Should the reading of the handbook still leave you with questions or inquiries in mind, feel free to join the Discord server and ask in the #q-and-a. You can as well reach out to the @ADMINS.

Timeline

8 Aug	Announcement + Signups Open
5 Sep	Signups Close (including Home Map Choice)
8 Sep	1st Round Commences
15 Sep	2nd Round Commences
22 Sep	3rd Round Commences
29 Sep	4th Round Commences
6 Oct	5th Round Commences
13 Oct	Deciders Round Commences
20 Oct	Semi-Finals Commence
27 Oct	Grand Finals Commence

Registration

Before registration, players must have read the entirety of the handbook and joined the AoE Leagues Discord server. By signing up, you agree to the rules stated in the handbook.

Make sure to tick “Show All Channels” in the server settings.

You can sign up in the AoE Leagues by filling out the sign-up form. You will then receive the SEASON 14 PLAYER role on the Discord that gives you access to the #sign-up-changes channel, should you want to make changes to your signup. As this role is assigned manually, feel free to reach out to either hosts or mods should you not have it.

Home Map Selection

Upon signing up, you’ll be asked to choose a Home Map: it may be selected from any of the Standard DE Random Maps available in single player. This includes the new maps from the July PUP (Aquarena, Sardis, Graupel, Stranded, Mired, Border Dispute, Chaos Pit, Murkwood).

Maps from the recent S- and A-tier 1v1 tournaments listed below are also automatically accepted. HyperRandom is no longer allowed. Quick-Start (QS) maps are not allowed for this season.

Other maps may be requested. These will be reviewed by the hosts and granted permission on a case-by-case basis. The map script needs to be available from the in-game mod browser, and should have been used in a notable or community 1v1 tournament. The final decision is made on a per-season basis and is entirely up to the admins.

The main criteria for a map to be accepted is that it is standard enough to not require a lot of practice to get the hang of it, the resource spawns are fair and consistent, and the script has already been tested out in multiple tournaments ideally.

Choose well! You are going to play on it many times.

Tournaments allowed: Noble Apartment Cup, SAX Nations Cup, TTL4, WWC2, Thalassocracy Cup, World Rumble 2, The Garrison, Valhalla 2, Latin Champions, Warlords IV, LingYuan Cup, Sudden Dessaster 2

Smurfing isn’t allowed, and will be looked out for; as such, sign up with a link to your account with the highest Elo. Failure to comply with this rule might lead to a disqualification, or even ban.

All confirmed signups are posted in the confirmation spreadsheet.

Format

Seeding & Bracket

AOE Leagues players are split into divisions of 12 players, each division being further divided into 2 groups A and B, with 6 players each.

Registration ELO is taken to be the average between the current and highest Elo, and determines your division. It is preferred that players who haven’t played in the previous season have an active RM 1v1 Elo, however this is not 100% necessary. If you do not have an active Elo, the admins reserve the right to place you in a league that they see fit, with any available evidence of skill level.

Leagues ranking

In an attempt to provide the fairest seeding in this recurring tournament, the admin team is relying on the results of previous seasons in addition to the ranked Elo to determine the final tournament Elo of returning players. Below is described how this is implemented at the moment; please note that it is not written in stone, and the admins can make arbitrary tweaks on a case-by-case basis.

Leagues Elo: based on the performances in the previous season

Runner-ups and champions: highest Elo of the previous division +50.
Semi-finalists: highest Elo of the previous division.
Others: use registration Elo

In the first two cases, if the registration Elo is higher than the leagues Elo (showing an improvement between seasons) then the registration Elo is kept.

Exception: the top 4 players of the division A in the previous season will be top 4 seeds, whatever the final tournament Elo.

The exact division breakdown will depend on the number of signed-up players, and for that reason the highest and lowest ranked ones might be balanced differently. This decision will be left up to the admin team, who will try their best to make it as fair as possible.

The tournament begins with an initial round-robin group stage, where each player plays against every other player in their group to gain points. This is then followed by a two-round single-elimination final stage.

Group Stage

Maps

Play-All-2
The Host A is the player on the top row, Guest B is on the bottom row
Game 1 is on A’s map (first column), Game 2 is on B’s map (second column)

Civilisations

3 global Civ Bans per player for the set
Order of bans is: A B B A A B
You may not repeat your civ in game 2 (you may use the opponent’s civ)
⛔️ The Athenians, Spartans and Achaemenids, from the Chronicle - Battle for Greece DLC are not allowed

Points System

3 points for a 2-0 win
1 point for a 1-1 draw
0 points for a 0-2 loss

Group Stage Rankings

Points
Map wins
Head to head for equal players
Best of 3 decider

Playoffs

Using the rankings from the group stage, the players will be split into three brackets of four players: Imperial, Castle and Feudal. Each bracket will consist of two semi-finals, followed by one final and a third place match.

Note: if a player wishes to, it is possible to not play the feudal or castle playoffs.

Semi-finals pairings will be done based on the final standings of the group stage: the highest placed player from Group A will face the second placed player from Group B (A1 v B2). The other semi-final will be B1 v A2. The winners will play each other in the Grand Final. The winner of the Grand Final will be crowned the Champion.

Semi-Final

Best of 3/5*
Host is the higher placed player in the Group Stage standings
Map Draft using all home maps from the division**
Civ Draft

Grand Final

Best of 5
Host is found using the following criteria: group stage score > group stage map wins > semi-finals score > seed
Map Draft using all home maps from the division*
Civ Draft

Links to the map and civ drafts for every division will be provided after the tournament starts. The host will be given an advantage in the semi-final drafts (a reward for finishing first of their group).

The drafts will be made following the templates found in the Drafts section in the Appendix.

* Bo3/5: for the Semi-Finals, players are encouraged to play it as a Bo5, but Bo3 is a possibility as well, if one of the players wants. Drafts for both formats will be provided.

** Dropouts: in case of one or multiple dropouts in a division, the corresponding home maps will still make it to the playoffs drafts.

Conduct

It is expected that all members of the discord follow the #rules of the server.

When interacting with players, mods and spectators, any abusive language, non-fit for work posts, calls to violence and bullying behavior will not be tolerated and these posts will be deleted and the offender banned from the server.

We also will treat any abuse or above negative behaviors on any other AoE server or stream to be considered grounds for banning from AoE Leagues.

Just be kind and supportive to one another.

Prize Pool

50€ will be spread among the 4 best players of division A - thanks to KoaLollo & Javisty for their generous contribution! If you’d like to participate in a prize pool, you can donate here or DM one of the @ADMINS on Discord. We will update this section with further details regarding the total pool and the distribution closer to the start date of the tournament.

General Rules

Scheduling

Scheduling is left to the responsibility of the players, and to ensure the best experience for everyone, they are expected to be proactive in scheduling. Contacting the opponent early and providing clear time slots (with 24h GMT format or the discord timestamp tool) is key. Such qualities will be used to judge, in cases of contention, who is the player at fault. Do not hesitate to reach out to @ADMINS if you’re having difficulties scheduling with an opponent.

This season, we require to play or at least schedule two sets during the two first weeks of the group stage. This is to ensure a smooth schedule, and spot inactive players. If you encounter difficulties following this rule, please inform the @ADMINS.

In general, be proactive in scheduling, and communicate clearly with your opponent and Admins.

Confirmation: once a date has been agreed upon, it is mandatory to post it in the relevant confirmed-sets post, to avoid any miscommunication.

Showing up

Be on time for a scheduled and confirmed set: if something comes up, inform your opponent as soon as you know. A player 15 minutes late concedes the first game/on the opponent’s home map, every additional 10 minutes without showing up concedes another game.

In any case, as long as the opponent agrees it is possible and encouraged to reschedule and try to play the set.

If your home map is subject to an exception in the laming rules (see section below), please remind your opponent before the bans.

Decide the best server to play on and set up the lobby (see Lobby and Game Settings).

Miscellaneous

Remember that at any point, if you encounter a problem, difficulty or have any question, it is important to communicate and inform the @ADMINS.

The admins have the right to make final decisions with regards to the rules and how they are applied, endeavoring to apply them as fairly as possible.

Stream Sniping and any other form of cheating are forbidden and result in a ban. This includes backseat gaming (getting help from any outside person, including a stream chat) and game breaking bug abuses (e.g. the tree hunting bug). Those should be declared by admin announcement on the Discord server; in any case, if you have any doubt on that matter, please ask.

In-Game Settings and Rules

Restarts and Restores

Restarts are allowed only if a map is bugged and should be called before “5 in-game minutes”. A map is considered bugged if resources are missing/inaccessible or at least half of their surface area is inaccessible. If you call a restart for a map that does not fit this criteria, this will result in a loss on that map.

In the event of a disconnect, a restore is preferred. If this is not possible, please reach out to @ADMINS for a decision. In the instance of a disconnect every effort must be made to save the game and restart from the saved point regardless of the time played. If there is no restore possible, the mods will likely recommend a restart if the game was close. All settings and civs must be repeated from the disconnected game. However, it is possible a winner will be chosen in situations where one player has a substantial lead (this will only occur if multiple mods are in agreement).

Cheating, Laming, and Map Settings

Cheating is forbidden and this includes bug exploits. Cheating will lead to disqualification.

Laming is not considered cheating but can result in a loss of the game for that map. See details below for specifics.

Players are responsible for claiming the win by minute 7 in-game if the opponent breaks one of the following rules.

Laming, including villager fighting, walling in resources, and taking/killing opponent hunt or herdables, is forbidden before minute 4 in-game, except for the following maps:

TBA
Nomad starts, however villager fighting is forbidden before 4 minutes. Walling in villagers is allowed.
If your home map falls into one of these categories, please remind your opponent at the beginning of the set.

For nomad starts, if initial town centers are placed such that they are capable of firing on each other, the game is to be restarted.
Town center drops (douching) is forbidden before minute 4, on any map.
Laming rules are in place to give players some time to check if a map has been generated correctly.
Any Regicide map will be played on the Regicide Mode. This includes, but is not limited to, Bastion, Copenhagen and Regicide Fortress. Fortress can be chosen as a home map without Regicide (as this is the Ladder standard), but has to be specified when submitting, the default will be Regicide.

If you believe there are other maps that have specific rule changes, including visibility settings, contact the Hosts. The above points are subject to change once all home maps have been submitted and approved.

Civilisations

Mirroring is only allowed by accident, in other words you may not choose “Mirror” in the civ selection. You also may not choose “Random” or “Full Random”. In the event that Player A plays a game with a civ that they are not supposed to (either banned at the start, has already played with them once before during the set, or not drafted in a civ draft), then the match will be restarted and Player B picks what civ Player A plays as from Player A’s available civs, taking into account any civ draft or DLC Player A owns or does not own.

Lobby and Game Settings

Unless otherwise stated previously, all games will be played with these settings; both players are responsible for checking that they are correct. The server chosen should be an agreed upon server based on local pings. If a suitably fair server cannot be decided upon, then servers will be alternated between games.

Again, for some maps the settings could vary, e.g. Reveal Map should be on Explored for Black Forest, or Fortress might be played with Regicide mode.

Fixtures and Results

AoE Leagues have transitioned away from using Battlefy and Tourney Bot to use automated Google sheets for the brackets. The standings, groups and sets (with host and guest) will be displayed in tabs, one per division. Every player from a division will be attributed the corresponding role on the discord server, which will give them access to the division chat.

Players are then responsible for getting in touch with their opponent and start scheduling.

Once the set is finished, the host of the set is responsible for uploading the recs and sending the results by filling the form of their division - the link will be available in #brackets-and-forms. The brackets and standings will then be updated automatically.

The recs should be uploaded in the replays forum, under the post of the division, following the template pinned at the top - no spoilers!

If you make a mistake when submitting the results you can resubmit via the same form, the latest entry should overwrite the previous ones. If it is still not displaying, ping @javisty.

Schedule with your opponent by private message or in the division chat.
On the day of your set, arrive on time and notify your opponent that you are ready to commence.
Draft in the order specified in the Group Stage section.
Determine with your opponent the server to be played on.
The host should host the lobby and the first game is played on their home map.
Repeat on the guest's home map.
Report the results with the form.
Finally, the host has to post the game recording files in the results channel. Tag each player and list their civ bans and upload both files. Rename the file to include player names and G1/G2. Follow the template in the channel.

Casting / Streaming Rules

AoE Leagues will have dedicated casters for each division. AoE Leagues also allows open casting.

As the caster role can not be self-assigned anymore, please contact either @ADMINS to get the role assigned to you! Please also indicate if you want to cast a specific division.

You may also stream your POV as well. It is recommended you include a stream delay. Ensure that your chat is not giving you information or help regarding the game.