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?