Ty

DeMu is a gold 3 player when it comes to villager reaction time

The last game was just such a clean inversion. Byz secures map control and advantage. It then decides to do the classical strategy to widen this advantage: To level up, leveraging the map control. Due to the map control, the Malians only realize this, and react, once it's through, and therefore only then Byz has to pull back to the base. And the walking time alone is enough to get the relevant upgrades and some castle units, which together with defender's advantage mean just as the Malians arrive, their window to deal damage is gone. If they had committed, it had played right into the hands of Byz. But now the Malians have map control and go T3, so the walking time as they retreat covers the time to age up. But as Byz follows right behind them, this buys way less time than the move the Byz pulled with their age up. Against any other nation, Byz now would have a nice window to deal damage. But Malian's get their veterancy techs twice as fast, and they can build the MAA counter pre-age-up. So the window isn't as big as Byz expects, and the Malians don't even need to sacrifice much to let it pass, and once the upgrades are through, it's now more or less even armies, but the Malians play with defender's advantage. And as the armies cleaned up another, it becomes painfully obvious just whose economy benefited stronger from the age up.

I've seen this somewhere before

Let’s go!

20 seconds