Mill before berries as japanese/mongols

Heya if you dont have the micro to lure deer what do people thibk of milling them before berries. You will get faster food and it only costs 50 wood as japanese or super fast as mongols.

First of all berries do not give you food slower than milling deer, because forager have basically no walking time and the berry mill is build way closer to the tc.

Second it depends on the map.
On the recent version of arabia the deer is really close to the tc. So probably it’s easier to shift queue 4 villagers (after the sheep ran out) on each deer and then on wood and forget about them. While not building an additional mill for the deer. Even with mongols.
The only exception I can think of on arabia is if there are 4 deers and you have the japanese mill.

With the assumption that you don’t have a clear dark age and want to safe attention on not pushing/watching your hunting villager, I would always use 4 villagers and shift queue. After your sheep ran out.
I would build a mill only, if there are at least 4 deers (3 deers with japs) and the deers are far away.

Note that you don’t have to push all. On arabia you can push only a single deer and shift queue the vills back to a stragler or sheep. That way you learn pushing and also you don’t have the awkwark food low, before the first deer delivery arrives.

If someone knows the exact break even points of deer count, deer distance and mill cost, please correct me 11

1 Like

I think I got from an old Spirit of the Law video that a patch of 4 deer is generally worth milling. Pushing them in is of course more resource efficiënt, but milling 4 deer should still beat investing the wood in early game farms, which is the main point of comparison, because you’ll be eating those berries anyway. Whether you do this before or after milling the berries should not make the hugest difference I think. Except probably if and when an enemy druch finds your hunters, that would be bad. Berries are also a nice stable food income source with which nothing can really go wrong, and it’s in a part of the map you’ll probably be looking at semi-regularly anyway. The main problem with milling deer in practice is not getting too much idle time by not noticing your hunters have run out of deer. But still, my rule of thumb is “patch of four deer, mill goes here”.

Iv noticed how close the deer are on arabia now and thats why I was thinking go mill the 3-4 deer then send then to berries or 2nd lumbercamp(whatever seams closest.)

11 nice rhyme bro.

But I would not even mill on hideout or arena, if the 4 deer is inside.
I don’t know for sure.

If you can push even just some of them that’s better anyway. And I’ve also seen pros just plain sending villagers to the one or two closest deer without pushing. It’s certainly not the only option. But free food is still free food…

it’s better than farming

problem is milling has micro too. you have to babysit the 3 villagers so they don’t take two trips to each deer. or you have to send 4 and waste some efficiency. command queue doesn’t work either for some reason

the mill is fine with japan. with other civs you usually want 4 deer before it’s better than walking

Yea I always thought about it like this. If you can’t/don’t want to push deer it’s still good to mill deer.

2 farms: 120 wood 350 food dark age
Mill 3 deer: 100 wood 420 food

More food for less resources = Win!
probably faster too, even with walking since farm collection is slowed by so much walking anyway.

So with Japanese absolutely for sure it’s good to mill deer.

I’m not sure if this is the right comparison, I think you should compare milling with long distance gathering. You need to take into account deer position aswell, if they’re exposed there’s the chance of getting pushed out from deers, losing the mill investment.

My thoughts was go deer before berries. So that when my opponent hits fuedal and get scouts out iv moved from deer to berries and all my stuff would be small walled.

2 Likes

Generally milling dear as Japanese makes perfect sense. And you’re right that it’s a faster income. They gather faster and carry more. However you’ll have more walking time to go to deer and the income isn’t constant (hunters carry a lot and it’s a bit awkward to force drop) so before click up that can you give some problems. So I’d always go to berries first and then mill dear on my way to feudal or so.

If you play Land Nomad you’ll see that there is no such thing as too many mills on deer. It’s no different to continue milling deer patches than building farms except that it’s less wood and more food. I dont think building a second mill would really mess up build orders unless it’s a tight one that requires a large wood investment straight into feudal like scouts

Farm comparison is off bc we’re talking dark age here. Usually you start farming on your way to or after you reach feudal. Especially as japanese you’ll probably go fast feudal and maa or as mongols scouts.

It’s not about the wood investment, at least not if you’re Japanese. As. mongols you indeed cant afford 2 mils in dark age with their fast uptimes. But the overarching point is that by milling dear you’ll lose food efficiency in dark age. You have to send vils to dear which are always farer away compared to dear on standard maps. Then berries give you a constant income while hunters carry so much food that you need to force drop most of the time to click up to feudal which is pretty awkwardness with milled dear. That’s the reasoning for open maps. On closed maps you’ll push the dear either way so it doesn’t matter. Maybe on mega random or nomad it might makes sense.

Of course you can. If you think it’ll help with what you want to do then go for it.
With Japanese I even do this occasionally.
With Mongols the biggest downside is you probably won’t get away with only having 3 on wood anymore which will delay feudal.
Remember though that the additional benefit from pushing 1 deer is much greater than the additional benefit of getting 4 deer instead of 3. There’s diminishing returns on each deer. 1 deer is ideal in many cases cus you want to go scout anyway.
If you’re going archers then deer aren’t so important. For scouts it’s essential to get at least 1.

1 Like