Pros always build all their own markets at an edge of the map and the newly trained trade carts have to ride for their initial (empty) trip the longest possible distance.
Why not build all the additional markets near the allied one? Thus the newly trained trade carts can instantly start bringing gold to the furthest away market.
what he’s saying is drop 1 market near your allies so that way they don’t have to travel the entire map for the first trip. they travel a few steps, pickup gold, then head to your furthest market by default.
The reason why people place multiple markets at the edge is so they can produce multiple Trade carts simultaneously and get the trade running faster. In order to do what you’re suggesting, they’d both need to drop multiple markets forward in order to produce at the speed they need. Further, running villagers to two opposite sides of the maps is a lot of villager time spent for that effect.
One market close simply doesn’t allow a proper trade boom in a realistic timeframe.
This is btw not only helpful the first time trade is set up, but also helps every time new trade carts are trained, for instance after the trade route got attacked.
With 50 trade carts trained in the direct neighbourhood of the allied market, you will have saved 50 empty useless trips.
Pros are not doing this, and it simply might be because they are used to pre-DE when trade carts didn’t understand they should absolutely not go the nearest market, but maybe it’s because there’s another good reason, in which case I’d like to know which one.
Isn’t it generally considered exploit and bug abuse?
For example Battle of Africa 2, 3vs3 tournament that happened in May 2020 had a rule specifically against it:
It’s not allowed to intentionally place markets in both ends of a trade route in order to increase the trade income by trading with adjacent markets or skip the first trip.
Yes recent tournaments had intentionally placing markets in the corner to shorten the first trip for a trade carts being banned. The main reasoning for this is: a) it’s different b) it’s new
The story: aM’ complained after a showmatch that GL used this from their perspective “exploit” to gain an unfair advantage, then Memb banned it in BoA, which was just a few weeks away and from then on every new tournament sticked to that rule.
But is it really an exploit? No. It’s just a simple game mechanic, that actually always has been there, already in aoc times. The difference was just that you had to do it cart per cart back then, since trade carts always preferred the closest market. In DE this was changed, now they always prefer the furthest away market.
Why is it not just an exploit: Just see the ally market as gold source. Why should you produce your units that collect this gold source on the other side of the map? On goldrush you also build tcs in the middle and not just in your base with the gather point in the middle, so the vills run 6 screens until they start working.
Allowing it would lead to players have more gold earlier → more fighting → more enjoyable fights. It’s not like you will miss out anything. If you play properly you can already now play gold-units-only in TGs, you shouldnt see trash units in TGs (other than halbs) so here nothing is changed.
Tournament rules should just be adapted and allow it. I also encourage everyone to use it in ranked games, for the same reason, that you build military buildings close to the fighting area and tcs next to resources, you should also build your tradecart production markets next to your ally market/trade gold source.
Tournaments have been having rules like these which create a divide between tournament play and ladder play. Another such rule is the restriction on slinging. But in that case, slinging was making games look more boring for the spectators, whereas here the reason seems to be that some pro players whined.
If you are allowed to build markets at both ends, it opens up another can of worm at top level play. One can retask trade cart after they have done their first half trip to again carry gold in the return trip. This is spending micro time for gaining economic advantage. Is it an exploit? The current rules prevent this as well incidentally. In the end we would love to see the pro player managing their battles and strategies rather than microing their trade carts.
There could be a workaround:
A) reducing all trade income by 33-40 %
B) A trade unit goes to the furthest own market after loading gold
C) A trade unit goes to the closest ally market after unloading gold
Then it’s in the interest of the players to place markets on both ends of the trade route.
They do already. The “exploit” was that since the market was closer the cart would get the gold faster on the first “trip” where it would leave the first market, get to the second market, get the gold value as if it had come from the third market, then return to that market for full profit. I think that’s what they’re getting at.
It’s still funny but I understand the point. If you sent a cart out with a 10 gold route but there was a 120 gold route on the map, the cart leaving for a 10-gold market would still follow a 120 gold route on the way back, which initially spikes the gpm. The players were likely therefore arguing that the cart should carry 10 gold back to whatever market it drops off at, regardless of where it is. I can understand the concern but I hate the idea of having separate rules for tournaments vs regular games. If you can do it in a regular game, you should be able to do it in tournaments.
I remember pro players doing this(I forgot if it is viper or yo or someone else) and I remember T90 has mentioned it in one of his stream. Some pro players don’t know that the mechanic has changed, and some just didn’t think about it because they are used to build them all at the edge. Otherwise, it totally worth it.
For me I build more often extra markets at my base.
Man that story, the Age competitive scenes mentalities are so â– â– â– â– â– â– â– weird compared to every other scene sometimes.
Nonstandard maps on competitive tournament? Sure give me an all-shallows map I’ll adapt, whatever. Arena shuts out agression in 2/4 ages? Sure, fine, that’s cool.
Mechanical cleverness that by all accounts would be considered an evolution of the meta in any other scene? Every civ can do it? BANNED.
This is the same game where Viper converts fishing ships and use them to steal fishing traps and delete the traps and other total greasy clever moves happen. The bans that exist feel downright arbitrary
