they are useless in castle age anyway because they cost 200 food. no one can afford that kind of food for a unit while they are trying to boom at the same time.
and this wouldn’t do it, because they cost 200 food each. you aren’t going to be able to afford that.
they have a better and faster boom, and trash xbows, and a better, faster eco.
@MatCauthon3, @JonOli12 and others who base their arguments for Unit viability on Pop efficiency,
I think you have something to learn about optimal play.
Pop efficiency is far too overrated by the herd on online forums, I suspect this happens because lower level players tend to wait out their games and are far more likely to reach 200 pop all the time, compared to how the game should be played optimally(like in 1650+). Not only that they also play unusual closed maps or high res/post imp-esque settings.
If you are a frequent watcher of pro games since many years, or a pro yourself, after seeing how the game is played optimally, you know that it is only the Cost Efficiency(ROI- return on investment) of the unit-line that matters everytime, it and it alone dictates the unit choices and counters, and also decides the game.
And this Cost Efficiency is majorly affected by not only unit cost but also unit speed(MAJOR FACTOR), counterability of unit(WORST for EA and WE) and net damage output per unit(number of hits) and millitary building cost.
That Population efficiency does not directly figure in any significant way into Return on Investment(ROI) calculations, should be fairly obvious.
Easy to understand if you have an understanding of economic indices.
if population efficiency is overrated, please explain to me why the battle elephant was just nerfed?
you know the problem with his argument? Goths literally get huge production speed to offset the reduced population efficiency of their army. they win by overwhelm, and it works for them, but most civs can’t just outproduce their opponents, thus population efficiency matters. ESPECIALLY against the goths.
you know you aren’t going to out produce them, so you are limited to population efficiency. thanks for making our argument for us though!
I don’t see how u can say persians have a better, faster boom. Yes, they make vills faster, but i think the teuton farm bonus offsets that in allowing u to get more farms and an additional tc up faster. Looking at it the other way around, 40% cheaper farms means 40% fewer lumberjacks to build/sustain those farms. If u are just doing say knights and booming, it takes a long time for Persians to catch up with that on faster TC. Say i can move 3 vills from wood to food as Teutons when doing a fast Castle (so same vills as Persians, but 3 fewer on wood). That’s basically like getting to Castle with 3 extra vills. And the more u boom the more that grows. Difficulty of execution is very important as well. Those cheap farms make executing ur boom a lot easier because balancing ur wood budget is a lot easier.
I will give u trashbows being very useful, but not typically til late Castle, and Teutons offset this by having access to champs (and thus a worthwhile militia line). In team games u will eventually end up in hand cannoneers rather than xbows anyway with either Teutons or Persians, so the trashbows are only significant in late castle/early imp for team games and into super late game in 1v1 (all gold gone).
I think having Mahouts be automatic starting in Castle would actually work much better with the trashbows. Allows u to make a few elephants in late castle and early imp to go with ur crossbows. It basically allows Persians to transition into elephants rather than waiting for Imp and basically all upgrades before u can start using them effectively (because by the time u get to Imp and get Mahouts, u really need the elite upgrade and last 2 blacksmith techs to keep them cost effective).
teuton farms don’t allow them to make villagers faster. it just means their farms are more efficient. which does nothing for how fast you can get workers out. you only need about 7 farmers per tc making villagers.
champs are a poor counter to archer units and get gutted by Persian knights
i agree it helps, but imagine being able to pump out your villagers 15% faster.
i personally believe that persians might need a buff, because the Dark Age nerf was excessive imho, but i also want to see how the pathing change shakes out.
200 food elephants in the castle age? GLWT
U missed my point. Teutons don’t have to make villagers faster than Persians because they don’t need as many vills. That’s what i meant. I think it ends up being close to a wash because when u get to Castle Teutons essentially have a vill advantage which lets them get more farms up, which means they can support more TCs while still making the same army. 15% is a significant but not massive number. If Teutons can support an additional TC that more than offsets the 15% bonus all day long. Think about the math: 15% is between 1/6 and 1/7. So u have to be at 7 TCs on Persians before that bonus is better than Teutons just having an extra TC. And think how easy that extra TC is: 40% cheaper farms is 24 wood saved per farm. U build 12 farms and u save enough wood for another TC. Or u build more farms with the same number of vills and can make more knights or get more upgrades than ur opponents. Counting replants, how many farms do u build by 20 minutes. 25-30? That’s 600-720 wood saved. By 30-40 mins on a strong boom u are talking thousands of wood.
considering you usually enter the castle age with around 25-35 villagers and you want to end the game with around 100-120, it definitely helps.
but its not just about how many tc you have.
for example. lets say they are both on 3 TC. those Villagers getting out faster means they are gathering resources faster. furthermore 10-20% faster might not matter much individually, but it does add up very fast, especially when you’re talking about needing 120 total villagers.
Nope, that’s wrong. Try talking to a pro on stream about how you think pop efficiency barely matters.
I think noone here argues that pop efficiency is more important than cost efficiency (you’re right that cost efficiency is the first thing to look at). But pop efficiency still is still a very important factor, also in pro games where it is a lot about optimizing everything.
Additionally pop efficiency not only games into play in lategame, especially in pro games. Why is it a strong strategy to go 2 (or even 3) stable knights in early Castle Age? Cause they’re pop efficient and noone goes 5 barracks Pikes to counter it - Knights can overpower pikes if they’re not in high numbers. This is linked with build time, but also comes down to pop efficiency since units in AoE2 usually don’t differ that greatly in build time (some UU exceptions to that). By that I mean the a pike, which costs less than 50% of what a knight costs, still is not that far away from him (I think it’s 22 sec vs 30 sec) when it comes to build time.
Again, u missed my point that (a) Teutons can build the same number of buildings and produce the same units with fewer lumberjacks, and (b) Teutons and Persians should not be on the same number of TCs. U can easily build 4 TCs on Teutons vs. 3 TCs on Persians with wood to spare. Who cares if Persian TCs are faster if ur farm bonus is so efficient that u can easily build another one. And Teutons on 4 TCs will significantly outproduce Persians on 3 TCs. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Persian bonus, and i almost always play them over Teutons because i like them better. What frustrates me is unless it’s a water map, i’m blatantly handicapping myself picking Persians over Teutons for the same land map strats. Whatever i plan to do in Feudal and Castle (knights, archers, rams, pikes, whatever), Teutons do it better than Persians. All Persians have on Teutons are camels (very minor difference when Teuton knights and pikes get +1 armor), and TC douche. U basically pick Persians b/c u like elephants more than TK, u like their architecture, and maybe u think u need trashbows for late game. Again, I almost never play Teutons, but i can pick them up with no practice and do any Persian strat more easily.
Besides, if it’s not going to hurt anything, if we all agree elephants are weak and difficult to field in Castle age, why NOT give them Mahouts for free in Castle age? What’s the harm? What does having Mahouts locked behind an imp age unique tech do for the game? I would argue nothing whatsoever. 300 food and 300 gold by the time u plan to make elite war elephants is pretty insignificant.
I do hear pros talk about pop efficiency a lot. They are smart guys, obviously way better at the game than me, but they aren’t perfect.
The empirical evidence that pop efficiency isn’t that important is massive imo. The most pop efficient UUs are rarely made - War elephants, mamelukes, cataphracts, teutonic knights, jaguar warriors, boyars. Two civs with very pop efficient UUs are considered among the worst on land maps (Koreans and Portuguese).
People don’t go 5 barracks pikes (preemptively) because pikes are basically only good vs knights. 2 or 3 stable knights relies somewhat on the element of surprise and mobility - if enemy knew it was coming they would just make spears in feudal (and then upgrade them) and be completely fine despite a less pop efficient army. That, and knights are gold heavy, so they don’t hurt your boom as much.
Final example, what’s the meta these days? Crossbow, a unit ~half the cost of a knight. (Yes, I know pathing…) Pikes+crossbow destroy the more pop efficient knight strat.
if population efficiency is overrated, please explain to me why the battle elephant was just nerfed?
11, because the battle elephant was insanely cost efficient.
Goth win by overwhelm more because of the cost reduction than the increased production speed (no one is afraid of Goths in feudal despite the 20% prod. bonus).
Goth spam wouldn’t work half as well without the extra 10 pop cap. It seems small, but in reality even small differences blow up to huge differences over the long term.
For example, a 20v20 should end with everything dead at the same time. The fight goes dramatically differently than a 20v21 fight, because the one extra focuses on a unit that dies in half the time, allowing two to focus on a third which also dies, allowing them to focus on a fourth.
And Goths always outnumber their enemies. It’s population efficiency built into their civ.
Noobs take forever to get to 200/210 pop yet they still do insanely well with Goths, that 10 pop space isn’t that huge. A 20 vs 21 fight b/w Briton champs and goth champs, the Britons dominate, but Britons still have a very bad WR vs Goths.
If neither side is hitting their pop cap then it’s not really relevant, is it?
And more likely you’d be looking at a 20 v 22 fight, which mathematically will end with one Goth champion remaining with a little health left. But take that to a 40 v 44 fight and things start to blow up, since you have one 22 vs 20 and one 23 v 20, which ends up with several champions remaining, and by the time you get to 100 v 110 you end up with a sweeping victory, due to lanchester’s laws.
Wait, why 22 now, you just said 21 vs 20. Even then, according to the combat simulator the brit champs win 20 vs 22 70% of the time. The rest of your post makes no sense. 100 vs 110, the brit champs still win more often than not.
It was an example meant to demonstrate lanchester’s laws, not specific to the goths?
Interesting simulator by the way, I’ll have to bookmark that. It doesn’t quite match up to my ingame testing, but it works for an approximation. I imagine it doesn’t account for the derpiness of pathfinding.
Anyway, according to the simulator, the break-even point comes at 113 goth champions vs 100 briton ones. This pretty perfectly supports my initial statement, that their strategy wouldn’t work half as well without the bonus population capacity. Especially since in most games you’ll be looking at more like 130 villagers and 70 troops; at this point, the goths do win 70% of the time with 13 survivors.
Increasing the base speed of the War Elephant to 0,69 will have the following result of having a total speed of 0.966 after Husbandry and Mahouts. That put them on the same level as the Archer-line in term of speed.
That would make the WE better at forcing fights against archers, and also better at escaping Halbs. I’m not sure if that buff is needed.
Aaaand the problem?
…
And the problem is that a unit with 5 times the HP of a FU Paladin and nearly twice the damage output without even counting trample damage, should have easily exploitable weaknesses. In that case, speed.