ESOCommunity

Hi all,
I am currently playing Dutch in AOE3: TAD. I think I have come up with a slightly better version of the ordinary Dutch opening.
Normally, when we start to age up, we dispatch 10 villagers on wood in order to gather 350 wood for our first bank. After testing out how market works, I found that exchanging coin for wood in the market is actually more efficient than chopping trees because Dutch villagers mine gold faster. Let's say we need to gather 400 wood, then we have to spend 400/0.5=800 villager seconds on doing so. If we spend 800 villager seconds on mining gold, we will get 800*0.69=552 coin. However, we only need to exchange 506 gold for 400 wood in the market, which is more efficient. If we chop trees for 400 wood, we would only get 400 wood, and that’s it. However, if we spend the same number of villager seconds on gold instead, and then exchange the gold for 400 wood, we would get 46 extra coin comparing with chopping trees for 400 wood directly, we can also get the hunting dog ungrade 1 second later.
If we start with 100 food, 400 gold, 200 wood starting crate, then build a house and a market. When starting to age up, we send 10 villagers on gold, the other 5 villagers still on food. And then exchange 506 gold for 400 wood in the market, build the first bank then research hunting dog, then 9 villagers on food, 6 villagers on gold.
If we start with 100 food, 500 gold, 100 wood, then build a market, and then exchange 125 gold with 100 wood to build a house. When aging up, send 10 villagers on gold, the other 5 still on food, and then exchange 511 gold for 400 wood in the market. Again, build a bank and research hunting dog, then 9 villagers on food, 6 villagers on gold.
What do you think? Is this new Dutch opening a slightly more efficient version of a normal Dutch opening?

bad cba to explain

GiBthedurrty wrote:bad cba to explain

then don't be arsed to post

I used to do 1 bank 1 tp when i played.
I guess if we compare tp to market tp just stronger.
But people usually dont build tp as dutch. No tp map it could be better though.
But all just guessing.

To be more precise:
I used to gather 200w and built tp when aging.
400w arrived built the 1 bank.
Rest was situational. But idk if its better than build simple banks. I felt it stronger.

It's well known that buying wood is efficient as dutch, but the thing is that it gets less and less efficient as the time goes. And since dutch needs to invest wood into banks, they usually struggle to have wood for other stuff like houses, market upgrades, buildings or even training a few pikes, etc. So you're most likely going to buy wood, sometimes even quite a lot of wood. But if you start buying wood for a bank in age 1 already, it's gonna be even more expensive to buy wood later on. And on some maps, if you have only one gold mine in base, you're also going to run out of gold faster if you buy more wood.
Plus, to do what you mentioned, you need to have a market already, which is often not the case. Getting the market in age 1 will most likely delay your age up or delay your bank.

And all that just to save 45 coin or something, not worth it.

This is good.
I used to test the same thing with Spain when I was trying a new semi that involves xbow play. I never considered it with Dutch is which much more of a no brainer.

I don't think it's worth it, (read kaiser's post) and on top of that you're aiming for a bank before aging for a shipment which you can easily do without market trading even if you happen to get 200w start.
Interesting idea nonetheless, would be nice for someone good to try it out and tell the verdict of it.

It is definetely worth. Not really because gold gathers faster (which is actually quite relevant with Dutch) but for the vill walking time. You prob save about 50-100 res just with that.

Nice post! I already market + HD start as dutch a lot but had not considered using the market in transition to help build the bank. Seems really obvious in hindsight.

Will defo use in future (at least on maps with solid coin.)

Legend has it @Victor_swe goes FI for mercs with Dutch.

i wonder if zuta made a comment without mentioning victor swe

appears that someone went back in time and stole your idea

(1:30)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/399882358

GiBthedurrty wrote:bad cba to explain

good, cba reading your stupid opinion

I feel like market start is not very good with Dutch in general for a few reasons:

Is what I wanted to say. Instead, here's my conclusions about market start:

1) You deny yourself any possibility of aging with 14 vills. Now most of the time I think that 15 vills is just better than 14 vills because it's often hard to get the bank up before you age and still get a villager in queue before you start aging, but when you get enough treasures to do it it's far superior to any other age 1 start.

2) It delays your first bank. By the time you construct your bank, you've only earned at best 115 food from getting hunting dogs at the beginning. And this is assuming you've done everything 100% optimally by avoiding gathering any food until your Hunting Dogs comes in and had no food crates or food treasures. Most of the time it will be closer to 90 - 100 food: ~100 food (108 VS) vs the 150w (300VS) and 50c (72 VS) you spent on getting the market and possibly slightly more villager seconds if you had mine to another 25c to convert it into wood. This guarantees that you get a slower bank by almost 300 villager seconds--264 if you want to be exact.

Now I'm no mathematician (I haven't taken math since high school), but I'm pretty sure if you divide the number of villager seconds by the number of villagers you have you can determine roughly how much later you get the bank: 264/15 = 17.6 seconds. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this but I'm pretty sure this is correct

Anyway, so 17.6*2.75 = 48.4 coin

. . . wait.

Ok so I was wrong about the earlier bank being worth more than the market start--you do actually get more villager seconds going for market start, instead of faster bank followed by market. Good treasures will probably only help the market start here.

However, I have very limited experience in how much this 15 second delay makes in getting your bank before you age up and also getting a villager in queue before you actually hit up, or if the additional villager seconds that would normally go towards your first batch in a bank wagon build result in getting only a batch of 3-4 out or if you still get a full batch.

Market start might be best if you intend to do 700w first, but with bank wagon maybe it's not always the best.

3) Buying wood on a market start is not very good. It will save you some villager seconds in early Colonial (enough to completely compensate for the late bank, even), but long-term you lose villager seconds. This is because you will have to leave your base for gold much sooner, and that walking time is going to hurt you more than the 60-70 villager seconds you save early on will help you, not to mention that it compromises the safety of your villagers. It's better to just chop wood most of the time I think, unless you've got a 5k gold mine in base: even 2 silver mines isn't enough to justify it, IMO.

If it turns out that the villager seconds you haven't compensated for yet are a problem in getting units out or queuing up a villager after your bank, then maybe there's some kind of middle ground where buying 100 or 200 wood is worth it but I would say that 300 or 400 is definitely not. If you do go for this I think you should be more careful about buying wood later on as well, as it will greatly impact how early you need to leave your base for resources.



I'll have to try it more, I guess. Whenever I've tried it in the past it didn't really feel great but maybe you have to limit it to certain crate starts, which I don't think I was really doing. There are definitely some crate starts where it just slows down everything, but on optimal starts it may be worth it.

wickedcossack must be proud of that math

princeofkabul wrote:wickedcossack must be proud of that math

Regardless of whether the math is correct or incorrect I don't want him to see that post to be honest. I'm not sure my pride can handle it.

You skip hunting dogs till you have the bank done. Market is only for the extra xp and to do the buying trick. You do lose 400g on the mine which is the main drawback but on EP it is usually a non problem since there is often 2 close mines and Dutch has one extra bank to generate gold anyway.

14 v seems awful to me, ur bank is late so u wont have a shipment rdy anyway, also que ur vill so late

Mitoe wrote:

princeofkabul wrote:wickedcossack must be proud of that math

Regardless of whether the math is correct or incorrect I don't want him to see that post to be honest. I'm not sure my pride can handle it.

I read it. It's ok if you lost your pride as I am proud of you! Good numberwork. What a rare skill you have to look at something objectively.

Hazza54321 wrote:14 v seems awful to me, ur bank is late so u wont have a shipment rdy anyway, also que ur vill so late

I agree, which is why I only go 14v when you can do it with no idle time but still queue that 15th vill for after the age up before you even start gathering for the bank.

Hazza54321 wrote:i wonder if zuta made a comment without mentioning victor swe

I think he has before.

A broader question would be could this market strat be used to help fund gaining a full control of a TP-stagecoach build instead of banks. when i hear caster's talking about TP-stagecoach being approximately 3-4 woodcutting vills, this is directly comparable to dutch banks which also gather at 4 un-upgraded dutch coin vills which also does not upgrade over time.

Each building generates XP, Trading posts especially after researching TP stagecoach so that the tech comes in as the travois has just started its next trip along the map before switching to resources. Both cost 0 population and continually gathers with the TP able to gather wood later if needed. Except one costs 350f 350w instead of 200w + ( one time cost of 200f + 200w). Although it takes time to set up, subsequent TP's are a lot cheaper than building your 4th/5th bank.

Could be a decent counter strat for some match ups on maps with centralised trading post routes.

Almost any civ can deny a dutch stagecoach. Doesn't matter if they buy for it in the market or not.

one tp near your base to deny your opponent's stagecoach would be more common to dutch