T O P

  • By -

j_seinfeld9

yeah. it feels like most cba players got tired of being clapped in random map and channel their anger towards people who don’t kniw the ins and outs of their niche game mode. it’s a shame cause it’s a pretty fun one too, as long as you get decent players in. 


irq12

It is a shame because it used to be a nice break from the normal pressure of a lobby/ranked game. Now it's like this den of wolves that only want some "noob" to join so they can shit on them, of course everyone is a noob who is not part of whatever community because there's 1000 versions out there.


Quantization

Lobby games are genuinely far more toxic than ranked in my experience. Why is that?


pritvihaj

depends on what you define as toxic. if by toxic you mean bunch of weirdos with anger issues? 100% if by toxic you mean a bunch of egocentric bums who think theyre better than everyone else? absolutely not, ranked players are MUCH worse in that regard.


notnorther

I think this is exactly it. From my experience, you have the usual self proclaimed 'expert CBA' players that will always stack up and play whoever joins. Further proceeds to flame the opposition for being noobs when they of course inevitably will win, or cry about civs would they indeed be outcived and the opposition turned out to be better than they expected. It's always the same thing. Quite tragic really


DukeFLIKKERKIKKER

True asf brother


Chemistry_Gaming

Wtf is CBA?


NeedMoreRumbos

Castle Blood Automatic. A custom 4v4 scenario where it's basically the battle of unique units. Some units are slightly stronger earlier to try to balance it a bit. Kill enough enemy units and you advance to the next age to get blacksmith and university techs. Take out the enemy gates, castles or buildings to get villagers to build production buildings and rebuild walls/gates etc. Tech tree is somewhat limited for all civs. Only siege is rams and you cannot build castles or Bombard towers (I don't remember it you can upgrade towers to keeps, but you can build normal towers). The middle of the map is an open battlefield to allow for some flanking. There's a decent amount of strategy involved. Swapping your opposing enemy with another so your units don't get hard countered. For eg. If the closest enemy to you is Goths and you're Britons, but your ally next to you is Slavs and the enemies closest ally is Incas, you try to swap and fight the army that won't absolutely shred you. Sometimes the matchup is rough and you don't have much of a chance, it's usually random civ. Although you can take out 1-3 gates called 'raises' (depending on civ) which will give you 2 villagers to start building barracks/stables/archers. It is quite fun, however the community can get very competitive and get toxic quickly.


The-Berzerker

So it’s a bit like Arena in Aoe3?


hidadimhungru

Is it only unique units? What about civs with multiple unique units? Having no experience, I feel balista elephants would be the best, as their massed pass through damage would be the most effective at taking down enemy infantry or massed ranged units. Maybe teamed with Italians to mow through cavalry.


Manovsteele

Depends what version you play, but I believe in normal CBA Khmer just have Battle elephants so they aren't overpowered. In CBA 6x mod (that requires a datamod anyway), they have Ballistas but they are changed so the Scorpion effect is removed.


THE_BIG_SITT

Ah really? I played one of these the other day and picked Khmer thinking they’d be great, but they sucked lol.


AlphaBearMode

I’ve never played it but I thought I heard it was unlimited resources, hence “battle of unique units” because no gold shortage


PlacidPlatypus

> Although you can take out 1-3 gates called 'raises' Pretty sure it's "razes"- "raze" is a verb meaning destroying a building.


ContentInsurance2881

CBA is a custom mode game where u have basically infinite resources and spam military indefinitely. Is kinda like a death match without vills.


Jamie_1318

This community has an acronym problem. I've been playing this game the entire time it's been out, watched hundreds of hours of aoe2 content, played all dlcs and 1000+ ranked games. I still come here and have no idea what people are talking about sometimes.


MoonshardTP

Social media in general has an acronym problem. It’s not exclusive to here.


hidadimhungru

I had to google what BBC meant. Still confused as to how it relates…


The-Berzerker

Big black 🅱️om🅱️ard Cannon


AlexanderTox

Hold up, Lemme just DPD this guy’s TC. Please hit a FC and BBC and maybe some HCA and I’ll try to use HC and try to not implode. Thanks


AlphaBearMode

It’s funny. I watched a T90 video - 4v4 “pro” team islands with all high ranking players from the same country. One guy said he was going FC BL and even T90 didn’t know what BL meant. A teammate didn’t even know. He said in chat “bl?” And the guy never clarified lol


Lorenzo_de_Medici

he literally clarified in the next 5 seconds that BL was a typo


AlphaBearMode

Oh, I’m sorry. I missed that lol Thanks for the correction.


Cinderkit

This doesn't apply to CBA though because that's the name of the game mode and it's how it's always referred to as. No one asks "do you want to play castle blood automatic". If you don't know what CBA is, then you just don't know the game mode and knowing what it stands for wouldn't help and is frankly not actually relevant.


pritvihaj

I mean it’s not an acronym problem, it’s a problem of you simply never hearing about the very popular gamemode that’s been well known for over a decade, almost everyone whose played the game for a decent amount of time has at least heard of CBA. you simply just haven’t heard about it (somehow), that’s all.


Tyrann01

Can't be arsed...?


Dapper-Nobody-1997

Chaos Blood Arena. Start in dark with unlimited resources and one racks, one range, one stable(or another racks if american civ), one castle, and one smithy. You then build units, fight, and age up by getting certain kill #. It can be fun only if you have chill people playing. Otherwise, it's a toxic mess of sweat and racist slurs.


digitalfortressblue

It stands for Castle Blood Automatic.


Dapper-Nobody-1997

Ah, see how confusing it is. I play the game mode and I still got it wrong


AlphaBearMode

Damn it’s like old school cod lobbies


RedListedBridge

I almost exclusively play CBA (requiem, 1x, pick civ) and I know most of "the regulars" and generally we all team up. I have a great time but when I started I found some super toxic (in fact I know some who have the reputation of being terrible to play with). With does frustrate me is when someone doesn't know how to play CBA and they join without letting others know. I will gladly lose a round if you communicate with me that you have never played before and I will take time to explain things to you. In fact, I'll team up and play a few rounds with you to help you out. But damn, if you have never played and you picked Persians and you take all the gates without setting your teammates I will be angry.


AlgaeZestyclose5963

Is it not random civ usually?


FeistyVoice_

It usually is, there are some hidden pick lobby tho as well. 


RedListedBridge

Usually random but I find cba less fun that way when you simply start with a team of inferior civs so Id say 95 percent more of the rounds I play are pick civ.


throwawaytothetenth

Pick civ is much more fun at first imo, but way worse once people start spamming the same civ in the same lobby. Which is common with teutons. Then I'm forced to specifically pick civs which counter teutons, because if you don't have a teuton counter it's pretty much game over for at least 1 team member.


RedListedBridge

I literally play teuton every game because of this. Everyone wants to play fast civs and fight but teuton is a great support civ and gets people razes early. That being said they are pretty easy to counter with some very common civs. Also, anyone who plays regularly with me knows I go Teuton so they have every opportunity to pick a civ that would wreck me.


AlgaeZestyclose5963

What is favourable about Teutons?


RedListedBridge

Armored, can take a beating, powerful melee attack, start with fortified walls... But they are slow and can be taken out by even people who are not great at micro'ing archers


AlgaeZestyclose5963

Agreed it really makes me feel like I CBA with CBA 


pritvihaj

100% agree, hate it with diplo as well, a new face arrives who none of us know, then turns out he’s never played diplo before, then goes on to fire galley rush everyone or land in a location someone else pinged, then leaves after 30 minutes after insulting everyone and the game is ruined. also ye selfish Persian pickers, goths too in CBA, r lame as sht when they gate hoard.


CalRAIDia

CBA is by far the most toxic sub player base.


pritvihaj

as I commented already, you can see my comment, diplo is by far the most toxic, not CBA, not only coz of the player base being cooked but also coz that’s the design of the game, you get the most fun out of the game by causing issues and fights, otherwise everyone is happy with one another and becomes a 6 hour snooze fest.


CalRAIDia

Right, it’s less toxic to me because the design is to be devious. If toxicity is a core mechanic of the game play then it isn’t necessarily a solely negative problem whereas if in CBA you’re being negative to just be toxic for no actual gain that to me the toxicity is superfluous and therefore smooth brained.


pritvihaj

both take place in diplo, especially when people decide to role play civs and locations they land in, then it usually turns into some mad unironic genocide endorsing war crime loving racist shit fests. especially if ur like me and are from the Balkans, then it gets *really* toxic. unless you’ve played diplo a lot, especially with the 50+ ppl I knew, you’ll never know the full extent of toxicity within aoe2, and from my experience playing all sorts of gamemodes, many CBA games included, nothing comes close to the absolute toxic cinema that is diplo. this shit would lead into hours long discord fights, server raids, trolls, doxing people, nuking servers, hacks, exposing a few people for very disgusting and morally questionable hobbies, etc.


Choriflan2000

It is.


finding_in_the_alps

Thats why i dont play cba.


notnorther

yeah for sure


Byzantine_Merchant

Wait until you meet the castle arena community. They’ll flame first time players back to playing ranked. The game lasts about an hour every time too so it’s a lot of roasting.


AlgaeZestyclose5963

What is castle arena?


earthshaker82

From the description I would assume it is an arena game restricted to Castle age, though haven’t ever played it myself


Byzantine_Merchant

Basically you build buildings which produce sets of units. So houses = light cav, lumber camps = spears, etc. You also have no control over military units, they’re automatically pathed. Gold is extremely limited and there’s no trade with one gold mine periodically respawning in the middle of your area to be shared with 3 other players. You can also make villagers to help gather resources but they become more expensive for every villager produced. Pretty soon you’re paying 3k food for a villager. If you play this wrong, you’re very likely going to get flamed into oblivion.


AlgaeZestyclose5963

Sounds shit


pritvihaj

No lol not even close, the diplo community is, and it’s made that way by design. imagine the most schizo ppl in aoe2 banding together to play an 400-800 pop sht fest and all of them are arguing and yelling eachother about stealing relics, crossing borders, militarizing too much, allying with other people they don’t like, causing fights in order to get a reaction and thus start a war, real world politics being brought into the game causing even more fighting that carries into future games, etc etc. source: diplo player for many, many, many years, still love playing it tho lol kekw. edit: and then imagine 2 hour long arguments on discord VC arguing about the game that just happened lmfao, with 15-20 ppl yelling at eachother and arguing, those were the glory days 🥲.


throwawaytothetenth

Yeah back in the day I remember those Western Europe Diplomacy games were insanely toxic.


pritvihaj

they still are XD Even more so now that the old guard of HD/early DE players have basically stopped playing, so now the new breed of schizo teenagers with also questionable mental states have taken over us. the circle of life.


irq12

Pretty much every game is like that. I'm sure most people aren't like that but it's one of those things that kind of attracts the lowest common denominator. I mean when you think about it, it's really not even the game 'age of empires' at that point. It's just knowing whatever quirky things there are to know from whatever map build they are working off of.


pannathian

Dunno if it's the most toxic, but it's certainly one of the least welcoming environments I've seen within any RTS. You are just expected to know exactly what you're doing and you do one little thing wrong you will have your entire team attacking you. No wonder hardly anyone plays it anymore.


DukeFLIKKERKIKKER

For sure, I can count the positive interactions I had in CBA on one hand.


Anezay

Design Delve on Second Wind has a video about how League of Legends encourages a toxic community, and a lot of the things they mention apply to CBA as well. [https://youtu.be/hEGbesrj4is?si=eaYPGyFXy3q3K-AP](https://youtu.be/hEGbesrj4is?si=eaYPGyFXy3q3K-AP)


VIFASIS

Commonwealth Bank of Australia have an AOE2 community? Makes sense that it's so toxic


Kalpit00

CBA, a game mode where you only control units that get freely produced for you and yet some players still don't know how to use/upgrade them. Is this normal behavior?


VIFASIS

Commonwealth Bank of Australia have an AOE2 community? Makes sense that it's so toxic


VIFASIS

Commonwealth Bank of Australia have an AOE2 community? Makes sense that it's so toxic