Good Castle Age time after m@a -> archers

[AceW]

Hey folks,

usually when I go for m@a into archers I end up having a bad castle age time (usually minute around minute 24-26).

At the start when I hit feudal age everything is fine. Usually I have ressources for m@a upgrade, double bit axe. Then I aim for producing archers and getting fletching. But I struggle to get a good food eco rolling and build farms whenever I can. But as mentioned the castle age time is not the best.

Do you have any tips on how to improve this?

 

[Nili_AoE]

We adressed this in my first episode of my Hera coaching: 23 min if you civ doesn't have any bonuses. My biggest mistake was to have more than 10 on wood.

 

[[DarkL]Myst_]

How many lumbers you need for massing archers from 2 ranges? 10 on wood is sufficient? And, if I remember correctly from that Hera coaching, at some point he told you to go more on food/gold for 2 stables knight against opponent skirms, right?

 

[Chainsaw]

We adressed this in my first episode of my Hera coaching: 23 min if you civ doesn't have any bonuses. My biggest mistake was to have more than 10 on wood.

Mind sharing VOD, if there is one? Are we talking about click up time, or actually up at 23 min?

 

[dodageka]

Mind sharing VOD, if there is one? Are we talking about click up time, or actually up at 23 min?

 

[Rayne]

24-26 castle time for maa and archers is not gonna get the job done for sure. That's handing a huge advantage to opponent who does a good BO for whatever they're doing.

There's more than a few things I can say. I am not sure if all this is covered in Hera's vid. Some things probably are. Sorry if its a long read, I'll 'try' to be as brief as I can while not omitting key details. I should say I don't really do maa builds, but I have practiced some as of late aside from seeing them while speccing. This isn't a complete build order so you'd have to piece in some things yourself.

It does depend on what you're playing against, whether its maa vs maa and then range army after, or you're vs some sc user who will surely add some skirms. I don't think you can realistically do pure archers these days and really get away with it (hills would play a factor in getting away with this and things like, opponent doesn't get archer armor fast for skirms). From what I can see though and depending on civ, your time can be anywhere from 22:00 - 23:00, 22:30 being the average in a real game.

I think how many farms you have before you even do ranges matters for castle time. Its one contributing factor. When I came back to aoc a bit in November, I tried some maa builds with like 1 or 2 farms (even 0), and my castle time was embarrassingly bad, always around 24 min which felt too slow. Then I came across Hera doing some maa build in April with 'mostly' archers on stream and he said something like 4 farms before you do ranges, and have 2 lcs. This seems to be one of the better ways and was so helpful. If you don't have at least that many, you may have a hard time kickstarting food eco, which you're already slowed down.

The next thing to mention I believe is how many vills you should have on gold. Once you start building ranges, which is around min 11, you should go to gold and have at least 7 vills mining, which maintains constant archer production (courtesy of Chris mentioning this at least 10-12 years ago to players who never knew or cared). I've done it with 8 and that can work as it provides a nice, slow surplus of gold which can contribute to castle time with ease. However, I did some with 7 today, before I thought about posting here, and found it works just as good if not slightly better. That extra vill to a farm sooner may help speed up castle time by some seconds (not sure how many).

Horse collar is an interesting thing. I've tried maa builds with it and without it. What I've come across is that if you try to get a little greedy and sneak it in after say, 7 or so farms, this affects you in a few ways. One, you can't really do blacksmith at an ideal time without further sacrificing food eco from farming. Two, its of course harder to farm for a short while. And three, this seems to slow down your castle time by at least 30-40s. I don't know why but some games it was 40s over 30s -- never checked the game though. Something to keep in mind if you try it.

Not sure how many agree with this around my rate or above it, but it seems the time when you build blacksmith can affect your castle time by just as much as horse collar, around 30s. I was doing it today by building blacksmith at 13:30 which is probably in the ideal time range for this. I notice slam for instance tends to be at opponent's base at 15 min timeframe with archers and fletching. Then I've tried building blacksmith at 14:30 (which is probably out of the ideal time in a serious game against someone good). My castle time today was a difference of 30s +/- doing everything else the same. That extra minute of farming helped it somewhere, but you may be in trouble if you aren't walled vs someone who would try to attack you at min 15 like slam (moreso if they can camp hills around base with archers since they beat you to it).

Another thing I found to help slowly speed up castle times/food income with any build that I've been doing for years, maa build being no exception, is taking 1-2 wood vills off for farming, and then replacing with new vills from tc (this can be hard to track sometimes with everything that goes on in a real game). But this is a different than what you may think. This depends on where your wood is, your tc distance in relation to where lumbercamp is, and where your mill is in relation to where your second lumbercamp may be as well. So this isn't entirely reliable and you can't do it every single game.

Basically if you have wood directly below tc, you should not immediately farm that space with say, shepherds when the sheeps are completely gone. You'd leave that space open so say, when you're making both ranges and wood piles up to 100, you can take 1-2 vills off wood and farm that space. Otherwise, they may have a longer walk/you'll double the farms if you try this (unsure what the difference would be, but obviously outside of optimity). Then you can send new vills from tc to wood but you have to keep an eye on it, may even need more than the standard 10 on wood, but the food boost for the time helps, can repeat this at least twice or 3 times. Same can apply to where your berries are with a mill, and if wood is there. This one just depends on whether or not the mill is in a 'safe' location and the wood is safe as well. If both are in back for instance and can't be hit by raids, you can take advantage of that and do this same thing, taking 1-2 off when wood piles up instead of waiting for a new vill from tc to make the farm, and get some small food boost. If its not in a safe location and its susceptible to sc or archer raids and you see yourself unable to defend it, not worth planning this. Been doing this little trick for years and it seems very helpful.

For a real game, is that I think you are probably going to need some spears if you're vs someone with sc, or skirms maybe in some maa vs maa war somewhere. I don't think you can just do pure archers and get away with it scott-free. From what I know with scout builds for instance, somewhere in the build each additional sc after a certain time delayed castle time by around 20s. So with skirms or spears, depending how many you make if its around 75f, you're going to be delayed around 20s I think. If you make around 6 skirms, that many should slow down the time by at least 40s. You could always try overfarming or something, to cover the delay but that may harm your BO somewhere with gold or wood; the extra vills could probably go to wood for a nice boost.

I suppose wheelbarrow could be mentioned but I am unsure how this fits in and where best time would be as I haven't practiced many maa builds. But from the ones I've been doing, I find it seems ok to have around 12-14 farms and then get wheel, which winds up around a 17 min timeframe. If you did the eco right, once wheel is done you can have anywhere from 400-500f and like 90-130g. You can click castle shortly afterward.

Sorry, but I can't really tl;dr this as much as I'd like to try. There's multiple factors that are going to be influencing how slow or fast your time is. Things like losing vills/eco disturbances too that I didn't list which will happen in real games.

 

[_Melkor]

It seems to me that in 1v1 you almost never get a chance to go men at arm to double range archers, unless you are fully walled and happy to camp until castle age.

If not walled, going 1 range is actually better, and that way you can mass archers and have the resources to react to whatever the opponent is doing. (see full scouts -> spam spears, see full skirm -> add a stable, see some sort of camp fc -> add more farms go up faster THEN add another range).

In tg, that is the time to go double range archers with constant production, which is why its worth thinking about the build.

 

[[DarkL]Myst_]

Build Order - Britons Pop 22 Archers

 

[AceW]

Hi everyone,

thanks a lot for all the answers.

I tested the stuff _Melkor wrote out.Going only with one Range at first and then adapt to the game instead for going 2 ranges worked out pretty nicely in the 2 games that I played and both times I had ~22min castle age times.

Rayne, awesome answer man! I definetely try to memorize everything you wrote. Regarding the Hera coaching. I also think that on wood is enough. In my few testing games I never had any wood issues.