Why 99v?

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France [Armag] diarouga
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Why 99v?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

In Age Of Empires 3, it's common knowledge that you don't have enough eco until you have 99 vills.
However, on Starcraft 2, the pro gaming scene has showed that having more than 80 is bad, and that in most situations 66 vills is what you want, while the drones/probes/scvs on sc2 actually just gather as fast as aoe3's vills.

The reason you don't want more than 66/80 is that this is what you need to saturate 3/4 bases, and also because of the limited amount of resources on the map.

So my question is why doesn't this apply to aoe3 too? There's also a limited amount of resources (mills and plantations are really bad in 1v1), and you can also "saturate" a mine or a hunt, it's 20v/mine and I'd say 15v/hunt.
Does that mean that we should stop our vill production at, let's say 40-50 vills to save 1k food and make more units to take the map in competitive 1v1 games?
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user »

Make 66 vills in a competitve 1v1 late game and tell me how it works, bud.

The concept of cutting vills when natural resources are low is not novel. At that point in a competitive match the switch to mills/plantations will be, should be, mutual anyways -- but I've seen you argue the opposite before, taking the stance that cutting vills should never be done.

It's "really bad" to not make infinite resource buildings when the resources are out and your opponent is making infinite resource buildings.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

The point is that if you make 20 less vills than your opponent, you'll have 2000 more food ie about 20 more units, and it might well be enough to kill deny him the map control and kill him.

It might be good to stop the vill production at 10/12 min, and get a military advantage if the opponent keeps making vills till 20 min.

And I'd say that the concept of cutting vills when natural resources are low is something very few players do. Anyway, my idea is that maybe we should cut the vill production before natural resources are low, like 10 min before.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user »

I'm looking forward to Mitoe's response then because this has been a personal staple in his play for a long, long time and a concept I guess I've just come to be familiar with.

It's not really 2000 more food though because the villagers are gathering, aren't they? And they pay off quick. I'll leave the math to someone else.

Testimony leads us to believe 99 vills is very optimal, at least much more so than 66. Cutting vills CAN be good, yes, but it is still high risk. That little bit saved, is it enough to decidedly win the map? And if not, what now? How much map do you have? You're just behind.

I'm not familiar with sc2 vs aoe3 + shipments mid-late game gathering rates but I suspect they can be made to make the case for near constant vill production.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Well, first I'd say that the vills don't pay off that quick, it takes them a few minutes.
In addition, if you get the map, then your opponent can't gather so the amount of vills he has doesn't matter at all.
And finally, even if you don't get the map, since it is a scenario where you're going to deplete all the resources, it doesn't really matter if your opponent depletes it 2 min before you because he has 10 more vills, because it means that after the resources are depleted, you will have 1000 more food in army, so you can't just do the maths and say that you gather faster.

Cutting vills at 20 min is indeed quite common, but what if we do it at 12 min actually?
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Hazza54321 »

Cutting vills does happen when map is running out, just most people usually do eco builds and by the time it happens they usually have a good enough eco to support the transition
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user »

It's not so cut-n-dry. Your opponent won't be able to gather for a time, but being up vills and having defender's advantage, reinforcements closer to the fight, it's not like it's a big swing (cutting vills). He could take pretty even trades while training vills and you not just by being defensive -- and the clock is only a few minutes at most before they pay off.

Anyways, there are a lot of factors to incorporate into the maths so it's probably best to just play the games. You tell me, does it work? I garner not.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Mitoe »

It does apply to AoE3, but usually by the time you reach that vill count the game has already been decided one way or another, and the advantaged player has no reason to stop training villagers because it's the easiest way to maintain their lead.

That being said, there are many games where I've stopped making vills at a certain point and win in the end--even in a few tournament games. It depends on the map and whether those vills are going to be gathering or walking, whether chopping wood actually helps you, etc. or how close the game is to a decisive fight where vills aren't likely to have time to pay off in the end anyway.

It can also be quite good in certain matchups for timings; e.g. in a Brit mirror (or vs civs like Russia/Aztec) if you mess up in age 1 and are forced to age a villager later as a result, and then concede map control to your opponent, cutting vills as your resources begin to run out is a good way to try to build up a military advantage and then break out onto the map; and as Diarouga said, as long as you have the map or can deny your opponent the map, it doesn't matter how many villagers you have.


I think it's difficult to set a specific time for when you would want to cut vills. It depends on the map, how many easily and safely accessible resources you have left, and the distance to your opponents base/resources. Is it optimal in most situations? Hard to say, I think. I don't think the majority of players have seriously tried to incorporate this sort of thing into their play enough to really know how effectively the additional units could swing fights, but at the same time in skirm/goon fights or musk wars even an extra 3-4 units can make a huge difference in how effectively you trade and how much ground your opponent has to concede.

Done well, and at the correct time, it should probably be quite good in most games in theory, assuming the game doesn't already have a significant advantage for either player.

The catch is that cutting vills really only gives you a temporary 3-5 villager lead over your opponent (the amount of vills required to continuously produce more vills depending on your upgrades), which your opponent will overshoot within 1.5 - 3 minutes, and then begin outproducing you. So if you fail to hit your timing, it's fair to say that you will be pretty far behind.


On a slightly unrelated note, one thing that I think should be done more often but isn't is sending new vills to berries in your base at a point when walking your vills to the nearest hunt or gold mine would take a long time--especially as Asian civs, as they actually have small upgrades on those berries. Those are safe resources that don't gather the fastest, but once you cut out the idle time and the fact that you won't be oversaturating those other natural resources once you do walk all the way there it's probably very worth it in a lot of situations. This would also delay the timing at which you start cutting villagers on many maps.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by stronk »

Vills are bad anyway. In a normal game where you have 26 vills you could have also used the 2k res to build an army and rush your opponent. Right?
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Aizamk »

@Kynesie why 140v?
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by momuuu »

In sc2 I dont think you can realistically expect to have more than 3 mining bases for an appreciable time. So having too many workers is just useless generally. But even then, there are differences.

In sc2 I would argue the gather rate is quite a bit faster with 4000 res/min being quite reasonable, which is actually worth almost twice as much as aoe3 resources. 99 villagers gathering at ~1.6 res/second would reach the same gathering rates, which isnt realistic until imperial age with a lot of eco cards.

In aoe3 battles are slower which means theres a big opportunity to reinforce. In that sense one can win the game by maybe having a slightly smaller army but outreinforcing. In sc2 battles are fast, reinforcing in a battle isnt very common and battles snowball hard. No matter the eco, it is important to have a strong army.

In sc2 production is slow compared to how expensive it is. In aoe3 production is cheap and the church upgrades make it really fast. It makes having a bigger eco better.

Also, in sc2 the resources are actually finite. So having more workers means you will mine out your side of the map much faster and just be stuck with no income. Its better to be cost efficient and mine slightly less because you will have more resources left to spend in the endgame. In aoe3 games are often decided before or when the natural resources run out, but there are still mills and plantations to fall back on.

That being said, people in aoe3 focus too much on lategame. Theoretically its optimal to stop producing villagers when the game reaches a game-ending state. It means that you will simply win during the eco transition. I see people shipping eco upgrades like refrigeration in close fights for the last hunt while even something like 700f would be the better call. I actually think the average deck has too many eco cards, given that lategame happens extremely rarely. Cutting vills at 12 minutes seems too early though. But at ~16 minutes it would be fine for some civs.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Mitoe »

Jerom makes some good points about the speed of battles in both games and the effects of reinforcing batches.

It is also important to note that villagers are more easily protected in AoE3 compared to SC2. In SC2 your workers are at risk at almost any time, and you can't just garrison them in a building or a boat when they are threatened; so having more units can sometimes translate into larger economic leads just by using them more effectively to harass.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Aykin Haraka »

Aizamk wrote:@Kynesie why 140v?


he cheats, so he can makes more units than you as garja said
he make 140v and 200 goons/skirms
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by HUMMAN »

Because defense is always better in aoe3, (unit shipment, TC, militia, cannons, skirm mass etc.) you can defend with less units in a good position during transition. So greedy playstyle is favored. Still i always thought it is possible to make make a 15 min timing with 40-50 vils and your entry army to the enemy base instead of making mills. Also at this point with wood making natives pays off imo if you are gonna hit a timing.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by yemshi »

momuuu wrote:In sc2 I dont think you can realistically expect to have more than 3 mining bases for an appreciable time. So having too many workers is just useless generally. But even then, there are differences.

In sc2 I would argue the gather rate is quite a bit faster with 4000 res/min being quite reasonable, which is actually worth almost twice as much as aoe3 resources. 99 villagers gathering at ~1.6 res/second would reach the same gathering rates, which isnt realistic until imperial age with a lot of eco cards.

In aoe3 battles are slower which means theres a big opportunity to reinforce. In that sense one can win the game by maybe having a slightly smaller army but outreinforcing. In sc2 battles are fast, reinforcing in a battle isnt very common and battles snowball hard. No matter the eco, it is important to have a strong army.

In sc2 production is slow compared to how expensive it is. In aoe3 production is cheap and the church upgrades make it really fast. It makes having a bigger eco better.

Also, in sc2 the resources are actually finite. So having more workers means you will mine out your side of the map much faster and just be stuck with no income. Its better to be cost efficient and mine slightly less because you will have more resources left to spend in the endgame. In aoe3 games are often decided before or when the natural resources run out, but there are still mills and plantations to fall back on.

That being said, people in aoe3 focus too much on lategame. Theoretically its optimal to stop producing villagers when the game reaches a game-ending state. It means that you will simply win during the eco transition. I see people shipping eco upgrades like refrigeration in close fights for the last hunt while even something like 700f would be the better call. I actually think the average deck has too many eco cards, given that lategame happens extremely rarely. Cutting vills at 12 minutes seems too early though. But at ~16 minutes it would be fine for some civs.


If you really prefer 700f over refrigeration i don't have words.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Hazza54321 »

have to agree, why even have food and coin ups in a 1v1 deck lol, i see france players with both and yet no skirm ups which just seems pointless
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Jaeger »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:Well, first I'd say that the vills don't pay off that quick, it takes them a few minutes.
In addition, if you get the map, then your opponent can't gather so the amount of vills he has doesn't matter at all.
And finally, even if you don't get the map, since it is a scenario where you're going to deplete all the resources, it doesn't really matter if your opponent depletes it 2 min before you because he has 10 more vills, because it means that after the resources are depleted, you will have 1000 more food in army, so you can't just do the maths and say that you gather faster.

Cutting vills at 20 min is indeed quite common, but what if we do it at 12 min actually?

I think you have a good point and are right. But (assuming food runs out at 20:00) I think even 10:00 or 12:00 is a little too early.

Here is a table showing the difference.

Assumptions:
-You both finish a vill at 10:00 and you stop making vills
-Your opponent makes a new vill every 30s (some people will not have perfect vill production; anyways it would only get worse for the players curring vills if you do 25s)
-Vills gather 1 res/sec

Analysis:

At 20 minutes, your opponent will have 3700 resources more than you in bank; while you will have 3700+2000 = 5700 res on the map. But of course since he has so many more units than you at this point, he can push you off your own res and start gathering them himself.

So about 4 minutes in it breaks even. Thus you can stop making vills 4 mins before res run, or even 5 (due to walking time of new vills from TC to far resources) and be ahead, since by the end of 5 minutes he will break out even, but during those minutes you will be a little bit ahead; so you could say you can stop even a bit earlier;but I wouldn't do it much earlier.

By the way the formula for the opponent res is 30n(n-1)/2 - 100n, where n is the number of vills behind. If you want to do more accurately with 25s, you can just change the 30 with a 25 in the formula.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Jaeger »

Mitoe wrote:The catch is that cutting vills really only gives you a temporary 3-5 villager lead over your opponent (the amount of vills required to continuously produce more vills depending on your upgrades), which your opponent will overshoot within 1.5 - 3 minutes, and then begin outproducing you. So if you fail to hit your timing, it's fair to say that you will be pretty far behind.

Nice post but just a small quibble with this; it's actually on the higher end, about 3-4 minutes, since you not only have to make 3-5 vills for continous vill production, you also have to catch up on that 300f-500f you spend on making those vlls. I made a table in a post above.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user0 »

It can work. A while ago there was a smurf, mightve been aklak but i never found out, who played hyper agressive brit timings. He would stop making vils around 35-40 and just spam nonstop. It definitely made a difference. And you had to adjust to it in order to defeat it. But if u do manage to hold it while you dont stop vill production urself, you win.

Otto had a similira variation, on re, because investing in church tech and tp was just too slow and expensive, you just stopped at 25v

And piroshiki ff has a similar idia in mind, though it's more like a 6 pool
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user0 »

Hazza54321 wrote:have to agree, why even have food and coin ups in a 1v1 deck lol, i see france players with both and yet no skirm ups which just seems pointless


Yea don't really need them in most games. But dont really need skir attack either. But in some mus you might need them, and they might offer an edge.

With spain i always toyed around with idea of sending 2 agressive shipments and then just only upgrades. But i've never managed to really make it work. Upgrades on nilla were kinda not significant enough and decks too small. While on tad spains just too meh. Maybe now on ep with spanish gold it might work

@Mitoe I've never understood why some players are so reluctant to use berries, and would rather move 20 vils across the map than to use the berries in front of them, for at least some of the vils. They would even rather switch to mills before berries. Don't the twc farm upgrades also upgrade berry gathering? Would be good for them too. I would always move some vils to berries in base when I start to take hunts across map. It ensures i always have some food income, and always some vils close to gather crates.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by deleted_user0 »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:In Age Of Empires 3, it's common knowledge that you don't have enough eco until you have 99 vills.
However, on Starcraft 2, the pro gaming scene has showed that having more than 80 is bad, and that in most situations 66 vills is what you want, while the drones/probes/scvs on sc2 actually just gather as fast as aoe3's vills.

The reason you don't want more than 66/80 is that this is what you need to saturate 3/4 bases, and also because of the limited amount of resources on the map.

So my question is why doesn't this apply to aoe3 too? There's also a limited amount of resources (mills and plantations are really bad in 1v1), and you can also "saturate" a mine or a hunt, it's 20v/mine and I'd say 15v/hunt.
Does that mean that we should stop our vill production at, let's say 40-50 vills to save 1k food and make more units to take the map in competitive 1v1 games?



Infinite res + walls, tc fire and towers. Turtling in aoe is just easier than in sc2. So ur cutting vils, the other guy holes up in base instead. The bit of extra res you get is barely enough for a few mortars, if ur iv at all. Wall upgrade + 2 culvs is still half the price of foundry + 5 mortars
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Jaeger »

umeu wrote:Infinite res + walls, tc fire and towers. Turtling in aoe is just easier than in sc2. So ur cutting vils, the other guy holes up in base instead. The bit of extra res you get is barely enough for a few mortars, if ur iv at all. Wall upgrade + 2 culvs is still half the price of foundry + 5 mortars

If you know for sure that your opponent will be cutting vills at x time then you can turtle at the right time; but I don't think you will notice until his army is already bigger (if the idea even comes to you that he cut vills to get that mass) at which point it is "too late" (too late if the vill cutting is actually good)
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Interesting.
From @Jaeger's post, I think it's safe to say, considering the snow ball effect that it takes 5 min for the vill production to pay off.
Thus maybe stopping at 15 min is more interesting.

I think that indeed the big difference between aoe3 and sc2 is that on sc2 the snowball effect is much better and that you can't afford to have less units (in late game it's quite common to see players getting to 200 pop then after a fight be at 120 pop and get at 200 pop again).

Still, I've never seen a mill transition work in high level games, let alone a plantation transition, so it might be worth in general to cut the vill production 5 min before the resources deplete.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by Goodspeed »

It's mostly a pop issue, and the point Jerom mentioned earlier about reinforcements.

In SC2 you are maxed out at what, 11 min? Having 20 more army than your opponent can be game deciding because in SC2 fights, there is no chance to reinforce. And having a big bank is irrelevant if you lose a fight hard. Therefore you have to cut worker production at some point. In AoE3, having 20 less army than your opponent while maxed is totally fine because the fight won't be over as quickly, and you can actually use your economy to make up the difference by reinforcing.
In AoE2 it's common for people to have 140v economies. With AoE3's many eco upgrades you probably don't need that many, but more than 99 seems worth.

Cutting eco in the early game for the sake of timings is another discussion, and is worth it in every RTS.
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Re: Why 99v?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Yea on sc2 you can be maxed out at 8/9 min.

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