Since they don't occupy pop space, what happens if at the very late game you just send 300 mule carts along with your soldiers to the enemy base? Just overflow the enemy base and at the very least bother the enemy farmers, forcing your opponent to collect inefficiently or surrender.
I feel like a castle age test is important here. That's often when your wood crunch really hits and it also allows an easier comparison as there's no techs missing. Also to see how it compares against civs that lack two man saw but arent the Celts. Something else to think about is mule cart vs no replacement camps, both representing a sort of fire and forget kind of deal. Attention is limited and time you're checking wood lines to see if lumber camps need rebuilding is time you're not spending other important things. Most players aren't being optimal in camp replacement because you'll forget and if you are being diligent that has its own tradeoffs. Put another way, a Georgian mule cart with no church will bring in about 3% more wood than a civ with two man saw given the same amount of attention. In order for that civ to flip that equation they need to invest time in rebuilding camps. If you assume a split difference here (since players rarely rebuild camps at exactly the optimal time and distance) then Georgians have about the same resource collection despite not having a 500 cost upgrade and the impact begins immediately. Also correct me if I'm wrong, but the cost of two man saw wasn't included correct? Now that part gets trickier since you'd have far more lumberjacks than what we see in these tests, but it's still a nontrivial upgrade at 500 resources and takes 100 seconds to research, further delaying the time until they'd have net overtaken them. It also means the Armenians are absolutely cracked in the late game having about 24% more collection over a generic civ with all upgrades for the same attention.
the mule should have a key to fix it on the ground as well as the trebuchets, so that it does not get stuck when ringing the bell or moving it by mistake with the villagers
My friends tell me the same thing but at the beginning of the game it is useful for me to deposit food, he fact that the mule also moves is a kick in the testicles@@daarom3472
Pro tips from an AOM player: use mule carts offensively to bodyblock while fighting off raids. Think of it like a vil who can't fight back but is very tanky. Against archers of course you can run and relocate for free. Also the key to a mule cart economy is extreme flexibility. At any moment you can switch all your lumberjacks to miners or etc, for free, and also switch back. This is held back a fair bit in Aoe2 since mule carts can't collect everything (it should at least be able to do all "natural" resources including fish and berries, farms can stay at mills and TCs), but the flow of eco timings will be a bit more toward large batches of resources as your bands of vils + carts efficiently roam around rather than trickles that get built up around infrastructure. Edit: oh and the tactical advantage is that if you have great scouting, you can just preemptively avoid the enemy so your army doesn't have to come home.
@@llSuperSnivyll That's to prevent mule carts being used like rams en masse against ranged. Offensively body blocking means forcing the opponent to fight you. The primary goal of early raiding is disruption; poking then running away, being annoying. Because early game units/raids aren't that much more powerful than vils and are usually outnumbered, so that's the most effective thing to do with them. In a straight fight you might kill a vill or two, but was that worth two militia, or three scouts or so. The opponent can't micro as well with a mule cart in the way. It's like quick walking but the foundation can't be blocked by enemies.
A small advantage the mule carts have over a lumberjack is that if you were to be towered. Simply moving away and not having to rebuild a lumberjack saves you a lot of wood
Ive watched alot if not all of your videos. The level of precision it feels like the devs has in regards to expected with actual bonuses and preventing "op" stuff. It makes me think that behind the scenes, when they make new civs or changes, they go through all the testing that you do after the release. It really goes to show the effort and care that the devs go through to have the game balanced.
Seeing mule carts reminds me about Age of Mythology (even though there are ox carts, not mule carts) I want to get my hands on AoM: retold so bad... 😱😅
One cool thing not mentioned here to the full extent is to be able to change between resources more easily. Basically hunt, wood, gold, stone all can be changed as mule cart speed is vill speed so just go with the vills to the other res. This gives more tricks available to pull off when doing early game build orders (like all on hunt, then on wood - etc.)
There is one more advantage to resource collecting buildings have over to mule cart, but it is very hard to quantify. Map vision. Even after a building is no longer being used to collect resources, it still provides map vision coverage. I can recall several experiences where a building I made the the early game tipped me off to a sneaky raid or flank attack, and I would not have had that tactical knowledge without the vision of the building. Again, it is really hard to quantify, but it is an advantage.
Sorry SotL, can't remember if you addressed it in a past video, but how would Bohemians fit into this wood collecting ladder? Given that most of the wood collecting time is taken by walking and Bohemians have the fastest moving villagers in the game, I imagine that they could dispute maybe something more than beating the generic civs being that they also have all good upgrades, probably making them better than Georgians in the late game? But I wonder how they compare to Celts, mostly, as I don't think that they'll get close to Armenians. Also, I'd did an honorable mention to Burgundians with their one-age-early eco techs (and discounted price) that surely boosts the wood collection significantly! Bonus track: Bohemians get redemption, so... Bohemians with a mule cart sound pretty strong!
I'm not sure if at that point they'd be of much use. As the test with Georgians showed, without two-man saw you'll be behind anyway. Also, I'm pretty sure you'd need redemption to convert them anyway, so that blocks 18 civs right of the bat (including Celts). Risking a monk to get a small advantage in wood collection in castle/imperial age is not something i see benefiting you in the long run. But I'm also curious how having mule carts instead of camps would impact other civs. Mongols could be potentially pretty funny if they had access to it.
Honestly the concept of a mobile building is fascinating. I'd love to see like, house carts or something. That'd be an interesting thing to give nomadic civs
As a Mongolian enjoyer, I would LOVE to see Mule Carts added to the civ, but it might tip them into OP territory. I love their hunting bonus, which is already very good especially in the dark age, having that with little/no travel and easy forced drops could lead to some insane advance times. And between the Mangudai and strong Siege, (I find) they're usually pretty wood-intensive.
Between a structure that can't move vs a slightly more expensive, yet mobile, general resource drop off point. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I'm fine both and are accustomed to them. Not spending wood on additional lumber camps is probably my favorite positive for the Mule Cart.
Love your work! And I love the way you structured that one disadvantages first, the pros and than your huge comparison test showing all information well organized, simplified and summarized! Simply an awesome splittscreen visualized showdown. Since Celts are not a top tier civ anyway, it might be reasonable to increase their carry capacity for lumberjacks. Please some love for all the alltime classic civs - Persians being a perfect example of a nice ovehaul to make classic civs feel more 2023 than HD… One side note / question after how long a new church would be needed?
Hmm, that would amount to an actual +16.7% until two-man saw, with wood lines and camps lasting as long as for generic civs. Sounds strong, but maybe fine for the Celts?
@@Phronesis1037 surprisingly it took the TC only a few shots, it goes down fairly quickly to TC fire. At least the last game my mule cart managed to survive. I watched it much more and there simply weren't any enemies close by ;-)
What this taught me is that, the difference between all setups is minor. Except celts in the early/mid game, and armenians in post imperial. Everything else hovers around a +/- 5%. Which matters a lot for high skill compeditive, bit only limitedly for casual or lowskill compeditive. Most important though, replace your wood camps every 1-2 tiles! Otherwise youre effectivly playing with a handicap.
Huns, Mongols, Cumans, and Tatars should get the Mule Cart, too. They should also have a Livestock Pen that replaces the Mill and be able to automatically train and fatten herd animals at the cost of wood (to replace farms). 🙃
Spirit i think the other thing to remember is while stats on the same wood proove they are efficient i think that the bigger take home for me was that being super efficient building new lumber camps every 1 tile vs not bothering only led to a 4% efficiency. In games that are super close that 100 wood could possibly be used earlier to create a bit more pressure earlier on?
Question: Does the 200 wood for the church have a bigger effect on the efficiency the shorter the measured time? I just felt like changing to 40 minutes for the second test would leave the Georgians & Church looking slightly better than it is. Maybe I'm wrong or you accounted for it and I missed it.
Question here do you think we should give the mule cart to steppe civilisations? Just to represent that they are more nomadic and prone to wander. Also a novel idea what about a house that's mobile in the form of a tent setup for the Huns to lean into the migration identity. Rather than just no houses.
Would it be better to test with just 1 or 2 vils to minimize them running into each other? Or is them bumping into each other an important part of testing?
A lot could be learnt from how top level age of mythology players use there ox carts. Hunt is something that becomes a heap more efficient for one. Also in late game to overcome the low hp of the ox carts maany players just send 2 to vulnerable wood lines
With the December patch, wood gathering is now an additional 4% and 8% faster than before after lumber camp upgrades in feudal and castle age. In imp, you lose the 15% upgrade, so net 7% slower wood gathering in the late-late game. Overall, I think it is definitely a buff since you are saving on upgrade costs of two-man saw and benefiting also with faster stone and gold gathering. Also, in a post imp game, it just isn’t that important having higher wood gathering as it is earlier on.
Frankly it seems that mule carts are rather fine as it is already. Some small polish might be needed but that's it. The biggest factor with them when adding to civs like Mongols is just that deer hunt bonuses with cart could be OP so probably bonus for hunt would need to be tuned down when combined with the cart
If any cumans may have it and i think that's it i don't see other civs getting it. If the mule cart need a buff they shoeld be enable to garrison 5 Villagers inside and getting a slight speed boost when doing this Just to adress their defensive disadvantage a bit
@@papermaniac Lol, this is the most insane take I've seen so far. That would make you be able to take all the deer on the map with no risk essentially for free, since no way you'll die to small feudal armies until you get back to the TC.
@@kane_lives most maps does not have a lot of deer Just one sometimes two herds. And maps that do have lots of deer are usually very open maps where retrieving villagers or mule carts to a defensive building is not always an option
Nice analysis. Though it confirms the main issue with the mule cart that I was suspecting: great on paper, but much less impressive in practice and pays off too little too late. All the downsides are in the practical aspects. The benefit of not needing a new lumber camp/mule cart only applies to the same group of wood choppers when they move far away from the camp/cart. However, early enough in the game I usually have more than one wood lines, and the benefit of mule cart doesn't translate towards it -- I still need two mule carts for the two wood lines. Therefore, I think the not needing to build a new camp pays off too late. Overall in practice I don't think I made fewer mule carts than I would make camps in the early to mid game, unless RNG works in my favor in map generation where I can delay a cart by sharing one between miners and lumberjacks. I also think having to wall more to protect the mule carts may neutralize their efficiency early on. One thing mules carts are amazing though is when I bring one cart with a hunting squad of villagers around a nomad map to hunt, if my opponents don't find them :) Maybe someone else can enlighten me otherwise.
The other way of looking at it is in comparison to the never rebuilding of camps. What you can get for the same amount of attention is quite notable. Having a few hundred extra wood in early castle can be game changing if you know what you're doing. Even in early and mid game it's somewhere between a 5-10% functional boost over camp rebuilding and a ~10-15% over not rebuilding. Hard to say that extra wood isn't useful when you start building farms and extra TCs. It's definitely a wonkier start though, a bit like Chinese where it's different enough that I think some players may struggle to maximize its potential. Plus it's still early in terms of figuring out metas.
Hi Spirit of the Law. I really enjoy your videos. You are so good at presenting differences in how stuff works in aoe2 . But I see in important topic that you have not yet covered. . The issue is that many people and even the pro players, when they get / pick armenians and georgians and have mule carts, I see that they still, probably out of habit, push in the deer in to the TC, and that confuses me, as the mule cart is the perfect tool to not have to push deer. There are many aspects to this. Using the scout to push deer delays scouting. Many times deer path in weird ways and you have to start over. Would it make sense to have 3-6 vils + a mule cart go to the initial closest pack of deer and hunt it before sending them to gold or wood? Would it make sense to allocate same team to just continue hunting all over the map unit they can find no more deer? Is it more efficient than just sending them to farms? I would love to see an in depth video about this topic :D Hope you make it. thanks anyways for all the great videos you do . All the best!
It's only been a couple of months so chances are many players are still in the adjusting phase (especially higher lvl players, who have a lot more institutional memory to deal with). Also of note AOE3 doesn't have drop off sites, which allow villagers to roam all over the map to hunt the huntables. The downside of that is they're easier to get out of place and open to enemy raiding/agression.
When you tested the wood collected from 1 tile lumbercamps, did you include the 200wood cost to replace them? If not then real difference should be even bigger
What about the other resources a mule cart can receive? How good do they compare to mining camps and are they useful or convenient when it comes to food from boars and deer?
The Mule cart might be weaker, but it can also move, and garrison, so it's by no means certain it will go down quicker than a standard camp. And that raises an interesting question, does it heal while garrisoned, the way villagers do?
In the end of the video you show how many farms a single village can support in some examples. What is this for a civilisation without a wood bonus? Is there a completely list of lists for all civs somewhere?
I don't have a full list on hand, but a civ without two-man saw or crop rotation starts off at just under 8 farms per 1 lumberjack. Crop rotation increases it to ~12 farms per lumberjack. Two-man saw adds ~1 farmer.
Anyone else noticed how grouped units suddenly stop moving when setting a waypoint? Just stopping after a few steps and remaining clumped up without facing any obstacles that would cause them to get stuck. Pathing gets worse and worse with every update
Not to mention the infuriating trait of a group of units when you direct them forward, turn around and move half a dozen tiles BACKWARD and then walk in circles to form up. It 's driving me insane. When you go back and play the old HD edition the pathing is so much smoother and more efficient. The devs need to go back to how they were doing it before because the new pathing algorithm is horrible.
It's not a pathing issue, it's a bug that already existing at least few month. Need to select and move units 1 by 1, usually it works. After last patch pathing feels better tho, but still for ex. on arena vils or units tasked to move outside , instead moving through the gates - decides to go to dead end in woodline and stuck there.
@@valger3652 I have been playing again for a month now (campaigns only), several games a day. Never happened once until the last few days. Your fix does work though, although I found it out myself during a game, where two masses of cavaliers just completely froze, even the animation was stuck. several smaller groups were then able to "untangle" them, because the full group (40-60) was completely immobile
@@Mystikan Love that! Mmmmhh "Hero unit X must survive" Oh, better move him to the front line of the enemy so we can get into formation. Same with siege units inside groups, always get teleported to the front. DE. trade better graphics for game breaking pathing.
After seeing this in depth comparison i thruly believe that all the nations that dont have «Two Man Saw» upgrade should have the «Mule Cart». They could make the more "Nomadic" civs have the «Mule Cart» as standard and dont have acces to the «Two Man Saw», and the other civs should be the other way arround. I believe that some could even have both the lumber camp and the «Mule Cart», but never the «Mule Cart» and «Two Man Saw» combo. (that would be broken probably lol)
i played many games with the mule cart. its not that good and often gets stuck or follows in some crazy direction. vills getting stuck between trees and it all the time.
Wouldn't a Castle age to Imperial age comparison have been better? The Georgian numbers for the mid-game is somewhat misleading since you can't even make the fortified church in Feudal age, unless this is meant to represent a point in castle age before you've researched your castle age wood tech.
This video really signifies to me just how directionless AoE2 civs have become. The new civs just steal bonuses from others (if not outright supplanting them) as well as other games like AoM. I’m not saying that the OG civs should remain untouched or go unopposed, but as more new civs get added with similar bonuses, they actually start to feel less unique.
Mule Cart has cute animal with it, so it wins, at least my heart.
And you can snack on that mule if the times get real tough
BUT WAIT! The mill has a mule too working inside!
@@nicklindberg90 They absolutely should make that an option! lol
Since they don't occupy pop space, what happens if at the very late game you just send 300 mule carts along with your soldiers to the enemy base? Just overflow the enemy base and at the very least bother the enemy farmers, forcing your opponent to collect inefficiently or surrender.
If you have 30000 wood floating you should be able to win regardless lol
@@MarcelVos why hello there, love your RCT videos.
Someone needs sugest this to Viper as new potential troll strat 😂
@@MarcelVosTrue about that lmao
why does this have so many likes? its dumb beyond imagination
man the amount of work this guy puts in his videos is amazing...
I feel like a castle age test is important here. That's often when your wood crunch really hits and it also allows an easier comparison as there's no techs missing. Also to see how it compares against civs that lack two man saw but arent the Celts.
Something else to think about is mule cart vs no replacement camps, both representing a sort of fire and forget kind of deal. Attention is limited and time you're checking wood lines to see if lumber camps need rebuilding is time you're not spending other important things. Most players aren't being optimal in camp replacement because you'll forget and if you are being diligent that has its own tradeoffs.
Put another way, a Georgian mule cart with no church will bring in about 3% more wood than a civ with two man saw given the same amount of attention. In order for that civ to flip that equation they need to invest time in rebuilding camps. If you assume a split difference here (since players rarely rebuild camps at exactly the optimal time and distance) then Georgians have about the same resource collection despite not having a 500 cost upgrade and the impact begins immediately.
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but the cost of two man saw wasn't included correct? Now that part gets trickier since you'd have far more lumberjacks than what we see in these tests, but it's still a nontrivial upgrade at 500 resources and takes 100 seconds to research, further delaying the time until they'd have net overtaken them. It also means the Armenians are absolutely cracked in the late game having about 24% more collection over a generic civ with all upgrades for the same attention.
the mule should have a key to fix it on the ground as well as the trebuchets, so that it does not get stuck when ringing the bell or moving it by mistake with the villagers
This is a decent QOL option.
don't ring the bell, ever ;-)
My friends tell me the same thing but at the beginning of the game it is useful for me to deposit food, he fact that the mule also moves is a kick in the testicles@@daarom3472
Pro tips from an AOM player: use mule carts offensively to bodyblock while fighting off raids. Think of it like a vil who can't fight back but is very tanky. Against archers of course you can run and relocate for free. Also the key to a mule cart economy is extreme flexibility. At any moment you can switch all your lumberjacks to miners or etc, for free, and also switch back. This is held back a fair bit in Aoe2 since mule carts can't collect everything (it should at least be able to do all "natural" resources including fish and berries, farms can stay at mills and TCs), but the flow of eco timings will be a bit more toward large batches of resources as your bands of vils + carts efficiently roam around rather than trickles that get built up around infrastructure.
Edit: oh and the tactical advantage is that if you have great scouting, you can just preemptively avoid the enemy so your army doesn't have to come home.
The idea of tanking might not be so viable with the latest patch as units will give Mule Carts a lower priority.
@@llSuperSnivyll That's to prevent mule carts being used like rams en masse against ranged. Offensively body blocking means forcing the opponent to fight you. The primary goal of early raiding is disruption; poking then running away, being annoying. Because early game units/raids aren't that much more powerful than vils and are usually outnumbered, so that's the most effective thing to do with them. In a straight fight you might kill a vill or two, but was that worth two militia, or three scouts or so. The opponent can't micro as well with a mule cart in the way. It's like quick walking but the foundation can't be blocked by enemies.
I can already imagine future masterpeaces made by the Viper
A small advantage the mule carts have over a lumberjack is that if you were to be towered. Simply moving away and not having to rebuild a lumberjack saves you a lot of wood
Excellent video!
Also goes to show that Celts really need not just wood upgrades but handcard and wheelbarrow for thair wood bonus
Great video! I definitely don't push deer, so it's an early food bonus for me!
I love the thumbnail, love all your videos, keep up the great work!
"Heat of the Moment" being capitalized in the subtitles made me laugh, and it's stuck in my head now
I thought they were going to be much more powerful than they actually are. I can say I'm pleasantly surprised
great stuff! thanks for making this great coverage of my favorite RTS :-)
The Age of Mythology mechanic for the Nords! I love it!
Impressive work as usual, thanks man
I’d be willing to bet on the mule cart winning in a head to head race, that’s for sure xD
Ive watched alot if not all of your videos. The level of precision it feels like the devs has in regards to expected with actual bonuses and preventing "op" stuff. It makes me think that behind the scenes, when they make new civs or changes, they go through all the testing that you do after the release. It really goes to show the effort and care that the devs go through to have the game balanced.
Seeing mule carts reminds me about Age of Mythology (even though there are ox carts, not mule carts) I want to get my hands on AoM: retold so bad... 😱😅
Hopefully they'll have soldiers that actually make use of their shields and hold their spears in a believable manner.
(overpowered Atlantean citizen join the chat)
I have to say the camps are surprisingly not as broken as I thought.
Putting the question to rest. Fantastic!
One cool thing not mentioned here to the full extent is to be able to change between resources more easily. Basically hunt, wood, gold, stone all can be changed as mule cart speed is vill speed so just go with the vills to the other res. This gives more tricks available to pull off when doing early game build orders (like all on hunt, then on wood - etc.)
There is one more advantage to resource collecting buildings have over to mule cart, but it is very hard to quantify. Map vision. Even after a building is no longer being used to collect resources, it still provides map vision coverage. I can recall several experiences where a building I made the the early game tipped me off to a sneaky raid or flank attack, and I would not have had that tactical knowledge without the vision of the building. Again, it is really hard to quantify, but it is an advantage.
this is some quality content, as usual
Sorry SotL, can't remember if you addressed it in a past video, but how would Bohemians fit into this wood collecting ladder? Given that most of the wood collecting time is taken by walking and Bohemians have the fastest moving villagers in the game, I imagine that they could dispute maybe something more than beating the generic civs being that they also have all good upgrades, probably making them better than Georgians in the late game? But I wonder how they compare to Celts, mostly, as I don't think that they'll get close to Armenians.
Also, I'd did an honorable mention to Burgundians with their one-age-early eco techs (and discounted price) that surely boosts the wood collection significantly!
Bonus track: Bohemians get redemption, so... Bohemians with a mule cart sound pretty strong!
I havent tested it but to convert a building you need to get close. Mule cart is mobile so it would escape before that
Now all the new players can break their wood-floating records with the Armenians!
Also nice callback to your video about refreshing lumber camps.
Calling the Celt strategy in feudal age for converting mule carts for a tiny incremental bonus now. Definitely worthwhile to investigate
Investigation at a standstill, cant figure out how to research redemption in feudal age. Began investigation on how to train monks in feudal.
unfortunately their sheep bonus doesn't work on mules apparently
im curious which civs would benefit the best from converting Mule Carts?
I'm not sure if at that point they'd be of much use. As the test with Georgians showed, without two-man saw you'll be behind anyway. Also, I'm pretty sure you'd need redemption to convert them anyway, so that blocks 18 civs right of the bat (including Celts). Risking a monk to get a small advantage in wood collection in castle/imperial age is not something i see benefiting you in the long run.
But I'm also curious how having mule carts instead of camps would impact other civs. Mongols could be potentially pretty funny if they had access to it.
It's useful in low elo where player dont micro as much regarding hunting boar or deer
I simply love you, please never leave us.
That's cool and all, but how does mule cart affect forest nothing 256 tech speedruns?
Amernians will just cut everything down like nothing was there
Asking the real questions
Honestly the concept of a mobile building is fascinating. I'd love to see like, house carts or something. That'd be an interesting thing to give nomadic civs
That feature already in aoe 4 for Mongol, doubt aoe 2 have that feature
As a Mongolian enjoyer, I would LOVE to see Mule Carts added to the civ, but it might tip them into OP territory. I love their hunting bonus, which is already very good especially in the dark age, having that with little/no travel and easy forced drops could lead to some insane advance times. And between the Mangudai and strong Siege, (I find) they're usually pretty wood-intensive.
It could be %50 more expensive for them :) but also provide +5 pop space?
Between a structure that can't move vs a slightly more expensive, yet mobile, general resource drop off point.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I'm fine both and are accustomed to them.
Not spending wood on additional lumber camps is probably my favorite positive for the Mule Cart.
You don't just save (future) wood, you also save construction time which in turn means more time spent chopping lumber for the villagers.
Props for the thumbnail, got me giggling irl
Love your work!
And I love the way you structured that one disadvantages first, the pros and than your huge comparison test showing all information well organized, simplified and summarized! Simply an awesome splittscreen visualized showdown.
Since Celts are not a top tier civ anyway, it might be reasonable to increase their carry capacity for lumberjacks. Please some love for all the alltime classic civs - Persians being a perfect example of a nice ovehaul to make classic civs feel more 2023 than HD…
One side note / question after how long a new church would be needed?
rather than carry capacity, id argue for an increased collection. As in, for every 6 wood they take from a tree, they bring in ~7.
@@Nazuikoi like that one. Feels really like 2023
Hmm, that would amount to an actual +16.7% until two-man saw, with wood lines and camps lasting as long as for generic civs. Sounds strong, but maybe fine for the Celts?
or just give em 2 man saw
The mule cart is fun to scout with on nomad maps too.
I did that twice in the past and both times lost it to enemy TCs because none alarm sound was played. Feels bugged
@@El3andro Turns out you have to micro in this game, who woulda thunk it?
@@El3androI mean early in the game it would take considerable amount of time to destroy it.
@@Phronesis1037 surprisingly it took the TC only a few shots, it goes down fairly quickly to TC fire.
At least the last game my mule cart managed to survive. I watched it much more and there simply weren't any enemies close by ;-)
you could say some are still muleing over this question, while others a pretty encamped
Great video as always
Now THIS is quality content
What this taught me is that, the difference between all setups is minor.
Except celts in the early/mid game, and armenians in post imperial.
Everything else hovers around a +/- 5%.
Which matters a lot for high skill compeditive, bit only limitedly for casual or lowskill compeditive.
Most important though, replace your wood camps every 1-2 tiles!
Otherwise youre effectivly playing with a handicap.
Huns, Mongols, Cumans, and Tatars should get the Mule Cart, too.
They should also have a Livestock Pen that replaces the Mill and be able to automatically train and fatten herd animals at the cost of wood (to replace farms). 🙃
This will help me the next time I'm deciding whether to build a mule cart or a lumber camp /s
Spirit i think the other thing to remember is while stats on the same wood proove they are efficient i think that the bigger take home for me was that being super efficient building new lumber camps every 1 tile vs not bothering only led to a 4% efficiency. In games that are super close that 100 wood could possibly be used earlier to create a bit more pressure earlier on?
IMO Mule Carts should cost 20 Food 80 Wood i.e. -20 Wood compared to right now, but same total resource cost as Camps
Question: Does the 200 wood for the church have a bigger effect on the efficiency the shorter the measured time?
I just felt like changing to 40 minutes for the second test would leave the Georgians & Church looking slightly better than it is.
Maybe I'm wrong or you accounted for it and I missed it.
The video we all needed but didn't deserve.
something forgotten in this is also that Mule Carts replace building new Mining camps for additional Stone/Gold
Question here do you think we should give the mule cart to steppe civilisations?
Just to represent that they are more nomadic and prone to wander.
Also a novel idea what about a house that's mobile in the form of a tent setup for the Huns to lean into the migration identity. Rather than just no houses.
Nomdic civs getting mule carts would be super cool.
Would it be better to test with just 1 or 2 vils to minimize them running into each other? Or is them bumping into each other an important part of testing?
It makes the test more similar to a real game scenario I think to have them bumping
Spirit, do you ever think about how many faces light up with a smile when they see that you posted another video? 😊
A lot could be learnt from how top level age of mythology players use there ox carts. Hunt is something that becomes a heap more efficient for one. Also in late game to overcome the low hp of the ox carts maany players just send 2 to vulnerable wood lines
With the December patch, wood gathering is now an additional 4% and 8% faster than before after lumber camp upgrades in feudal and castle age. In imp, you lose the 15% upgrade, so net 7% slower wood gathering in the late-late game. Overall, I think it is definitely a buff since you are saving on upgrade costs of two-man saw and benefiting also with faster stone and gold gathering. Also, in a post imp game, it just isn’t that important having higher wood gathering as it is earlier on.
one day Spirit of the Law will meet that patch note and Developer Dude at the AOM Team , thats whole purpose it is to keep updates interesting :)
Ah, aoe2 wood chopping, the most therapeutic sound.
In the near future, Devs will probably rethink the idea of the mule cart and may also grant other civs access to it. It's just a fine idea.
Frankly it seems that mule carts are rather fine as it is already. Some small polish might be needed but that's it.
The biggest factor with them when adding to civs like Mongols is just that deer hunt bonuses with cart could be OP so probably bonus for hunt would need to be tuned down when combined with the cart
If any cumans may have it and i think that's it i don't see other civs getting it. If the mule cart need a buff they shoeld be enable to garrison 5 Villagers inside and getting a slight speed boost when doing this Just to adress their defensive disadvantage a bit
@@papermaniac Lol, this is the most insane take I've seen so far. That would make you be able to take all the deer on the map with no risk essentially for free, since no way you'll die to small feudal armies until you get back to the TC.
@@kane_lives most maps does not have a lot of deer Just one sometimes two herds. And maps that do have lots of deer are usually very open maps where retrieving villagers or mule carts to a defensive building is not always an option
Nice analysis. Though it confirms the main issue with the mule cart that I was suspecting: great on paper, but much less impressive in practice and pays off too little too late. All the downsides are in the practical aspects.
The benefit of not needing a new lumber camp/mule cart only applies to the same group of wood choppers when they move far away from the camp/cart. However, early enough in the game I usually have more than one wood lines, and the benefit of mule cart doesn't translate towards it -- I still need two mule carts for the two wood lines. Therefore, I think the not needing to build a new camp pays off too late.
Overall in practice I don't think I made fewer mule carts than I would make camps in the early to mid game, unless RNG works in my favor in map generation where I can delay a cart by sharing one between miners and lumberjacks.
I also think having to wall more to protect the mule carts may neutralize their efficiency early on.
One thing mules carts are amazing though is when I bring one cart with a hunting squad of villagers around a nomad map to hunt, if my opponents don't find them :)
Maybe someone else can enlighten me otherwise.
The other way of looking at it is in comparison to the never rebuilding of camps. What you can get for the same amount of attention is quite notable. Having a few hundred extra wood in early castle can be game changing if you know what you're doing. Even in early and mid game it's somewhere between a 5-10% functional boost over camp rebuilding and a ~10-15% over not rebuilding. Hard to say that extra wood isn't useful when you start building farms and extra TCs.
It's definitely a wonkier start though, a bit like Chinese where it's different enough that I think some players may struggle to maximize its potential. Plus it's still early in terms of figuring out metas.
a strat I believe people aren't looking into is the fact you can kite boar with them very easily. they run around the carts very awkwardly.
Hi Spirit of the Law. I really enjoy your videos. You are so good at presenting differences in how stuff works in aoe2 . But I see in important topic that you have not yet covered. . The issue is that many people and even the pro players, when they get / pick armenians and georgians and have mule carts, I see that they still, probably out of habit, push in the deer in to the TC, and that confuses me, as the mule cart is the perfect tool to not have to push deer.
There are many aspects to this. Using the scout to push deer delays scouting. Many times deer path in weird ways and you have to start over. Would it make sense to have 3-6 vils + a mule cart go to the initial closest pack of deer and hunt it before sending them to gold or wood? Would it make sense to allocate same team to just continue hunting all over the map unit they can find no more deer? Is it more efficient than just sending them to farms? I would love to see an in depth video about this topic :D Hope you make it. thanks anyways for all the great videos you do . All the best!
It's only been a couple of months so chances are many players are still in the adjusting phase (especially higher lvl players, who have a lot more institutional memory to deal with).
Also of note AOE3 doesn't have drop off sites, which allow villagers to roam all over the map to hunt the huntables. The downside of that is they're easier to get out of place and open to enemy raiding/agression.
When you tested the wood collected from 1 tile lumbercamps, did you include the 200wood cost to replace them?
If not then real difference should be even bigger
The fact that you don't have to spend wood in new lumbercamps is being understimated.
Yes, also we need to talk about more lumbercamps and more lumberjacks. Armenian lumbercamps are the best though that is unmatched.
Need a scrub version of the video where everything is compared to forgetting to move your lumber camp up, cause that's my life.
What about the other resources a mule cart can receive? How good do they compare to mining camps and are they useful or convenient when it comes to food from boars and deer?
The blue "set and forget" lumber camp looks suspiciously like one of my bases 11
"I'd go back to choppin', but someone has to pet the mule from time to time"
- stuck villagers, probably
Can you instruct your mule cart to guard a villager that is cutting wood? so it was always move closer as the wood gets cut?
Great video❤
Does it make sense to compare the escenario of having a church in feudal?
Ty for ASMR spirit!
Spirit of the Law!
What do you mean there's a way to just select eco units? I didn't know this for over 20 years!
Will this video get remade when all the pathing/selection issues get bugfixed out?
The Mule cart might be weaker, but it can also move, and garrison, so it's by no means certain it will go down quicker than a standard camp. And that raises an interesting question, does it heal while garrisoned, the way villagers do?
sotl showed that already - the cart heals very fast
do u have to manually drop off hunt before moving to wood?
Then the next question: because the civs that have access to woodcarts do not have all wood tech, which is better? The cart or the camp?
In the end of the video you show how many farms a single village can support in some examples.
What is this for a civilisation without a wood bonus?
Is there a completely list of lists for all civs somewhere?
I don't have a full list on hand, but a civ without two-man saw or crop rotation starts off at just under 8 farms per 1 lumberjack. Crop rotation increases it to ~12 farms per lumberjack. Two-man saw adds ~1 farmer.
@SpiritOfTheLaw 8 farms per Lumberjack thank you that is really useful
but how good are mule carts on forest nothing? can you fit one in your starting area as armenians?
I am curiouse about what would happen if celts convert a mule and use it
Anyone else noticed how grouped units suddenly stop moving when setting a waypoint? Just stopping after a few steps and remaining clumped up without facing any obstacles that would cause them to get stuck. Pathing gets worse and worse with every update
Not to mention the infuriating trait of a group of units when you direct them forward, turn around and move half a dozen tiles BACKWARD and then walk in circles to form up. It 's driving me insane. When you go back and play the old HD edition the pathing is so much smoother and more efficient. The devs need to go back to how they were doing it before because the new pathing algorithm is horrible.
New patch will address all this
It's not a pathing issue, it's a bug that already existing at least few month. Need to select and move units 1 by 1, usually it works.
After last patch pathing feels better tho, but still for ex. on arena vils or units tasked to move outside , instead moving through the gates - decides to go to dead end in woodline and stuck there.
@@valger3652 I have been playing again for a month now (campaigns only), several games a day. Never happened once until the last few days.
Your fix does work though, although I found it out myself during a game, where two masses of cavaliers just completely froze, even the animation was stuck. several smaller groups were then able to "untangle" them, because the full group (40-60) was completely immobile
@@Mystikan Love that! Mmmmhh "Hero unit X must survive" Oh, better move him to the front line of the enemy so we can get into formation. Same with siege units inside groups, always get teleported to the front.
DE. trade better graphics for game breaking pathing.
Lots of work., Thanks
Is this a new feature or have carts always been able to collect resources in AoE ?
Back in school I did never understand what math was good for, so I didnt care and always had bad grades. I wish u were around back then.^^
Have you considered a career in management consulting Spirit of the law??
Interestingly the efficiency depends deeply on pathing. So if pathint improves it will get better.
What about the cart when it comes to stone and gold?
You'll save 100 wood here and there. Nice, but nothing too impressive.
Hey Spirit of the law, guys here
After seeing this in depth comparison i thruly believe that all the nations that dont have «Two Man Saw» upgrade should have the «Mule Cart». They could make the more "Nomadic" civs have the «Mule Cart» as standard and dont have acces to the «Two Man Saw», and the other civs should be the other way arround. I believe that some could even have both the lumber camp and the «Mule Cart», but never the «Mule Cart» and «Two Man Saw» combo. (that would be broken probably lol)
I wish those eyes where on both objects for the whole video
Yes, water is wet, and now you know exactly how wet
Merci, très instructif comme d'habitude🤩
So this video then raises the question of, can I gift the mule camp to my teammates, and what does that mean for the existence of team building?
Celts need to get two hand saw to protect their identity
i played many games with the mule cart. its not that good and often gets stuck or follows in some crazy direction. vills getting stuck between trees and it all the time.
1 View.
28 Seconds ago.
Me:
OMG! Finally! A mathematics video to procrastinate!
Who has the strongest villager ?
Spanish : **huff confidently**
Armenians : 'I can carry *14* farms on my own !"
I still think that historically nomad civs should get mule cart as well. Mongols and Huns for instance
Mule carts are gonna be insane on forest nothing
Celts being dethroned feels wrong
They 100% can be used as a wall as long as you do it right. Just make sure you don’t move them when they get attacked
Wouldn't a Castle age to Imperial age comparison have been better? The Georgian numbers for the mid-game is somewhat misleading since you can't even make the fortified church in Feudal age, unless this is meant to represent a point in castle age before you've researched your castle age wood tech.
This video really signifies to me just how directionless AoE2 civs have become. The new civs just steal bonuses from others (if not outright supplanting them) as well as other games like AoM. I’m not saying that the OG civs should remain untouched or go unopposed, but as more new civs get added with similar bonuses, they actually start to feel less unique.