Is there anyone who goes 2 TC’s in open maps? Not 1 TC full aggression, not 3 or 4 TC boom, but middle of the road aggression while still thinking long term.
Or is this an example of argument of moderation? Showing that centrism can suck and extremism be better ahah.
I frequently go 2 TC. It helps force me to be more aggressive than it be with a 3 TC boom.
With Portuguese and cumans I’d almost always go 2 TC.
There is an interview of Tatoh by Spirit of the Law where he asked something similar and Tatoh explained why it’s bad.
However, you TC count should be dynamic. If you get the upper hand, built more, if you’re behind try focusing on military production, army micro and raiding…
I don’t find it… is it perhaps this interview with Hera? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fjyb_YqT-w
I’ve seen plenty of games where a pro player doesn’t add extra TCs from start, but eventually builds the second and the third one. I think there are plenty of in-between strategies aside from booming and 1 TC agression.
Oh yes, I mixed them up. (The one with Tatoh is older and about another topic…)
I completely agree. Having a clear idea about whether to go full agression or full boom can be good oftentimes but it’s not like you always have to commit to either one of them. If you play 2 stable knights, for instance, in immediate second tc is hard to get for most civs so you can delay them a bit, get map control and only then adding new tcs.
Aside from the above, 2 tc strategies certainly find their applications. It’s pretty common on arena for civs that may not have the greatest eco and/or late game unit compositions but want to use momentum in early imp (usually the more tcs you add, the later you’ll be up).
Then there is siege/pike pushes which used to be pretty common with civs like Celts (Teutons also work pretty well, here) before everyone started doing the hoang rush. It always depends on how your opponent reacts but if they don’t answer with a lot of knights (which mostly isn’t doable because you prefer to siege/pike push someone when they’ll go for extra tcs) you have the res to spare one extra tcs while keeping the agression rolling.
Yeah the Cummans do it in Feudal all the time 11 
There are an absolute abundance of times where an open map with an archer civ turns into a 2 TC kind of game. Mayans are the most common example, their army is excessively cheap to make, so you really don’t need that many villagers to sustain it, which means you don’t need as many TC’s to reach that number. TC’s don’t improve your economy past a certain upper limit just because you’ll get to a point where you need the military pop, not villager pop, and if you don’t have enough space to spend your resources they’ll just pile up and you’ll lose.
While the extra production is nice, even for civs that don’t particularly need it, the raiding protection and the economy efficiency is a big reason why so many extra TC’s are made, regardless of the actual growth benefits on an economy. You generally want to have TC’s on different resources to protect whatever’s vital to your strategy.
I have never played standard game, not a single once, always go FC or crazy Yolo strats especially with Saracen’s market/Tatars/Mongols/ Noboru Incas rush this is in all open maps.
Closed maps like Arena, i will go with most all in Arena famous strats, like Spanish castle drop, Mongols castle drop into Mangudai and siege, Saracens insane fast castle in 13min, Fast imp Turks 20min and double castle Arambai, but the problem with Yolo or all in strat that they are “Do or Die”, if the enemy stopped you there is no come back unlike playing standard, but for me i really don’t enjoy play standard i like going crazy even if i will lose
I always go 2 town centers and almost always win. Plus, I typically never make more than 70 villagers (including trade carts, cogs as well as fishing ships) in a game.l