ideas for BF multiplayer maps, im noob and i want a good eco civ to learn how to make a good economy 
Totally depends on the scenario. If itâs just about uncontested boom probably malay, khmer and burgundians. These are at least the best eco civs on arena. If youâre talking open map scenarios with feudal fights and such Iâd say vikings, burgundians, chinese and mayans. Depending on how everything plays out you could also add cumans to both lists.
Just threw the market abuse for saracens in: Potentially they can equal with aztecs in terms of pure booming potential with the market abuse. But ofc only if the opponent doesnât interferes.
There are special BF civs, depending on your playstyle: Persians, Celts, Mongols or Koreans eg. Not necessarily the best eco wins in BF. The map favors special kinds of units.
Impressive work. It is great to see that you included all the small things too like 3 sheep and the buildings needed and so on.
Basing it on a real build order and taking the results from there for walking time and stuff like that is also a great base for all the calculations.
I canât tell if the HWP stuff and how you did your calculations is working perfectly but at least to me it seems you put a lot of thought into it to get somewhat reliable results
I guess you also factored in the moments when ressources become available. This is especially relevant early castle age when you start to set up your boom where the rate at which wood and food become available are THE one thing that decides how fast you can place farms and create vills to get get your boom going.
As for the Teutons vs Franks you did a good analysis.
Teutons have an early game bonus. Basically you didnât have to collect as much wood as other civs in dark age since the moment when you place the first farms in dark age or in feudal age your civ bonus (cheaper farms) already kicks in.
If you placed 8-10 farms in feudal that is already 192-240 wood saved.
The Franks at this time got around 60 food lead (but not free food) from berries and another free 75 food and 75 wood saved for a total of 60 faster collected res and 150 saved ressources.
Looks like a slight advantage for Franks in feudal as long as they go fast castle (because food savings) and another advantage spike with heavy plow instantly early castle age (another free 250 res). It takes probably around another 15-20 farms for Teutons to catch up on that which happens rather fast while booming and from that point on Teutons eco takes the lead - 1 more TC would be possible soon with how much easier it is to spam farms
For comparison here a Link to Spirit of the Lawâs best booming civs from 2020. But there were no Sicilians, Burgundians, Poles and Bohemians back then and Tatars didnât have free sheep on TC built back then
The Spanish boom is really interesting. I think most of the community was not really aware of it but when you see the huge impact the faster building time has with sicilians it now makes sense that it will also affect the spanish boom in some way.
Your analysis could be worth making youtube videos - explaining the setup based on the build order and explaining some of the civs.
Here some numbers games - might be boring for some ppl
I tried to find out how you get to 1:1.887 and 1:1.695 (Teutons) ratio of worth between food and wood since it seems extremely high and in the end I got an idea why and was baffled a bit by the result. Never expected that food is SO much more valuable
You have an investment of 60 wood for the farm + some build time to get out 375 food with heavy plow in castle age.
With wheelbarrow gathering rate from farms seems around 22.7 while wood gathering is probably around 31 with the 2 techs.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/ey1nmf/complete_results_of_farming_rates_and_other/
So to calculate it I would say you would need to calculate the time for the farm to be built (15 sec) + the time to collect 60 wood (thats around 2.2 min villager time upfront for a regular farm and around 1.4 min villager time for Teutons for 36 wood farm)
To gather the 375 food it takes 16.5 min villager time. If you add the 2.2 min villager time to build the farm and collect the wood thats 18.7 min total villager time to get 375 food which is a theoretical gathering rate of 20.05
For Teutons its 17.9 min. 375 / 17.9 is around 20.95 averaged gathering rate of food.
So 31 / 20.05 = 1.55. So regular civs food should in theory be worth 1.55 times as much as wood before hand cart
Teutons: 31 / 20.95 = 1.48. For Teutons food should in theory be worth 1.48 times as much as wood before hand cart
BUT since you pay the wood up front and resources become less and less valuable over time I guess you get your numbers. That also explains why for you the difference between regular civ and Teutons is higher since that initial wood investment at a time where ressouces were worth more than at the end of the farm lifespan is more important and thus Teutons lesser initial wood cost for the farm is more impactful
I think you did some crazy maths for your list
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you didint understand. I want a good eco civ to practice my economy build, to go random civs on BF
You exactly got it. Thatâs also why my approcimation for khmer is way better than the one of sotl, as he didnât took the impact of timing on the food into account, whilst in my model the continouus farming of the khmer vills is regarded.
The key why food is so much worth while booming is the high upfront cost for the farm. A farmer takes about 1.5 minutes to just pay of the initial investment. If you would assume food worth the same as wood it would actually take more than 2.5 minutes to pay of the initial investment. This shows that increasing the value of food actually makes the farms paying of their investment earlier and more worthy to build, because food has such a high worth at this stage of the game.
Maybe, maybe itâs too deep for good youtube content. But Iâm a terrible content creator so⊠unless no youtuber shows interest in my calc I donât think there would be any chance this will be shown there.
Also I always find little mistakes I made and also now several flaws in there, I try to correct as much as I can, but the game isnât perfect and so arenât the players⊠So this kind of calc will always be âimperfectâ and if I would present my calcs or whatever to a public auditory I would like them being âperfectâ, too. Here is ok because in this forum only the real enthusiasts find their way in ;). And I think they can live with imperfect things, knowing that it is just an convergent approach.
Your approach seems more detailed and is more up to date than SOTLâs
One thing to not forget about the value of wood in early castle age is that you need it since the natural food ressources ran out. So there is no compromise - you simply need the wood to get up any kind of eco or buildings for military.
So the value of wood is huge when reaching castle age especially if you want to boom.
But what these value comparison numbers say is it is far easier/cheaper in villager time to get wood than food.
All that also explains why Franks are such a strong civ. The 60 faster food from feudal age, free farm upgrades and also free bloodlines for knights and on top +2 LOS all together is just too good. So much food and even some gold for free which allows you to put out strong knights more easily than most other civs.
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I can understand that well.
Btw. I have tried to find your chart a few times in the past. Is there an URL where we can always find the most up to date version of your eco chart without having to dig through the forums?
Then why in the picture Saracens booming time is less than Byzantines, Magyars and Goths? If they donât use market, they should be as generic as those.
If you want to practice before going random, then you should choose civs with the worst eco bonuses and a wide tech tree like magyars. This way you would always feel confortable once you start going random and wont have bad habit regarding eco management.
If you want the eco bonus to compensate for your noob skills at the beginning, then pick civs with âsoftâ eco bonuses instead of strong ones. You will feel comfortable while practicing and still be able to adapt to any random civ easily.
Civs with soft eco bonuses and a decent lategame are bohemians, vietnamese, italians, spanish, tatars
Because in my Buildorder I make a Market to go up to Castle.
And btw:
Best eco for higher elo but harder to use as it needs micro/gameplan/ different timings -
Chinese, Poles, Burgundians, Britons, Bohemians, Cumans
Best eco for all elos and easy to use with just background eco bonus you donât have to micro or think about too much-
Celts, Vikings, Mayans, Indians, Franks, Teutons, Slavs, Khmer
Some very good other ones but just a hair off the top spots in my opinion-
Lithuanians, Persians
Top 5 my opinion
- Vikings
- Celts
- Burgundians
- Poles
- Britons/Franks
I recognize Chinese eco is great but itâs just too much force dropping and a mad dash to find food for me to list it in my top 5
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Depends, but if I target to achieve imp with good eco on Arena:
- Britions (cheap TC, fast castle)
- Burgundians
- Cumans
- Malay
- Not really sure what to put here. Poles?
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I figured out I made I mistake in my calc for the booming potential of the civs. The Eco I use to go from isnât fully balanced. I need to calc a balanced eco distribution for all civs (to boom). And then substract the amount of investment needed to balance the eco out for every civ.
I donât know how to approach this - but I think this explains why certain civs seem to âunderperformâ a bit in my calcs. Like Teutons and other seem to overperform a bit (like Britons). Not that I think the impact is massive, but I think I do need to do this to get more reliable results.
Iâm a bit disappoint with myself I didnât figured that out earlier, but ok.
Has anybody an Idea how I could solve an Issue like: State of the game: 4 TCs + 16 farmers, but you need to place another 6 farms to sustain vill production. Shall I just substract the cost value of the needed extra farms? What about the Vills needed for that which currently are working on wood (or other ressources)? Because once you have the more farmers you have less on other ressources to initiate further booming (new TCs). The thing is, âBalanced ecoâ is such a vague and abstract term because of the timing influences. For a âbalancedâ eco you need to sometimes overproduce certain ressources for later investments, so an âbalancedâ eco is basically never really âbalancedâ, but rather an ever shifting distribution.
Has someone an Idea how to approach that problem?
Now Iâm confused. You said this but in the picture we can see Saracens have different time than other generic civs.
I guess you didnât show this on the picture. Anyway Iâm surprised that they are that good. I thought they would be very close to Portuguese. Anyway can you provide the BO for Saracens?
IMO, if you play in a standard way (the current meta) Vikings, Franks and Mayans and the best Eco civs followed very closed by Aztecs and Indians and now Poles in early stages of the game
The best Eco civs are Cumans and Chinese, but you need very particular BO to take a true advantage
Other civs that are OP in terms of Eco are Malay, Burgundians and Saracens but you need to change a lot the way you need to play them
No, itâs not in that picture yet, I will upload a new one once I corrected the problem with the âunbalanced ecoâ at the begginning of the calculation.
Just wanted to state. Creating a new picture has proven extremely difficult with excel, as the form of graph shown can only be achived by manually copy/paste and arrange different data, as certain functions of excel that i was used to donât exist anymore, like for example transponed links or automatic colum names⊠This xxx new excel completely confuses me.
No, I havenât made special buildorders for the civs. I tried to make some with cumans and malay to figure out how much use you can get from the market abuse, but I never found builds that were satisfying. Seems Iâm definetely not that kind of âcreating buildordersâ guy. But maybe my calcs could help other people to find new buildorders with these civs, optimally abusing the market, if I can tell them to which price (and how much gold in the end) should optimally be converted to gain the most benefit.
I also donât claim that my calcs are perfect, but I try to get as close as possible at least.
Edit: Here the graph with saracens market abuse:
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Now with Bohemians.
Bohemians perform way better than I expected, actually. The fervored Villagers farming increase is quite strong in the midgame, also the stone mining bonus helps a bit to place additional TCs.
Still, Bohemians arenât a top booming civ in comparison to the other powerhouses. But the civ actually performs better than I initially assumed. I think it is absolutely justified to make a monastery and favor quite early in castle age just for the economical benefit - and take the higher speed of the vills as a âfreeâ bonus to the protection of your eco.
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Would you mind to summarize your approach here since the infos are scattered across many posts? Especially in regards to what builds you are using? Bc if do 24+0 fc with Khmer for instance I dont see how civs as Britons or chinese are able to keep up with that. I mean if you play a regular fast feudal and military your lists matches experience but if itâs straight fc and boom even vikings and cumans have a hard time keeping up with something like khmer or malay if you use the correct BOs.
I tried to summarize here: Best eco civ - #18 by casusincorrabil, but itâs only the basic concept. I will try to answer your questions so you may get an insight of my working process.
At some time I will make a structured explanation in my original thread where I sarted this. From that starting point I continually optimised, corrected, consisted and added things to the original calc, so I also need time to collect all this and find narratives for my workaround for certain problems that are complicated to implement. Speaking of one of these problems:
For all kind of these âbuild order relatedâ advantages I chose to make the orange bar. As you see, Khmer have a quite big orange bar. That means I approximately calced how much these civs can profit from these kind of buildorders to improve their boom. Generally speaking, for all Civs I use the same initial buildorder and calculate from that how much they are âaheadâ at the time where they start full booming. The Buildorder I use is a FC into 4 TC boom I made with magyars. As I calced at some point that directly 4 TC boom is stronger than 3 TC - at least for standard civs.
Speaking about Khmer, they are initally very far ahead - but actually not more than chinese and malay. But Khmer boom is also better and they would make the 4th place if you would just look on the âeco potentialâ. But they need to skip important buildings to get to this that need to be build at some point anyways, so I correct them (as other comparable civs too) by assuming you have to build these buildings after your boom. On the other hand I also accounted for them not needing to spend any time in feudal, so they can go up later to feudal but reach castle faster with the same eco. Because of that they can start their castle age vill production earlier and this is reflected in my calc. Just to explain, how I solve these kind of problems. Khmer are an insanely strong booming civ, no question about that. But other civs have actual even better bonusses to their boom, at least according to my calculation. If you can show me the opposite, feel free to do so.
Just to explain the reason why the khmer boom isnât necessarily the best: Their bonus helps them to get the fastest uptimes, but that means when they reach castle, they have less eco behind - they maybe start with 3 tcs - but others can delay their uptime a bit and then immediately make a 4 tc boom with all the ressources they gathered more from delaying to go up. When the Khmer player finally can add extra TCs the other civs already sustained 4 tc vill production for quite a time.
And I even Think khmer canât sustain 3 tc boom with a 24 + 0 popup outside black forest with all the hunt. I think 24 pop with almost no bunkered ressources canât sustain 3 tc vill production - you need 15+ farms for that! But tbh I never tried this.
Chinese have more vills to start with, an insane bonus especially if you delay your uptime to make a 4 tc boom. I also I assumed that Chinese get 0 TC idle time which in theory is possible, but practically I never saw anybody to do this. But the calc canât assume for human mistakes, so I must leave it as it is, even if it is a bit âunrealisticâ. Also the tech discount of chines is quite handy to improve the boom, too. Especially if you make a build that gets all the important eco upgrades asap when reaching castle. Britons cheaper TCs are also extremely useful as they not only allow you to add more farms because of the saved wood, but also add extra tcs âsmootherâ and with less vills (I calced Britons should make the extra TCs with 2 vills (like sicilians). This saves another 75 or so wood.
Just to explain a few of the things I made to account for different civ boni and why some civs look better in the stats than they are often played - britons wood lose about 5 ranks if they built their tcs with 5 vills like standard civs. Chinese would lose about the same if they have 25 sec tc idle time at the start of the game.
Well the calcs show that vikings can hold their own in terms of booming against these civs. Vikings just donât have much to boom into, they arenât a good lategame civ. The free HC is an insane booming bonus, one of the strongest eco bonusses in the game and this is reflected in the calcs. Besides Khmer can have faster uptimes and more initial ressources, the VIking eco is actually overall stronger and they can catch up and even overtake with their boom.
Cumans second TC is sick - here I actually chose to make a special build with placing exactly 8 feudal farms and buying myself up to get a 18:20 uptime. This is the only civ where I chose to make a special build as their feudal TC is so special. Note that this only works for cumans with market abuse - without the market abuse the cuman eco would be much worse. And cumans are the only ones to get away with âdamagingâ their eco to get a faster uptime by selling gold for higher values as this technique allows them to go up to castle age faster - this way they can sustain their vill lead and transit into a full boom (immediately + 2 tcs after reaching castle) at a competitive time (18:20).
If you would play cumans normally, they would ofc be the worst of all, not being any better than thecivs at the bottom of the list.
Cumans are the only civ that got this kind of special treatment yet. But if you can show me a Khmer build that can outperform my cuman build, I would be glad to implement this. I need any savegame with an ingame timestamp of 18 +/- 1 minutes in arabia 3 deer. Then I can calculate the end time of the boom from that.
I think that Cumans and Vikings arenât seen as good booming civs because they donât have much to âboom intoâ. Not because they canât boom, itâs just⊠You donât want to overboom with them as your lategame is quite weak. You better take your midgame advantage and snowball with military. Tatars also share the same fate somehow. Besides they have an insane lategame comp, you want to have pop space for that comp.