Ok, here’s what I’ve got watching your rec:
Your play:
- Started chopping straggler trees with only 5 on sheep (you only want to chop stragglers if you’re waiting for the wood for farms, and you want to start with 6 on sheep)
- Built a mill before getting your first boar, you want to do this after getting the first boar
- No lumbercamp at first, and had 4 vils on stragglers, it’s far more effective to build a lumbercamp
- Decent management of the sheep, not killing too many or anything, you’ll do a lot better with 6 vils instead of 5 on sheep
- Still using stragglers even after building a lumbercamp, this is super bad for efficiency
- Boar not being lured until all sheep are finished, this is super bad. Your starting build should usually be:
- 6 on sheep
- 4 on wood (build a lumbercamp)
- Lure first boar with next villager, and transfer shepherds to boar
- 4 on mill by berries
- Lure second boar
- 5 on a new lumbercamp
- Get loom (if it’s an open map)
- Advance to Feudal
- You need to work on keeping the TC running, you had 36 seconds of idle TC by 6 mins, which is a whole vil and a bit you’re sacrificing
- Going to gold in Dark age. This is a horrible play, and one you should basically never do before you click up to Feudal (there are a few exceptions, but right now, they won’t matter), you’re just wasting villager work time that would be far more helpful elsewhere
- Badly done boar lures, you want them at the timings I mentioned above, and run the vil past the TC, bringing your shepherds off sheep as you do so, instead of waiting for the sheep to run out
- You never, ever go on stone in dark age, unless you have a very specific plan for it, and know how to make the timing work, it’s a complete and utter waste of villager work time
- Don’t send all your vils out to lure boar, you both do it, and it’s really bad. It means each vil has to walk out there, instead of using a proper build order, and timing it right so you don’t get all this wasted time
- Once in Feudal, you want to pick up Double Bit Axe and Horse Collar as soon as you can, especially before you start heavy duty farming
- By 15 mins you had 1:48 minutes of idle TC, which is almost 4 villagers behind where you could be
- By 16 mins, you were floating about 400 wood, and had your buildings to go up to Castle. At this point, you could definitely pull villagers off wood, and drop some farms so you can click up, and boom, which is a good play as Vikings
- Don’t put your military buildings outside your walls, it lets the enemy see what you’re doing, and leaves them vulnerable
- I hate the tower play, it doesn’t do anything. It’s outside your walls, so melee units will kill it easily, and it wouldn’t even protect anything, it’s super easy to avoid. It’s a waste of perfectly good stone, and considering you were about 50 seconds away from Castle, and not in any danger, you definitely should have waited to drop a castle instead
- I’d just like to point out the irony of you complaining a lot about people tower/castle dropping you, and then you plan to do it to Orange. It is a decent idea though
- Don’t get upgrades for units you don’t have, researching Man-at-Arms was pointless at the point you did it
- Castle placement was decent, it denied both stone, and a woodline, unfortunately neither were in use, and it couldn’t range either TC nearby
- I like the 3TC play, but I wish the 3rd TC had gone on the gold + woodline to the right of your base instead of just a woodline
- I really don’t like the tower plays, a tower can’t deny a Castle, and it’ll just get knocked down, total waste of stone
- If you’re starting a castle war, you need to get archer upgrades
- 3TC is only good if you’re going to boom, which you didn’t, you need constant villager production out of all TCs, I recommend playing the Art of War booming tutorial until you can at least get silver. Also, get a hotkey for “Select all TCs” and start using it
- The lack of commitment to a strat is not good. You want to boom? Then go for at least 3 TCs, and pump out vils constantly, until you have at least 120. You want to castle drop? Place it strategically, and follow up with military. You did a washed out form of both, which isn’t as effective as doing one properly
- If the enemy castle can suddenly range you, and it couldn’t before, you need to pick up archer attack upgrades ASAP, and start repairing for a bit
- 4th TC placement is really nice, that’s where I would have put either the 2nd or 3rd, but still, that was good
- Orange reaches Imp, you know he’s going to treb you, and you don’t do anything to set up military? Didn’t pour out Berserks/Archers. Archers would be a great play, Malay would have trouble against it
- You’re literally making no military, which seems to be a consistent problem. Pick a unit comp you want to get to (in this case probably Berserks + Arbs), and work to get there, instead of waiting until it’s too late
- Heavy Scorpions are a bad choice. You didn’t know what orange was training, but you knew the others had various cav, heavy scorp is not a good call. Pikes, maybe you could justify with Chieftains. I would have gone Berserks and Arbs for sure
- Fortified walls was also a bad call I think, once again, you need military, not all these defenses
- Although I think heavy scorp was the wrong army comp, it certainly works against Karambits. Of course, they are one of the weakest units in the game, but still
- Your army got wiped, and you didn’t change, which is a sign there’s a problem. You really needed to change your army comp after all the heavy scorps got shredded, although by that point, I suppose it didn’t matter
- Don’t trickle treb, you want at least 3 or 4 (ideally 4 +) before you attack, because the enemy gets less time to respond
- If you’re floating 11k food, you want to use it, either invest in military, or tech, (you don’t need eco at this point), or see if any allies need it (Teal did)
Yellow’s (Ghatak’s) play:
- Killed several sheep early on, and then couldn’t collect all the food, decreasing efficiency by a fair bit
- Barely any lumberjacks early on, slightly better because they are Huns, but not good
- Sent out 6 villagers to lure a boar, terrible play, super inefficient, you only want 1
- Boar lure done badly, the boar died several tiles away from the TC
- Also used straggler trees a lot, no lumber camp early on, and poorly handled eco balance in the first 5 mins at least
- Decent job at keeping the TC running in the early game, 7 seconds idle at 6 mins
- Pushed deer, this is a pretty decent skill move. No berries though early on, so it kind of cancels out
- Built the mill 2 tiles away from berries, which is less efficient, you want either 1 tile, or a no tile gap
- Lured the second boar really badly as well
- Put 12 vils on a single lumbercamp, this induces a lot of bumping, and makes them really inefficient, you want to split them onto additional camps once you start getting above 6 (in the early game at least)
- Started farming without finished berries, which could situationally be ok, but this wasn’t one of those situations. They were floating a lot of wood though, which makes it a bit more justified
- Built a barracks outside the walls, meaning anyone can easily see it, making it more likely their tactics can be predicted
- Going on stone in Feudal, which is not a good play, unless you plan to build a Castle (and as Huns, this would not be my go to Arena strat, although I guess Tarkans could work)
- Added extra TCs, which is good, but the placement was horrible. You want your second TC on a woodline, and your 3rd to be on a resource you need for your strat, such as gold if you’re doing a gold intensive strategy, or stone if you want UUs
- Horrible castle placement, basically in the middle of no-where, built by 2 vils, and does basically nothing strategically
- Really good job keeping the TC running, almost constant villager production
- Lumbercamps should be refreshed once villagers start walking too far
- By playing their eco well, they were then able to reach Imp, and start knight production
- The really nice eco handling makes a huge difference, it’s what lets them do Paladin production
- The raiding was a super smart play, why bother fighting the army on the frontlines if you can destroy the eco, and stop the player replacing their army?
And now for the final analysis and verdict:
Yellow’s early game eco was horrible. Really bad. The thing they had going for them was knowing how to boom with 3TCs. Basically just by keeping them running the whole time, they were able to out-eco everyone. And when it comes to the gold, you’re not considering all the facts. Red was defeated early on, having mined only 2.6k gold. Once the gold in yellow’s base started running out, he then started taking it from the neutral territory, and the ashes of red’s base. Because no-one pressured them at any point however, they were able to easily amass all the gold, which was then converted to paladin production. So no, they weren’t a smurf, and considering they have 900 elo, I would say they are at the right elo, you just had the misfortune of being matched in this way. Also, ask yourself this, before you go round pointing the finger and reporting people “If they were in my team, would I still accuse them of smurfing?” Pressuring yellow early on would have made a big difference. Another game changer would be if you picked a better army comp, that could have shifted things a lot. Green aging up faster, and getting paladins out sooner would have helped. The biggest thing might have been if literally anyone decided to make Halbs at a point where it would have made a difference. By the time blue started making Halbs, he had lost his base anyway. So overall, no, they weren’t a smurf, they were just slightly higher elo than you, and really good at keeping their TCs running, and their lategame. Their early game was not good at all in terms of eco balance.
That took me over an hour and a half to write, so if you actually read it, took some of it in, and improved at the game, that would be great.