Is anyone going with dark age golden age because of the new buff (15% gather rate up from 10%)? I tried it with a single TC opener and dark age wheelbarrow upgrade a few times. I can get the 1st tier golden age in about 4.5 minutes and Feudal in about 7 minutes by building 1 mill, 1 lumber camp, 2 mining camps, 1 HOW, 5 houses, and maybe substitute an outpost for a house or a mining camp. I noticed the landmark TC doesn’t count as one of the 10. Has anyone created any good build orders for this? Obviously the quick golden age is greedy and vulnerable to early aggression, but it pays off pretty quickly.
My typical build order is age up to feudal at about 4:10-4:30 and I get the first tier golden age at about 7-9 minutes. This allows me to rush some horsemen or tower rush to harass while I prepare for castle age. Abbasid are pretty terrible all in during the feudal.
I figure that if I go golden age in 4.5 minutes I beat my typical golden age by about 3 minutes. I have about 18-20 villagers by 4.5 minutes. I figure I make well over 325 extra resources in that time (see below). The arithmetic below doesn’t take into account that up to 9 additional villagers are being built during the three minutes or possibly the wheelbarrow upgrade too. Nor does it consider the extra 200 or so wood spent on houses and extra mining camp. Those resources are hardly wasted as they are useful to have as the match progresses.
[(18 villagers)(40 resources per minute base gather rate)(0.15 increased efficiency rate)(3 minutes)=324 resources.
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Abbasid primary strength is 2 TC or 3 TC booming in Feudal with Fresh Foodstuff. The faster you can get to Feudal, and the faster you get your second TC up, the better.
Building buildings before you actually need them is actually damaging you since you could invest those resources in an additional TCs or in units (if you need to defend).
And you will still reach Golden Age tier 1 fairly fast, but with an economy that increases faster since you get more workers faster.
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With a small amount of vilagers FFS is probably worth more than first golden age. My eco build aims for wheelbarrow, FFS, 2nd TC and 1st golden age at minute 7.
What could be decent is to age up quickly, build production to create some early harass units and to hit the 1st golden tier and then use the eco boost to go into TCs.
this is always my goal, but i only seem to play against French, English, and HRE all-in’s every single game so it rarely works out. regardless of how quick i get up, they are typically faster. the strength of this pays off exponentially if you don’t die in the first 12 min~ or so though
The good point about abbasid is that you don’t need gold in feudal, since you can build rams without investigate, and archers, pikes and horsemen uses only wood.
So, if you are getting attacked in early feudal, I recommend you put only 2 villagers in gold (to slowly getting into castle), and put a lot in wood and food (depending if you are producing or building, swap them into your needs).
You will be fast putting a lot of towers to defend, and spamming archers or pikes or whatever unit you need to defend, and in some time you will realize that you have the enough gold and food to get to castle age.
Also don’t forget that rams are good also to defend, for example, from an english trying to build towers near your base, and you can build them without researching.
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I agree with you all of you. However, playing too defensively is reactive, predictable and easy to exploit. You’re presenting the conventional way to play Abbasid and I enjoy that style of play very much. I’m just trying to think outside the box.
The weakness with this style of two TC’s is getting eliminated before the military is present for a good defense. IE Good luck putting up two TC’s in seven minutes against an aggressive English, HRE, or French player. Their armored units and rams will march all over you. While they have map control and pick off a few villagers they might as well put up more town centers too. Typically against aggressive civs I attempt to harass with horsemen or tower rush their gold while I age up and get some mangonels and crossbowmen or whatever is appropriate.
I’ll tinker a little bit and maybe put a draft build order on here people could use to experiment with a speedy golden age. It probably isn’t a competitive strategy, but I want to give it a shot.
Ok, I have a basic build order posted below.
Some notes:
- I noticed when selecting workers and highlighting the golden age buff in the feudal age it said the increase in gather rate was only 10%. It should say 15% according to the update.
- All the times could be faster, I’m not that great at this game and haven’t mastered the build order. On the last run through my TC was idle for 40 seconds because I was so busy trying to oversee construction! lol
- It was tricky deciding what and where to build to avoid villagers idling or walking across the base to get to the next task. Ideally, the builders should finish construction near food or gold so they can gather those resources.
- This was done in skirmish mode with no opponent.
Golden age tier 1 @ 2:25
Feudal age @ 6:02
2nd TC @ 7:15
- 4 lumber camp/wood
- 2 berries
- 1 wood
- 3 build - house, HOW, housex3, mining campx2
- Once enough wood is obtained for the golden age building, move 4 lumberjacks to food and one to gold.
- Queue up remaining workers to food and one to gold until age-up.
- As construction winds up move builders to food
- Research FFS immediately at Feudal age-up
As abbasid, is crucial getting into castle fast. Putting an upgraded tower on enemys gold and harass the other gold with horsemen, just to gain time, sometimes is enough to stop an english/french from rush.
They are every time the ones attacking, and they usually don’t expect to be attacked that way. That distraction gives enough time to get into castle.
I agree about getting quickly up to castle. That’s why I always go with FFS. It saves food to get you to castle faster. Arguably you could get similar economic benefit by going culture wing first and getting eco techs, but that strat doesn’t emphasize food enough.
Yep, culture wing is also good but I usually unlock culture wing to get into castle. Economic upgrades when you have not enough villagers are not worth it.
I read somewhere that they start to be worth from 15 villagers in a resource, but I didn’t do the maths.
That’s the advantage of the golden age. All resources get the buff, not just the one resource.
15 villagers x 115% of the base gather rate is like having 17.25 villagers. Gather rate doesn’t impact villager walking time; wheelbarrow upgrades the walking time. Which is especially good for farming, hunting, and lumberjacking.
Yes, I meant the economic research upgrades. Imo they are not worth it until castle age.
My typical build order is feudal age with eco wing, then fresh foodstuffs, and research wing with preservation of knowledge, then I get rhe first eco upgrades (+15% to each resource on the pertinent camp).
For me it works fine and saves a lot of resources.
I think it makes sense to get food or wood chopping upgrades in the feudal age. Forestry is super cheap too. If you ever play the Forest Nothing mod it is a must.