ESOCommunity

Welcome to MU of the week. Every week a thread will be opened where we go over a certain match, set on a certain map. Hopefully the discussion will be in depth and top players will share their insight. Replays are definitely welcome so that people may support what they have to say. To make things even more interesting and engaging, we'll set the match-up on a certain map.

This week's featured match-up is China vs Port on Baja California .



Welcome! Credit for this idea goes to @kami_ryu @lemmings121 as well as @musketeer925 & @BrookG building upon it. They are the masterminds behind this pretty nice idea!

fair mu, but not on this map. maybe jeroms dock ff for china can do something. But i think china will just lose vs port water in the long run.

This is one map where it's relatively easy to procrastinate the game if you go for water. Mostly because of rush distance and water on both sides.
Also because every single map on ESOC has a bottom line for starting hunt amount it's hard to punish water with aggressive play and China in any case doesn't have very fast rush.
I guess if you don't want to try usual stuff (FF, water FF, FI, etc.) You could try some stagecoach colo play into age up and maybe old han. Also just stagecoach+water and go for max boom.
Problem is that pretty much every civ on EP gets outscaled if tries to mirror Port water play and that's partly due to vill scaling which makes Port progression incredibly smooth.

fi for old han and crow spam mightve won on re, but wont work on ep.

Fi jinete hc vs fi old han reforms. Not sure what is the best one in current ep... I would bet on ports.

Yea Port FI better on the EP.
I'm not sure Port water would win actually, and that's why I wanted this to be discussed.

First, if Port goes water, China can take the TP line and almost keep up in eco.
In addition, China will be in age3 before Port and will easily win the water fight on the right side, because they have mortars, age 3 boats which are great, and there's no TC to defend the right side, and if there's one it will die to the 7 mortars.

Thus, the Port water option is debatable. Maybe a standard eco ff from Port is better.
Then, does a std Port ff beat the China ff?
It used to when villd costed 80f, it doesn't on the RE, but what now?

I would have to test to be sure, but isnt the third tp reasonably close to the water? maybe not in direct range of a frigate, but close enough that ships can protect the troops sieging it. plus, in industrial age a monitor can snipe it. A stagecoach boom where you give your enemy 1/3 of the route inst that great.

Anyway, a direct all in ff from china doesnt sound too good vs 3tcs/cm/frig/wall/unit pops, but a ff with porcelain tower + stagecoach could setup a contain, castles near water, pressure to deny gold.. it could work just fine for china.

I'm pretty sure the TPs are out of the freagate range. Monitors aren't available before age 4 and by that time your boom will have paid off.
Anyway, even a 2TP boom is good if your opponent doesn't get the 3rd.

Walls are weak in EP, so "standard FF all-in" dumb play may be hard to deal with.

Age 3 mortars damage turtle boom of port.

fei123456 wrote:Walls are weak in RE, so "standard FF all-in" dumb play may be hard to deal with.

Umm not sure what you want to imply but walls are weaker in EP not RE

On EP, why would ports be better at water booming than china?

As Ports on EP I'd just water semi FF here.

Eco theory -> 700w -> 700c. Double dock, 14-16 boats only, market with 400w, HD & steel traps only. Take every vil off wood when you hit age 2 and use the 700w to pump up to 14-16 boats. Should hit age 3 at a very respectable time from what I remember since you age with a standard 700c timing.

Then just go pure land. Probably one of the strongest builds I've come across so I use it at any opportunity.

Though with the new schooner change it might be viable to send it again and play a slower and heavier water game with more fishing ships. I have not looked at that yet.

why eco theory? If I was gonna waterboom I'd rather save the shipment and ship more crates or go schooners

Eco theory affects fishing ships too. Soon eco theory will be the equivalent of a 5 vill card plus all the previouss boost to eco and the extra boost once you pass the 50 eco pop count.
600w can be an alternative with eco theory sent later when you have 40-50 eco units. It's basically as good as 30% fishing up.

That's smart

On RE I would do as you say tedere but thanks to 70w boats you have a unique opportunity to send eco theory first while doing a waterboom.

With double dock and TC you reach 30 vil pop (3 vil shipment) very quickly after you have sent it and it continues to scale from there as garja says. It's actually a lot worse on land maps were your villager count can't explode for a long time and a lot of your eco might be coming from stagecoach which doesn't get boosted by the card.

As for saving the card for crates, normally you do that to streamline a build and get some momentum but this build works really smoothly as it is and would benefit very very little from an extra 600w for example. You get 1100w pretty quickly in age 2 (400+700) which means you can smack all your vills on food/coin while still pumping dual boats AND researching steel traps. Then 700c arrives in perfect time to age and boom you're suddenly age 3 and just going pure land at a normal port FF timing except you randomly have 14-16 extra vils and eco theory.

If you want to do an extended water boom then sure saving for 600w/schooners could be better but I've been having a lot of success with small streamlined water booms that go pure land very quickly afterwards (thanks to the 70w change.) Ottomans have a really nice even smaller boat boom (10-11 boats).

This is also nice against players that take the TP line as you can start contesting it very quickly in age 3 so they don't gain much benefit from it. Though I forgot to mention I do usually take 1 tp if it's on the map either in age 1 or with the age up wood. (Just depends on treasures, starting crates, tp location etc, it's the one thing that annoys me about the build actually since it's streamlined best for a no tp map and the extra 200w can be a little awkward but it's usually fine.)

I love how nobody is online nowadays and instead we are all time debating which civ should win on paper

somppukunkku wrote:I love how nobody is online nowadays and instead we are all time debating which civ should win on paper

Tbh I personally enjoy thinking and talking about strategy more interesting than playing games sometimes. I just like thinking about the concepts of a game and how thinks work, actually playing games is generally a bit repetitive to me personally.

One of the reasons I have mostly quit playing aoe3 is that discussion regarding strategy seems somewhat dead. Without the discussion I never even get motivated to play games and test things.