Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

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Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

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Post by Mitoe »

Hey guys, so before anyone goes crazy, no this is not a parody of the basement's "Tip of the Week" series. It just occurred to me that simple tips like this are very easy to explain but are also very practical in nearly every game, for nearly every civ, so rather than writing a bunch of guides, hopefully I'll write one of these occasionally to help out those of you who genuinely want to improve your play.


Basically this tip applies to any situation where your army is made up almost solely of units costing food and gold. The general idea is right before you engage in any large-scale fight with your army, to switch your villagers off of wood to either food or gold. The reason for this is because those vills are likely only chopping wood to provide housing for your military, and once you fight your population is likely to drop pretty drastically, leaving you with a stockpile of wood and nothing to spend it on. Switching your vills off of wood before you push into someone's base can help you provide more complete reinforcing batches during the fight and remass afterwards, without screwing up your macro and leaving yourself with a 400+ excess wood bank.

If you know you're going to remass quickly and need wood shortly after the fight anyway, a good way to set it up is to switch those vills to food/coin and then switch your TC(s) rally points to wood. This way your reinforcements and remassing goes smoothly, but you should also have a reasonable number of vills providing you wood again once you need those houses.


To provide one example of this, imagine you're playing Germany. You're about 12-13 minutes into the game in the fortress age, sitting around 135/140 population or something like that. You're just outside of your opponents base and about to push in, but first you switch your 5-6 wood vills to gold, and reset your TC rally point to wood. Shortly after the fight your population is around 80/140, and you quickly remass to 120/140 over the next minute or two with about 4-5 vills on wood already from your TC which should give you that 100w you need for your next house just as you reach 140 population. By doing this you'll be sitting around 140/150 only a couple minutes after the fight, rather than something like 130/180, with pretty smooth macro all around.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If you need wood for units (think longbow, cannons, etc.), or if you expect to win the fight pretty hard and you want to use the excess wood to grow your lead afterwards with TPs + stagecoach, a 2nd TC, arsenal upgrades, or something similar. But in close games this will help prevent you from losing a fight and having 1000w randomly floating uselessly in your bank while your opponent pushes onto your half of the map.

There are also some more advanced applications of this macro technique. For example, if you're playing a civ like Aztec, and the bulk of your army consists of mace/puma, you may consider switching vills off of wood onto gold before a fight, because your puma are a lot more likely to die than your mace, since it's usually their job to keep the mace alive. Since your unit composition will, in theory, be lacking this unit type at the end of the fight, switching those vills from wood to coin before the fight even though your units cost primarily wood will allow you to remass that key part of your composition more efficiently during and after the fight. Even if your composition is almost completely food/wood, switching a few vills off of wood to food before you fight will still help your macro because you won't need that additional wood for housing afterwards, only units.


This tip may seem obvious to some, but I'm sure there are a lot of you who hadn't really put much thought into it and hopefully this will be helpful to you. This is also one of the reasons you rarely see top players buy/sell with the market very much. Let me know if you like it, I might write a few more in the future.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by forgrin »

Excellent tip! Never thought of this tbh, just didn't occur to me.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Mitoe »

There are lots of little strategic things like this that you can do that seem obvious, but are rarely put into words. I know when I was trying to make that leap from Lt-col to Colonel trying to put these sorts of things into words helped me organize my thoughts and plan during the game.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user0 »

I never have vils on wood. Tp op brobabe
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

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Post by Mitoe »

New tip: switch TPs off of wood before a fight :O
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Garja »

Well usually you spend the extra wood on a 2nd rax and stable or arsenal or church.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user0 »

Mitoe wrote:New tip: switch TPs off of wood before a fight :O


I always aready actively watch my tp income and switch accordingly. before im going to have a big fight, i usually set it to XP, to get that extra shipment out just a bit faster, to coin, in case i have a shipment but want mercs for my push that will start in 1 min. or to food, in case i want to get mah fuckin dogsouljas.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user0 »

Garja wrote:Well usually you spend the extra wood on a 2nd rax and stable or arsenal or church.


or a 2nd tc.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Mitoe »

umeu wrote:
Mitoe wrote:New tip: switch TPs off of wood before a fight :O


I always aready actively watch my tp income and switch accordingly. before im going to have a big fight, i usually set it to XP, to get that extra shipment out just a bit faster, to coin, in case i have a shipment but want mercs for my push that will start in 1 min. or to food, in case i want to get mah fuckin dogsouljas.

Hmm... I'm pretty sure once you have stagecoach the XP you get from spending the resources you receive from your TPs is still far better than ever leaving those TPs on XP, since you get units from those resources as well. Not to mention XP's diminishing value the longer the game goes.



Garja wrote:Well usually you spend the extra wood on a 2nd rax and stable or arsenal or church.

Mitoe wrote:Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If you need wood for units (think longbow, cannons, etc.), or if you expect to win the fight pretty hard and you want to use the excess wood to grow your lead afterwards with TPs + stagecoach, a 2nd TC, arsenal upgrades, or something similar. But in close games this will help prevent you from losing a fight and having 1000w randomly floating uselessly in your bank while your opponent pushes onto your half of the map.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by milku3459 »

Great tip Mr Mitoe much thank!
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user0 »

Mitoe wrote:
umeu wrote:
Mitoe wrote:New tip: switch TPs off of wood before a fight :O


I always aready actively watch my tp income and switch accordingly. before im going to have a big fight, i usually set it to XP, to get that extra shipment out just a bit faster, to coin, in case i have a shipment but want mercs for my push that will start in 1 min. or to food, in case i want to get mah fuckin dogsouljas.

Hmm... I'm pretty sure once you have stagecoach the XP you're from spending the resources you receive from your TPs is still far better than ever leaving stagecoached TPs on XP, since you get units from those resources as well. Not to mention XP's diminishing value the longer the game goes.




Garja wrote:Well usually you spend the extra wood on a 2nd rax and stable or arsenal or church.


Mitoe wrote:Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If you need wood for units (think longbow, cannons, etc.), or if you expect to win the fight pretty hard and you want to use the excess wood to grow your lead afterwards with TPs + stagecoach, a 2nd TC, arsenal upgrades, or something similar. But in close games this will help prevent you from losing a fight and having 1000w randomly floating uselessly in your bank while your opponent pushes onto your half of the map.


well it depends, how much xp you are lacking for your next shipment. if you miss half the bar, then ofc its not so great to set it to xp. but if you miss only 1 or 2 passes, you can get your shipment within 15 sec in stead of within 30-45. Obviously i'm assuming i can still produce units without the tp income, because previously it wouldve been on wood, and i dont use that res to produce units.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by NekoBerk »

Mitoe wrote:Hey guys, so before anyone goes crazy, no this is not a parody of the basement's "Tip of the Week" series. It just occurred to me that simple tips like this are very easy to explain but are also very practical in nearly every game, for nearly every civ.


@Mitoe Do you think that this can work with brits too? they need like tons of wood for houses and for make 2 stables and 2 raxes, and almost all the time around the min 12 you just go LB + Musk + Huss or LB + Goon + Huss if you're in fortress age and even you need to upgrade the huss and LB's. Do you think that brits can be the exception?
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Mitoe »

Umeu wrote:well it depends, how much xp you are lacking for your next shipment. if you miss half the bar, then ofc its not so great to set it to xp. but if you miss only 1 or 2 passes, you can get your shipment within 15 sec in stead of within 30-45. Obviously i'm assuming i can still produce units without the tp income, because previously it wouldve been on wood, and i dont use that res to produce units.

Yes, in that specific case I agree with you. In my mind I had framed the situation you're describing as during the fight, rather than just before it.
NekoBerk wrote:@Mitoe Do you think that this can work with brits too? they need like tons of wood for houses and for make 2 stables and 2 raxes, and almost all the time around the min 12 you just go LB + Musk + Huss or LB + Goon + Huss if you're in fortress age and even you need to upgrade the huss and LB's. Do you think that brits can be the exception?

It depends on the situation, but Brits would be one of the civs that can spend that excess wood more effectively than a civ like Germany of France, yes. Normally if you have villagers on wood after 10-12 minutes as Brits you're already using that wood to produce longbow, as you most likely already have 150+ house population set up, whereas a lot of other civs will likely only have villagers on wood at that point for housing. Plus, if you have excess wood as Brit and you just drop houses, that wood starts paying for itself a lot more quickly than the sorts of things other civs can invest in to increase their boom. TCs, for example, take much much longer to pay off than 5-6 manors.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user0 »

no, just before a fight, gearing up to the push, so to speak. during the fight i wouldnt want to have it on xp, youre gonna get enough through fighting already.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by admiraljsmith »

Very nice tip. Much appreciated!
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Hazza54321 »

noob tip, how can u afford strelet production
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Darwin_ »

Wow, never would have thought of this. Thanks Mitoe!
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Challenger_Marco »

Yeah I never thought of this ,Thanks @Mitoe and I like it very much more tips like these is highly appreciated.Please write tips like these in future as u mentioned and create a separate thread where u post all ur tips like strategy wall would be nice!
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by sdsanft »

Can't wait for the next one.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by pecelot »

well said :love: :love:
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Kaiserklein »

Nice tip ! Even if you dont want to compare with the tips of the week, I will still do it. What you wrote is a real tip. As in, an easy, but clever move, which lets you gain an advantage. The totw guys keep saying "this is bad" without a valuable explanation, which doesn't make good tips in my book.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by evilcheadar »

Kaiserklein wrote:Nice tip ! Even if you dont want to compare with the tips of the week, I will still do it. What you wrote is a real tip. As in, an easy, but clever move, which lets you gain an advantage. The totw guys keep saying "this is bad" without a valuable explanation, which doesn't make good tips in my book.

I think I've provided a good explanation in my tip, it's not just the title.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by deleted_user »

evilcheadar wrote:
Kaiserklein wrote:Nice tip ! Even if you dont want to compare with the tips of the week, I will still do it. What you wrote is a real tip. As in, an easy, but clever move, which lets you gain an advantage. The totw guys keep saying "this is bad" without a valuable explanation, which doesn't make good tips in my book.

I think I've provided a good explanation in my tip, it's not just the title.

Mitoe is just a copy boi.. he can not even be close to your level
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by evilcheadar »

deleted_user wrote:
evilcheadar wrote:
Kaiserklein wrote:Nice tip ! Even if you dont want to compare with the tips of the week, I will still do it. What you wrote is a real tip. As in, an easy, but clever move, which lets you gain an advantage. The totw guys keep saying "this is bad" without a valuable explanation, which doesn't make good tips in my book.

I think I've provided a good explanation in my tip, it's not just the title.

Mitoe is just a copy boi.. he can not even be close to your level

Yea, it's interesting to see all these spinoffs of my tip series. The quality varies a lot.
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Re: Pro-tip #1: Switch vills off of wood before a fight

Post by Nathan_Drake98 »

Thx!

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