I love, competitive RTS'. The first rts I ever played was wc3, and I dedicated a few years to it and have/had become pretty good (my current acc is about lvl 46 solo, for any of you who play wc3), but I've grown to dislike wc3 and the way it is played. I fell in love with starcraft- imo, the best game ever made. But, starcraft is old, wc3 is imbalanced and simply not enjoyable so I started looking elsewhere. I looked through the eb-games soon to be released games and saw AoE3. I knew of the popularity of the age-of games, and that they had been used for competitions in the past like WCG so I decided to read up. After quite a bit of reading, and now that the demo has been released, I think I'll definitely be getting into the game. Yet, like all RTS' I have played, I never really play it leisurely. I am always serious and competitive and try to play in a format in respect to such. So here are my questions:
1. Anyone have any idea what they would do about Main Cities in a competition/tournament? Like say for WCG (world cyber games) do you think they'd start you off with lvl 7 home cities, or lvl 1s? Or would they even disclude home cities entirely?
2. For those of you who have read more than me or simply know more in general- what do you think of civilization balance? Just by reading the civ's descriptions, it seems to me that portuguese will be hands down the strongest civ- two city halls, a spy glass and relatively strong units? Though all civs have their strengths and weakness' this seems to me to be by far the greatest.
Thanks in advance,
Theo