it made me question whether deer run away or attack back

...until it died.

@@terner1234 Maybe Ibex's are different

You are better than me, I don't play at all except Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds from time to time :P I really like listening to SoTL.

Much the same ... It might well be 12 years ago i last touched my old AoEII:Conquerers CDs to give the scenarios a spin (never been much into competitive multiplayer gaming), but i really enjoy theses videos

Ok so maybe i have the macro and micro skills of a boomer but my knowledge about the meta is fucking divine thanks to Sprit of the Law's theorycrafting.

I don't even own the Game.... Yet I've been watching SotL for a few years now - his vids are great and I like his analytical style.

Get to work, you still have a boar to lure!

That TC ain't gonna build itself.

Hey! what are you doing here, did you completely build that wall?

Who told you to stop farming? Get to work!

I feel that we need a full version of the La Hire montage

@JR 1986 Can't speak for anyone else, but I hadn't heard the pun before.

Coomans in Castle Age: "Oh God I'm boooming, aaaaaaah!" (Releases a load of Kipchaks)

Ok Cumer

Disadvantages of 2 TC feudal instead of fast Castle: -Enemy siege knocking at the door -Xbows/knights enforcing their population control policy -Relics disappearing from the mini map -Your units and buildings wanting to change religion -Wild enemy Castle appearing out of nowhere

@@shafoz well closed off and walled maps can leseen those disadvantages .....

@@dogeofgreatness2222 Not really. Walls go down very fast in DE, specially in Feudal, and if your opponent forces the issue you'll have to fight having less numbers and worse technologies which can add to a snowball effect where you can never match your opponent army to fend it off And while you are struggling to keep the enemy out of your base, he's taking all the resources of the map PS: Not saying it doesn't work, I'm just describing the downsides. Cuman 2 TC boom is a valid strategy but it's not so easy to pull off like the video suggest

@@shafoz well I have to say I have to agree with you. On a map like arabia it's like axing your own foot. Arena like map is still VERY risky. BF which has been walled off properly you would still need near perfect execution to pull it off. The only map where I think it can work the best is Michi?

@@dogeofgreatness2222 is a decent strategy in arena and regicide fortress, some pros have had some success with it in tournaments I remember Viper managing pull it off in AOELYMPICS But I also remember Viper failing miserably with that strategy against Mr.Yo in another tournament

Thats how is steamroll my oponenet in 1v1s if i get cumans

honestly you can still afford a third tc and three stable knights with upgrades, it can be really strong.

Depends if you want to stay alive 4 minute more or try to destroy ennemy in this amount of time.

@@kevley26 You can't. It's mathematically impossible. 3 stable knights needs 39 vills and with the third tc you need something like 20 on food. Upgrades on top can't be gotten, I've tried this strat a lot. You enter castle with something like just over 50 vills if you did a 20 fast feudal and build the tc with 7 vills and do everything after close to optimally.

Nevermind skipping the third tc. Idle your existing tcs as well! Sound stupid I know but I've had crazy success with this. I try drag out the feudal age for both players as long as possible, get a nice 5 or 6 vill lead, go castle, then idle both tcs and just spam fully upgraded cav out of 4 stables with one or two rams. People have no idea how to respond. Even if they're full on spears your numerical advantage is just too crazy.

Cuumer vs boomer

I prefer Bloomer.

Hera did this in game and proved that is better going 3tc than 2 tc.

Can relate

Malay players are waiting

Next to the dock, with a one tile gap

@@martijn9568 Some players will read your comment and will take it seriously as a pro advice. I feel bad for them already !

verdict ?

@@Hashslingingslasher- Dk

@@Hashslingingslasher- probaly if u are going for a feudal rush or play u should do the 2 TC cause it would make ur eco as good as a fast castle one... If not Fc is always better imo

@@justlikeit417 I played some low elo games last night 1400ish and i think you're correct. Although going fc is just much easier especially because going fc as cumans throws them through a loop as they're expecting you to boom

Something I've come to appreciate this year is that thinking of tcs as purely exponential is a bit inaccurate. Exponential graphs don't have cutoff points. AOE has a population limit, limited resources, and an enemy who can kill your villigers and tcs, and the fact that tcs are discreet "step functions" not continuous graphs. I now think more in terms of the logistic growth function and the Lotka-Volterra equations.

@@neildutoit5177 Yeah, that is a interesting and probably more accurate way of thinking about that. Thinking about the function of total resources collected over the whole game, I think that is basically continuous, but the first and second derivatives are definitely discrete. And how fast villagers are added should in theory not generally rely on how many resources you have because you should always have enough to keep your TC's working. So in reality, that figure should be constant until you add another TC. Which would definitely mean that it's not strictly exponential. And you're right, there are so many other factors that mess with villager numbers and the generalized collection rate that it's not that simple.

@@neildutoit5177 TBF, you could argue that in this case, the earlier TC also has value because it can be used to defend resources effectively.

vikings free wheelbarrow/handcart will demolish this

Thats quite interesting. In my opinion it would probably close the gap and be better late game I guess

Because the point is to figure out whether cumans should go for fast castle or start booming in feudal, not how they compare to other civs doing fast castle boom

@@anderslaustsen6546 Well sure, and I am very glad he did that math for us. But I still think my question is a natural follow up.

It's not that close. Mongols for instance get about 600 extra resources from 11 deer and 3 boar (on a map like scandinavia) and that's with a 40% faster bonus. Something like celts is a 15% bonus reduced by travel time much more than hunting. And lumber gathers slower than hunting. There is more wood though. But yeah in the medium-short term an extra tc blows all other eco bonuses out of the water. Long term it's hard to answer. If you're just booming you can go to 4 tc easily as cumans as soon as you hit castle and it's possible as other civs a little after hitting castle.

Yeah. With 2 TC's you can generally get all the eco upgrades a bit sooner. That's actually one of the big advantages of the 2 TC's. You can also transition into castle to quick imp by dropping a castle and staying 2 TC's for a long time without actually needing extra villager production for a long time.

... I'm not sure why investing in a fuedal rush would make the second TC better. The second TC is the easiest way to double your rate of constant economic growth

@@suddenllybah The longer your opponent stays in feudal age the longer time you will have a 2 TC advantage. But if you do 2 TC you will not have enough resources to apply any pressure to delay your opponents castle age time.

Essentially. My understanding (albeit limited and growing) is that it's easier to shit out too many lumberjacks and redirect them to other resources after they've chopped some logs

@@hahaureadmyname pretty much xd

Spreadsheets ARE cool man, what are you talking about?!

it glitched. it happens to farms every once in a while, my dad hates it when it happens in real life too. One minute you're planting tomatoes and then BOOM everything is gone.

Yeah imagine vs celts, they'd get smashed lol. Also the early castle age spike if they used a couple knights or xbows

Kind of, the economic bonus of this is really good. The weakness is that it leaves you open to high aggression in feudal age/early castle

Malay, Aztecs, Vikings, Persians can beat the crap outta this.

Yeah, but that is assuming opponent fast castles. If opponent goes for feudal aggression, then you're the one who's made a big TC investment that hasn' t paid off yet.

@@Naccarat yes I agree the strategy is mainly a counter to boomers HOWEVER If the opponent goes feudal aggression it might be even better just over-invest in defence, quick wall as much as possible and every minute you can stay alive you will be gaining more and more of a villiger lead so you don't worry about over-investing if the opponent doesn't go castle you will eventually win if you can stay alive. Scouting is important to know if you need to defend or attack.

@@neildutoit5177 Well that is the same thing as 1TC push vs booming in castle age. If the booming player can defend they gonna win. If the pushing player kills the a decent amount of vills he is winning. Actually most games get opened with a drush or at least feudal units. Cuman with 2nd feudal TC is always in defending position.

@@ComfyDents I agree it is very similar and many of the same principles apply but there are 2 noteworthy differences: number 1: If you are defending as cumans against a feudal push it is a bit easier to defend than defending against a 1tc castle push because defending in the feudal age is just easier. Even if opponent gets castle age before you, by the time siege gets there your tc has paid off so you can defend with spears, skirms, scouts, towers. Number 2: When you defend with Cumans in Feudal opponent is probably trying to save up for castle also so not investing everything in millitary so even though you put a lot into tc you can invest a lot into army as well because you aren't saving for castle (I disagree with sprit that you should go so fast to Castle. Stay in Feudal until 9 minutes after tc built just defending with all resources, then save for castle.) This is different from a 3tc boom defence because with 3tc boom defence opponent is not saving up for next age so it is harder.

If you are interested, my elo 1250 I got it up from 1100 playing cuman 2tc strat. I don't know how viable it is at a higher level but for mid-elo it is good.

I love the smell of cumans.... oh wait no, that's cumin.

I am not a 100% sure on this but the fact that the feudal tc takes almost 2x longer to build, while FCing, it is pointless to start the TC while advancing as it will finish roughly at the same time as if a new TC was started just after hitting castle (and more villagers would not be working for the duration making the economy a lot weaker). There was one game in Arena (in one of the recent tournaments, I dont remeber who) where one of the pro players FCd with Cumans and had wood but delayed building the TC until hitting castle age as it would be up at the same time but more villager seconds will be wasted.

The sooner the fast castle into 3 TCs the better. I considered factoring in buildings like market and blacksmith (houses are actually already included in the villager cost here), but just assuming 20 pop for Cumans and 26+2 fast castle already covers that. Those are both common builds, which through trial and error already account for all of those costs and get you to the intended age consistently with the necessary amount of resources and not too much extra floating. I didn't see a need to reinvent the wheel in this case while those builds have already been worked out.

Attack but what ?! several layers of walls&buildings while just a few tiles behind a feudal siege work shop is going up just about the precise moment the cuman player hits castle age to pump out mangonel&skorpions to buy enough time to either mass kts/camels from more stables then u can sustain or build a castle to bait you into either wasting more resorces on more units&siege or go for an imp race he will easily surpass you in... Early pressure is indeed the best&default way most civs have to deal with the cuman 2 TC boom but its heavily dependent on the map and how good at waling the opposing cuman player is.

That seems unreasonably quick. You can't have enough resources even for a second TC to keep pumping for more than a few mins

Zacharias Tsampasidis it’s a tight build order. Definitely worth a try. Only works with the Khmer because of the no building to click up bonus(meaning you don’t need wood)I can usually start producing vills from 3 tc before other players hit castle. I’m still tweaking it. I usually have 1 vill on straggler trees 2-16 (on sheep, boar, deer, berries) 17-19 on gold (no mine) until 250 gold. Then 4 vills on farms, rest on wood on the way to castle

Sortof but "not really". By the time you attack with imp units, they're in early castle, as you mentioned. Which means that they are in an advantageous position compared to a person who has done the classic build (3 TCs) instead. Keep in mind that a cumans player does not have to build the third TC, it's done like that in this video in order to make the resources line up, (obtaining the same number of incoming villagers). It's not a bad option (in reality, it is a good option), but it's not to be confused as their ONLY option. Whether fast imp can compete with 3 TCs is an age-old battle with advantages on both sides of the board, and cannot be determined by maths alone. But regardless of that, the cuman's would be objectively harder to defeat than a generic 3TC boomer due to having a 500 resource advantage. Edit: The one thing you would gain from using fast imp against cumans is the knowledge that they are extremely likely to go 2 TCs, and are less likely to go on a Feudal Offensive or Fast Castle Offensive (not to be confused with a large Castle Age offensive). Whether that knowledge alone is good enough to go fast imp is up to the player

Too bad he didnt test those. I would add Khmer to this list.

And Malay!

Two Handed Swordsman Malay eco is bad

@@ThisIsMyRoad I don't think so... I mean that fast aging is everything for it.

@@ThisIsMyRoad How can they be bad? They have one of the best types of bonuses?

Would be incredibly busted

this sounds like a job for the Goths!

who else has seen that meme