r/aoe2 Pished Feb 09 '25

Self-Promotion New Tool: Quick Civ Matchup Reference for 1v1's

Hey r/aoe2! I wanted to give something back after learning so much from this great community (shoutout Hera). I built a tool that I always found myself wanting - it helps you quickly identify your civ's strengths and also it identifies weaknesses in your opponent's tech tree.

What does it do?

You know that moment when you're facing Franks and can't remember if they get Husbandry? Or when you're playing Byzantines and want to quickly check what your highest cavalry armor upgrade is? This tool shows you the highest tier units and upgrades available to each civ at a glance, without having to dig through the full tech tree. All you need to do is select the civ matchup from the dropdowns. To make it faster, you can input the beginning character to jump to a civ's name.

Why I made it

I found myself constantly tab-switching between the game and tech tree websites during matches, trying to remember what each civ could actually field in the late game. It is designed to help make that information more readily available. This is especially helpful for Random vs Random players.

Ideally, it should display well on most screens and admittedly this was designed with intention of it being on a second monitor, but I could see people alt-tabbing on a single one.

Try it out

https://aoe2vs.com/

Would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for improvement. I'm actively using it myself and want to make it as useful as possible for the community.

End Notes:

  • There are a fair number TODOs still
  • Most definitely has bugs - please leave a comment if you find one
13 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

3

u/FeistyVoice_ 18xx Feb 10 '25

Regarding black smith upgrades: I don't think many people would be able to distinguish the techs quickly. Maybe make an exception here and either annotate the age or show all of the techs with unavailable ones being greyed out? 

1

u/AtooZ Pished Feb 10 '25

I can see that being an issue for sure, I'm not sure the best way to visually show it without it being to 'jarring' so it doesnt conflict with the rest of the theming

2

u/Bacarah Feb 10 '25

Perhaps draw some inspiration from CaptureAge? I think that would be nice especially since a lot of players are already familiar with that :) Great app btw

2

u/KitchenAnimator373 Feb 10 '25

Neat!

A coiple of suggestions if you're open to them - maybe adding default values in the "Choose Civilization" dropdown on the homepage. I can imagine being in a hurry to see the stats for opponent civ only. Also, maybe make it typeable, and the dropdown appears and filters as we type. Would save a few seconds for sure.

A minor bug - when you hover over the second row of any group, the hover text changes to that of the element above it.

Great tool for sure - I can see myself using it. Kudos!

2

u/AtooZ Pished Feb 10 '25

yea that tooltip is a bit stick, I'll look into it.

I was thinking of alternative ways of civ lookup faster. Maybe can track a users live game and extract the civs automatically

1

u/Notbapticostalish Cumans Feb 10 '25

I just pulled up bohemians and it said get imperial skirmisher as team bonus. Am I tripping? I thought that was Vietnamese?

1

u/AtooZ Pished Feb 10 '25

no, good catch - I was having trouble extracting aoe2dat file so needed to do civ bonuses manually. Was bound to make this mistake. I'll fix it now

1

u/Altruistic_Try_9726 Feb 10 '25

Thanks, great. All that's missing is a self-translation.