What do you think about silk road? Is it good enough for a Fast Imperial into trade in Arena?
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I wondered this question now. I don’t know, I didn’t play Italians in real game for now. You need Castle, and making trade units when you have gold mine and making less military a little bit bad for your team. I think it depends, I usually start trading when it’s late game. I think gold mines faster and safer gold source (After checking source I found with first gold upgrade gold mining faster).
Source: AoE2 Database App on Play Store
I mean trade in early not worth it according to this information. I don’t know how it works in a real game. I usually see after fast imp players don’t make any Town Centers from videos (AI and pro players). I think after fast castle booming and creating some army on Castle Age. When you advance to next age getting Silk Road better. Italian Players can answer better, I just looked at numbers.
Thanks
So it seems only a tech that smooths your transition to trade, instead of replacing goldmining entirely.
What a shame, i wanted to try fast imperial into lots of trade into heavy gold comp (condos/GC/BBC)
Edit: however, feitorias work worse than 20 villagers and fast imperial into feitorias is a thing…
not in 1vs1, but in a team game… also not good, does this topic still need to be discussed? maybe I didn’t understand and it’s actually a good idea to leave the Italians without a second technology outside of team games? this is definitely bad for the charm of italian civ
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I wondering do you have spanish trade? do you have map control to secure a trade route? But probably game will be over before you can profit of that build order. But never tried it! Still mining gold seems the more reasonable thing. There could be some slinging involved (giving resources to the team) but dont think is fun.
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Enemy will delete Market for sure.
Think Cuman Mercenaries. Not all of unique techs needs to be good like Teutons and Turks.
It depends you are right. If your team enough to hold enemy team maybe you can do it. Trade route length important too. In addition Trade Cogs can make more gold (in maps like coastal).
this does not change anything, and Cuman Mercenaries is actually stronger and most importantly more fun
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Slinging can be fun once you are swimming in lots of gold… I doubt this strategy would allow to sling a lot of gold.
Portuguese fastimperial into feitorias can work a bit because it has a faster impact than a standard boom despite being ineffecient in the long term. Also, Portuguese have gold discount which make this easier to abuse.
Italians at least have the ageing up discount and the gunpowder discount. This is why I thought on silkroad, as a way to spam trade carts to balance your economy. The problem is that trade carts have 51 seconds of training time… A lot of markets is needed to spam trade carts quickly.
I asked viper to do this in a match. Hope he sees my message and consider it as a trolling tool strategy.
Silk road can allow you to sooner and easier, but you shouldn’t see it as way to get gold from trade earlier, but more like a long term investment that pays back by stockpiling gold.
The tech is good because it allows you to save wood and gold in imp when you are starting trade. This can be used either to keep production of military units or to train more carts sooner, and by so getting more gold (again, in the long run).
It also means that you are less susceptible to raids on your trade lines, because it cost you less to replace you trade carts. The tech itself allows pays itself back after only 10 carts.
Of course while there is gold on the maps you should take that, but avoid to start trading only after that gold has run out, otherwise it’ll be difficult to train those carts.
Well, not all UT or bonus needs to be used in 1v1, the same applies for the spanish team bonus, which is useless in 1v1.
Also, italians have problems in feudal and castle age, not in late imp.
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TB≠UT
Kasbah is a perfect sample, and all similar UT are not useless in 1vs1 the Vietnamese have already changed in this direction, and only the Italians are left useless in 1vs1 and not affecting other players
Yes but the principle is the same. It applies to units too, for example elephants and paladins are units that are really rare in 1v1, but common in team games.
In the specific case of silk road, it’s a bonus that affects trade, so it can’t have a use outside of team games, but in those it let you save a lot of resources.
The same is for spanish and portos team bonus, that doesn’t have a use outside of team games. Paper money is useful in 1v1 too, but is in team games that it really give you back it’s real value.
Also, Portos and Spanish team bonuses are still more useful in teamgames that Ethiopian’s one…
This strategy requires to much of an investment. In order to outboom a player with 4 TC you need to build about 15-20 markets in addition to your starting TC and constantly pump out tradecarts. The reasons for such an insane number are
- you start your production much later than other players
- markets produce trade carts in twice the time it takes to produce a villager
- trade is inefficient on Arena because everyone is close to the middle, so one trade cart is worse than one villager
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Elephants are a problem, and paladins aren’t exactly the same.
I’m not against team UTs in the game, but silk tech is frankly a bad level, it has a lot to improve
My point was that both are costly units that have costly upgrades, and that’s why it’s usually not worth in 1v1 and you see them almost only in TG.
Silk tech it pays itself after only 10 trade carts, from there onward it’s all resources saved that can allow you to train more military units.
The only problem is that it’s useless in 1v1, but on TG it’s actually powerful.
I don’t think it’s powerful, but at the same time I don’t play much TGs and always limit myself to 20-30
trading units. hmm, if you make 100 trade carts, the savings will be 2350G and 5000W and 500F spent, well, it’s powerful
Fast imperial strategies are done to overcome your opponent with superior military units/trebuchets. This advantage lasts for short time until your rivals age up to imperial with superior economy.
I wouldn’t make this exclusively for 100% booming, because in that case it would be better booming from castle age, as you pointed. I would use this only for buffer my lack of economy after a fast imperial while producing imperial military units (condos, trebs, BBCs, etc), so the economical disadvantage is less noticed in the long term in case my enemies reach imperial.
But I am conscious that this may not make sense at all…
Well, with 20-30 trade carts the save is between 500w/250g and 1000w/500g. Plus, you save on every cart that you need to replace after a raid.
SOTL explains it well on it’s review about the Italians (the video is old, but silk hasn’t changed since then so…).
In this case the issue is that yin FI you need to invest heavily into military to overwhelm your opponent. You can’t casually afford 750 res on silk road, 400 res on caravan and 750 res on carts (and that’s assuming you have both market and castle). Maybe if you struggle to find damage with your FI you can stop making military and transition into eco (possibly with trade carts), but that’s definitely not something you should do while trying to kill your opponent in a short time window.
Understandable. So the tech is only useful for last teamgames after an standard boom, when you want to transition to trade eco. Not more uses such as a boom replacement, etc.