I discovered recently while browsing the age of empires bug report forums, that there is a bug report about wheelbarrow, which was under the radar and undiscovered by most people, but could actually be huge.
It seems that when Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart finishes research, villagers that were already working as Farmers the moment it researched DON'T receive the move speed bonus until you interrupt them and re-task them, or until the farm is rebuilt.
This actually has a big impact on competitive play since usually most players will construct 8-15 farms before even researching wheelbarrow. So let's say you have 15 farmers, and research wheelbarrow, those 15 villagers don't receive the full benefit of wheelbarrow until you tell them to Stop in place and re-task them (or until you force drop or reseed the farm).
This is quite an unneeded farming penalty for no reason. And also might be the reason Vikings were so strong these past few tournaments. The reason is because Vikings receive free Wheelbarrow once they reach Feudal Age, they make all of their farms before wheelbarrow hits. This bug also gives a boost to Khmer imo, since their vills don't care much about move speed.
I went into scenario editor to test this. Made 2 mills very separate from each other, and 3 farms near each mill. I placed 6 vills (1 on each farm) to stand idle.
I started researching Wheelbarrow at the TC, and I paused the game when wheelbarrow was at 99%. During that time, I told 3 of the 6 vills to start farming. Then I unpaused the game. Immediately after wheelbarrow finished researching (1-2 seconds) I paused again and tasked the other 3 villagers to start farming. Then I unpaused and let them farm.
The results confirmed the bug report. The 2 vills that started farming after wheelbarrow finished researching, finished their farmers substantially faster than the villagers who started 2 seconds earlier. When the 1st villagers in the after-wheelbarrow group finished his farm, this is how much food was left on the other farms.
When the first villager(the one that was closest to mill) of the ones that started after-wheelbarrow emptied his farm. I stopped and compared amounts of food left.
Vills that started work 2 seconds before wheelbarrow:
15+14+17 = 46 Food Left out of 525 food (3 farms)
Vills that started work 1 seconds after wheelbarrow:
0+4+11 = 15 Food Left out of 525 food (3 farms)
credit to harooooo1 on reddit
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Does this correspond with some experience from players here?