castle, drop a castle and go full unique unit. Yeah. Or you know, Romans are on that tier list for their some unique unit of that civ or that Yes. unique bonus. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We should have had MBL as a guest at the same time here. Yeah. Well, we’re going to come to MBL for sure. That’s a particular family interaction between you guys. But one thing I I’d be curious to know that when I first saw the first strategy that I remember for you was the Oregon gun. So the fast castle Oregon guns and I remember thinking and I don’t know and I don’t know if I just created this scenario in my mind or whether actually said this explicitly but the feeling that I got was that you’re trying to prove that fast castles are broken particularly with ses like the Portuguese. So first of all is that true? you feel like the strategy in itself is broken and second of all is that still the case or are things better now? So I’ve like since um I don’t know if you’d call it tempered my stance but feel like I have a much more nuanced view. So I think fast castles like for example I think hands down Bengali are like the best civ on Arabia purely because of the fast castle like that’s that’s easy for me to say. Um, so I still have a lot of faith in them, but I have realized after like coaching highle players that it’s kind of like a runner and a swimmer. So all the meta players are runners and I’m a swimmer. Um, you know, these strategies are or running and swimming are very different and they actually don’t share a lot of skills that overlap. Like you could be an amazing runner and if you pick up a fast castle for the first time, you’re going to be really, you know, if you try swimming for the first time, you’re going to be really terrible at it. Um, you’re going to try, you know, running into the water instead of, you know, diving in or whatever. You’re all your intuitions will be backwards. And the same when I try to play meta, I’m at like 1,700. Um, you know, so I have terrible running intuitions. I I I just try to swim on land, which doesn’t work. Um, so, uh, yeah, I’ve I’ve recently learned they’re just two different things. And I I really think that fast castles are extremely strong, but you need to, you know, learn how to swim before you can do them at all. Uh, like if Viper tried one of my fast castles tomorrow, he he might be able to do it. Uh, but it would his his execution honestly would be at like a fairly low level. I’m not trying to say that as a bad thing to Viper or anything. Um, I’m sure he’s, you know, he’s a pretty good player, I’ve heard. Um, but uh it’s just uh it’s just a different thing. That’s how I describe it now. Really good analogy first of all, but it’s the same like with Hang with the Kelt Rush, right? People tried it, but they don’t do it the same way he did it. Uh yeah, I mean like I I once this uh phosphorus strategy stuff became popular. I did obviously mess around a bit on my stream as well doing some Yola fast castles and honestly with pretty good success. But but I always felt like I would beat this myself if I was against this, you know, and that’s the that’s the the feeling I got whenever I I tried this. But then again, you have sometimes like when like if you get a okay fast cast with war wagons or anything crazy like that, it’s obviously insanely uh strong. So I do get where you’re coming from in terms of you feel like this fast castle unique unit and such can be incredibly powerful. it can in the right circumstances, but I’m also still more in the boat of like it should you should be able to deal with it still as a runner. Yeah. I I will say when I see pros attempt, you know, a fast castle, it looks really really to me it looks really really rough. Like um it’s it’s quite a low, like I said, a low level of execution. They’re trying to run in the water and that is not what you do in the water. Um you you’d swim. So, I definitely believe that you would beat yourself, you know, if you could clone yourself and play one guy FC. But I I would argue that if that guy that you cloned spent like a month playing FC, I think he’d beat you every time. That’s that’s my argument. Um but but if you don’t spend a month, you’re just you’re going to be drowning. Nothing’s going to make sense. Okay. So, do you see that as a good thing for the game that there’s something that is still to be explored and you know the pro players are potentially sleeping on or do you really feel like that’s something that it’s broken and if you know if everybody learns how to swim properly or how to run properly and how to play the strategy properly that suddenly the game looks completely different? Yeah, that’s a that’s a hard question. Um, so I I think I’ll go with what I’ve said before which is not enough people are doing it for us to know the answer to that question. Like the devs, if you look in the patch notes, they’re certainly worried about the things that I’m doing. Like uh you know, whether it be uh Kam or uh you know, Janiseries and Rams or uh siege tower gto or husites or uh you know, Ratha, any of these things, they seem nervous about it. Um just because they keep nerfing the strats. Um, but uh I think we we honestly need need more data before people go down that route cuz there’s really just uh there’s me and Hong doesn’t really play the same way I play and he often plays feudal. Um, now at Modern Hang plays a lot of feudal. Um, so I’m not sure we have the data points to answer that yet. Yo, send me some your builds and I’ll play them for a week. Okay. We’ll see see how it goes. Okay. How how technical do you want? cuz I got technical guides that it will take you like I don’t know a little while to get through. Does that sound good? Well, depends how long is a technical guy going to take. Man, I see so much potential for content here. I mean, you guys could get together and do some streams. You know, fast for coach is vibrant. Yeah, it would be will be cool to see if if there’s some uh I mean like it would be I mean again like I said I played some Fast Castles and it feels very good at times but obviously it falls on its face flat sometimes as well. So I will be definitely interested to try to explore it a bit more for sure. All right, cool. Well, I’ll uh I’ll definitely that sounds like fun. Okay, so this feels like the perfect time to actually bring in the MBL discussion. So I I don’t know how much you follow this but uh I’ve saw three videos. was I don’t know if there have been more which was MBL coaching a 2K2 player to beat Fosfu with a meta strat. So that was specifically the goal of the coaching. So MBL was supposed to coach a 2K2 player and uh he could not pretend like he knew that Foster was going to go for fast castle. He needs to act like he didn’t know. So he made units in Fatal 8. So it’s supposed to ideally mimic a real game situation. And so what happened was in the first two games Fosu beats the guy that MBL was coaching. But then it turns out the guy who was coaching was only a Mitchi player, I’ll say. So he couldn’t micro very well. You know, he was overwhelmed very easily. On the third try, MBL gets a real Arabia 2K2 player, I’ll say. And the guy beats Fos. So uh we know how MBL feels about the whole thing. Obviously, he thinks he’s proven his point. the red fuzz for strategy can be beaten with normal meta strats. I didn’t hear your response to that. So, this is your chance. Did MBL prove his point? Yeah, I will just say Emmy and MV came into my stream. We started chatting and we set up this challenge and Emmy Emmy said, you know, if if one guy beats if I you beat my guy five times in a row and I beat you once, I win. Like, that was the joke. That’s why after every game we both say this proves nothing because neither of us will take the the L. Um but no uh I I think that’s a honestly a a good showing of that strat. Like um I think I think that’s a fair approach that uh ML takes. You know, make like three scouts and then just macro and go to the next stage. Totally fair. I will just say uh it doesn’t really work in my games like when I fight uh normal players. By the way, Emo Warrior, the guy who beat me, he beats me all the time. Like, my ELO hovers around 2K3, Emo Warriors 2K2. That’s just a competitive matchup in the first place. Like, we’re not uh we’re not terribly different. Um, obviously, if I have like Shu or something, then then I can play like a 2K 5 level. Um, so it’s really uh FC dependent um like what my ELO is. Like, you know, I play FC Samurai and that only goes to like 2K 150. Um, but FC FC Shoe goes to, you know, 2K5. I think that uh that that is a totally fair approach and is sometimes scary um to do the kind of the macro approach. Um, but I I really don’t feel like if there were two like uh there was like me or Viper and a clone of Viper, I think the clone of Viper would win every single time. Like I’m I’m entirely convinced of that. No. Okay. So, what’s your point? that the only reason the guy beat you is is just normal variance or is it because MBL was coaching him because if I understand you correctly you think that your strat is superior so why okay so is it just because he was co is just because he was being coached by Oh yeah MBL’s coaching I’m sure helped although I don’t think it helped with warrior having ML in your ear could probably be seen as a negative not a positive calm down but it’s obviously civ dependent for sure I’m not sure how what you guys did Was it random save or? No, no, it wasn’t. It was It was Bengali versus Vikings. Bengali is definitely one of my my best strategies should be a fairly good counter to the Bengal though, I feel like. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, there was definitely that was definitely an intentional um counter pick. But no, the the the main thing I’d say is that’s just normal variance. And I also I will just say this, if you’ve watched my games versus pro players, like have you seen the game versus Andy the other day on T90’s channel? I have nothing. Okay. I think I had like 20 grenaders, three manganels, 36 vills. Andy had one manganel, 20 vills. I lost that game. I don’t really fight super well when I know eyes are on me. My hands get extremely shaky. This is true whether it’s MBL coaching someone or MBL fighting MBL himself. Like I lose games that many people would say are like un unlossable. Like I was talking with Dragon Star the other day. I had this game versus MBI. Same situation. I had like 36 vills. He had 30. I had 17 army. He had two. His were two feudal scouts. Mine were 17 war chariots. That’s a game I lost. Like MBL will look at that. I could I could even send you the the VOD if you if you want to if you want to show it right now. Um but NBL will look at that and say like, “Yeah, this strat will never work.” I look at that and say, “I’m in an amazing spot.” like Dragon Dragon Star who’s one of my friends uh says like you you should never lose from this position but you know uh I’m really not I am a truly a 1700 and when I when I fight uh with a lot of eyes on me and when I fight MVL I really feel like I don’t play very well and he also outicros me. I mean just plain and simple he’s a better player. I don’t but I I think the strongest argument for the strength of strategies is the fact that MBL is getting tilted when fighting a 1700. There’s no other strategy in the game that you could get you to that state. I I I’m I’m 100% certain of it. I think that’s a fair statement. I’m not accustomed to fighting pro play. I’m not you know MBL’s played however many turns. He’s been on the ropes to be like he’s had a lot of eyes on him. I really don’t perform well actually. I I just recently, like last week, modded my stream, so I can’t even see names anymore or chat messages. I don’t even know who I’m playing cuz this was such a big problem for me when I thought I was playing MBL or a lot of people were watching me. I I just didn’t like my performance. I I modded it. So, I don’t even know if I’m fighting a big game anymore. But how do you how do you then deal with the fact that I mean, when people face you, they know what’s coming. So, everyone plays blind hard blind counter essentially. Well, how do I deal with that? You got to hard blind counter them back. So, like, but do you ever then just decide, okay, I’m just going to open scouts. Viper, you got to you got to remember what level of play I can open scouts. People really forget that analogy. I really only know how to swim. I promise. If you put me on land, I’ll wobble around and then fall over. Like, I’m unaccustomed to walking. Like people get very surprised about this, but I was playing like a a Rage Forest game last night for like the first time ever. Welcome. And how come? Welcome. I saidelcome. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um and like they were upset about the teams cuz I was, you know, 2K on my 2K 5 account and they’re like, “We, you know, this is bad balance.” And I my APM was like 10 and I was just staring at the screen like I was imp. I don’t know what to do in imp. I I I am very confused staring at the screen like making three elephants and then looking back. I I really do play at an extremely low level when I have to play meta just like when people play my strategies I think they play at a a really low level. Um anyway uh you know that’s uh no that’s an incredibly interesting point which leads me to the question do you have tournament ambitions? Do you see yourself at some point trying, you know, to expand your repertoire strategies and being able to play those more meta strategies, maybe competing tournaments? Is that something that you aspire to or not at all? Yeah, you know, uh I don’t know. So, I’ve I’ve played, like I said, the only reason I know I’m 1700 is cuz I played an alt to like 1700. That was me trying my hardest. Um and that was really difficult for me to get to that ELO. Uh 1,700’s terrifying for me. Um, and so I know that it would take me a really long time. And I also just in that experience, I didn’t have much fun. Like uh I didn’t really enjoy it. I played probably probably like 70 games to get to that ELO. Um, and uh I didn’t really enjoy it and I quickly went back to, you know, going FC Samurai on people uh because that’s that’s a blast for me. Uh and playing scouts is is confus mostly confusing. I don’t really get it. And uh and tournaments in general I I don’t have ambitions for just cuz like last time I ever played tournament like I was versus Satau he beat me on draft it was like three water maps in a closed map and then I got one you know enclosed and I I ground you know I grit my teeth and I got through all the closed maps because I lose instantly on those. Um, and the water maps, I lose instantly on those. And then I got to enclosed and SatO just counter fast castled me and I’m like, okay, uh, I I can’t do anything here. Like all my this all my strength has been taken away anyway. So, uh, no, I’m not really that interested in tournaments either. Getting my own strats thrown back in my face uh can only uh I can only take it for so long. But do you follow tournaments a little bit and try to learn something? Yeah. Yeah, I follow tournaments and I I will just say like a ton of these FCs are super amazing on open open style maps. Um, so I like coach uh I probably shouldn’t say what players I coach, but I coach players on anti- meta strategies on open style maps. Are we talking I love doing that. Like I say, I love building things. That’s my favorite thing to do. Wait, are we talking about players that everybody knows or Yeah, that’s I can’t I can’t I can’t tell you though. They wouldn’t want them tell us. No, no, no. That’s fine. You don’t have to. I’m just I’m just wondering. Uh I mean this one’s old, but like Stone Stone Please did you know the Bengali thing on I forget what map it was in TTL. But by the way, he lost. And that that kind of goes to my argument. I’ve never coached someone who’s played more than like eight games uh of of a of the strategy. So like they’ll they’ll do like eight practice games and they’ll be like great, I can I can have C now on an open map. And that is not how it works. You know, if I played eight games of meta, I wouldn’t be able to play at 2K5 level. Uh, that’s not how it works. You need to dedicate some time. I’d say like at least I don’t know, to be really exceptional, probably at least a couple weeks of just playing anti- meta. Um, and and learning the the flowchart. Anyway, so I I haven’t seen anyone who’s really been committed. Um, I think the most committed player I saw was like Neos who did it recently. U, but even Neos doesn’t really play anti- meta that much on the ladder. Do you find the games that you do watch, you still enjoy watching them even though they’re not using the kind of strategies that you like to play or how is it for you if you’re not seeing these crazy anti-atter strategies? You just don’t enjoy watching the game as much. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’ll kind of just skip through like, you know, is is there going to be an all-in push? No. Okay, next one. I I yeah, I’m I guess I’m weird, but no, I I just like anti- meta play mostly. Uh yeah, the coming days when I’m streaming, I’ll do some just pure fastest castle, fast forward styles, freestyle, and then after that, you can send me some of your builds and uh I can try to adapt a bit. You want you want to you want to struggle a little first? I want to see first how I do it just intuitively, right? Okay. Uh and then afterwards we can see cuz since you’re saying that if you don’t follow your builds or you get guided and that you think we’re executing on a low level obviously in quotes low level. Uh so let’s see if there’s like I do it and then you find like tons of improvements for me. Obviously eventually you’d be playing a really good fast castle. No one gave me a build order. Um you know uh but it just takes a lot of time. Um yeah but yeah I’m very curious to see it. Okay. Uh, Fosfruit, we see you stream from time to time. Not really that much. Is that something you’re planning to do more frequently? Potentially more streams. I mean, people complain about your mods. Have those I got to say, I agree. Unfortunately, those uh is the flat mods or whatever. It’s It’s fairly hard to look at your stream. Uh, but you’re planning to do more of that maybe because you have such unique something so unique to offer. Uh, I don’t know. Streaming streaming is pretty fun. Sometimes it gets tiring. Um, you know, I feel like the amount of blindness goes up when I stream, too. People play pretty, you know, bare knuckle versus me, which is like why I have to develop flaming techniques and things like that because, you know, I’m forced to. So, I only have so much fun playing that hard ball. Um, uh, and then it gets a little repetitive. Um, so yeah. Um, I I’ll I’ll continue to stream probably at the same amount that I am, maybe maybe a little bit more. Uh, depends on how much fun the unique units are. you know, I really don’t play like I don’t log on and play 20 games of Bengalies. Um I I usually just bounce around um on, you know, really fun things that I think of as really fun like Samurai and uh you know uh Magar and you know all these Mimi units. Um I love I love playing Siege Tower infantry. Looking forward to that change. Um and then I and then once I get bored of that then I then I go go off or switch to another strat. So before we let you go, u remind me. So your next big project here is going to be that YouTube video that you were about to release about uh the laming. I believe you said it was. Viper can get in on it. You can be in the intro. Viper, try to get that. I’ll I’ll send you the challenge video that I sent to MBL and Buri. Okay. When can people check for that video? Is that going to be next week or when is it going to be on? It’s whenever freaking MBL gets back to me. He’s uh but I don’t know. Uh give it a couple of months maybe. Yeah, I’ll give it a couple months. So, no, this one’s going to come out in like 5 days, probably. Five days. Okay. Listen, Fru, awesome hearing a little bit more about you, knowing how you think about the game. Was great. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. And uh I’m very curious to see that that challenge. Have to wait a little while. But thank you. Thank you for having me on for sure. And if you guys enjoyed the podcast, you know what you have to do. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And we’re going to be back in roughly two weeks. See you then.
Welcome to our podcast format “Town Center” – where the lovely duo of @TheViperAOE & @MasmorraAoE discuss everything around the world of Age of Empires II.
Today they’re joined by @RedPhosphorusMc
4:49 New DLC is announced!
7:17 Three Kingdoms “Fastest Selling” DLC
12:27 Chronicles’ civs in ranked?
19:32 LingYuan Cup: TaToH and DauT fight for the qualification
28:28 Quintessential Cookout (and a little teaser…)
29:58 Welcome Red_Phosphoru!
32:32 How do you find all these bugs?
36:34 “Viper and others CANNOT fast castle at a high level”
42:11 The MbL rivalry!
49:22 Tournament ambitions
LingYuan Cup
https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/LingYuan_Cup
Quintessential Cookout
https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Quintessential_Cookout
Check out the GL Summer Sale, up to 35% discount on the 2024 collection:
SUMMER SALE 2025
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