This will make wonders for the future of AoE3!

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[Sargsyan]

too long, didnt read, but gave you a like anyways

[Ashvin]

too long, didnt read, but gave you a like anyways

Spanky was right after all.

[Sargsyan]

too long, didnt read, but gave you a like anyways

Spanky was right after all.

I did this on purpose to prove spanky's point. I don't know what she said though

[Ashvin]

rip in peace joke

[Jerimuno]

an exceptional example for why theory can sometimes be utterly useless

[Garja]

The time reduction for previous villagers doesn't still doesn't compensate the cost of each additional vill after the 4th one. But ye, one should still keep that in mind.

[Mitoe]

Actually, your numbers for the Fortress Age are not quite correct. Villagers on wonders do not actually reduce the build time by a flat number, it's a percentage, and the percentage does not change regardless of the build points on the wonder (Fortress Age wonders have 145 build points, all other ages are 120). I think the percentage is like 8.5% or something like that, which works out to be ~10 seconds per villager off of a Colonial/Industrial/Imperial wonder, and half of that percentage for each additional villager after the 4th. So in Fortress 8 villagers is not reducing your age time by 60 seconds, it's actually ~72 seconds or something very similar IIRC.

The Exiled Prince allows non-Ottoman civilizations to have an additional two settlers, and it will take them seven minutes to gather enough to pay for their own cost and 6 skirmishers. This is actually stronger than I anticipated, so perhaps this justifies choosing the Exiled Prince more than the timing. But then again, seven minutes is a lot of time in a normal supremacy game, so perhaps it is time for the French and German players to reevaluate their Fortress Age politicians!

The real value comes from being able to train/ship Fortress Age units/shipments sooner (which I'm sure you actually know ), so I don't think anyone's going to be re-evaluating the Exiled Prince because of a couple of villagers. Also it's closer to 3 settlers (2.8), not 2, which brings that timing closer to 5 or 6 minutes--accounting for walking/idle time.

[[Armag] diarouga]

You don't pick the exiled prince because of economy lol, but because you want to be in age 3 sooner, since it allows you to train age 3 units, and ship an age 3 shipment.

[Interjection]

This isn't a shitpost though. Rather high brow for your standards.

I didn't expect such an interesting read Gendarme!

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[Ashvin]

A recent demonstration of your talents.

[spoiler=Context]Ede expects answer in the units of length[/spoiler]

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[deleted_user0]

aging 8 to age 3 is good. Aging 8 to age IV is good when you do an FI, otherwise, it depends on the state of the game and how necessary the age up is, but, usually it's fine as you can easily spare 8 vils.

aging 8 to age 2 is bad. It's simply too big of a hit on your eco. Game experience tells you this (which is empirical), no amount of math can change my mind on this matter. For age2 I would go 0 or 4 tbh. 4 with china, because they're quite slow but can't afford to be. 0 with japan because they usually don't age up that late. and 0 with india because while they're slow, they can afford to be, and the advantage of having 4 vils gathering wood so you can sneak in a tp is just too big.

[momuuu]

But there clearly isnt much difference between going 3 and 4. Why not go 3 then?

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[deleted_user0]

But there clearly isnt much difference between going 3 and 4. Why not go 3 then?

because 10 seconds can be the difference between winning and losing a game. When you do spain vs otto, as spain, if you click age up at 2:45, you win. If you age up at 3:05. You lose.

With china, the margins are often as tight if not tighter. So I would prefer to age as fast as I can, without fucking up the sync of shipment arriving and having 1200 food. Perhaps if you would play age2, you could age 0 or anything between 1-4.

Being very fast to colonial usually doesn't give you much anyway, while being faster to any other age is usually very important. Going colonial you just don't want to be too late (aka over 5 min, the exception being india)

[deleted_user0]

...or 6

you try it, and tell me how many games you lose XD

6 is just bad. res earlier in the game > res later in the game. That's why you ship 3 vils, and not save your shipment for 5 vils.

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[deleted_user0]

So you are saying that the 4-vill age up just happens to coincidentally be optimal in all cases and has nothing to do with the misconception that the 5th villager is significantly inefficient? Let me quote myself:

If having five villagers building a wonder is horrible, then surely having three villagers building it is better than four.

have you even read what I said? Where did I say that 4vill is optimal in ALL CASES? I mentioned one case lmao

this is what happens when you approach the game from a math perspective. You simply can't account for all the variables. But to put it simply (i have explained this in another thread about age up times already, but whatever), either speed matters, and you're gonna go for 4, because 8 is too much, and 5 is an insignificant time gain. Or speed doesn't matter, and it's about being greedy in transition, in which case you go 0. It's really that simple. With china, if you macro properly, you're gonna get 700c collected and 1200f at the same time. If you 3v, you'll have your 700c collected when you have way too much food. When you 5v, you're likely to have your 700c collected when you don't have 1200f yet, you'll probably be around 1100f, but somoene would have to try it out.

I wouldnt age 4v on wonder with either japan or india, so... ye not all cases for sure!

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[deleted_user0]

Well, you did say "anything from 0 to 4" which seems to be dependent on the situation (i.e. a general statement), but 5 is somehow not an option.

I said maybe if you stay age2. Which obviously I wouldn't do with china in most cases, and i said it halfheartedly as it's something I've not tried. But there's no reason to be faster to age2 with 5v on a wonder, but not having enough wood to get a barracks and a village up or enough res to queue that first batch (assuming you went 1tp 1 village) it's already quite tight to get just that first village in transition up before you hit age2. Being faster just gives you nothing but 700w 5 sec faster, which is totally not worth it.

[Garja]

From 0 to 4 it all depends on practical reasons. Mostly just hit an exact age up time you need for the strat to work (e.g 4.45 max with China or japan). After 4 it is going to be worse both for practical reasons and also cost efficently.

[Gendarme]

nepuvir sb gVGeG

[deleted_user0]

Cost-efficiently it is always bad to have k+1 villagers building rather than k, and so far no one has tried to demonstrate why saving 10, 20, 30, 40, or 60 seconds is generally practical while saving 45, 50, or 55 seconds isn't.

maybe if you'd play the game instead of theorize about it, you would understand. Or, alternatively, you can read my post XD

putting vils on wonder isn't just, if at all, about saving resources, it's about saving time mostly. After 4 vills, the time you save isn't worth the resources it costs you. This is true only for aging to colonial, as after that, you usually have enough economy where it becomes worth to invest extra resources (aka the VS) into aging faster. If aging faster isn't really an issue, which it isn't in some mu's, then it's best to just put 0 vils, because as you say, K is better than K+1. Sometimes, you can put 1 or 2 extra vils, as garja says, to meet the max age up time in order to make your strat work. Aging too early usually has little benefit, but aging too late can lose you the game. So that's why sometimes, even though 0 vills would be best, you need to put 1 or 2 vils in order meet that "deadline", while putting more vills will give you no effective benefit.