Scout report

RM 1v1 sample: 6,388,699 games. Overall win-rate leaders: Romans 54.3%, Tupi 53.2%, Bulgarians 52.7%. Most played: Mongols 5.7%, Franks 4.9%, Persians 3.6%. Elite slice: Byzantines 79.1%, Chinese 77.7%, Tupi 76.6%.

AoE2.ai is tracking 46,360 RM 1v1 players. Top five: #1 _LY_Yo 2,930, #2 Oni.Vinchester 2,914, #3 VIT | Hera 2,840, #4 Oni.Lewis 2,837, #5 TAG_Sitaux 2,836. Longest hot streak in the sampled top ladder: 抖音ique (64 wins). Best sampled win rate with 300+ games: VIT | Hera 74.8%. 53 of the sampled top players have played in the last 24h.

GAME INFORMATION GAME BUILD #: 24094652 GAME PLATFORM: Steam OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11 ISSUE EXPERIENCED When SP game vs. AI ended and went to stats screen, it flickered because I had a picture-in-picture video playing. The vid was over the lower-right corner of game while I played he whole time, no problem, as I often do. But as soon as I won and it went to the stats screen, flicker started. When I moved the PIP window over to my 2nd monitor, flicker went away. When I moved the PIP back over AoE2:DE on my 1st monitor, flicker resumed. Happens on the Options screen, too REPRODUCTION STEPS Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue: Pop out a browser video from another service Scale the vid smaller and place it in lower-right corner area of screen so you can watch/listen to the video while playing AoE2:DE Win the game, go to stats screen, watch flicker. Or, I’ve tested just existing the game and going to stats screen, same thing Go to Options menu, screen flickers there, too. Same issue happens when bringing screen-recording software overlay over to the same AoE2:DE pages EXPECTED RESULT Stable screen = good. Flickering = bad. IMAGE

I'm 1400 and I'm interested in participating in some online 1v1 tournaments mostly for fun and also to motivate me to practice more, but it seems community tournaments are all scattered and Microsoft doesn't do tournaments other than A tier tournaments... I honestly don't know why because this seems to me like an unexplored opportunity... I would gladly pay 20$ to participate in some C tier tournament (max 1600 elo or something) to have a chance of getting prize if I get top 3... It's not even about the money, but having this incentive to play would motivate me more to get better at the game and playing more.

https://preview.redd.it/w1o44h4e0aeh1.png?width=735&format=png&auto=webp&s=af6415090b485ccd58c93d1a8042781be05e8588 I thought I was going crazy the first time I saw it, and then I saw it again and managed to screenshot it. What is this variant? Why it exists? Who is this guy?