u/ForgeableSum

After weeks of closed beta testing, Empire League is officially open to everyone.

Empire League is a 100% free community matchmaking client for AoE2:DE. It works alongside DE and adds an independent ranked multiplayer experience with its own matchmaking, ratings, leagues and leaderboards.

At launch, Empire League includes:

• Better map selection with full control over which maps you play
• Civ bans for random civs
• Classic Civs mode
• Competitive map variants made by the community, like KotD Arabia and Hyper Random
• Built-in match history and player stats
• Seasonal leagues and divisions
• Custom unranked queues for stuff like FFA nomad/arena
• Fully automated tournaments with no admin required
• Strong anti-smurf protections including the ability to decline games from accounts using family share
• Friends, messaging and online status
• Independent ratings and leaderboards
• Party system with chat for queuing team ranked with friends
• And many more QOL features!

The whole process is handled end-to-end by Empire League. You queue through the client, EL finds and confirms the match, handles the pre-game countdown, automatically creates the DE lobby and gets everyone into the game. When the match is over, EL verifies the recorded game, reports the result, updates ratings and standings, and you're ready to queue again.

There is of course a chicken-and-egg problem with launching a new matchmaking platform: you need players to attract players. Realistically, Empire League isn't going to reach critical mass overnight, and that's okay. The platform is built, fully functional and isn't going anywhere. Whether it takes off months from now or remains the small community it is today, I'll continue to maintain it as a viable alternative for anyone who wants to use it.

I’ve read a lot of complaints about smurfing, map choices, lack of social features, etc but complaining is free; doing something about it usually comes with a cost. In this case, that cost is the friction of downloading and using a new third-party app. I've tried to make that friction as small and painless as possible: install EL, queue up, and everything else is handled for you.

Empire League is available now at empireleague.gg.

A special thanks to hiimJKM, harooooo, Lakinther, Tomo Žeznati, Hestia, Chipmunk, bob_sajit, Sonny and mcnitz for helping test Empire League during the closed beta. These players selflessly donated their time to test EL and provided feedback to help get it ready for launch. I simply could not have done it without them. Thank you!

I'm running a $50 Empire League test tournament today at 1 PM EDT to put EL's automated tournament system through its second real public test. The first tourney completed but had 1 failure. This tourney will be single elim and take place on KOTD6 Arabia.

The tournament system is designed to require essentially zero admin work. Creating a tournament takes a few clicks, players join with a single click, and EL (an electron app that runs on top of DE) handles the rest: seeding, brackets, notifications, lobby creation, match results, and round advancement. When your match is ready, you get notified and click to join via the app.

This one is primarily a test, but there's $50 for the winner.

If you haven't heard of Empire League, here's more info. You can find a link to the website/dl in there.

Come help us break it!

It has been 3 days since the announcement and we've already made a lot of progress, thanks to some brave souls in the discord that downloaded & ran the highly unstable, early beta version of Empire League.

Suffice to say, we've squashed a huge number of bugs, and are approaching a stable version. We still have a long way to go before a full release but I think I can say with confidence there is only a 5% chance your machine will catch on fire running Empire League!

We also just added a Classic Mode, which I think will be a staple feature. With classic mode enabled, you can only play with and match against civs up till the Mountain Royals DLC, excluding civs that were fundamentally changes: Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and Incas.

I know what you're probably thinking ... won't this causing finding a match to take even longer?

Classic Mode is designed to protect the classic civ pool without splitting the ranked into separate queues. Mirror for example will match a non classic queuer with a classic if the civ chosen was classic or not classic. Picking a civ will also allow non-classic queuers to match with classic if for example, a classic civ is chosen (which happens most of the time since most civs are classic).

When someone selects unrestricted Random, Empire League quietly assigns their search to one of two pools:

• Classic Random: 41 civilizations
• Non-Classic Random: 12 civilizations

There are 53 ranked civilizations in total, and 41 of them are eligible for Classic Mode. That means 41 ÷ 53 = 77.4% of unrestricted Random searches are naturally compatible with classic mode.

The assignment is weighted by pool size, so every civilization retains approx the same chance of being rolled. Once a match is found, the server rolls the actual civ from the assigned pool while respecting both players’ civ bans.

This gives classic mode a major advantage over a completely separate queue: nearly 77% of players choosing ordinary random can still match classic players, while normal matchmaking remains compatible with everyone. Classic players get the roster they want without unnecessarily sacrificing queue population or waiting much longer for a match.

Pretty neat huh?

If you're interested in helping out the EL project, join our Discord. I need more testers. I realize its a lot to ask, and most people would rather wait for the end product esp. since you need to coordinate tests with others... My offer still stands: your name & player profile will be permanently enshrined in the credits if you test just 1 or 2 games.

Think of the glory!

I'm working on a 100% free AoE2:DE client that lets you...

• Choose the map you want to play on the ladder, including the ability to wait longer for that unpopular map you really love
• Avoid smurfs and reject games from players using family share
• Queue up for the most popular custom games like FFA Nomad, Michi, CBA and BF with players of the same skill level and without drudging through the custom lobby browser
• Browse through custom lobbies without many of the bugs and quirks we've come to expect
• Add and message friends you make in the game
• Participate in seasonal leaderboards with leagues and divisions
• Safely roll random civs without fearing bad matchups
• Play more balanced team games

In summary, Empire League is an unofficial DE client designed to enhance the DE matchmaking and online experience.

Website: https://empireleague.gg/

I first got the idea from watching u/Hera_Aoc play WC3. The community over there has their own matchmaker called W3 Champions. It is smaller in scope than Empire League (less features for casual players), but it does one thing very well: a smooth ladder experience.

That's the primary goal here!

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How does it all work?

It's a lightweight electron app with a React UI that runs as an overlay on top of the game (sort of like Steam does). It automates lobby join and creation by sending window messages to an AoE2 process it owns. It reads replay results and sends them to a centralized server (which also functions as the matchmaker) for result verification.

It is only possible given the P2P nature of the game and is no more or less secure than playing normal ranked games. It does not store any sensitive data or user credentials as you sign in via Steam OpenID (typical OAuth flow).

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Don't you think queue times will last forever?

I expect queue times to feel better even if we only have 1/3rd the volume of players as vanilla DE ranked, simply because you have the ability to choose how long you wait.

I see it as a UX problem not an engineering one, and I don't believe negative incentives (like matchmaking bans for dodging) work.

If you want to only play an obscure water map, you can queue up and listen to a podcast while you wait. And if you're tired of waiting, you can simply enable a more popular map, without resetting the search or changing your position in the queue. It's all streamlined.

This will result in fewer dodges, fewer early leaves and overall higher quality games, because people are playing on the maps they want to play on.

Map categories

I've grouped maps into 3 categories: open land (Arabia-likes), close lands (Arena-likes), and water maps. These 3 designations I believe most accurately represent the various map metas and map preferences players have in DE. Not perfectly, albeit, but as close as you can get to accurately stereotyping maps.

I'm also considering allowing players to have separate ELOs for each map type. So you'd have your general ELO (all maps) but you could decide to play a map category with your general ELO disabled, and it will instead use that category ELO.

For example, suppose you got to 1500 ELO just playing arabia and never played Arena (like myself). With the current system, you'd be hesitant to play Arena (like myself) against 1500 ELO players when you don't know the very basics. Well, you could choose to play with Land Closed ELO (1 of the 3 categories) which ignores your general ELO, and learn at a more comfortable pace against players closer to your actual skill level on Arena.

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Seasonal resets

Right now pros aren't grinding the 1v1 ladder much. I believe this is because there is nothing to gain or lose. So what if you get 3rd place today? You'll be 15th place tomorrow, and 2nd place 1 week after that. I believe this is a common reason why many pros don't ladder, and the scene is not better off for it. I for one am tired of watching Hera stomp 2K players all day long (and frankly the poor 2K players could use a break from matching Hera). I want to see high level matches not just in tournaments but every day, on the ladder, which should be the meat and potatoes of the comp scene.

I think a seasonal reset system could work to that end. Each season, you'd reset to the bottom of your league (grand masters are 2200). Every month, the seasonal LB resets, and players are ranked by the highest ELO achieved in that season. This wouldn't just be bragging rights but the season placements could be used for tourney qualifiers. Who knows, if the platform grows big enough we could crowdfund an Empire League S tier tourney at the end of the year. This would be fundamentally different from tourneys organized and funded by outside organizations.

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How far along are you?

Everything is prototyped and working. Map selection, anti-smurfing, civ bans, queuing, lobby automation, friend system, etc.

However, I still need to do more testing on more machines before rolling it out for everyone. There's actually a thousand edge cases to test, esp. with the lobby automation. The community needs something that works not 99% but 100% of the time, and I can't achieve that goal myself, hence I'm doing a casting call for testers.

Since it's an electron app with a web UI, you can find an in-browser preview of the entire app here:

https://empireleague.gg/app-preview/index.html?preview=1

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Will Microsoft dissaprove?

Considering they've embraced community projects (like Capture Age) in the past, I doubt it. Let's not forget Forgotten Empires also started as a community project.

I should add that Empire League does nothing against TOS, as it simply facilitates matches between players in Aoe2 DE, with lots of bells and whistles on top to make the experience more enjoyable.

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About me

Some of you might know me as a Survivalist channel regular :)

And some of you guys might remember me as the creator of Feudal Wars: a cute little browser clone of AoE2 I made with Resonance22 before DE, circa 10 years ago. Although I've since handed that project off to someone else, it still exists!

Anyway, at heart I'm just another AoE2 fan like you that grew up playing the game. I don't believe AoE2 has peaked yet. It's chess 2.0, just needs a little love and shine ... especially around the edges of the multiplayer experience!

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What next?

If you're interested in helping out, or staying in touch for the latest news and updates, please join our Discord.

I'm exiting the prototype stage and entering closed beta. So I'm really on the hunt for people that can help test this thing before a full rollout...

Let's do this!

In case you missed it, this was not a diss, but a challenge. It was Hera trying to goad Grubby into taking AOE2 more seriously, which would help grow the scene. Grubby's accomplishments in AOE2 are extraordinary, reaching 1700 ELO in less than 500 games. Plus his track record in other RTS games, he almost certainly could go pro if he dedicated the time and energy.

I hope Grubby takes the bait!