I for one, have never been shamed for my farms.

Next up: Building three archery ranges on a tiny neutral island isn't that bad.

But you are not factoring in the psychological impacts that poorly placed farms have on the player. Every time I see that my farms are placed poorly, there is a part of me that thinks "it's okay if they get attacked, because I can build new ones and this time they will actually look pretty". A well placed farm increases morale by at least 25%

SotL, Blink twice if you're being held hostage by T90!

This video has been sponsored by T90

Alternate thumbnail "T90 farms? No problem"

SotL has officially endorsed T90

Finally, a video where Spirit doesn't tell me how bad of a player I am

"Farm-shaming" XD - sorry, gonna have to steal that.

I would argue the true problem of badly placed farms is the space they take. If you have a smaller map or are stuck inside your walls you have to optimize farm placement

Florida man grows mustache and becomes crazy, kidnaps fellow KZfaqr

T90 is gonna love this video

You forgot to mention the part where you say "T90 held me hostage in his basement! SEND HELP!" Blink twice if yes

Sotl, is T90 pointing a gun to your head, when you made this?

Your videos are like scientific papers - complete with Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and finally, Acknowledgements as well. Very entertaining and informative. Please keep up the good work! You almost single-handedly renewed my love for AoE2.

Spirit of the Law is lying to all of you. He knows you'll listen to 'em. "Oh yeah, yeah your farms are fine like that!" he says. Meanwhile at his base he's got perfectly placed farms and 3 more knights than you, and probably a monk already out there collecting relics.

When he deletes the one farm he placed poorly, then accidentally almost placed a house instead. Ouch. That felt like a personal attack.

I didn't actually realise that farms "grow" food until now! I thought they just spawn with all of it at once, like when you slaughter an animal, or collect from a berry bush, do fishfarms have the same mechanic?!

Sponsored and Endorsed by T90™

SOTL: Poorly placed farms. Chat: Did you say T90?

Wait, if Slavs farm 18% faster but the farm only grows 10% faster, does this mean that as Slavs for max efficiency you should build the farms, but leave them for a while before you start to collect? 🤯

T90 use his battle royal money to "convince" SOTL

It’d be awesome if after researching handcart, every villager would be seen pushing an actual handcart : D

SotL: "Poorly placed farms aren't all that bad." Everyone in the comments: *Joking about T90*

Khmer: I see no difference

I’m always so impressed by your mathematic approach to these questions and your experimental design to solve them, well played!

Ok sure, but you have to admit that perfect farm placement gives a significant boost to satisfaction.

Thank you for continuing to make these videos - hopefully KZfaq's compensation is super generous towards you. I love all of the things you produce

I always wonder what topic you work on next. I´m often surprised in a good way. Awesome work as always from your side.

Did the intro always have "house Tyrell, growing strong" or is it new?

The decreased efficiency of farms comes from the time that the villagers need to drop the collected food into the mill. They need to spend time to do this instead of gathering more food. That is why the hand cart is crucial: it reduces the time that villagers require to drop the food (by increasing the amount of food they can carry, effectively reducing the number of trips they need to do, and by increasing their movement speed). Since the displacement of farms due to poor allocation (compared to perfect/baseline) just slightly increases the time that villagers need to do a trip to the mill, the allocation of farms will have small negative impact on efficiency. The 14 year old me obsessed with AoE II would have loved these videos.

Kinda as expected. Back when you talked about the value of the Ugprade, I noticed: What carry capacity does is offset the impact of imperfect walking distances. But usually you already optimized for walking distances.

SOTL, you can be honest with us, how much did T90 pay you? Kappa :D

The farm growing food is so insane. They didn't need to do that. The fact that they made it so intricate as to allow farms to be placed farther from dropoff points without hurting efficiency, and also limit collection in the meantime is amazing. I just don't see the same level of detail going into newer games.

Holy smokes that is some great game design right there! I dont know if this was intentional, but making it so that town planning really pays off in the early game where it is the focus, but is more lenient in the end game, where other things demand your attention, in this elegant a manner is really impressive!

The amount of respect we have for your channel is really high. You propably know it but, really, what you do is just incredible and essential. Thanks again SotL !

"Why poorly placed farms aren't as bad as you think" *T90 liked that*

There's something else that I think we all realise but it should be mentioned: in the early game, economy micro is the most important thing you can do. But in the late game, you aren't supposed to be paying as much attention to your economy anymore, because you should be constantly using your military. So this also means bad farms early on is just you playing badly, but bad farms later on happen because you had more important things to pay attention to.

I love the t90 cameo at 8 minutes in. Was real neat to see him join this video

Still love watching your videos, and I still wish I could hear more of your music.

And SOTL, I wonder why high ranked players tend to place farm plots manually each time they exhausted, instead of auto-sowing them? Villagers usually stop for a second and do they work properly, and players can earn their time to focus on micro-ing!

I've been wondering about this for a long time great video

I love all your videos, but your "I did the math" ones have always been my favorite

BRO I LOVE YOUR VIDS MAN. YOU SHOULD ALSO DO PODCAST AND STUFF

Making this video and not calling them "t90-farms" even once had to require so much restraint. Admirable

I love that "Don't agonize over it...". It reminds my of myself, misplacing a farm, removing it and taking two ages to place it right... Or not reseeding just to make sure I place it alright the next time... resulting in me leaving ten villagers idle just so I can place a farm two inches nearer to the mill.

In other words in Early game I should build them close but after That I can make a 1 tile gap around my town Center so that the farms align and are pretty. And then get killed by the enemy for playing sim city

Khmer mains: "I am beyond such petty concerns."

I didnt even know that farms "grow". I thought they had a build phase like a normal building and then had to be rebuilt (meaning re-seeded) after a while

Still better than T90's farms, JK xD But what if the poorly placed farms are in symmetry? Like the low ELO legends

SOTL, perhaps you could do a test on building a second ring of farms around an existing mill vs making a new mill with perfectly adjacent farms with higher efficiency.

Seems to me that the biggest takeaway is that researching hand cart lets you double up all your farms at your existing TCs/Mills

Excellent points!

Hey, the long intro is back! Yay!

Thank you for another great video! Can you please do the analysis for the Supplies tech? It seems to be a common idea, that Supplies is a noob trap, and it'll be great to find out when is it worth getting it. The question is not trivial as resources have different value at different stages of the game and in game prices generally tend to inflate overtime. As well as some unique cases for some civs. I want to know when T90's SUUUPPLIIIEESS is justified.

Very interesting video! Hand cart has a big importance for late game

Great analysis

I used your video today as an example of good experimental design in my class XD

It was very relaxing to know that it is a bit more forgiving in imperial age as farms are usually placed with a super general round pattern of clicks...😂👍

I dont even know of this Game, but nice guide. Might try it out lol

Great video

Important to note this effect gets worse if you don't have carry upgrades (wheelbarrow, hand cart and heavy plough). A large part of the reason you don't see a large drop off is because the longer walking distance only happens every time the vil needs to drop off, if they take 20 actions and only one of them is a long walk this obviously compares favourably to taking 1 actions and one of them being a long walk. If they drop off more often they walk more so they spend less time collecting. Post-imp farming is probably the most important assumption made in the video. Farming upgrades make a more significant difference to inefficiently placed farms than to efficiently placed ones.

Please do a video analyzing the three archery ranges on a neutral island strategy.

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:22 🎶 *Introduction to Musical Segments* - The video begins with musical segments at 00:22 and 08:50. 08:50 🎵 *Continuation of Musical Elements* - The musical elements persist at 08:50, contributing to the overall audiovisual experience. Made with HARPA AI

i didnt know farms had a grow rate, i always thought the villagers just collect from them and they despawn when done, so how does it actually work? the farm produces food and has it "stashed" if you will and that stash can fill up and then be emptied again by the villager, for example when theyre walking to drop of the food? and what decides when the farm then dissapears? also, im guessing this also means placing 4 farms arround a mill to increase efficiency actually doesnt really increase efficiency?(i do it as teutons because i usually play black forest so im swimming in wood anyway.

Ok wtf, so does this mean that if you want to collect even faster as slavs, you pre-build farms with 1 villager before sending vils on it to gather the food at +18%?

I’ll add one comment on something obvious but not necessarily thought of, which is that poorly placed farms allow for less total space for farms. There have been a few scenarios where I threw out farms haphazardly just to save time (on maps like arena, and team islands) and later would be short on food with nowhere to put new farms from enemy pressure, ect. Putting two farms two spaces apart is already almost a guaranteed lost farming spot. Of course, this has to do more with base cleanliness in general than just farms.

In short- Vikings' eco bonus is amazing.

I havent played this kind of game in more than 10 years, i dont ever watch videos about it , and still somehow i watched this whole vídeo.

Great stuff

when analyzing the last one (e) - those farms are so far away you could cram in more farms around that mill (less mills to farm ratio gives you some efficiency).

1 castle surrounded by 4 tcs within a maximum of 1 farm distance either on the four sides or touching the four corners - a second castle within range of all 5 buildings if possible and a fifth tc on the other side of the castle - you will easily have room for 50 well protected farms

I loved the music. Shows you do have a sense of humor. Otherwise I'd swear you were a robot.

I forsee a revolutionary new strategy - build farms, send the builder to gather other resources and wait for the food to grow, then move vills back onto the farms a couple of minutes later.

Even getting as bad as those last two, dropping Mills on the opposite side of each fixes it perfectly well and then you just fill in with more farms

I mean you are the only one who ever told me that bad farm placement is bad

T90: I've seen enough. I'm satisfied.

You underestimate my capacity to play simcity in aoe2

Next video: three archery ranges on a neutral island is not that bad

Ah I wish I could have seen where the 5 and 10% drops were for early game, as that's what I was basing my judgement on. Choosing top right as 5% and bottom left as 10

People only really get mad at terrible farm placement in team games like Black Forest because of “limited” space in the teams spawn

I’ve never played this game, nor i have ever seen a KZfaq video about it. I somehow enjoyed this

If Age of Empires 2 fix the grid for TCs, Mills ( and maybe the farms ), it would be bliss. Imagine 12 farms fit perfectly close to the TCs making it a perfect square. The same can be said to 8 farms for the Mills.

Taking notes, the isometric perspective biases me to place my farms 'optimally' on the left side, but the data shows that you should place them 'optimally' on the right side for a more efficiency.

This is amazingly helpful. I’m not sure if my ocd can take doubling up farms though :(

The most helpful tip for me was the clicking on the mill without shift. I hated that the vils would plant the farms together

He could also have Said Players except T90 normally dont place farms that Bad

I have been following your vids for a while, admiring the easy-listening of the raw data supplement to my knowledge of the AoE universe ^-^ ...that being said, I made a discovery when I used to play The Conquerers, in that placing them in a swastica pattern can generate increased economic power and military strength. (not to mention I am a huge fan of the farm reseed que) Think like how Constantinople, Tenocktitlan, Rome, Athena's Athens and other large cities had their systems built, if you can absorb the Spirit of Cilvilization through say one of caesars successful governors of the past, these greater iconic (i like thinking of them like giant shrines with quantum flow conduits) bits of knowledge become evident and can even be revealed in games such as this, as all coded games are quantum systems as well! ^-^ -Cheers🍷

I can't play this game due to PC issues, so I still have to place each farm INDIVIDUALLY !!!! 😒😒😒 I NEVER knew about the "Shift + Click" trick in later versions of the game! 👀 Thanks, as always, SOTL for a helpful and entertaining video. 👍😁 Placement first, upgrades later - Got it! 👑

Now make video about how efficient is to place 3 archery ranges on an island

How timely. WinterSC was getting backseated on Twitch last night with his econ and farm placement. He's been learning on Khmer...

I think this actually is quite interesting; however it does beg to ask the question, what IS the most optimum way to place farms? When should you build a mill for the purpose and when do you just branch out from TC and berry mill?

nice video, thank you

Have you noticed that the windmills rotate in the opposite way? Look at the blades angle... it should go the other way!

I've got a different challenge for SoTL: How do the villagers survive a direct hit by the mill blade as, for example, seen at 1:01 - 1:12 or at 1:19?

i just noticed the windmill wings are backwards... or like if the wind was hitting it from behind

Because it's basically like lumberjacks : when they're cutting trees (farming) they take the same amount of time on the tree (farm) whatever the distance to the drop off point. So, just as it's a good thing to build a new lumber camp when the trees are 4-5 tiles away, it's better to build farm closer to the mill, especially at a point in the game when the villagers are slower and carry fewer ressources

I also feel like in early game there are less stuff to look out for, giving you more time to place your farm

great vid

what about collisions ... when the farms are packed together around a mill and we have two layers of farms, there seems to be quite a lot of collisions among the villagers slowing down both the villager that is collecting and the one who is trying to drop off the food to the mill... i prefer TC to layer up my farms ... and avoid mills for this reason