@@m33a lol typical smoothbrain tryhard degenerate that should be flailed, and immolated for the good of mankind. I BUILD THE BEST VILLAGES DONT TALK SHT ABOUT CUTE VILLAGES!
Villagers don't procreate. All town centers are equipped with cloning vats. Each clone requires 50 food. That's why you can produce villagers even when you don't have any.
Every TC has a Dr. Frankenstein under contract to stitch new villagers together from an assortment of animal corpses, berries, and crops. The "Town Center" label is simply a convenient cover for his abattoir/lab. This also explains how the villagers get so swole, considering the monster had a superior physique in the Mary Shelley novel. Yeah, turns out AOE is actually a horror game. Who knew.
i'm regularly impressed by how helpful and friendly a lot of the AOE2 community members are. it's really refreshing compared to the poisonous atmosphere of rude, egotistical people who congregate around other games. love the video.
This video inspired me to look a little deeper at extra TC's and some less conventional strategies. Building two TC's does exactly what you think and splits the difference. I don't know why, but I was surprised to realize that it takes just as long for it to pay off it's investment though. You still don't surpass the one TC build until more than 9 minutes have passed, which is the same time it takes a 3 TC build to surpass either a one TC build or a two TC build. But the difference either way is only going be half what it otherwise would have been, so nobody is going to have as great of an army advantage during those ~10 minutes. Or after. So could be a good way to hedge your bets if you're not sure what your opponent may do, but it'd also be harder to leverage an advantage over your opponent once you find out what they're doing. You'll have less of an initial economy lead to disrupt them if they went for more TC's, and you're not going to have that much stronger of an economy than them after 10 minutes if they went for fewer TC's. Then for fun I looked at Indian players with their cheaper villagers specifically. Trying to replicate your math, I calculated that an Indian villager only costs 138.1 vill seconds to create. Thanks to this, the Indian player on three TC's will surpass the value of a Generic one TC build a full minute faster than other civs, at a bit over 8 minutes. A significantly shorter window. Another interesting option I looked at but haven't tried in game yet is an Indian player doing a four TC build. Since four vills for them costs nearly the same as 3 for a generic civ. The four TC build has the obvious and quite substantial drawback of a more expensive initial investment, basically bankrupting you at the beginning of castle age. However, it is never more than that initial investment behind a generic three TC build. Unlike the other comparisons, you're not falling further behind while making extra vills against a generic three TC build, so they will never have more than a 1237 vill second economy lead over you. AND that disappears surprisingly quickly after around 6:30 minutes. From that point forward, you're ahead.
On a practical note, 2 tc has the advantage of being much easier to execute and balance for newer players. I'm using it as a way into getting used to using more than one TC in open games and would reccomend it for other lower level players too
Really like the pro player feedback. I would realy love if you could get that after you did your tests so you could potentially discuss some of the results and see if that changes their mind on otherwise add to the conversation. E.g. in this case it would have been nice to have the 9ish min mark be discussed to see how that held up to real scenarios as well as the whole converting of resources into villager seconds. I think a pro player could really use that sort of information since they would have better knowledge of how long techs take to research and could potentially give further insight with the resources represented that way.
I'm a Vietnamese, that means whenever you upload a video it's usually pretty darn late. Which is nice because you have a very calming voice and it helps me get over the trouble of not being able to sleep at night. Not trying to say that your videos bore me to sleep or anything, they actually interesting. But for some reasons, after watching a few videos of yours in a row, I'll always end up falling asleep. Blergh, enough about me blabbering about, great videos, keep doing what you're doing!
I struggle to sleep too a good portion of the time and I likewise listen to youtubers like spirit of the law for this. He also has a consistent tone and melody that is not disruptive or alerting so you don't get woken up by them if you put them on.
I love Spirit of the Law. Honestly I can't stand UA-camrs or streamers who scream and overreact all the time at times it's not even necessary. What I love about his videos is the way of bringing very amazing information with all the formulas such and just staying who he is. I always like to watch his videos when I'm drinking coffee or taking a break from my homework.
My two cents for intermediate level players is that you may only want to do the one tc push when you're confident you're a better player(through scouting, score) and that way you get good at it and finish the game fast, otherwise is safer to stick to the usual boom strats
I think that is a terrible strategy. If you are up against someone of roughly equal skill based on elo and their score is lower, it is likely they had a bad start or they are fatslob, in which case they will play super defensively and might 1TC too, meaning you will lose a game you would otherwise win. I think you use this technique at the intermediate level on BETTER players, because it gives you a reasonable chance at success if your opponent has the lead even. All or nothing kind of shot. Viper if anything teaches the riskier strategies are usually better as they are less predictable - only in the lead do you play it safe.
I wish they would change the game to allow a max 2 town centers in feudal age but the game simply unlocks unlimited town centers in castle age. Also if you have a sweet spot with mining, food, and wood available, building a town center saves a house or 2 worth of wood and provide a mill, lumber camp, and mining camp worth of drop off point for resources and can make villagers and support population. That is a lot of benefits that come from building additional town centers. You don't have to have every town center always making villagers if you can't keep up with the food, make a villager, keep the town center providing its other benefits such as drop off, population support, and the ability to use the town bell if the enemy player bring their soldiers to kill your villagers.
I'm a casual player nowadays that's super busy with work and play on turbo, so I generally stick to one largely because I'm fairly close to the number of villagers I want to have by that point and would now be switching focus to military. Back in the day of the original disk version, I used to make additional town centers, but not immediately upon castle age as I've just always liked to get a couple key techs out the way first ASAP then go about other things. I've been thinking about finally developing a proper build order as I do tend to spent too much time in the lower ages laying the groundwork for the later ages, which is another reason I typically stick to one TC as I occasionally rush through the castle age to the imperial, especially since I tend to gravitate towards civs that are the strongest in imperial. May try out aging up quicker (as in closer to typical build order) then catch up on villagers with extra TCs the next time I play.
I don't usually build TCs just to get more villagers. I kind of think of them in terms of what they let me do on their own: research broad econ techs while growing pop, defend areas, and gain population space. In that sense, I'm more likely to build TCs if I have a glut of villagers and I don't have the economic research to benefit from them, or if I'm building far from my starting area, particularly if there's some barrier to streaming villagers to a remote area quickly, like water. Of course a few civs can also use the TC in place of a castle for drop strategies, in particular the Britons and Malians.
I know I'm very late on this, but I think you forgot to factor in the lost resources that those 8 villagers missed out on collecting while constructing the TC's. By my math 8 villagers working for 75 seconds adds up to a not insignificant 600 extra lost seconds. But maybe it's not worth factoring that in because players will be constructing things anyway.
Great video. Myself I would really view it as whether to castle age rush (1 TC) versus Castle Age boom (at least 3 TCs) - the strategy being the determinating factor while the number of TCs is part of the build order/strategy. There might be rushes that use more than 1 TC and times where you boom and still do some sporadic raiding, but judging from what I saw in the video, 1 TC essentially means omitting to a big castle age rush because a lot of the time the game is over in Castle Age or you may may it to Imperial late and finish it off then which happens with a big castle age rush. I am not much of a rusher so I may be wrong about this if there are other builds that favour over 1 TC in castle.
The main advantage is that you can continue to build villagers during the Imperial Age advance. I usually build 5 villagers and put down another TC during the Castle Age. After that I use the villagers to build farms or chop wood and you get the return on cost back fairly quickly. I also play Britons normally and their TCs are pretty cheap as it’s only the 100 stone cost that matters. I prefer only to have 2 TCs personally as the stone is better spent quickly walling off the enemy and building castles. Stone is normally the rarest resource and is vital for defence.
Hey Spirit, you have civ overviews, why not do player overviews where you take a look at top well known players' micro, macro, consistency, map control, late gameplay, and give them grade rankings for each just like your civ overviews? Or maybe a top 5 (or 10) aoe 2 players similar to your top 5 gunpowder, infantry etc. lists? I'd love that
more town centers makes you more resilient to villager raids (as in you'll have more villagers to begin with and will be able to replace lost ones faster) AND works as an extra layer of defense. i think it's worth it.
I used a 1 TC strategy as Franks against a friend who plays Turks. It worked extremely well for me for the very reasons he mentioned it being useful at lower levels of play (I am definitely in the lower levels of play). My friend couldn't adapt to it.
I always just use 1 center. It makes it easier for me to have a central hub instead of spread around. I will however build extra sometimes in like allied territory or as a back up if my main one is in a more dangerous location.
Hey Spirit! Great video. If possible, could you make a quick video about AOE2 DE? Something like predictions or a wish list. Maybe things you want and don't want to see when it releases. Anything 😂
average villager time for resources is marxian economic value very progressive of sotl to calculate it that way and also proof that value theory of labor is universal since sotl came to it organically
Another factor to consider with TCs is that they give you limited amounts of map control. A 1-TC push is bad in part because not only are you expanding more slowly, but your expansion (taking more gold, stone, wood) is going to be less well defended unless you're also building castles.
I think the person doing the 1 tc push usually has better map control. They got more army roaming around the enemy base keeping the enemy hemmed in. That said, you're right that the 1 tc push is very vulnerable back home (if they don't wall) and sometimes pro players will try to sneak a batch of their smaller army through the enemy lines and into the enemy base for easy vil kills rather than watch their smaller army get wrecked by the larger army of the 1tc push.
Somewhat related to this video, I think it would be really cool to look at the economic impact of Persians’ TC work rate bonus. Have always wondered how strong that bonus really is.
So assuming that, you have 4 villagers building the 2 additional town centers each, you would have 8 villagers missing out of farming resources. so if you pass to the castle age with 28 villagers, you would have 20 villagers remaining in the mean time making resources, whereas in the other case, you would have 28 villagers making resources. so the resource gap should increase until the TCs are done, but in your table it stays constant. this should also shift the time for making up the resource gap further. am I missing something?
I play post-imperial age if I'm not in the mood for a challenge, but every time i start out, even in the dark age, I can literally never catch up. I take forever to build, only because I build last. I always end up winning with the most resources collected, etc etc. Even playing on "hardest" with either the Koreans, Aztecs or Teutons, I still manage to win, even with the weird bonuses and whatever. Overall, I'm a slow player. I save my games and quit when I'm bored. I used to play 400,000,000- (not really) games in one day and I- [sigh], I now play 5 minutes and I'm done
There are plenty of tutorials all over UA-cam. Search for "build order" videos. I think res22 did a bunch a couple of years ago and I know zero empires started a full tutorial series but I don't know how much of it he's made.
@@OliSmith111 He has the basics. Boar luring, finding sheep etc. But TBH I feel like just playing the game is the only way to get good. I trained against the hardest AI until I could beat it every time, but that didn't really teach me how to play against someone who knows how to manage an archer rush.
I almost never do this but im not a normal player either. i just use extra mines etc where needed i usually play very defensively and completely wall in my area asap, then go offensive later on after fending off many attacks and depleting enemies gold food etc.
@FERNANDO JOSE BUELVAS BETANCOURT yeah i do that alot too. alot of times just doing this gets the enemy to show its underbelly and they keep relentlessly attacking with more and more calvary and i just keep blasting them with canon galleons and or canon towers then they are so depleted i can cruise in and take last relic or just kill them off.
I think it should be stated that transitioning back into economy after a 1 TC push could be the right decision if you have gotten ahead of your opponent economically, but are starting to struggle to push any farther in their base in any direction.
So basically 3 TCs are universally the better option but I have to wonder, normally when your opponent reaches Castle Age before you, the default would be to 1 TC push them while they are probably booming in order to stay competitive, but what if they 1 TC push you instead? They have better units, why not invest a large amount into military first. I know this depends because walling and booming is easier than constantly attacking but would there even be a point to booming if this was the meta. Idk I guess I just need more experience at the game
did spirit actually take the costs for farms into perspective after calculating and converting the food per minute into resources per minute you can gain? a farm has 250 food with horse collar and costs ya 60 wood. it takes a woodcutter around 142 seconds to cut 60 wood and a farmer 769 seconds to harvest his farm (assuming that 19.50 is the pure farming without taking the farmcost into account). both together take 911 seconds (or 15 minutes and 11 seconds). now i divided the 250 food you can get from a farm with the amount of seconds you need to harvest the farm and the wood = 0.27 resources / sec. multiplied with 60 i get 16,46 (~16.50) resources / minute instead of 19.50. ...or did i make a mistake here?
Is there a way to contact spirit of the law. I have a suggestion conserning a weird game mechanic that is going to be worth his time to look more in depth at. Pls help
Black Forest Player here . So there really isn't a problem here for me, extra TC's every single time, my Walls keep any potential Early Castle Age Military away
I often find myself making 3 stables getting all upgrades and making too many knights, but only for a while. While I have more units I raid cause enough damage and disruption to slow my enemy, then I add tcs.
How many vills do you need to sustain villager production in an additional TC? are these resources withdrawn from the calculation? Why not go for 1 TC instead of 2 additional TCs? -> maybe always 2 additional TC compared to +1 since you are not committed enough EDIT:: posted this comment before reaching 16:00
It is discussed in a previous vid. It takes 5 farmers to produce enough food to sustain villager production on a TC (not including the gather time of wood needed to make the farms). That's why the payback for TC's is around 7-9mins. It's much shorter to re-gather the materials spent on just building the TC.
Man, I am stupid. I've only played campaign so I'm looking at all those dang farms in confusion; thinking "wait, I thought food workers were best". Jeez.
I was wondering how I could beat the AI on hard reliably, since after a few victories I always lost track of my eco. I was quite ashamed how despite my victory, the AI had way more villagers, and wondered if I should put down more TC all the time. No wonder I never won since then, I was banking of having the extra resources, while the AI booms every time. I always had the advantage.
I usually turtle with 2 town centers. Maybe that's why I'm not a pro player. I have a question. If you're going to turtle, and if your enemy can't successfully raid you early on, is it worth building 4 town centers? Or would you run out of natural resources before that strategy becomes viable?
I do this only if there is one area that is rich of food and gold or stone since I can't use either mill or mining camp to gather them with one building. The same thing is for food and wood, wood and gold or stone, food, wood, and gold, and all 4 types of resources. XD
At low levels the chance that you will get to the imperial age is very low. Too much idle time, too inefficient wood gathering. So for casual players it's better to add tcs - if you get idle time or don't produce enough units and float resources, you can catch up and spend faster. Overinvesting in production facilities is not that bad in aoe2, gives you more flexibility.
Its a little off-topic but when attacking wouldnt it be ideal to destroy houses first to prevent oponent from making more units in thanks to population cap ?
Depends on what kind of attack you deploy. Villagers are the most important unit of the game. If you disrupt resource collection he will only make a limited number of defensive army, because he needs to save for replenishing villagers. Villagers die faster than you can destroy a house. So, if you have a light army, raid vils. If you have a more committed attack "lay siege on the city" The effective case for your question is kill vils with cav or archery, defend said units with counter to the enemy counter unit. While rams destroy houses. Ex. Cav kills vils, enemy will make pikes,monks, camels you should have brought archers(camels got fixed though) with 3-5 rams. Depending on the situation production building should be rammed instead of homes- like if he is massing siege. Because houses can be rebuilt easily and quickly.
It's much easier to harass vills and prevent them from working than destroy enough houses. Preventing production only stalls their future economy (the current vills are gathering resources still). Preventing vills from working immediately causes damage to their economy. Killing villagers is of course even better. Houses are dirt cheap and easy to build. Villagers are expensive and easy to destroy.
This all assuming you build TCs with 4 vils, right? I never saw the mention of how taking vils off resources to build the TC would effect things but I'm at 4 minutes and tired :/
It was factored into the construction cost of each town center (304 seconds = 4x the construction time with 4 vils). The part that wasn't accounted for was any walking time, but a few seconds of walking by 4 villagers wouldn't have a big impact on the results.
Hera is a good teacher. He basically casts while playing on his twitch stream and you can learn a lot there. He's also IMO the best looking AOE2 pro, so there's that. ;)
I've never really bothered with extra TCs... mostly because I suck at the game! Feel like doing a starters guide soon? Maybe for when Definitive Edition drops?
There are a ton of those. Resonance22 is a great watch to learn the very basics of the game. While I agree that Spirit Of The Law does great videos I really don't think he himself is good enough to teach new players. He hasn't even managed to reach 1800 HD rating so 11 No disrespect whatsoever against SOTL though. I love his videos.
@@PartialViewmusic You do know that being 1800 does not qualify you to teach others, right? you could be 2.5k and still not qualify. Teaching and playing are 2 different things.
@@PartialViewmusic I think SOTL is entirely qualified to teach the basics. He knows the basics, so why shouldn't he teach them? However I agree thinking that his potential is better placed in the content he does normally, not beginners guides. Except of course if he reallz has fun doing them.
Sotl is quite qualified to teach as its technically what his channel is mainly about, which is teaching aoe2 indirectly (ie no build order guides etc) If he does make a beginners guide it should be something new and around his style of videos, instead of a build order guide which is probably the norm why not take a look at basic build orders and walk through why everything is done. Instead of people learning they comprehend it and progress further with a general understanding and ability to mold it much better than a normal build order would.
Great video! shouldnt you emperically consider the cost of building more lumber camps or mine camps, which players with only one TC have to do? Because when I build an extra TC I put it in a place i would a build a lumber camp and a mine camp. Just a suggestion!
Fair point, but you should also consider the extra farms you need for villager production and your lumbercamps and mining camps get saturated faster with the higher villager production so you also need more of them faster. You are investing in your eco three times as much as you would do for one tc and your eco is therefor also growing three times as fast.
I think bart is right, you have more farms and mills to build, and more micro to do - all at a time where a one tc player is really pushing you. So i don't think it is an economy. I think it really comes down to attacking in AoE2 being quite challenging and risky - otherwise single tc would win every time (as they used to in the old meta)
Hera was the man to ask on this strategy, but it would have been nice to get his take as Viper was the best player back when one TC was the meta, he could explain why 3 tc became dominant and why. He also goes 1tc on occasion.
Hera is the guy to ask here, since this is one of his signature strats, and he's much easier to get ahold of since he's a canadian and consequently in a closer time zone. You have to see this from the pro point of view.PoVs too. There's little incentive for someone like Viper to weigh in; everyone who watches SotL knows who he is. Hera, meanwhile, is not, properly speaking, a 'pro' because AoE2 isn't his primary source of income, so this Q&A is a great opportunity for him where it'd just kinda be a chore for the Viper. In any case, SotL's "ft. pro" segments are a relatively new feature. He's only had this format for like three videos? I'm sure we'll get Viper at some point.
@@TheStrangeBloke Ive just seen Tatoh and Hera so far, so yeah, i hope we get more pros commentaries. Id also like to point out that SOTL videos have a certain resonance. For example, when he uploaded the 1 tower and a villager vs 2 empty towers Tatoh explained it in detail to his twitch community, which i found great. So yes, i hope we get more of this. Cheers
TheStrangeBloke and being in aM makes you pro if we consider what you say we can count all pros from aoe 2 in one hand..... and t90 would be pro it doesn’t make sense i believe we say someone pro by the skill level they have to bring not the amount of money they make
just like the Goths technology allowing Barracks to train Huskarls other than from the castle, there ought to be a technology research allowing houses to train villagers other than from the Town Center
Was truly a pleasure helping out for this video! I hope I was able to shed some light on one of the more complex topics in aoe2
omg hera ima big fan thanks for helping us noobs in this game
Great analysis and explanation man. I think I can apply this knowledge straight away and improve.
Nice to know you have the channel!! Will subscribe
I fall into the "builds only one extra tc in castle age" category. I'll try to stop this behaviour and commit to an actual strategy. Thank you! :)
2 Canadians dropping the knowledge on the AoE2 scene!!
"Hm. Yes, interesting." *plays at 14 APM building pretty villages*
Lol..typical aoe newcomer
@@m33a Ha! Wrong! I played the first game quite near release! ... at 14 APM, building pretty villages.
Best thing about AI games is the town building aspect.
u r not alone in that lol!
@@m33a lol typical smoothbrain tryhard degenerate that should be flailed, and immolated for the good of mankind.
I BUILD THE BEST VILLAGES DONT TALK SHT ABOUT CUTE VILLAGES!
Three TCS or one, we won't be any closer to learning how villagers procreate.
Villagers don't procreate. All town centers are equipped with cloning vats. Each clone requires 50 food.
That's why you can produce villagers even when you don't have any.
Immigration. The food cost is the price to feed them and get them to join your side.
Every TC has a Dr. Frankenstein under contract to stitch new villagers together from an assortment of animal corpses, berries, and crops. The "Town Center" label is simply a convenient cover for his abattoir/lab.
This also explains how the villagers get so swole, considering the monster had a superior physique in the Mary Shelley novel.
Yeah, turns out AOE is actually a horror game. Who knew.
It s about feeding the enormous queen, like an hive.
At least they HAVE females this time. Poor AOE1 is mono-gender.
i'm regularly impressed by how helpful and friendly a lot of the AOE2 community members are. it's really refreshing compared to the poisonous atmosphere of rude, egotistical people who congregate around other games. love the video.
This video inspired me to look a little deeper at extra TC's and some less conventional strategies. Building two TC's does exactly what you think and splits the difference. I don't know why, but I was surprised to realize that it takes just as long for it to pay off it's investment though. You still don't surpass the one TC build until more than 9 minutes have passed, which is the same time it takes a 3 TC build to surpass either a one TC build or a two TC build. But the difference either way is only going be half what it otherwise would have been, so nobody is going to have as great of an army advantage during those ~10 minutes. Or after. So could be a good way to hedge your bets if you're not sure what your opponent may do, but it'd also be harder to leverage an advantage over your opponent once you find out what they're doing. You'll have less of an initial economy lead to disrupt them if they went for more TC's, and you're not going to have that much stronger of an economy than them after 10 minutes if they went for fewer TC's.
Then for fun I looked at Indian players with their cheaper villagers specifically. Trying to replicate your math, I calculated that an Indian villager only costs 138.1 vill seconds to create. Thanks to this, the Indian player on three TC's will surpass the value of a Generic one TC build a full minute faster than other civs, at a bit over 8 minutes. A significantly shorter window. Another interesting option I looked at but haven't tried in game yet is an Indian player doing a four TC build. Since four vills for them costs nearly the same as 3 for a generic civ.
The four TC build has the obvious and quite substantial drawback of a more expensive initial investment, basically bankrupting you at the beginning of castle age. However, it is never more than that initial investment behind a generic three TC build. Unlike the other comparisons, you're not falling further behind while making extra vills against a generic three TC build, so they will never have more than a 1237 vill second economy lead over you. AND that disappears surprisingly quickly after around 6:30 minutes. From that point forward, you're ahead.
On a practical note, 2 tc has the advantage of being much easier to execute and balance for newer players. I'm using it as a way into getting used to using more than one TC in open games and would reccomend it for other lower level players too
Spirit of The Law with the content I need ♥️
Really like the pro player feedback. I would realy love if you could get that after you did your tests so you could potentially discuss some of the results and see if that changes their mind on otherwise add to the conversation.
E.g. in this case it would have been nice to have the 9ish min mark be discussed to see how that held up to real scenarios as well as the whole converting of resources into villager seconds. I think a pro player could really use that sort of information since they would have better knowledge of how long techs take to research and could potentially give further insight with the resources represented that way.
5, for maximum Supremacy effect!!!!
With Britons that's a very good idea!
Great video SotL as always - Loved the interview with Hera
I always knew Hera was a beast in-game, but this shows that he also is a pretty eloquent speaker and good at explaining things. A+ to you both.
I learned so much from Hera. Thanks SoTL!
I'm a Vietnamese, that means whenever you upload a video it's usually pretty darn late.
Which is nice because you have a very calming voice and it helps me get over the trouble of not being able to sleep at night.
Not trying to say that your videos bore me to sleep or anything, they actually interesting. But for some reasons, after watching a few videos of yours in a row, I'll always end up falling asleep.
Blergh, enough about me blabbering about, great videos, keep doing what you're doing!
I struggle to sleep too a good portion of the time and I likewise listen to youtubers like spirit of the law for this. He also has a consistent tone and melody that is not disruptive or alerting so you don't get woken up by them if you put them on.
I love Spirit of the Law. Honestly I can't stand UA-camrs or streamers who scream and overreact all the time at times it's not even necessary. What I love about his videos is the way of bringing very amazing information with all the formulas such and just staying who he is. I always like to watch his videos when I'm drinking coffee or taking a break from my homework.
I'm in Sa Pa, north of Vietnam right now! Greetings friend
This video will fill some gaps on 1 tc attacks. What an amazing piecr of information. Cheers SOTL.
My favourite 2 AoE 2 players in 1 video!!
I wish you did the math for my every life choice :D
Is a wife worth it?
So complete, so perfect video, so Spirit of the Law!
My two cents for intermediate level players is that you may only want to do the one tc push when you're confident you're a better player(through scouting, score) and that way you get good at it and finish the game fast, otherwise is safer to stick to the usual boom strats
I think that is a terrible strategy. If you are up against someone of roughly equal skill based on elo and their score is lower, it is likely they had a bad start or they are fatslob, in which case they will play super defensively and might 1TC too, meaning you will lose a game you would otherwise win.
I think you use this technique at the intermediate level on BETTER players, because it gives you a reasonable chance at success if your opponent has the lead even. All or nothing kind of shot. Viper if anything teaches the riskier strategies are usually better as they are less predictable - only in the lead do you play it safe.
@@carbon1255 different people different experiences, all in all, the best thing to do is go out there and see what works best
I wish they would change the game to allow a max 2 town centers in feudal age but the game simply unlocks unlimited town centers in castle age. Also if you have a sweet spot with mining, food, and wood available, building a town center saves a house or 2 worth of wood and provide a mill, lumber camp, and mining camp worth of drop off point for resources and can make villagers and support population. That is a lot of benefits that come from building additional town centers. You don't have to have every town center always making villagers if you can't keep up with the food, make a villager, keep the town center providing its other benefits such as drop off, population support, and the ability to use the town bell if the enemy player bring their soldiers to kill your villagers.
I'm a casual player nowadays that's super busy with work and play on turbo, so I generally stick to one largely because I'm fairly close to the number of villagers I want to have by that point and would now be switching focus to military. Back in the day of the original disk version, I used to make additional town centers, but not immediately upon castle age as I've just always liked to get a couple key techs out the way first ASAP then go about other things.
I've been thinking about finally developing a proper build order as I do tend to spent too much time in the lower ages laying the groundwork for the later ages, which is another reason I typically stick to one TC as I occasionally rush through the castle age to the imperial, especially since I tend to gravitate towards civs that are the strongest in imperial. May try out aging up quicker (as in closer to typical build order) then catch up on villagers with extra TCs the next time I play.
I don't usually build TCs just to get more villagers. I kind of think of them in terms of what they let me do on their own: research broad econ techs while growing pop, defend areas, and gain population space. In that sense, I'm more likely to build TCs if I have a glut of villagers and I don't have the economic research to benefit from them, or if I'm building far from my starting area, particularly if there's some barrier to streaming villagers to a remote area quickly, like water. Of course a few civs can also use the TC in place of a castle for drop strategies, in particular the Britons and Malians.
I know I'm very late on this, but I think you forgot to factor in the lost resources that those 8 villagers missed out on collecting while constructing the TC's. By my math 8 villagers working for 75 seconds adds up to a not insignificant 600 extra lost seconds. But maybe it's not worth factoring that in because players will be constructing things anyway.
Great video. Myself I would really view it as whether to castle age rush (1 TC) versus Castle Age boom (at least 3 TCs) - the strategy being the determinating factor while the number of TCs is part of the build order/strategy. There might be rushes that use more than 1 TC and times where you boom and still do some sporadic raiding, but judging from what I saw in the video, 1 TC essentially means omitting to a big castle age rush because a lot of the time the game is over in Castle Age or you may may it to Imperial late and finish it off then which happens with a big castle age rush.
I am not much of a rusher so I may be wrong about this if there are other builds that favour over 1 TC in castle.
When there's no intro music and it makes you feel sad.
The main advantage is that you can continue to build villagers during the Imperial Age advance. I usually build 5 villagers and put down another TC during the Castle Age. After that I use the villagers to build farms or chop wood and you get the return on cost back fairly quickly.
I also play Britons normally and their TCs are pretty cheap as it’s only the 100 stone cost that matters. I prefer only to have 2 TCs personally as the stone is better spent quickly walling off the enemy and building castles. Stone is normally the rarest resource and is vital for defence.
Hey Spirit, you have civ overviews, why not do player overviews where you take a look at top well known players' micro, macro, consistency, map control, late gameplay, and give them grade rankings for each just like your civ overviews? Or maybe a top 5 (or 10) aoe 2 players similar to your top 5 gunpowder, infantry etc. lists? I'd love that
20 min sotl video.
*reschedule important doctors appointment*
more town centers makes you more resilient to villager raids (as in you'll have more villagers to begin with and will be able to replace lost ones faster) AND works as an extra layer of defense. i think it's worth it.
You got Hera, pls get Dave, another Canadian for a video pls 11...
Dave could teach how to stack gates 11
Slam and Heart: am I joke to you?
@@randomfluffypup9608 here ya go ua-cam.com/video/tbqvXp5WRdE/v-deo.html
@@Lampredi4 hearttt ? 11 he's Peruvian
he needs to get chris 11
your videos are top class, thanks
I used a 1 TC strategy as Franks against a friend who plays Turks. It worked extremely well for me for the very reasons he mentioned it being useful at lower levels of play (I am definitely in the lower levels of play). My friend couldn't adapt to it.
It used to be the meta for good reason, you hit like a truck.
I always just use 1 center. It makes it easier for me to have a central hub instead of spread around. I will however build extra sometimes in like allied territory or as a back up if my main one is in a more dangerous location.
My favorite AoE 2 players in 1 video! :D
Hey Spirit! Great video. If possible, could you make a quick video about AOE2 DE? Something like predictions or a wish list. Maybe things you want and don't want to see when it releases. Anything 😂
question: heavy plow before or after 4th tc in full boom? Feels like by the time my horse collar farms run out the wood is worth far less to me.
average villager time for resources is marxian economic value
very progressive of sotl to calculate it that way and also proof that value theory of labor is universal since sotl came to it organically
Man, u certainly must put a lot of effort and time on these videos!! Great job!!
I wonder how that would apply to aoe3 with the shipment mechanics!!
Another factor to consider with TCs is that they give you limited amounts of map control. A 1-TC push is bad in part because not only are you expanding more slowly, but your expansion (taking more gold, stone, wood) is going to be less well defended unless you're also building castles.
I think the person doing the 1 tc push usually has better map control. They got more army roaming around the enemy base keeping the enemy hemmed in. That said, you're right that the 1 tc push is very vulnerable back home (if they don't wall) and sometimes pro players will try to sneak a batch of their smaller army through the enemy lines and into the enemy base for easy vil kills rather than watch their smaller army get wrecked by the larger army of the 1tc push.
For DE, now we need to know when cuman's extra feudal tc become worthwhile
I’ve found that for Black Forest maps where you wall up a lot, 4 or 5 tc’s is best
I would like to see a 2 TC comparison added to the chart.
Somewhat related to this video, I think it would be really cool to look at the economic impact of Persians’ TC work rate bonus. Have always wondered how strong that bonus really is.
So assuming that, you have 4 villagers building the 2 additional town centers each, you would have 8 villagers missing out of farming resources. so if you pass to the castle age with 28 villagers, you would have 20 villagers remaining in the mean time making resources, whereas in the other case, you would have 28 villagers making resources. so the resource gap should increase until the TCs are done, but in your table it stays constant. this should also shift the time for making up the resource gap further. am I missing something?
I play post-imperial age if I'm not in the mood for a challenge, but every time i start out, even in the dark age, I can literally never catch up. I take forever to build, only because I build last. I always end up winning with the most resources collected, etc etc. Even playing on "hardest" with either the Koreans, Aztecs or Teutons, I still manage to win, even with the weird bonuses and whatever. Overall, I'm a slow player. I save my games and quit when I'm bored. I used to play 400,000,000- (not really) games in one day and I- [sigh], I now play 5 minutes and I'm done
Starter guide or such would be nice.
I'm always scared to pick up this game because I was really bad at it.
There are plenty of tutorials all over UA-cam. Search for "build order" videos. I think res22 did a bunch a couple of years ago and I know zero empires started a full tutorial series but I don't know how much of it he's made.
@@OliSmith111 He has the basics. Boar luring, finding sheep etc. But TBH I feel like just playing the game is the only way to get good. I trained against the hardest AI until I could beat it every time, but that didn't really teach me how to play against someone who knows how to manage an archer rush.
Keep working bro best aoe 2 Channel ever
@SotL could you do mass kamayuk vs mass jag video?
More gameplay videos!
I almost never do this but im not a normal player either. i just use extra mines etc where needed
i usually play very defensively and completely wall in my area asap, then go offensive later on after fending off many attacks and depleting enemies gold food etc.
@FERNANDO JOSE BUELVAS BETANCOURT yeah i do that alot too.
alot of times just doing this gets the enemy to show its underbelly and they keep relentlessly attacking with more and more calvary and i just keep blasting them with canon galleons and or canon towers then they are so depleted i can cruise in and take last relic or just kill them off.
He balanced absolutely damn properly streamSmile
I think it should be stated that transitioning back into economy after a 1 TC push could be the right decision if you have gotten ahead of your opponent economically, but are starting to struggle to push any farther in their base in any direction.
So basically 3 TCs are universally the better option but I have to wonder, normally when your opponent reaches Castle Age before you, the default would be to 1 TC push them while they are probably booming in order to stay competitive, but what if they 1 TC push you instead? They have better units, why not invest a large amount into military first. I know this depends because walling and booming is easier than constantly attacking but would there even be a point to booming if this was the meta.
Idk I guess I just need more experience at the game
Very nice video
I only go 2 tc near the end of castle age so when i upgrade to imperial and i get the tc upgrades out of the way
did spirit actually take the costs for farms into perspective after calculating and converting the food per minute into resources per minute you can gain? a farm has 250 food with horse collar and costs ya 60 wood. it takes a woodcutter around 142 seconds to cut 60 wood and a farmer 769 seconds to harvest his farm (assuming that 19.50 is the pure farming without taking the farmcost into account). both together take 911 seconds (or 15 minutes and 11 seconds). now i divided the 250 food you can get from a farm with the amount of seconds you need to harvest the farm and the wood = 0.27 resources / sec. multiplied with 60 i get 16,46 (~16.50) resources / minute instead of 19.50.
...or did i make a mistake here?
What about the Britons? Their TC's are cheaper. So, we should have 5 TC's or just 3 or even 1.
Perhaps 3 TC is the best.
You can go to Imperial Age faster and get the long ranged Arbalests.
Can someone tell me the names of the music tracks that SotL uses in his videos? 🤩
What does "Fast Castle" mean? Is it going fast to castle age or fast to build a castle?
It means trying to get to castle age as fast as possible
whats the difference between 3 and 4 tcs?
Is there a way to contact spirit of the law. I have a suggestion conserning a weird game mechanic that is going to be worth his time to look more in depth at. Pls help
Just post it in the comments. I've heard it's the best way to get a hold of him.
Black Forest Player here
.
So there really isn't a problem here for me, extra TC's every single time, my Walls keep any potential Early Castle Age Military away
So what if
2TC?
I often find myself making 3 stables getting all upgrades and making too many knights, but only for a while. While I have more units I raid cause enough damage and disruption to slow my enemy, then I add tcs.
YOu can never have too many knights. As long as they are all slashing.
How many vills do you need to sustain villager production in an additional TC? are these resources withdrawn from the calculation?
Why not go for 1 TC instead of 2 additional TCs? -> maybe always 2 additional TC compared to +1 since you are not committed enough EDIT:: posted this comment before reaching 16:00
It is discussed in a previous vid. It takes 5 farmers to produce enough food to sustain villager production on a TC (not including the gather time of wood needed to make the farms). That's why the payback for TC's is around 7-9mins. It's much shorter to re-gather the materials spent on just building the TC.
Please to a quick update video for vikings who get free wheelbarrow + more villagers! ;)
Man, I am stupid. I've only played campaign so I'm looking at all those dang farms in confusion; thinking "wait, I thought food workers were best". Jeez.
One with Viper please ♥️✨
Sotl is the man
I was wondering how I could beat the AI on hard reliably, since after a few victories I always lost track of my eco.
I was quite ashamed how despite my victory, the AI had way more villagers, and wondered if I should put down more TC all the time.
No wonder I never won since then, I was banking of having the extra resources, while the AI booms every time. I always had the advantage.
I usually turtle with 2 town centers. Maybe that's why I'm not a pro player.
I have a question. If you're going to turtle, and if your enemy can't successfully raid you early on, is it worth building 4 town centers? Or would you run out of natural resources before that strategy becomes viable?
Yes. On no-rush modes (i.e. no atk until 30/40/45/50 mins), you can find strats using 4-6 TC's. 7 is rare because you can get 300 pop in
I do this only if there is one area that is rich of food and gold or stone since I can't use either mill or mining camp to gather them with one building. The same thing is for food and wood, wood and gold or stone, food, wood, and gold, and all 4 types of resources. XD
Best aoe Chanel
Shalom to hera
At low levels the chance that you will get to the imperial age is very low. Too much idle time, too inefficient wood gathering. So for casual players it's better to add tcs - if you get idle time or don't produce enough units and float resources, you can catch up and spend faster. Overinvesting in production facilities is not that bad in aoe2, gives you more flexibility.
So if you stick with one town center then you need to attack quick.
First TaToH and now Hera. WolfPacK re-uinion confirmed.
Its a little off-topic but when attacking wouldnt it be ideal to destroy houses first to prevent oponent from making more units in thanks to population cap ?
Depends on what kind of attack you deploy. Villagers are the most important unit of the game. If you disrupt resource collection he will only make a limited number of defensive army, because he needs to save for replenishing villagers. Villagers die faster than you can destroy a house. So, if you have a light army, raid vils. If you have a more committed attack "lay siege on the city"
The effective case for your question is kill vils with cav or archery, defend said units with counter to the enemy counter unit. While rams destroy houses.
Ex. Cav kills vils, enemy will make pikes,monks, camels you should have brought archers(camels got fixed though) with 3-5 rams. Depending on the situation production building should be rammed instead of homes- like if he is massing siege. Because houses can be rebuilt easily and quickly.
house are cheap and easy to rebuild while they take some time to destroy making it not so worth it
It's much easier to harass vills and prevent them from working than destroy enough houses. Preventing production only stalls their future economy (the current vills are gathering resources still). Preventing vills from working immediately causes damage to their economy. Killing villagers is of course even better. Houses are dirt cheap and easy to build. Villagers are expensive and easy to destroy.
Minutes are in-game minutes or real ones?
always in-game minutes
Cbilly goatsgruff Thank you
7:53 wait what, daut is above the viper in elo ratings? what happened? xD
Viper keeps using organ guns.
Where is the intro??
Ahh... a new sotl vid, a new way to compare different resources.
I feel like your music is the default aoe2
Bruh where's the tree hp video?!?!?!?!?!
TEAMKILL
Why no intro? =(
This all assuming you build TCs with 4 vils, right? I never saw the mention of how taking vils off resources to build the TC would effect things but I'm at 4 minutes and tired :/
he has a video on this so you could add that on too, if it was unaccounted for.
It was factored into the construction cost of each town center (304 seconds = 4x the construction time with 4 vils). The part that wasn't accounted for was any walking time, but a few seconds of walking by 4 villagers wouldn't have a big impact on the results.
how am i supposed to understand him without subtitles?
By listening
Hi bro i want buy this game.pls send the online link in aoe 2 1999.
Time for my maths lesson. And with a guest pro-fessor.
Interviewing pro players for this type of video is a nice touch.
Edit: Case in point, trapping a whole scout rush in his wood line at 13:33.
I noticed that too! Looked in the comments to see if anyone else spotted it, was not disappointed.
Oh nice
I hated seeing that 1 scout alive for a while. OCD brain... well OCD towards 'Killing' I guess!
"full knights with any civ with bloodlines"
_suggests Franks_
This is why AI can't replace us
Because Franks have such a weak knight push lol.
They have bloodlines without even researching them, and better.
I'd say they know that.
@@dantegomezbasualdo5507 Not in feudal 😄
@@mrkirby8622 so best scouts un terms of hp doesnt count?
this guy answers the questions very well
Hera is a good teacher. He basically casts while playing on his twitch stream and you can learn a lot there. He's also IMO the best looking AOE2 pro, so there's that. ;)
@@TheStrangeBloke MBL for sure man
@@TheStrangeBloke Edie and Jordan are easy on the eye too
Im so glad DE came out, last time I played AOE was 10 years ago and we had to use Hamachi to play between friends...
Never played AoE back then, but I did use hamachi for minecraft and let me tell you, I'm glad it's gone. Fuck hamachi.
There is voobly for that. Once you set up port forwarding and use an ethernet cable instead of wifi it actually works pretty well.
@@animangovideo7375 thanks for telling him what he should have done 10 years ago
I've never really bothered with extra TCs... mostly because I suck at the game! Feel like doing a starters guide soon? Maybe for when Definitive Edition drops?
Same here. I never realy saw a reason to make them (since for farms i can just use mill i thought), unless my initial got destroyed.
There are a ton of those. Resonance22 is a great watch to learn the very basics of the game.
While I agree that Spirit Of The Law does great videos I really don't think he himself is good enough to teach new players. He hasn't even managed to reach 1800 HD rating so 11
No disrespect whatsoever against SOTL though. I love his videos.
@@PartialViewmusic You do know that being 1800 does not qualify you to teach others, right? you could be 2.5k and still not qualify. Teaching and playing are 2 different things.
@@PartialViewmusic I think SOTL is entirely qualified to teach the basics. He knows the basics, so why shouldn't he teach them?
However I agree thinking that his potential is better placed in the content he does normally, not beginners guides. Except of course if he reallz has fun doing them.
Sotl is quite qualified to teach as its technically what his channel is mainly about, which is teaching aoe2 indirectly (ie no build order guides etc) If he does make a beginners guide it should be something new and around his style of videos, instead of a build order guide which is probably the norm why not take a look at basic build orders and walk through why everything is done. Instead of people learning they comprehend it and progress further with a general understanding and ability to mold it much better than a normal build order would.
Great video! shouldnt you emperically consider the cost of building more lumber camps or mine camps, which players with only one TC have to do? Because when I build an extra TC I put it in a place i would a build a lumber camp and a mine camp. Just a suggestion!
Fair point, but you should also consider the extra farms you need for villager production and your lumbercamps and mining camps get saturated faster with the higher villager production so you also need more of them faster. You are investing in your eco three times as much as you would do for one tc and your eco is therefor also growing three times as fast.
I think bart is right, you have more farms and mills to build, and more micro to do - all at a time where a one tc player is really pushing you.
So i don't think it is an economy. I think it really comes down to attacking in AoE2 being quite challenging and risky - otherwise single tc would win every time (as they used to in the old meta)
Love your videos man. Your use of math to be objective is awesome. You are my AoE2 Yoda.
Please remake with an interview with Hoang, an expert in this field!
He would raid your economy before you even reach Castle.
Why you never ask the viper. I know he is very busy and a shy person in general but plezzz man
Hera was the man to ask on this strategy, but it would have been nice to get his take as Viper was the best player back when one TC was the meta, he could explain why 3 tc became dominant and why. He also goes 1tc on occasion.
Hera is the guy to ask here, since this is one of his signature strats, and he's much easier to get ahold of since he's a canadian and consequently in a closer time zone.
You have to see this from the pro point of view.PoVs too. There's little incentive for someone like Viper to weigh in; everyone who watches SotL knows who he is. Hera, meanwhile, is not, properly speaking, a 'pro' because AoE2 isn't his primary source of income, so this Q&A is a great opportunity for him where it'd just kinda be a chore for the Viper.
In any case, SotL's "ft. pro" segments are a relatively new feature. He's only had this format for like three videos? I'm sure we'll get Viper at some point.
TheStrangeBloke i consider hera pro because he is top 10..... and being top 10 in a game makes you pro
@@TheStrangeBloke Ive just seen Tatoh and Hera so far, so yeah, i hope we get more pros commentaries. Id also like to point out that SOTL videos have a certain resonance. For example, when he uploaded the 1 tower and a villager vs 2 empty towers Tatoh explained it in detail to his twitch community, which i found great. So yes, i hope we get more of this. Cheers
TheStrangeBloke and being in aM makes you pro if we consider what you say we can count all pros from aoe 2 in one hand..... and t90 would be pro it doesn’t make sense i believe we say someone pro by the skill level they have to bring not the amount of money they make
Came for the insane archer micro in the clips, stayed for the analysis.
Short answer : Yes.
just like the Goths technology allowing Barracks to train Huskarls other than from the castle, there ought to be a technology research allowing houses to train villagers other than from the Town Center
a tech called what, exactly? "Sex" ??
@@aurawolf664 Yes.