Abbasid vs French TC Boom - gather rate vs production rate

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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So the thing with the X TC boom strategy as Abbasid into French is that the latter can also choose to make more TCs and actually gain an advantage via the faster production rate. This kinda made things hard for less skilled abba players since the French only need to pick off two or three villagers to snowball into a bigger economy - the faster vil production means the gap only widens with time.

Recently some small changes have added up; Abbasid tier 1 golden age now gives +15% universal gather rate and the French vil production bonus was changes to +10%/10%/15%/20% faster each age. Now I want to talk about if the Abbasids can actually out boom the French off the back of villager productivity - overcome the French quantity with quality.

I’ll list the dis/advantages each civ has in an eco contest:

French:

  • Villager production speed
  • 30% cheaper eco techs
  • 50% cheaper drop offs
  • All bonuses are free an available right out the gate and cant be interrupted
  • no extra gather productivity bonuses - just generic eco techs

Abbasid:

  • 50% less vil cost
  • can get all techs for 30% cheaper
  • Golden age gives another +15% gather rate to all res - effectively three free eco upgrades
  • Can access extra eco upgrades to scale productivity of vils beyond imperial techs
  • need to unlock bonuses with time and res
  • age restriction on vil/tech cost reduction techs

To add some context, I’ll explain the Abbasid extra techs a bit more for those who dont know. The eco wing gives the access to Agriculture and Improved Processing. The former is +15% productivity boost to farms available in castle - it only applies to farms, but its base cost is a lot lower than Fertilization (age 3 mill food tech). Improved Processing is an imp tech that gives a universal +8% more res dropped off - pretty good but imperial is rarely important.

With all that to think about, I’d like to give my subjective view of all this. The Abbasids 2 TC build orders usually allow for tier 1 golden age by around the 8 min mark. Eco techs have a payback period which gets shorter the more vils you have - earlier on its just better to have more vils and French also goes for eco techs later. Now, the Abbasid passive gives you effectively three eco techs in age 2 once active. The comparison becomes 10% more vils vs +15% better vils in feudal - there’s a slight (abt +3.9%) advantage for Abbasid at this point. Then in age 3 the French have an equally tiny advantage (abt 3.5%) with the +15% vil production rate. Both civs get to use the 30% tech discount, so the French get a lead in the cost of at least 3 techs (spear upgrade, eco/culture wing), until Abba gets alot more techs. Age 3 Abbasid can get Agriculture on top of the golden age to get a post imperial workforce and near English food eco, but the French can still keep a tiny (abt 4%) edge in the wood/stone/gold income via sheer vil number, while losing hard on the food eco.

Overall the eco situation feels pretty even to me for the most part and favors Abba by late castle. The most important point here is that in age 2, the French cant flatly outscale the Abba boom with 2 vill kils, they need about 5+ now which is a much more forgiving margin. That’s just my opinion, tho. Thoughts?

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For some reason you have me excited to play the Abbasid today. I’m going to give them a run

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Abba and Rus always felt like the most well designed civs imo - lots of small things that work really well together with these in particular.

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15% better gather rate does not translate to 15% better vills. Walking time reduces the effect of all eco bonuses, and all eco upgrades.

That said, as an Abbasid main I think that Abbasid vs French is slightly Abbasid favored. You just need to get a barrack before your 2nd TC, then go horseman/spears, play defense and add a third TC if he is not all-inning you (sometimes even if he is all-inning you, when you have enough army). Basically French pressure is really easy to deal with since they always play the same way - knight harassment into knight/archer. And even if they go the economic route, you just add your 3rd TC faster.

Playing against Delhi is much harder since you need to be both greedy and contest the sacred sites at the same time.

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15% better gather rate does not translate to 15% better vills. Walking time reduces the effect of all eco bonuses, and all eco upgrades.

There are diminishing returns, true. All eco upgrades are supposed to give +15%/30%/45% per tier but its more like +14%/25%/36%. That said, the initial upgrades are very close to the literature values. Eco upgrades are deferred until vill counts begin to exceed around 25+ on a single res, and I wanted to highlight the golden age buff since its often ignored.

The comparison becomes 10% more vils vs +15% better vils in feudal - there’s a slight (abt +3.9%) advantage for Abbasid at this point. Then in age 3 the French have an equally tiny advantage (abt 3.5%) with the +15% vil production rate.

The math I did is based on sample data from in game gather rates, not theoretical values. That’s why the difference is less that 5%, and why french retake the lead. I compared the gather rates of deer, sheep, and farms for a more direct comparison.

That being said, the counter 2TC is the only thing that made the French matchup hard since they ramped up faster while I more or less had my pants down. The mentioned buffs, horseman buff and TC/tower nerf made counter raids and scaling easy enough that I can finish a farm transition and outlast the knight spam - its not a problem any more.

For Delhi, just ignore the SS for a bit, make as many TC’s as you feel safe with and go all out into lancers. Most Delhi players blow all the SS/relic gold on Tower eles which got destroyed by knights even before the hp nerfs. If the try to heal with scholars, lancers can kill those too. Once you repel the first attack, lancers can go run around the Delhi base and the slow elephants/spear army cant do much against it. Just dont try camel archers, the camel unease does not debuff elephants.

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