The vicious cycle of force dropping food (AoE2)
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- Sometimes early game micro can add some extra efficiency and is key to playing competitively, but other times it just gets in the way. This is a case where doing some overzealous micromanagement can trigger a vicious cycle, all because of how some numbers line up in the game.
0:38 The math
1:42 Example
2:57 Civilization exceptions
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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition - Ігри
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Jokes on you, my micro isn't nearly good enough for me to force-drop more than once when I want to go to Feudal Age.
There is a nice trick though: simply delete TC to avoid idle TC time instead of force drop
This is the only right answer
I would say that it happens more with buffaloes is because they have more food and villagers drop their food off if the herdable runs out. So if you force dropped off but the sheep runs out at the perfect time you get the food and with buffaloes that happens less frequently.
4:30 basically "This proof is left as an exercise for the reader" LOOOL
I thought it was fun of him to do.
Much easier to just force drop off with 1 or 2 vils to get enough for the mext vil, then the rest are still geeting to thier max carry and dropping off automatically.
I do this too 👍
Easier said than done. You'll have to manually select those villagers, rather than just selecting them all with control groups. Or worse, make two control groups for villagers who're all doing the same thing, just to do this. Only worth it at high tiers of play.
This it is
It's really not that hard to just drag select a couple of the villagers.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn tbf this seems to be an optimization for higher levels of play anyways.
I put 7 on food. I live in a very relaxing manner.
Hacks man.. the hacksss
Sorry to ask this, but what Elo are you at?
I do the same, it just works better. For the guy who asked, I'm about 1200 elo.
@@edmis90I do 7 on food and am 1550
I do 5 always. I only play persians, britons, hindus and liths though
One trick is just force dropping in 2 of the 6 villages, so you reach the 50 food for click next villager and the other 4 villages still collect and will drop off during those 25 seconds (40 food between all them and surely you had 10 on the bank, so next vil is ensured)
interesting
It didn't occur to me that I could force drop of with just one or two villagers. Thanks for the video :)
He never gave that tip. Glad you figured it out anyway.
😅
I always do that. I didn't want to trouble all of them to just nudge it so i can queue next. And i can free myself to go herd deer
Easier said than done. You'll have to manually select those villagers, rather than just selecting them all with control groups. Or worse, make two control groups for villagers who're all doing the same thing, just to do this. Only worth it at high tiers of play.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn Pretty sure this whole thing is more for high tiers of play anyways?
A neat trick you didn't mention: Dropping off with just a few of the villagers. That is, you drop off with just the amount of villagers you think you need to reach the treshold to produce. After that, your villager dropoffs should be less synchronous too which is good.
SoTL upgraded from teaching me math to giving me math homework
Incredible
Homework: I am inevitable.
Incredible how not being a sweaty tryhard player has helped me all these years
A partial solution would be to select only 2 or 3 vills to force drop (if you are just short a little bit of food), instead of selecting all of them. That way you cause less disturbance, and also afterwards the vills will be dropping in a staggered manner, instead of all of them at the same time
I am amazed at how SotL keeps finding ways to create new content. Amazed, and delighted.
Less total food on sheep = more times where the villagers automatically drop off food (below their 10 food limit) when the sheep runs out
Love these little quirk videos. Please do more!
The Aztec experience
I think there might be a 'trick' to proactively break the cycle.
The problem in your example was that you didn't get enough food to get the next villager, and that you did it so close to the villager completion. Going from 30 to 45 doesn't get you over the threshold; in binary terms you haven't gained a villager (0 food or 49 is the same), but you've delayed the next auto drop off.
The solution is to drop again as soon as that'll put you over the threshold. In your example where you went from 30 to 45, when you *see* that you didn't go over 50, you can predict the issue; you *know* that it'll be more than 25s to the next auto drop. So proactively force drop again in 5-10s, once there's enough food to get to 50 in the bank. Now you've got enough for the next villager, and the next auto drop will be before the villager after that.
It turns into a cycle because a "just in time" drop means that the next auto-drop is more than 25s away. If you force drop early (and the problem can be identified early), you can prevent the cycle from happening by dropping far enough that the villagers will drop while the next villager is on the way.
In that specific scenario you can also drop off with one villager to get over the threshold.
I have a similar problem with Mayans. I’m guessing it’s for the same reason as with the water buffalo… the resources lasting 15% means the villagers can collect a bit more food before finishing the first sheep and that makes them “force drop” an inconvenient amount of food which means you have to force drop after that.
A separate issue is to what extent repeatedly force dropping has a negative impact on food collection over time. Even going really fast there is a slight delay created from each drop off that adds up.
The list of youtubers i would willingly take homework from is exactly 1
Just when you thought it couldn't get more complicated
A rule of thumb when force-dropping food would be to check your food count modulo 50 afterwards; if it's around 40 to 49, wait 2-3 seconds and force-drop again. Basically you don't want your food count to be sitting around 40-49 while your shepherds are holding onto nearly their maximum capacity of food.
It's been many years but still feel strange seeing "The vicious cycle of ____" without hearing Bãtutã din Moldova
I just noticed this the other day and thought I was going crazy. Glad to see it's a real thing.
Spirit of The Law of Attraction.
Aoe2 help me understand that why in WW2 allies were more focused on city bombing than military target
A total war is fought in the farms and factories and in transport. Romans lost a hell lot of battles and got a quarter of their population killed in the Punic wars but they still won because they could keep fielding troops
An easy fix is to not drop off all 6 villagers. Have them off set so the gathering is more continuous. 3 and 3 should be best.
You didn't mention the better option for that example where you had 45 food: just force drop off one vil, and you are good to go.
1:46 'here I have a villager about to come out' wooo yeah you go girl!
We're so proud!
The worst part of having to force drop off is that you delete your shift queued orders in the process. Sometimes my villagers will split up inefficiently between herdables after a drop off because I forget to queue them again.
Babe, come over, SOTL just dropped a new obscure math gameplay issue that will forever chage our AO2 perspective again....
i love you so much man, ur just the best, from time to time i say to myself, geee, i wish SOTL made a video explaining in detail this specific interaction, and the best thing is that its possible that you will!!
Another detail is that when you force drop, you loose like half a second where your villagers aren't collecting food, no matter how fast or how well you do the force drop.
What does the math look like if you do a single force drop for half your vills? Seems like a stagger makes it overall less likely you have downtime
What abou only force dropping with 2-3 villagers? That would made so you get food maybe each 10-20 seconda instead of 30
I usually just go off with 1 or 2 vils if i have to. Avoids this problem usually
So without intervention your villager’s carrying capacity is a bit like imagining Mario at a bus stop…
Apart from the solution of force dropping just 1-2 vils, wouldn't a second force drop like 2 seconds later also solve this?
A lot can be avoided by only having two or 3 of the drop off. You get the food you need while minimizing idle time
i played my own not very well thought out version of the x10 team bonus mod with a team of maya, aztecs and vikings and well the trees had a lot of wood but it turns out vils with +30 base carry capacity and 10x wheelbarrow on top will not drop off until that tree is gone. it was very bad.
later i added malians and went to gold ... i don't remember how much the vils carried but it was over 350 with the gold tile staying almost untouched.
I just research Loom if I don't have enough resources for the next villager. After Loom, it won't come up again
Keepin constant vil making i can do consistently, but I save loom often for a get out jail card when I get housed early on🤷♂️
Spirit of the law: "THE MATH (Yes, we need this part, sorry uwu please understand uwu)" Me:... That's... That's why I'm here...
My problem is that sometimes I forget that I had my rally point on sheep and I end up with like 10 villagers on sheep before I notice and quickly send some off to chop wood instead
That in of itself is not much of a problem. What is a problem is that if that's too much micro for you already, how do you manage the rest of the game? xD
i think legitimately the only force drop off i ever do is food for feudal, and stone for a castle
Why did you type the 5 syllable word "legitimately" in that sentence? It would read more cleanly and have the same meaning without it. You used it "superfluously".
6 vil on sheep, force drop off. use 1 vil more.. stonks go up
Is the water buffalo difference because they have 150 food and the villagers take slightly longer to finish collecting from the buffalo vs the sheep. I think if a villager is carrying 7 food for example and the sheep carcass runs out of food they will drop off that 7 before moving on to the next sheep. So with the buffalo it takes longer for it to be depleted of food and the villager does a “half full” drop off later than they would when collecting food from a sheep (or goose, pig, alpaca)
7 on food lightens the mood 😅
I came from AOE4 where this kind of problems dont exist anymore but i had issues in my first matches because i had this trauma with aoe2 gathering XD send help pls. (good video as always bro, thanks :3)
If I need to force drop off, I always do it with just 2 or 3 villagers. I've never had issues with constant need to drop off.
I thought of, and solved, this problem a few years ago when joining ranked. Before that, I didn't even care because I went full vegetarian mode.
Can't you mostly solve this by just only selecting a few of the villagers to force drop off, instead of all of them?
4 on wood though. Even 3 for archers should give you that force drop off. Although grabbing a boar in this first situation is probable!
Why don't they just removed the aztec's +3 bonus for shepards specifically?
I guess players will have to micromanage their micromanagement to avoid this. :V
If you got just a tiny bit of food missing, maybe force-drop just one or two villagers instead of the whole group. This should allow the others to continue collecting and dropping normally.
this is a great vid idea. I know its standard to go to the boar before all the sheep are gone. But always wondered why not take all the sheep first
Because vills gather faster from hunt so you want that as early as possible. Likewise berries are slowest so you gather them last.
Early to the sauce, this time
I normally put 8 on sheep to start then take 2 off sheep to build lumber camp to avoid this.
at 2:03 just collect enough villagers to get the missing 5 food, then you won't have this problem anymore.
I just force-drop once and then get loom and it resets it so I don’t need to force-drop again after that. Maybe getting loom early is a rookie mistake?
Yes. Because getting loom puts you down one villager, in the early game this is a large size deficit. It's best to delay loom as long as you can
It's because everybody's got a water buffalo, yours is fast but mine is slow.
Where do you get them I don't know.
I thought Tatars would get a mention
Someone gotta left this guy about small trees
Some people don't want small trees.
@@16vSciroccoboi false, small trees are better and make it easier to see.
@@balooojeffersong4234 and some people don't want to look at small trees.
Hence why it's an option.
People should just play with block mod, it's easier to see everything.
@@16vSciroccoboi nope you’re wrong. Small trees is objectively better. That’s why the viper uses it. Do you really think you know more about the game than the viper?!? Didn’t think so there bud.
Collection rates for the water buffalo is slower?
Not that I know of, but they do have 150 food instead of 100 which can screw with the timings of food drop off because of when they finish one and start harvesting another.
I feel like this happens every Mayan game.
Thank goodness I don't have RTS APM OCD
What about dropping off with just 2-3 of the vills?
6 villagers juuust not enough. as we all know when we play Chinese.
The free market. AOE edition.
Plz make a video on monaspa
The problem is that you didnt rush their berries.
My solution to this is I only force drop off with 2 villagers. it usually helps, But I'm also weird and put 7 on herdables so my food eco is higher. that's why I'm not a pro.
How to fix: only force drop off with one villager, then the others are still in the cycle they're supposed to. I do this, and I'm 960 elo, so I should definetly be trusted.
What about Tatars, whose herdables contain more food?
It is probably considered to act more like water Buffalo so worse. The higher food content makes it so the vills are less likely to randomly finish in time to not have to force drop.
This is actually the main reason why playing the Chinese at low ELOs is so painful, they demand good micro just to break even, if you have bad or slow micro their bonus becomes a handicap. I'd argue that the Georgians are better because at least they still have a food buffer. Likewise with +50 food the Chinese opener wouldn't be a problem for even low ELO players anymore, simply because of the buffer.
How about force dropping with 1 or 2 villagers? That way you would have crossed the 50 food in this example scenario and the rest would have dropped off on their own. That staggering is what you want anyway to smooth out the income.
I manly do it with "boars" since they drop the most food of the three food sources.
If you HAVE TO micro manage, don't do it with entire team... Do it with few employees.. only force drop from 3 villagers
I just put looms to compensate
Sooooo look how much food you have and if you're at 45 just only drop off one holding 8 food so the rest gathers up normally?
you can force drop?
Yeah, just select a village, then right click on the TC to force the villager to drop off the res. You can also garrison the villagers in the TC - that will drop off any resources they are carrying.
Villager*
i have 7 on food early to avoid all of that, and im not trying to be too competitive
why do people force drop more than once or twice on sheep? you don't need more to get feudal at 6 vills and at boars you only typically need to force drop 2-3 times as well. I don't get how this can become a cycle
how do you got these graphics on the game?
Why not just have all of them force drop off? Just have 1 or 2 drop off to get you the last little bit you need?
Just force drop off with 1-2 vils?
Was hoping you would cover Persian tc. I never get the early game correct with Persian civ.
Hey Spirit of the law, Guys here 👋
You just force drop off from 2 or 3 vils. Solves
I have 7 on herdables so the math is always screwed up.
Only drop off 3 or 4 instead of the whole group
Thr last time i was this early pathing was still a thing.
what if you drop with only 1 vill when you are 45, then you are good for the rest of the game right
I just do 7 vils on food first. I’ve got enough to deal with without the force dropping.
I'm so early, its still dark age
I'm sorry but I'm not here for the clifhangers, gimme the reason goddamnet.
Would it make more sense to just force drop off half your villagers?
I do 7 villagers at food 7 at wood then berries am I doing it wrong?
Most standard orders seem to be 6 on sheep, 4 on wood, and then the 11th vil builds a house + lures first boar. The rest after that keep going to food sources until you can click up. Maybe 6 on wood if you need to do lots of walling idk.
@@I_enjoy_some_things dont you need two on gold if you're going fast castle like everyone seems to now?
The fact that this even matters at all is one of the biggest recurring flaws in RTSs.
What are you talking about "in RTSs"? Force dropping isn't even a thing in starcraft for example
Jokes on you, my micro is bad anyway
Am i the only one who clicked expecting Bàtutà din Moldova at some point