@@BryanLikesCandy i actually did it bck when I was playing. Around 700-800 elo I believe. The enemy left his market at the front. Because it's a low Elo I couldn't close the game fast. I'm pretty sure that slow cart paid for himself, by the time the enemy resigned.
Im impressed he didnt use this video as an excuse to talk about his beloved Japanese and their god like fishing ships. "I swear im not paid by Big Fish", instead of "And thats not just because of a bias in favor of Japanese."
You considered that Burgundians could get Caravan in Feudal to help with the trade boom, but forgot to mention they could also get Gillnets in feudal to amp up the Fish boom. SOTL might be a merchant sympathizer.
It's irrelevant to the argument since the argument he was making was that even under the best and most stacked of circumstances early trade still gets outperformed by fishing. You could stack the fishing deck with bonuses to even further exacerbate this point but there's no reason to.
@@karonteazt3286 Yes and no, he didn't factor the cost of the buildings into the equation at all, so a cheaper market wouldn't have made any difference in this analysis.
I seriously believe the sudden 2020 boom in AoE2 was largely because of the sheer amount of incredibly detailed guidance you provide to new and returning players. Thank for reviving this game
Try to implement the return on investment on more aspects of the game and you will improve greatly. It is hard to realise how much the timing on certain decisions will impact the thing you are doing. It needs actual analising to see, and channels like spirit's really help to see that perspecitive better :) good luck on your Age journey.
don’t play online if you don’t know basic shit in game, you will only be an extra liability to your teammates, the game is 20+ year old with enough resources in-game and online to learn from
Ignore this guy above, the Elo system is there for a reason, it is a game after all, not some urgent aid mission where failure results in the death of innocent people
at ~07:00 I think there is a second factor that inflates fish: you build a dock specifically for fishing, while you nearly always want a market anyway. (not that it really changes any outcome here)
that only applies if you use trade carts. and really, that at adds a 25% cost increase to the 4 eco unit set-ups. Which is clearly a back of envelope type calculation, because you don't queue up that many eco units at once, but for the point where you check for the payback time, you will have made those 4 eco units.
@@flydrop8822 Depends on a map. Some maps have fishing, but don't necessary have heavy water fighting or possibility of water trading. Like Four lakes / Cross or African Reed Beds.
When I first played AOE2 about 20 years ago when I was a kid, I never would have guessed that 20 years later people are still playing this game and they are still releasing DLC expansions with new civs and they have these highly detailed videos that explain why trading in Feudal Age is not as beneficial. Thank you, Spirit of the Law for keeping the spirit of this game stronger than ever 20 years later. The community is stronger than it has ever been I think!
"You have made poor early game choices one too many times. Face my numbers heathen!" Love how much opportunity cost can be taken apart and analyzed, thank you for your endless stream of entertainingly packaged real research :)
Thanks so much! I need to send this to my friend. Everytime we play, its 9min = boom, trade-cart. I tried to talk him out of it based on "I feel like..." but now I got exact mathematical argument 11
Hi SotL, nice video, thank you! I think in your calculations you didn't take into account that the trade produces gold while the ships produce food. It's a bit difficult to convert with shifting prices, but we can still generalize. Selling food (if needed) returns lots of gold early in the game, while buying food from gold is rather expensive. This effect is reversed later in the game, which makes trade way more attractive than in the early game. Moreover, players need food rather in the early game and gold rather in the late game, which is already a factor for trade not being necessary so early. :)
This is actually really interesting. My family likes to play aoe4 a lot. In that game, we can build town centers in feudal and trade carts cost less resources (and sometimes don't have a gold cost if I remember right). I had told my family when we started playing that early trade wasn't worth it and that they should instead gather the stone to build more town centers, but maybe there are some civ cases where trade is actually more beneficial (especially considering several maps have neutral trade points that are a good distance away).
There was actually one specific situation I have seen where feudal trade was the right choice.and it was very niche. It was an open map and 2v2, where my opponent had lamed my alternative gold and tower rushed my main gold and stone. It was a dire situation but my ally was going archers and was able to keep the towers from advancing. However the stone walls around my alt gold and three walled in towers around my main gold made me stuck in feudal. My ally was massing archers to defend himself too from the enemy spearman archer combo from the other opponent. Meanwhile I has scout rushing as Magyars and denying the rose man’s wood, and forcing towers at home. In this bizarre case, I chose to continue with scouts to help my ally win the archer war, because he had dedicated part of his army to stop the towers. I had no spare food and a surplus of wood. my ally got a market to buy his way to castle because he had too much wood. I decided to build a second stable and go hard on scouts while spending my last gold on trade carts. I could have bought gold but I had too little food to click up. I already had bloodlines so there was nothing else to spend gold on I was predicting that the game would drag on in feudal for a very very long time. It did because it was so extremely messy. I was putting on so much pressure on the archer guy with my 1/1 scouts that he was just stabilizing for 10 minutes.the tower guy was in shambles and had to wall himself in and crawl back into an economy. My ally took damage while helping me and was not relying on me to do something huge. By the time the dust settled I had 800/200 for castle and clicked up at an insane (late) time. I only made 3 trade carts the whole game which gave me enough gold to get the light cav upgrade and eventually +2 armour. That was it. I made nothing but 150 + light cavs and controlled the gamy for my ally. The trade carts ended up working out.
I forgot to mention the reason I had so much wood and a market. The tower rush had also forced me to abandon some farms next to my mill and tc, so I send those guys to chop wood. I made a market thinking I was going to use it to trade wood. But in the end I had so much more damn wood than food I rebuilt mass farms instead and made trade carts (not knowing the return would take so long).
@@victoriancu5661 The actual optimal solution in that situation would have been to just have your ally send you enough gold to advance, or to share their mine until you get to castle and get rams to unlame your resources. Obviously it depends on if your ally is ok with that since nobody wants to piss of their teammates since they can do a lot of harm if they are no longer attempting to win the game but fuck you over.
I played this back on mirc era, 23 years ago or so. Still to this day remember an Arabia game that went through almost 2h, 3x3, everything was mined, I had the persians pumping pikeman, elephants and scorpions, the back bone was 2 markets at the edge generating crazy amounts of gold while the map was mined out, people were trading food for wood and that was rich me with elephants. We were noobs, but very epic noobs. Crazy to think that at one point I had one last game and never returned, but your videos are great, love them.
Another argument against trade is about your opponent building military to stop trade/fishing: -Against fishing: They build warships, get water control and then their ships just stand there. You can get land control while they invest into water. -Against trade: They build archers/scouts, get land control and move on to your villagers after stopping trade.
I am so impressed with the play on words and jokes you dead pan deliver. Big fan. Auspex Tactics is another very different fandom channel but does the same thing.
I kinda want a map with neutral markets and little to no gold to force early trading (and protection of said trade). Perhaps with a Premium market in the centre that gives better value to fight over. Now that'd shake up Feudal Age
The opportunity cost point at about the 11:00 marker is hands down the most important point in this video. You're choosing to make trade units instead of military, which you can use to help defend your base from attacks. If you're that insistent on getting extra gold income, try to start gathering relics as soon as you hit castle, and send a few military units with your monks if needed. The gold you pay for that monk will be paid back on its own, then you can use those monks to heal your troops or defend against anyone going Knights or Elephants. That's my 2 cents at least.
I concur. All people reacting they would like to see a buff for early game trading don't see how even doubling the gold income would still make it a questionable play on open maps. I am perfectly happy with trading just being viable for when gold is running out on maps. Fishing ships at least need water maps to be impactfull, but I have no desire to get the basic eco meta to be shaken up by a heavy focus on map corners.
Or just build an extra town centre and put it to work making miners. And then other resource gatherers. And wheelbarrow/hand cart. And then enjoy the extra map control!
@rubywest5166 You can easily do both. I typically go for an 7-9 Knight rush in early Catle to put on extra pressure, then build TC's at home. It wouldn't take much to make a monastery with 1-2 monks on top of that. But I think most important takeaway is to start making some form of military by the time you hit early Castle, unless you're on a map like Michi or Black Forest, where you might have a little more time.
@@rubywest5166 In what world is having more TC's to boom on the same as having map control? If you TC boom and your opponent doesn't I have bad news for you who controls the map. And if your monk-mangonel defence isn't on point the only place your villagers will be staying is inside of the TC's doing nothing.
@longbow857 I'm happy with how it's balanced too. I think plots of gold need to have a higher purpose in the earlier stages of the game to create a sense of urgency for map control. You can arguably get away with not taking stone at the center of the map, but gold? That's a different story entirely. Getting those central gold plots delays your need to start trade imo.
This has convinced me that I SHOULD make trade carts in Feudal Age. I never believed this before watching this video. Reasons: 1) Building a dock only for shore fish and fish traps has been found to be worth it on black forest in the modern meta. So the correct comparison here is to 16.2 food per minute collection rate. 2) Additionally, you have to build the dock and eventually the fish traps. The market you'll usually have already. 3) In the same way that adding fish is often worth it only up to 5 or 6 ships, whereafter prioritising short term res in the bank is better, I see no reason I should need to make 4 trading carts in Feudal but 1 or 2 is probably the right number. 4) The allies can help 5) If I'm fast castling I'll have caravans soon anyway, and I'm just getting a small headstart on producing the trade 6) None of your graphs go far enough to the right. It's obviously setting you back in the first 12 minutes. The eventual payoff will be very big though, especially because it will eventually start compounding.
Fishing: Gives you about an extra villager worth of gathering (or more!) for a similar price right at the point you'd want the extra eco unit production the most. Trade: Basically only gives you half a villager worth of gathering for triple the price, and by the time it's set up you're already close to getting extra town centres. Fishing is about as good as farming and comes in when it's most valuable in dark age. Trading is usually far behind mining, and by then you're nearly able to make more miners anyway.
And while the Market is a way more useful building to build than a unit production building, the fact that fishing ships have the ability to be roughly 1.5 the cost and 1.5 the real gather rate as a villager on a why cheaper unit production building than what villagers have, and booming is powerful, the option to pseudo boom in dark ages is so good, that it is effectively required.
I hoped that you would have extended the graphs a bit longer. It would be interesting to see at what minute does trading overtake fishing with this setup.
One thing I am curious about is the reduction of space between the trade centers vs gold collected instead of maximizing gold by increasing space. I bring this up because I wonder if there is a sweet spot in the middle somewhere, where the loss of the max gold balances out due to the increased amount of runs able to be done per cart/cog. For example only, not actual numbers. Let's say at a in-game 10 mile span you get 30gold per car/cog normally, no bonuses. Of course the cogs are faster, but ignore that for now. Now let's say the minimum span of being right next to the trade center = 1 gold. At what point is the return of the cart/cog going to be fast enough to increase the gold per run enough to exceed the max gold per run instead. I don't think this is going to change the balance into trades favor in feudal, but I do think it might balance it out a bit.
On Michi, I run a trade cart boom (it's obviously best with burgundians but their post imp units aren't ideal for my post imp plans) On Michi, the tricks I use are. Build markets in both corners and have an ally market in each corner. The initial waypoint for a market is the ally market near in its own corner, thus eliminating a dead leg across the entire map. New trade carts in either corner's initial waypoint is the ally market in its corner. Furthermore, when a trade cart has completed its leg across the map, you select that trade cart and have it go to the ally market nearest to it in the its corner. Thus eliminating another dead leg. The feudal eco is basically just 6 on food and everyone else to wood. (Initially 5 on gold to kick off the trade). Add markets when I can afford it eventually getting to 10-12 markets. It's michi, so I don't have anything to worry about. Not going to add TCs, not going to place additional farms. I just bounce between the corner markets and find trade carts that are finishing a leg and micro them to the nearest market. Eventually I'll be floating a lot of gold. I might buy wood for more markets, or I might sling to an opponent in need. But eventually will get 100-125 trade carts and buy my way up to imp. Typically I do this with Japanese on Michi. And all this gold is turned into stone purchases and I spam 200+ yasama towers at points of interest The reason I type this is because these tricks to trade cart boom properly are not mentioned in this video. Nor is the ability to fish on Michi.
I dont understand how any of what you said makes sense. Sending a trade unit to a nearer market just makes it return less gold. It returns faster, but way lower amount. I dont see how it adds any value at all whatsoever.
@@Vittinable the trade carts will automatically go to the furthest market of yours to the market it picks up the gold So the market it is created at goes 5-10 tiles to the near market then it automatically knows to go my market in the opposite corner
@@XavierOrtega2 I know this strat and it works as advertised. As long as the trade carts go to the nearby market to pick up the gold not drop it off, they will pick up gold to bring to the far market instead of the close one, and then go there, skipping the first half of the trip where they would go across the map just to pick up the gold.
Clarification: the trick is that they go to the close market on the pickup trip and for some reason the game only considers the drop off trip distance for money per trip calculation.
Hmm that is really interesting, I never played online and only play against moderate CPU so I never even heard anything bad about feudal trade. I will have to keep this in mind if I ever brave online play
generally a meme early on. you can build a single dock and have a vil on shore fish and one or two boats. later on with high wood eco you can make a couple extra docks and fill it with fish traps but it takes a long while. you ideally start it as a very a light investment that you slowly increase over time
There's also this dimension, which is an expansion on the resource angle. Specifically, let's focus on the part that matters: what resources are the units collecting? Fishing ships cost 75 wood but collect food, never wood; this is atop the 150 wood or so you need for the dock itself. So here, it makes sense if your aim is to grow the food supply--since food is needed by villagers. These can then collect the wood used and recoup it. In this, it's actually a very efficient way to collect food, compared to simply using a villager, who needs 50 food, and then several minutes seeding then harvesting a farm to recoup the food and turn in the desired food profit. Put another way: the cost is largely offloaded outside the fishing industry itself. So if you lose a fishing ship, then you can simply raise more, because (ideally) you should have the lumberjacks needed to keep collecting wood, precisely because the ships have raked in all that food. If you want to upgrade the ships, it will cost food, but it isn't required to turn a profit: only to increase it, for a more powerful boom. Meanwhile, a trade cart costs 100 wood and 50 gold atop the 175 wood for a market. And in my experience, carts rarely gathers more than 15-20 gold at a time on any given map. So just to recoup the loss of gold and begin to turn a profit, you need two or three runs, and after that, the margin isn't really all that high: the loss of a trade cart (or worse, a whole convoy) will set you back a LOT of gold. And this is to say nothing of the tech costs, which also include gold, and their inability to defend themselves, which necessitates defense of the trade route (while making it easier to cut off trade). Similar issues apply to cogs. So, as a means of getting gold, trade carts suck precisely because they cost a lot of gold, simply to collect gold from a market to a value that is typically well under the gold value of the cart itself. Meanwhile, mines only require food and wood to get gold (tech aside), and while monks cost even more gold than carts (100 gold a pop), they can gather relics and put them in monasteries, and these relics then generate infinite gold in turn ad infinitum. Further, if you're lucky, you only need one monk anyway to collect multiple relics, for faster gold generation. And this doesn't get into the fact that monks can convert enemy units (and buildings, depending on availble tech for a civ), and heal your own people. Thus, the utility value of a monk, who can heal, convert, or collect, is far greater than a cart that can only gather gold, thus making the higher gold costs of Monks and their relic collection more than justifiable.
On hybrid maps, I do a Roman fc into rams and scorpions because I can count on my opponent to try fish booming. And it slaps hard when you’re laying down two forward siege workshops in their face at 13 minutes, and they’re still in early feudal because the fish boom set their uptime behind. I haven’t lost with that strategy yet in those circumstances.
The value of these resources change depending on the games state though In feudal and early Castle: food>gold Castle: food=gold Late castle and imp: gold>food
what he said tho: you can buy food with the gold you get so the difference in the feudal case doesn't matter *that* much it sure is an extra you still rarely make trade while in castle or even early imp unless it's something like michi. you only want trade really when you're prepping for your access to gold to run out or when it has already run out
I just watched a 12 minute video about a game i haven't played in 12 years, just for bro to not even show us what the results of the Trade Cogs in the super team test was. i was hoping it'd slam it in for at least the cogs. oh well. if i missed it i missed it. excellent work with the practical examples by the way.
It would be nice to see a civ with a team bonus of trade carts costing half (and maybe free caravans in feudal) and see viable feudal trade. It would be a fresh twist to the meta and we would see raiding / protecting trade with feudal armies. Kinda like Cumans being able to build a 2nd TC in Feudal. The big problem is it gives no bonus in 1v1s though.
I could see it if they wanna make a third Mule Cart civ (of course they would, why not?) and have them focused around this idea of cart-pulling equines. Free Horse Collar, trade carts costing less (50% less wood? 20% total cost reduction, so 80W/40G?), maybe make them move faster/tankier too? Could be interesting, though I assume theyd also be a Cavalry civ and not infantry or archer focused, so theyd have to want that extra gold for something too - likely knight or siege bonuses. There is the 1v1 issue as you said, esp if dedicating *multiple* bonuses towards this giga trade cart meta.
I wonder if it would be good to reduce cost + creation times of standard trade units + slightly increase speed + gold gathered for all Civs for the same dynamic. Caravans could then further increase speed and add some armour for more survivability against raiding. It might not make feudal trade viable with the delayed payback SOTL demonstrated but might make it viable in Castle Age (with the trade-off you mention) rather than just post-Imp
What I'm taking out of the video is an idea to try making a couple of trade cogs on my way to castle age in games when my team looks to be winning water after feuda when I'm usually done with making fishing ships already.
Hey Spirit of the Law! Could you please leave the outro music to play a little bit longer like you used to? It's really catchy for me, and i used to listen to the end of that sequence. Also your best videos are these ones, where you go into detail in the math behind the game, i really appreciate your hard work. Thanks, and keep on!
I never really considered it myself since those carts would be too slow to pay it back and they’d be easier targets to kill. The numbers are fun to watch anyway though. Thanks, SOTL!
I still remember one of my first ranked team games, it was a 4v4 and I made a couple trade carts in castle age. Once it reached the other side my teammate said something along the lines of "this teammate is making trade carts in castle age gg" and quit after which the other two quit since we were down a player. ngl if I said that didn't sour my opinion on ranked for a while.
The other thing to mention about the payback times is that players shouldn't be spending that long in Feudal anyways. A ~5 minute payback time on Fishing Ships is fine for Dark Age-> Feudal Age and makes sense for preparing you to have a stronger mid-game economy, but trade taking that long to repay its investments in Feudal age means delaying aging up, and therefore delaying your Castle Age boom that pays itself off much faster. Its to the point where I could see the developers making trade carts and cogs only be able to be built in Castle Age just to discourage this, though that might disrupt a few campaign scenarios.
"...we are going to be overanlysing a simple question in AoE2, using significantly more math and graphs than are strictly necessary. So a pretty typical video on this channel" At this point, I knew this was going to be good
1:20 I love how Law’s definition of being a dick is preparing a relief cache to aid an ally who’s made a strategic error. Like: “Sometimes my teammates make me so angry that I prepare a stash of resources to help them out when they run into trouble, all while being polite to them” He’s such a nice guy I stg. Such a rare find in the RTS nerd community
This makes me appreciate how clever the AOE4 double half drop off actually is, as it might not do away with this scaling issue, it at least left shifts the trade slope by minutes. Of course, they rarely hit situations where they need trade, have enough gold trickle to ignore gold mining, or often just try to go it without gold rather then bothering with traders. But still, its a clever trick to tweaking the risk factors by a bit.
I was ready to complain that you had forgotten to mention the cost, and you did right after. lol I still wouldn't put the cost all at once, only after the creation time of each unit (pro players modus operanti), but it's still correct.
The cost to make a Market is wrong. You almost always make a market anyway when you get to Feudal. So that would be cancelled out. Meanwhile a dock is specifically made (but not exclusively for) fishing and navy.
@@apex9806 you dont necessarily make a market in a 1v1 until fairly late. in team games you do, not because of early trading but sending res to allies in case of need
Anything with a gold cost is premium in feudal age: archers and galleys and trade. You more or less pick one because putting too many vils on gold means youre putting less on wood and food which slows eco progression and your castle time. Thats pretty much it. Yes, the trade will pay off sooner but in feudal the long term value proposition is less important than stability and security to just stay alive at the moment.
I think you are even being too positive about this...trade carts are a really bad deal overall, and the only reason they exist and anyone would make them is for when the gold mines run out. Because you are exactly right, gold is a premium resource. So why would you pay gold to generate gold later, if you can add vills to gold (which doesn't cost gold and collects at a MUCH faster rate compared to the same number of carts) to generate gold now and use it now. Another way to think about it is: if gold mines were infinite, would anyone make trade even in team games? Probably not. So, don't make trade unless you need to 😂
All I use AOE2 for is creating epic medieval worlds that never leave Castle Age. SotLs content has barely any value to me, and yet I'm totally hooked on him analyzing this 25 year old game.
While I'm not going to argue against the conclusion, the argument that it's not worth it in the best case scenario because it isn't quite as good as fishing doesn't really appeal, because why not both? It's not like late game upgrades have as high of a cost efficiency as early game upgrades in general.
The reason for "why not both" is that you have limited resources. If you could afford everything, you would add everything. But you can't afford everything, so adding trade means you're adding fewer fishing ships, or adding fewer town centers and villagers, or getting fewer eco upgrades, or have less army to protect your economy and attack the enemy economy. Even in feudal age on a map with no fish this matters. If you add trade, and your opponent doesn't, they can get to castle age and afford extra town centers, army, or upgrades before you do. And those will benefit them more than your trade is benefiting you.
@@ajfish9514 Sure, the principle is opportunity cost, but the argument just doesn't get around to actually proving that it's bad because the comparison sotl is doing isn't the actual tradeoff.
@@Tobbzn How is it not an actual tradeoff? If you have the resources to make fishing ships and trade, you have the resources to make fishing ships and even more fishing ships. Or fishing ships and an extra town center. Or fishing ships and eco upgrades.
@@ajfish9514 i did not say it wasn't a tradeoff, I said sotl's argument does not follow through on why the tradeoff is a bad deal because he only compares it to what we already know is a great deal. That means that as far as the argument is concerned, it could still be a decent deal and so the math hasn't shown what the math purports to show
I recommend sending at least 1 trade cart to the enemy market just to see the response. Sometimes they'll delete the market, other times they'll try to box it in or get scouts to chase it down, or you might just get "11" or "???". In any case, it's well worth the investment of 150 resources if you wanted the market anyhow
It's surprising that on paper cogs are better than carts, but we pretty much never see them in competitive team games. The reasons why, I think, are that they get stuck on each other very easily, they're hard to defend (can't wall water), and most maps don't give you a good long sea trade route
Early trade is almost always a loss, but I have tried it with a single goal in mind: to hit the opposing team with heavy gold units asap in castle, in this case, elephants. While I did click up to castle after my teammate and both opponents, I was able to field 15 war elephants about 12 minutes into castle with full techs. My teammate went into crossbows and even a group of twenty or so was enough to ward off pikes so the elephants were devastating. It was an amusing strategy that wouldn’t work at higher elo or with more aggressive opponents, and gimped me for any longer game as I was severely behind with food, but I’m sure the other team was in a panic when they got hit by so many elephants.
Hi SoTL. It comes very clear from the video that fishing > trading in feudal. But can you tell us more about the opportunity cost and the long term return of making carts in early? I understand it’s suboptimal in a water map, but why do you shiver when you see it in your matches? Why does it get good in imperial, or is it just the only way to get gold and ideally one should never trade? What’s the role of the techs? Should I get the carts fully upgraded before starting? So many questions :) thanks for your video! Such a great job and clear explanations
trade is the only good way to generate gold in late game.there are things such as trickles and trading res at the market but that has a limit. even feitorias suck at the conventional 200pop limit. just food and wood units dont cut it late game (even malay 2swordsmen are a meme unless you have absurd amounts of food and even then you need some gold for bombards) You start trade at early imperial generally because it takes gold and time to make the carts, upgrade them, start to get their first paybacks and safeguard the trade route while it's also the time the gold will start to run out naturally. you ideally need a large amount of wood to make multiple markets and start popping carts as well a decent amount of gold too
@zachariastsampasidis8880 to quantify Feitoria, produce 3 raw gold per second per pop space used which is roughly a third the rate as trade carts. It is better in terms of gold cost as it takes 3.5 carts worth of gold to make like 3 carts worth of gold income. However, I think pop space is really want makes using them not viable, even if gold cost wise they are okay.
@@suddenllybah in random chaotic matches like 8 man ffa or 8 man nomad it's fine especially with higher pop caps. Ability to generate stone is invaluable
It sure how else to reach out to you. Love your work! Keep it up! Have you made a video on Georgian fortified churches? My quick math on them is interesting to say the least. Would love expert analysis. Cheers
I've done Burgundians Feudal Gillnets before, but I've never thought about Feudal Caravan. I think on Michi, getting Caravan on the way up to Castle could be worth it, as you can start a trade boom in early Castle on that map.
@@kartiksaraf4676 When I play Michi, I start trade in early Castle and often go Bow Saw -> Caravan, and you can use the Trade gold to buy wood or food to keep the TCs running ~1300 ELO TG.
Depends on the map too, some times maps have little gold so making one or two trade cards to insure a trickle of gold is not always a bad idea as the market exchange rate becomes ever worse.
It's reassuring that I was subconsciously aware that trading early is bad, even though I never thought about why. I played AoE2 since my childhood, often back then and on and off since. But I was never and still am not particularly good. However, that you should start trading only in Imp was a fact I apparently picked up on as a child without ever analyzing the question.
lol, that player described building the trade units in Castle Age is my wife. I love her, and it's fun playing together, but she definitely drags down my team RM elo.
The idea of the trade cogs is on the maps that TC is busy and you have no other option in terms of production. I think you should consider it in maps like Arena.
The issue is that you are still competing with the just getting to castle age faster and build TCs. Trade carts take a while to pay for themselves, and if you buffer resources to get to castle age, you get into TC spamming, which is a way better return on investment.
Yeah but you create them when you click to castle. As soon as the market is completed you click. And on the way up you create trade with anything spare. Because your TC is busy, so it is not like you are better mining, because you cannot produce new vills.
@@ijhuana right, but any res you spend on those trade carts could instead be saved to make more town centers once you hit castle age. the argument is that investing in extra villagers out of new town centers generates more resources than the trade carts will.
No, because the alternative is to simply go to castle age quicker and get the extra TCs that give you *actual* villagers. That ends up being better, not just for economic reasons but also for the fact that you will be in castle age.
I think there is an argument in BF matches that trade in late castle is worth while because your side of the map is completely walled and you want a gold boom when early imp hits for reinforcements of your gold intensive units
I agree. Trading in late castle age is not that bad because you already have your tcs up. The worst thing about feudal trade is that you delay your tcs.
I'm curious to see how trade compares as fish spots begin running out entirely, and you have to resort to fish traps for the fishing ships to continue generating value.
Reminder to Self: always make a single trade cart to send through Spirit of the Law's town, just to let him know I'll need to be carried all game.
Send a trade cart to your enemy's town to lull them into overconfidence.
@@BryanLikesCandy That might not be enough. Better to send 50 trade carts, just to make sure.
Free resources 😂
@@BryanLikesCandy i actually did it bck when I was playing. Around 700-800 elo I believe. The enemy left his market at the front. Because it's a low Elo I couldn't close the game fast. I'm pretty sure that slow cart paid for himself, by the time the enemy resigned.
Lol!
Any excuse is valid to hear SotL talk about math
Sometimes I feel he holds back because he knows most people don't like it
Agreed!
Luckily he agrees.
Im impressed he didnt use this video as an excuse to talk about his beloved Japanese and their god like fishing ships. "I swear im not paid by Big Fish", instead of "And thats not just because of a bias in favor of Japanese."
Maths and 4 minutes of padded intro
"I am not looking to rock the boat or put the cart before the horse..." 2 puns in one sentense... SOTL stop, you're spoiling us.
He's pungeon master after all 😂
Those are idioms not puns
@@Blink_____ You must be fun at parties.
You considered that Burgundians could get Caravan in Feudal to help with the trade boom, but forgot to mention they could also get Gillnets in feudal to amp up the Fish boom.
SOTL might be a merchant sympathizer.
He is the true member of the Merchants Guild.
“Hey hey people”
Haha, nice to see SsethTzeentach fans here.
@@BigPapaKaiser my fellow fishermen, if we do not accommodate trade cogs in our economy, we will one day run out of gold.......
It's irrelevant to the argument since the argument he was making was that even under the best and most stacked of circumstances early trade still gets outperformed by fishing. You could stack the fishing deck with bonuses to even further exacerbate this point but there's no reason to.
Spirit of the Law on his Wealth of Nations arc
When has he not been on that arc?
He forgot sarracen ultra cheap market
@@karonteazt3286 Yes and no, he didn't factor the cost of the buildings into the equation at all, so a cheaper market wouldn't have made any difference in this analysis.
Best comment in AOE 2 I've seen
so lets start with a nail..
I seriously believe the sudden 2020 boom in AoE2 was largely because of the sheer amount of incredibly detailed guidance you provide to new and returning players. Thank for reviving this game
Indeed, Spirit of the Law awoke my interest in the game again, after having played the original CD version in childhood.
That's certainly why I started playing for the first time in about 20 years
Everyone home from covid also massively boosted hidden cup views, leading to more people picking the game up
Im one of them. Came back to the game and started looking for content. Found this channel and I literally watched all his videos.
~900 elo here and had ZERO idea trading early was bad…but all of this makes perfect sense.
Adjusting gameplay from here on out
Try to implement the return on investment on more aspects of the game and you will improve greatly. It is hard to realise how much the timing on certain decisions will impact the thing you are doing. It needs actual analising to see, and channels like spirit's really help to see that perspecitive better :) good luck on your Age journey.
don’t play online if you don’t know basic shit in game, you will only be an extra liability to your teammates, the game is 20+ year old with enough resources in-game and online to learn from
Ignore this guy above, the Elo system is there for a reason, it is a game after all, not some urgent aid mission where failure results in the death of innocent people
@@ammarfd1361 wow, somone got up on the wrong side of the bed today...
@@DerSim688 He is probably a weak person that has no authority in life.
"In this video, we'll be Overanalysing ..." I lost it
at ~07:00 I think there is a second factor that inflates fish: you build a dock specifically for fishing, while you nearly always want a market anyway. (not that it really changes any outcome here)
No, you do need a dock for trading later as well as for making and upgrading war ships.
that only applies if you use trade carts.
and really, that at adds a 25% cost increase to the 4 eco unit set-ups.
Which is clearly a back of envelope type calculation, because you don't queue up that many eco units at once, but for the point where you check for the payback time, you will have made those 4 eco units.
You're actually very correct on this.
@@flydrop8822 Depends on a map. Some maps have fishing, but don't necessary have heavy water fighting or possibility of water trading. Like Four lakes / Cross or African Reed Beds.
@@icarian553 true
When I first played AOE2 about 20 years ago when I was a kid, I never would have guessed that 20 years later people are still playing this game and they are still releasing DLC expansions with new civs and they have these highly detailed videos that explain why trading in Feudal Age is not as beneficial. Thank you, Spirit of the Law for keeping the spirit of this game stronger than ever 20 years later. The community is stronger than it has ever been I think!
"You have made poor early game choices one too many times. Face my numbers heathen!" Love how much opportunity cost can be taken apart and analyzed, thank you for your endless stream of entertainingly packaged real research :)
I think it's pretty self-explanatory why Feudal trading is so bad.... They're feuding.
Them's fighting words.
Yes.
*Feu-duelling.
it's the vetkopers and schieringers all over again, smh. 😔
Get out 🧐👉
2:04 When two dad jokes combine to transcend their own daditude.
Ah yes, nothing like a Spirit video to start my day
Thanks so much! I need to send this to my friend. Everytime we play, its 9min = boom, trade-cart. I tried to talk him out of it based on "I feel like..." but now I got exact mathematical argument 11
If it's vs AI... who cares?
I miss the days when you gave a shoutout to “I lick toes at night.” Made me chuckle every time.
Leaving at 11 likes. 👉👃
Hi SotL, nice video, thank you! I think in your calculations you didn't take into account that the trade produces gold while the ships produce food. It's a bit difficult to convert with shifting prices, but we can still generalize. Selling food (if needed) returns lots of gold early in the game, while buying food from gold is rather expensive. This effect is reversed later in the game, which makes trade way more attractive than in the early game. Moreover, players need food rather in the early game and gold rather in the late game, which is already a factor for trade not being necessary so early. :)
This is actually really interesting. My family likes to play aoe4 a lot. In that game, we can build town centers in feudal and trade carts cost less resources (and sometimes don't have a gold cost if I remember right). I had told my family when we started playing that early trade wasn't worth it and that they should instead gather the stone to build more town centers, but maybe there are some civ cases where trade is actually more beneficial (especially considering several maps have neutral trade points that are a good distance away).
Aoe4 trade is much better
1:25 Timestamp of Spirit passive agressive roast.
that moment when you ARE that player needing the fund unless you're handicapped 11
Hopefully this vid has an impact on the community. Getting a bit tired of telling teammates to stop trading in early Feudal age xD
I thought I was the only one 😂
Sometimes having fun is more important then the meta builds though?
@@GloriousGruntthe issue is that it's not really helping you do that. It's anti-cheese.
I love your videos and friendly voice, mate. You're greatly appreciated.
Another thing against Trade for Burgundian Caravans Trade Cogs, you need both a Dock and a Market, since the latter is required to research Caravans.
There was actually one specific situation I have seen where feudal trade was the right choice.and it was very niche. It was an open map and 2v2, where my opponent had lamed my alternative gold and tower rushed my main gold and stone. It was a dire situation but my ally was going archers and was able to keep the towers from advancing. However the stone walls around my alt gold and three walled in towers around my main gold made me stuck in feudal. My ally was massing archers to defend himself too from the enemy spearman archer combo from the other opponent. Meanwhile I has scout rushing as Magyars and denying the rose man’s wood, and forcing towers at home.
In this bizarre case, I chose to continue with scouts to help my ally win the archer war, because he had dedicated part of his army to stop the towers. I had no spare food and a surplus of wood. my ally got a market to buy his way to castle because he had too much wood. I decided to build a second stable and go hard on scouts while spending my last gold on trade carts. I could have bought gold but I had too little food to click up. I already had bloodlines so there was nothing else to spend gold on I was predicting that the game would drag on in feudal for a very very long time. It did because it was so extremely messy. I was putting on so much pressure on the archer guy with my 1/1 scouts that he was just stabilizing for 10 minutes.the tower guy was in shambles and had to wall himself in and crawl back into an economy. My ally took damage while helping me and was not relying on me to do something huge. By the time the dust settled I had 800/200 for castle and clicked up at an insane (late) time. I only made 3 trade carts the whole game which gave me enough gold to get the light cav upgrade and eventually +2 armour. That was it. I made nothing but 150 + light cavs and controlled the gamy for my ally. The trade carts ended up working out.
I forgot to mention the reason I had so much wood and a market. The tower rush had also forced me to abandon some farms next to my mill and tc, so I send those guys to chop wood. I made a market thinking I was going to use it to trade wood. But in the end I had so much more damn wood than food I rebuilt mass farms instead and made trade carts (not knowing the return would take so long).
@@victoriancu5661 The actual optimal solution in that situation would have been to just have your ally send you enough gold to advance, or to share their mine until you get to castle and get rams to unlame your resources. Obviously it depends on if your ally is ok with that since nobody wants to piss of their teammates since they can do a lot of harm if they are no longer attempting to win the game but fuck you over.
You could could have simply sold wood for gold and buy food with gold.
For a game I haven't played in almost 20 years-- you're revolutionizing my understanding of the game.
That patreon announcement... Smooth man, so smooth XD
I played this back on mirc era, 23 years ago or so. Still to this day remember an Arabia game that went through almost 2h, 3x3, everything was mined, I had the persians pumping pikeman, elephants and scorpions, the back bone was 2 markets at the edge generating crazy amounts of gold while the map was mined out, people were trading food for wood and that was rich me with elephants. We were noobs, but very epic noobs. Crazy to think that at one point I had one last game and never returned, but your videos are great, love them.
Another argument against trade is about your opponent building military to stop trade/fishing:
-Against fishing: They build warships, get water control and then their ships just stand there. You can get land control while they invest into water.
-Against trade: They build archers/scouts, get land control and move on to your villagers after stopping trade.
I am so impressed with the play on words and jokes you dead pan deliver. Big fan. Auspex Tactics is another very different fandom channel but does the same thing.
We can now be sure that if any dislike occurs on this video, those would be from the detractors of the fishing industry.
those playing exclusively on dry maps
I kinda want a map with neutral markets and little to no gold to force early trading (and protection of said trade). Perhaps with a Premium market in the centre that gives better value to fight over. Now that'd shake up Feudal Age
The Ally Relief fund is the most relatable thing I have ever heard in one of your videos
The opportunity cost point at about the 11:00 marker is hands down the most important point in this video.
You're choosing to make trade units instead of military, which you can use to help defend your base from attacks.
If you're that insistent on getting extra gold income, try to start gathering relics as soon as you hit castle, and send a few military units with your monks if needed. The gold you pay for that monk will be paid back on its own, then you can use those monks to heal your troops or defend against anyone going Knights or Elephants.
That's my 2 cents at least.
I concur. All people reacting they would like to see a buff for early game trading don't see how even doubling the gold income would still make it a questionable play on open maps. I am perfectly happy with trading just being viable for when gold is running out on maps. Fishing ships at least need water maps to be impactfull, but I have no desire to get the basic eco meta to be shaken up by a heavy focus on map corners.
Or just build an extra town centre and put it to work making miners. And then other resource gatherers. And wheelbarrow/hand cart. And then enjoy the extra map control!
@rubywest5166 You can easily do both. I typically go for an 7-9 Knight rush in early Catle to put on extra pressure, then build TC's at home.
It wouldn't take much to make a monastery with 1-2 monks on top of that.
But I think most important takeaway is to start making some form of military by the time you hit early Castle, unless you're on a map like Michi or Black Forest, where you might have a little more time.
@@rubywest5166 In what world is having more TC's to boom on the same as having map control? If you TC boom and your opponent doesn't I have bad news for you who controls the map. And if your monk-mangonel defence isn't on point the only place your villagers will be staying is inside of the TC's doing nothing.
@longbow857 I'm happy with how it's balanced too. I think plots of gold need to have a higher purpose in the earlier stages of the game to create a sense of urgency for map control.
You can arguably get away with not taking stone at the center of the map, but gold? That's a different story entirely. Getting those central gold plots delays your need to start trade imo.
This has convinced me that I SHOULD make trade carts in Feudal Age. I never believed this before watching this video. Reasons:
1) Building a dock only for shore fish and fish traps has been found to be worth it on black forest in the modern meta. So the correct comparison here is to 16.2 food per minute collection rate.
2) Additionally, you have to build the dock and eventually the fish traps. The market you'll usually have already.
3) In the same way that adding fish is often worth it only up to 5 or 6 ships, whereafter prioritising short term res in the bank is better, I see no reason I should need to make 4 trading carts in Feudal but 1 or 2 is probably the right number.
4) The allies can help
5) If I'm fast castling I'll have caravans soon anyway, and I'm just getting a small headstart on producing the trade
6) None of your graphs go far enough to the right. It's obviously setting you back in the first 12 minutes. The eventual payoff will be very big though, especially because it will eventually start compounding.
Fishing: Gives you about an extra villager worth of gathering (or more!) for a similar price right at the point you'd want the extra eco unit production the most.
Trade: Basically only gives you half a villager worth of gathering for triple the price, and by the time it's set up you're already close to getting extra town centres.
Fishing is about as good as farming and comes in when it's most valuable in dark age. Trading is usually far behind mining, and by then you're nearly able to make more miners anyway.
And while the Market is a way more useful building to build than a unit production building, the fact that fishing ships have the ability to be roughly 1.5 the cost and 1.5 the real gather rate as a villager on a why cheaper unit production building than what villagers have, and booming is powerful, the option to pseudo boom in dark ages is so good, that it is effectively required.
Fish make economy
Trade need economy
New strat, build 1 cart and send it to the enemy so they think you have no idea what you're doing
I hoped that you would have extended the graphs a bit longer. It would be interesting to see at what minute does trading overtake fishing with this setup.
This doesnt look like trade is bad it looks like good game design where trade is good but towards the end game
Who would win?
A Market and a Small-Tradey Boy
VS
A Stable and a Knighty-knight Man
One thing I am curious about is the reduction of space between the trade centers vs gold collected instead of maximizing gold by increasing space. I bring this up because I wonder if there is a sweet spot in the middle somewhere, where the loss of the max gold balances out due to the increased amount of runs able to be done per cart/cog.
For example only, not actual numbers.
Let's say at a in-game 10 mile span you get 30gold per car/cog normally, no bonuses. Of course the cogs are faster, but ignore that for now.
Now let's say the minimum span of being right next to the trade center = 1 gold.
At what point is the return of the cart/cog going to be fast enough to increase the gold per run enough to exceed the max gold per run instead.
I don't think this is going to change the balance into trades favor in feudal, but I do think it might balance it out a bit.
I don't even know what this game is but you had me at "Over analyzing using more math and graphs then necessary." ❤
On Michi, I run a trade cart boom (it's obviously best with burgundians but their post imp units aren't ideal for my post imp plans)
On Michi, the tricks I use are. Build markets in both corners and have an ally market in each corner. The initial waypoint for a market is the ally market near in its own corner, thus eliminating a dead leg across the entire map. New trade carts in either corner's initial waypoint is the ally market in its corner. Furthermore, when a trade cart has completed its leg across the map, you select that trade cart and have it go to the ally market nearest to it in the its corner. Thus eliminating another dead leg.
The feudal eco is basically just 6 on food and everyone else to wood. (Initially 5 on gold to kick off the trade). Add markets when I can afford it eventually getting to 10-12 markets. It's michi, so I don't have anything to worry about. Not going to add TCs, not going to place additional farms. I just bounce between the corner markets and find trade carts that are finishing a leg and micro them to the nearest market.
Eventually I'll be floating a lot of gold. I might buy wood for more markets, or I might sling to an opponent in need.
But eventually will get 100-125 trade carts and buy my way up to imp.
Typically I do this with Japanese on Michi. And all this gold is turned into stone purchases and I spam 200+ yasama towers at points of interest
The reason I type this is because these tricks to trade cart boom properly are not mentioned in this video. Nor is the ability to fish on Michi.
I dont understand how any of what you said makes sense. Sending a trade unit to a nearer market just makes it return less gold. It returns faster, but way lower amount. I dont see how it adds any value at all whatsoever.
@@VittinableI also have the same issue so I'm commenting in case he replies haha
@@Vittinable the trade carts will automatically go to the furthest market of yours to the market it picks up the gold
So the market it is created at goes 5-10 tiles to the near market then it automatically knows to go my market in the opposite corner
@@XavierOrtega2 I know this strat and it works as advertised. As long as the trade carts go to the nearby market to pick up the gold not drop it off, they will pick up gold to bring to the far market instead of the close one, and then go there, skipping the first half of the trip where they would go across the map just to pick up the gold.
Clarification: the trick is that they go to the close market on the pickup trip and for some reason the game only considers the drop off trip distance for money per trip calculation.
Hmm that is really interesting, I never played online and only play against moderate CPU so I never even heard anything bad about feudal trade. I will have to keep this in mind if I ever brave online play
What about fishing on Black Forest?
generally a meme early on. you can build a single dock and have a vil on shore fish and one or two boats. later on with high wood eco you can make a couple extra docks and fill it with fish traps but it takes a long while. you ideally start it as a very a light investment that you slowly increase over time
Friendly reminder some guy a few years back dared to say SotL was not mathy. I remember.
Love hearing another vid from you (:
There's also this dimension, which is an expansion on the resource angle. Specifically, let's focus on the part that matters: what resources are the units collecting?
Fishing ships cost 75 wood but collect food, never wood; this is atop the 150 wood or so you need for the dock itself. So here, it makes sense if your aim is to grow the food supply--since food is needed by villagers. These can then collect the wood used and recoup it. In this, it's actually a very efficient way to collect food, compared to simply using a villager, who needs 50 food, and then several minutes seeding then harvesting a farm to recoup the food and turn in the desired food profit. Put another way: the cost is largely offloaded outside the fishing industry itself. So if you lose a fishing ship, then you can simply raise more, because (ideally) you should have the lumberjacks needed to keep collecting wood, precisely because the ships have raked in all that food. If you want to upgrade the ships, it will cost food, but it isn't required to turn a profit: only to increase it, for a more powerful boom.
Meanwhile, a trade cart costs 100 wood and 50 gold atop the 175 wood for a market. And in my experience, carts rarely gathers more than 15-20 gold at a time on any given map. So just to recoup the loss of gold and begin to turn a profit, you need two or three runs, and after that, the margin isn't really all that high: the loss of a trade cart (or worse, a whole convoy) will set you back a LOT of gold. And this is to say nothing of the tech costs, which also include gold, and their inability to defend themselves, which necessitates defense of the trade route (while making it easier to cut off trade). Similar issues apply to cogs.
So, as a means of getting gold, trade carts suck precisely because they cost a lot of gold, simply to collect gold from a market to a value that is typically well under the gold value of the cart itself. Meanwhile, mines only require food and wood to get gold (tech aside), and while monks cost even more gold than carts (100 gold a pop), they can gather relics and put them in monasteries, and these relics then generate infinite gold in turn ad infinitum. Further, if you're lucky, you only need one monk anyway to collect multiple relics, for faster gold generation. And this doesn't get into the fact that monks can convert enemy units (and buildings, depending on availble tech for a civ), and heal your own people. Thus, the utility value of a monk, who can heal, convert, or collect, is far greater than a cart that can only gather gold, thus making the higher gold costs of Monks and their relic collection more than justifiable.
On hybrid maps, I do a Roman fc into rams and scorpions because I can count on my opponent to try fish booming. And it slaps hard when you’re laying down two forward siege workshops in their face at 13 minutes, and they’re still in early feudal because the fish boom set their uptime behind.
I haven’t lost with that strategy yet in those circumstances.
Would love to see the comparison of total resources by say 30 min with trade/fishing vs just standard 1 or 3 tc boom play.
The value of these resources change depending on the games state though
In feudal and early Castle: food>gold
Castle: food=gold
Late castle and imp: gold>food
what he said tho: you can buy food with the gold you get so the difference in the feudal case doesn't matter *that* much
it sure is an extra
you still rarely make trade while in castle or even early imp unless it's something like michi. you only want trade really when you're prepping for your access to gold to run out or when it has already run out
I just watched a 12 minute video about a game i haven't played in 12 years, just for bro to not even show us what the results of the Trade Cogs in the super team test was. i was hoping it'd slam it in for at least the cogs. oh well. if i missed it i missed it. excellent work with the practical examples by the way.
It would be nice to see a civ with a team bonus of trade carts costing half (and maybe free caravans in feudal) and see viable feudal trade. It would be a fresh twist to the meta and we would see raiding / protecting trade with feudal armies.
Kinda like Cumans being able to build a 2nd TC in Feudal.
The big problem is it gives no bonus in 1v1s though.
I could see it if they wanna make a third Mule Cart civ (of course they would, why not?) and have them focused around this idea of cart-pulling equines. Free Horse Collar, trade carts costing less (50% less wood? 20% total cost reduction, so 80W/40G?), maybe make them move faster/tankier too?
Could be interesting, though I assume theyd also be a Cavalry civ and not infantry or archer focused, so theyd have to want that extra gold for something too - likely knight or siege bonuses.
There is the 1v1 issue as you said, esp if dedicating *multiple* bonuses towards this giga trade cart meta.
I wonder if it would be good to reduce cost + creation times of standard trade units + slightly increase speed + gold gathered for all Civs for the same dynamic. Caravans could then further increase speed and add some armour for more survivability against raiding. It might not make feudal trade viable with the delayed payback SOTL demonstrated but might make it viable in Castle Age (with the trade-off you mention) rather than just post-Imp
What I'm taking out of the video is an idea to try making a couple of trade cogs on my way to castle age in games when my team looks to be winning water after feuda when I'm usually done with making fishing ships already.
Well, since im a scientist watching this is considered working because there is maths and graphs
Something tells me this video idea came up after someone went Feudal trade in one of his games!
YAAAAASSSS right during lunch!!!
I kinda wish they buffed early game trading. I feel like it should be viable as long as you keep your trade safe.
Hey Spirit of the Law!
Could you please leave the outro music to play a little bit longer like you used to? It's really catchy for me, and i used to listen to the end of that sequence.
Also your best videos are these ones, where you go into detail in the math behind the game, i really appreciate your hard work.
Thanks, and keep on!
I never really considered it myself since those carts would be too slow to pay it back and they’d be easier targets to kill. The numbers are fun to watch anyway though. Thanks, SOTL!
this makes me want to watch that vid where one team only used trade and the market to generate resources again.
I still remember one of my first ranked team games, it was a 4v4 and I made a couple trade carts in castle age. Once it reached the other side my teammate said something along the lines of "this teammate is making trade carts in castle age gg" and quit after which the other two quit since we were down a player. ngl if I said that didn't sour my opinion on ranked for a while.
The other thing to mention about the payback times is that players shouldn't be spending that long in Feudal anyways. A ~5 minute payback time on Fishing Ships is fine for Dark Age-> Feudal Age and makes sense for preparing you to have a stronger mid-game economy, but trade taking that long to repay its investments in Feudal age means delaying aging up, and therefore delaying your Castle Age boom that pays itself off much faster.
Its to the point where I could see the developers making trade carts and cogs only be able to be built in Castle Age just to discourage this, though that might disrupt a few campaign scenarios.
Hey guys, spirit of the law here
"...we are going to be overanlysing a simple question in AoE2, using significantly more math and graphs than are strictly necessary. So a pretty typical video on this channel" At this point, I knew this was going to be good
1:20 I love how Law’s definition of being a dick is preparing a relief cache to aid an ally who’s made a strategic error.
Like:
“Sometimes my teammates make me so angry that I prepare a stash of resources to help them out when they run into trouble, all while being polite to them”
He’s such a nice guy I stg. Such a rare find in the RTS nerd community
Just before this video was made, a fisherman was standing on his boat looking at op and saying
"Wololooo"
4:20 The relation is definitely linear since, the variable gold income generated can be represented as a proportion of distance traveled.
This makes me appreciate how clever the AOE4 double half drop off actually is, as it might not do away with this scaling issue, it at least left shifts the trade slope by minutes.
Of course, they rarely hit situations where they need trade, have enough gold trickle to ignore gold mining, or often just try to go it without gold rather then bothering with traders.
But still, its a clever trick to tweaking the risk factors by a bit.
I was ready to complain that you had forgotten to mention the cost, and you did right after. lol
I still wouldn't put the cost all at once, only after the creation time of each unit (pro players modus operanti), but it's still correct.
The cost to make a Market is wrong.
You almost always make a market anyway when you get to Feudal.
So that would be cancelled out.
Meanwhile a dock is specifically made (but not exclusively for) fishing and navy.
@@apex9806 you dont necessarily make a market in a 1v1 until fairly late. in team games you do, not because of early trading but sending res to allies in case of need
@@zachariastsampasidis8880 That defeats the purpose of the entire video and the entire topic of Trade Carts bro. 😂
@@apex9806 I just said that in general you don't HAVE to make market that early. That's irrelevant to when it comes to trading obviously.
@@zachariastsampasidis8880
Right. Since we can always make an archery range or stable + blacksmith anyway.
i dont play this game but i love hearing you talk about it! maybe one day i will start playing and be one of those humanitarian resource users haha
Hey Spirit of the Law, guys here
Anything with a gold cost is premium in feudal age: archers and galleys and trade. You more or less pick one because putting too many vils on gold means youre putting less on wood and food which slows eco progression and your castle time. Thats pretty much it. Yes, the trade will pay off sooner but in feudal the long term value proposition is less important than stability and security to just stay alive at the moment.
I think you are even being too positive about this...trade carts are a really bad deal overall, and the only reason they exist and anyone would make them is for when the gold mines run out.
Because you are exactly right, gold is a premium resource. So why would you pay gold to generate gold later, if you can add vills to gold (which doesn't cost gold and collects at a MUCH faster rate compared to the same number of carts) to generate gold now and use it now.
Another way to think about it is: if gold mines were infinite, would anyone make trade even in team games? Probably not. So, don't make trade unless you need to 😂
I would love these kinds of videos for aoe4
Great video, checking out conventional visdom is, well, wise!
All I use AOE2 for is creating epic medieval worlds that never leave Castle Age.
SotLs content has barely any value to me, and yet I'm totally hooked on him analyzing this 25 year old game.
So what you are saying is that I should be building multiple markets in feudal so that my trade cards can pay off faster? Got it.
The idea that I could make Spirit of the Law disappointed in me is enough of a reason to never build a trade cart before Imperial
Now this is the original SOTL vedio love you 🎉🎉 fan from india
While I'm not going to argue against the conclusion, the argument that it's not worth it in the best case scenario because it isn't quite as good as fishing doesn't really appeal, because why not both? It's not like late game upgrades have as high of a cost efficiency as early game upgrades in general.
The reason for "why not both" is that you have limited resources. If you could afford everything, you would add everything.
But you can't afford everything, so adding trade means you're adding fewer fishing ships, or adding fewer town centers and villagers, or getting fewer eco upgrades, or have less army to protect your economy and attack the enemy economy.
Even in feudal age on a map with no fish this matters. If you add trade, and your opponent doesn't, they can get to castle age and afford extra town centers, army, or upgrades before you do. And those will benefit them more than your trade is benefiting you.
@@ajfish9514 Sure, the principle is opportunity cost, but the argument just doesn't get around to actually proving that it's bad because the comparison sotl is doing isn't the actual tradeoff.
@@Tobbzn How is it not an actual tradeoff? If you have the resources to make fishing ships and trade, you have the resources to make fishing ships and even more fishing ships. Or fishing ships and an extra town center. Or fishing ships and eco upgrades.
@@ajfish9514 i did not say it wasn't a tradeoff, I said sotl's argument does not follow through on why the tradeoff is a bad deal because he only compares it to what we already know is a great deal. That means that as far as the argument is concerned, it could still be a decent deal and so the math hasn't shown what the math purports to show
I recommend sending at least 1 trade cart to the enemy market just to see the response. Sometimes they'll delete the market, other times they'll try to box it in or get scouts to chase it down, or you might just get "11" or "???". In any case, it's well worth the investment of 150 resources if you wanted the market anyhow
Thanks Law, but honestly, I thought you were going to compare it to how fast vills collect gold from a mine
It's surprising that on paper cogs are better than carts, but we pretty much never see them in competitive team games. The reasons why, I think, are that they get stuck on each other very easily, they're hard to defend (can't wall water), and most maps don't give you a good long sea trade route
Early trade is almost always a loss, but I have tried it with a single goal in mind: to hit the opposing team with heavy gold units asap in castle, in this case, elephants. While I did click up to castle after my teammate and both opponents, I was able to field 15 war elephants about 12 minutes into castle with full techs. My teammate went into crossbows and even a group of twenty or so was enough to ward off pikes so the elephants were devastating. It was an amusing strategy that wouldn’t work at higher elo or with more aggressive opponents, and gimped me for any longer game as I was severely behind with food, but I’m sure the other team was in a panic when they got hit by so many elephants.
Hi SoTL. It comes very clear from the video that fishing > trading in feudal. But can you tell us more about the opportunity cost and the long term return of making carts in early? I understand it’s suboptimal in a water map, but why do you shiver when you see it in your matches? Why does it get good in imperial, or is it just the only way to get gold and ideally one should never trade? What’s the role of the techs? Should I get the carts fully upgraded before starting? So many questions :) thanks for your video! Such a great job and clear explanations
trade is the only good way to generate gold in late game.there are things such as trickles and trading res at the market but that has a limit. even feitorias suck at the conventional 200pop limit. just food and wood units dont cut it late game (even malay 2swordsmen are a meme unless you have absurd amounts of food and even then you need some gold for bombards)
You start trade at early imperial generally because it takes gold and time to make the carts, upgrade them, start to get their first paybacks and safeguard the trade route while it's also the time the gold will start to run out naturally. you ideally need a large amount of wood to make multiple markets and start popping carts as well a decent amount of gold too
@@zachariastsampasidis8880that sounds very reasonable! Thanks :)
@zachariastsampasidis8880
to quantify Feitoria, produce 3 raw gold per second per pop space used which is roughly a third the rate as trade carts.
It is better in terms of gold cost as it takes 3.5 carts worth of gold to make like 3 carts worth of gold income.
However, I think pop space is really want makes using them not viable, even if gold cost wise they are okay.
@@suddenllybah in random chaotic matches like 8 man ffa or 8 man nomad it's fine especially with higher pop caps. Ability to generate stone is invaluable
I'm 20% here for SotL to talk about AoE and 80% here to see how he tackles data analysis and stats problems.
It sure how else to reach out to you. Love your work! Keep it up! Have you made a video on Georgian fortified churches? My quick math on them is interesting to say the least. Would love expert analysis. Cheers
I've done Burgundians Feudal Gillnets before, but I've never thought about Feudal Caravan. I think on Michi, getting Caravan on the way up to Castle could be worth it, as you can start a trade boom in early Castle on that map.
In early castle you need to focus all your wood on TC and farms to get your eco rolling as quickly as possible
@@kartiksaraf4676 When I play Michi, I start trade in early Castle and often go Bow Saw -> Caravan, and you can use the Trade gold to buy wood or food to keep the TCs running ~1300 ELO TG.
Attempt 2 for Spirit of the Law to have a series to overview all Romae Ad Bellum Civilisations. :D
10:02
Where is the trade ship part of the graph?
Depends on the map too, some times maps have little gold so making one or two trade cards to insure a trickle of gold is not always a bad idea as the market exchange rate becomes ever worse.
Never stop!
It's reassuring that I was subconsciously aware that trading early is bad, even though I never thought about why. I played AoE2 since my childhood, often back then and on and off since. But I was never and still am not particularly good. However, that you should start trading only in Imp was a fact I apparently picked up on as a child without ever analyzing the question.
You're paid by the lobbies of fishing!
Thanks for uploading on my lunch.
lol, that player described building the trade units in Castle Age is my wife. I love her, and it's fun playing together, but she definitely drags down my team RM elo.
The idea of the trade cogs is on the maps that TC is busy and you have no other option in terms of production. I think you should consider it in maps like Arena.
The issue is that you are still competing with the just getting to castle age faster and build TCs.
Trade carts take a while to pay for themselves, and if you buffer resources to get to castle age, you get into TC spamming, which is a way better return on investment.
Yeah but you create them when you click to castle. As soon as the market is completed you click. And on the way up you create trade with anything spare. Because your TC is busy, so it is not like you are better mining, because you cannot produce new vills.
@@ijhuana right, but any res you spend on those trade carts could instead be saved to make more town centers once you hit castle age. the argument is that investing in extra villagers out of new town centers generates more resources than the trade carts will.
@@mmmmatthewwww Or could be used to immediately grab one of the many economy techs that unlocks upon reaching castle.
No, because the alternative is to simply go to castle age quicker and get the extra TCs that give you *actual* villagers. That ends up being better, not just for economic reasons but also for the fact that you will be in castle age.
I think there is an argument in BF matches that trade in late castle is worth while because your side of the map is completely walled and you want a gold boom when early imp hits for reinforcements of your gold intensive units
I agree. Trading in late castle age is not that bad because you already have your tcs up. The worst thing about feudal trade is that you delay your tcs.
Without watching the video, I always do one or two it pays itself in two trips and from there all benefits.
I don't even play this game... Why do I keep coming back to your videos then??? Explain your sorcery, now
I'm curious to see how trade compares as fish spots begin running out entirely, and you have to resort to fish traps for the fishing ships to continue generating value.
Big thanks to James