Gurjaras' Mills

I don’t think they will keep the sheeps inside generation food until mill is destroyed… and even if this does, the sheep will eject it or killed with the mill? :face_with_monocle:

Garrisoning sheep bonus + faster elephant and camel production + extra bonus damage for mounted units= new hoang strategy for maps with lots of sheep?

Sounds really good on practice but not possible as you need to build the mill to do this.

Sounds like fun and might even be viable simply due to training time. It’s like 17sec tt Vs 30 sec for a scout. Unless they nerf feudal tt like eagles.

Will certainly be an option Vs the usual scrush civs. On acropolis and those super open maps as well.

Godspeed on your quest, remember us when you’re famous among the 700 elos :purple_heart:.

so Its too slow to be useful huh

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My guess would have been 5 per mill, giving roughly the same food as an extra farm. I wasn’t that far off on the rate, but 10 per mill is a nice extra, makes the whole thing a lot easier to manage.

Edit: And I think his analysis is right. Instamill, ruling out a super early drush, start with berries under TC, perfect boar management to prevent idle villagers, perfect house management plus straggler trees if needed to afford a lumbercamp. Eat the sheep around the time your berries run out, now you’ve got a little bit of extra food to smooth the transition to feudal age and go cavalry. Probably two horse scouts first to get to the initial damage output needed to attack, for their vision and to make him think spearmen rather than archers, then add camels. Play a bit more conservatively in late feudal age than with a standard scout rush, as anything left alive will still have value in castle age.

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Seem powerful for Water Nomad

It’s slow speed stops it from being broken OP.

Think of a map where there’s lots of herdables. It could be broken if it was fast. Plus, your allies giving you more herdables.

It’s more of a long term reward thing.

I think with pushing deer you can get away with using your sheep for the mill. Having basically 1 food-relic throughout the game (except for the first 1-2 minutes) seems quite decent to me and worth it to have less food under the TC, as long as you can still get to Feudal in a normal time.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not an amazing eco bonus, but I think (and hope) it’s still worth going for and something interesting.

I think people will take 2 sheep, garrison 6, and push deer.

I’m not so sure. Food is not much of a problem in long games. What’s a few more farms? But just a bit more food can make a big difference either fighting in feudal or saving up for castle age and maybe some knights, before you have a hundred villagers and several farm upgrades. Even just actually taking sheep to pay for said farm upgrades a little earlier while seeding your farms a bit later can save quite a lot of wood and inefficiency in the long run.

I used to be a big fan of saving up for the long run, using light cav in an effort to still have gold in late imperial age, stuff like that. But at some point I stopped trusting that instinct in aoe2. Why kill tomorrow what you can maim today?

But I’m curious how the meta shakes out for this in a few weeks. This might actually turn out to be one of those things where you have several good options (ignore it, instamill into eating herdables last, eat some, save all).

This would be the best case scenario though :slight_smile:

What I would consider in favor of saving the sheep is that it’s not like you just let go of 800 food you could have had. It’s also 800 food you don’t need to spend time gathering with your vills and can make them do something else. It’s still a downside of course, but as said before I could see it being small enough to justify for that constant food income (even though I agree, it’s a very minor thing for the mid and lategame)

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You can actually sustain vill production with not taking any it seems. So you can potentially garrison all 8 and then eat them in feudal on open maps (or leave them in on closed maps).

Imo the rate is kinda low, but the amount of food you can get by garrisoning them is not that bad, about 250 free food when you still eat them in feudal + 250 food on the bushes.

It’s not that bad of an eco bonus actually, though I think that the bengals bonus is stronger.

But I would like it more if it was the mentioned 5 f / minute at least that would justify leave the sheep in in feudal… garrisoning them to eat them later feels weird.

Actually it is around 710 due to meat rotting.

I think you should save at least 4. 2 Berries = 250 food = 3 sheep - 15 food. So you can save 3 sheep without any problem. Save 1 more as you have hunt animals so 4 sheep in total. You will be around 100 food short in Dark Age which 4 sheep will payback in about 7 minutes. Later they will work as a small food relic.

True just need some of the best eco management skills of the game. I’m thinking people under 1400 (Can ve lower or higher) elo better not try this and mess up build order. Instead they should be happy with +250 food and slight wood saving for delaying farms which is still not bad. For 2000+ elo, as always they can work with this bonus a lot.

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So is this bonus also weak?

On maps with tons of herdables. It’s quite powerful. If it was quite fast with 8 sheep, it could be OP.

I think 1 sheep = 3.5 food/min in dark age, 5 f/m feudal, 6.5 f/m castle, 8 f/m imp would be more interesting.

The bonus should reward you for having your sheep in the mill the longer the game is played. Also, the later the game goes on the less food is important so it wouldn’t be too strong.

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Free food is free food.

The main worry I think is that at lower elo’s in particular people are going to put the sheep in the mill, mess up their management of their other resources, idle their TC for a while, go into farms too early and still expect it to work as a bonus, and then get mad that this is one of the worst civs.

For higher elo players and people who practice this civ specifically it’s probably a decent food bonus. Just one that takes some work to use.

On maps with extra herdables it could be a really good bonus, on par with or better than the Brittons’ faster butchering bonus.

Whether the civ as a whole will be good and can make the bonus work, that one is a little early to tell for me.

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