BF in lategame is more about pop efficiency than anything else(needless to say the pop efficiency of mass selling wood is much worse than tradecarts), no one is starwing for resources early imp so much that it would make a tad difrence
Thats a great point I hadnt considered. My simulation used 80 pop for wood choppers compared to just 30 trade carts (30 pop)...BF in lategame is more about pop efficiency than anything else(needless to say the pop efficiency of mass selling wood is much worse than tradecarts), no one is starwing for resources early imp so much that it would make a tad difrence
Thanks again for the games and insight into the best ways to test this. I agree that our scores in both games were close while we were booming so yeah our skills were similar. I would like to add that in both games, I believe we refuted the consistent argument made many times here that great players or even typical situations allow for ample time to delay for that time duration, be it 14 minutes or otherwise for trading to pay off. Both games were DECISIVELY over before that time. In the 2nd game which IMO is the most relevant, the end screen showed just 466 trade revenue for you. If as you said you invested into around 10-20 carts, thats definitely not good ROI. When I have some time I will record the replay and post to yt. I am curious to take tactics out of it and see who had more resources at 35 or 40 minutes of straight booming. I will also post the scenario which anyone can use to test this vs another equally skilled person. Fun facts we learned about scenario play:If people are interested, I played a few HD BF games against the OP on Henk's map. As most would guess, the results have said next to nothing about the theory in question. Rico played without trade, and I was allowed to trade with an AI's isolated markets. After a few aborted games, I won the next before trade even kicked in. The game was played on 200 pop, but Rico had expected 300. We hadn't adjusted settings, so he miscalculated how many vills he could produce. Rico then won the second on 250 pop, but again not because he benefitted by avoiding trading, simply because I went for the same strat out of laziness, and he correctly attacked in a couple of different places, the good old principle of two weaknesses.
Chatting with Rico after the games, it's pretty clear to me that the entire argument has been conducted at cross-purposes, as a few people have already mentioned. Rico was adamant that more units could be produced by avoiding early trade investment, and I agreed that went without saying. I did point out that most people in the thread would also take that as given; the position taken was rather that the expected value of earlier units would be less than the expected value of earlier trade. Rico felt the thread disagreed even with the 'less early trade equals more early units' point. Both parties are pretty entrenched in their positions; some incapable of admitting their positions are identical. Perhaps Rico had an axe to grind over the way his posts were received on Reddit. Perhaps some people here reacted to that with the "Can't those goddamn HD noobs stop getting ideas above their station!?" sentiment. Either way, it's unlikely any consensus will be reached as there's too much already invested in 'winning' the argument.
A few postscripts would be that Rico is pretty reasonable one-to-one, but I assume hackles get raised by the perception of gang mentality in the forum environment. He was in fact very understanding when I had to take repeated breaks to put my Surface 4 Pro in the freezer to postpone the screen flickering known to affect the device (a legit fix, google!) As for the HD - Voobly elo conversion question that came up a number of times, I'd say we were pretty similarly matched over the very limited sample size, in terms of up times, resources gathered, unit usage, and so on. This would make Rico's 19xx HD rating from BF TGs equivalent to a Voobly 15xx BF TG rating. I may have reached 17xx on arabia 1v1s, but I consider myself eminently noob-ish. The difference between noob and intermediate can be semantics of course. I'd quibble that I was playing on a 12-inch screen on HD, something I'd basically never done, but I doubt it affected anything that much. The pace was glacial compared to Voobly though!
TL;DR All in all, it was an exercise in futility, but isn't that the definition of AoE? 11
Heres my question for you: if you had to play me 1v1 in that scenario for real $$, would you trade or not given what you now know?
Expanding that argument, me and my clone go all in vs two thehands on one side of a 4v4 BF teamgame. Then the other two enemies for the other team lose all their trade when we overrun that side. You keep acting like the counterargument is to just play better, or rely on teammates. I think thats invalid and defeatist. If I have a tactic that gives me a well over 50% chance to push right into my opponents base and kill their trade, you should be able to stop it with a tactic or solution that doesnt just involve "play better, rely on teammates".How's that relevant at all?
And how is this scenario relevant at all?
Weren't we talking 4vs4 BF?!
Of course all-in strategies have a higher rate of success in 1vs1's where there are no team mates to help you...That's a no-brainer.
However if you invest into an all-in strategy such as skipping trade in a team game, all the enemy team has to do is stop you and they can easily commit 2 players for that task, because once you're stopped your team is dead.
Thanks again for the games and insight into the best ways to test this. I agree that our scores in both games were close while we were booming so yeah our skills were similar. I would like to add that in both games, I believe we refuted the consistent argument made many times here that great players or even typical situations allow for ample time to delay for that time duration, be it 14 minutes or otherwise for trading to pay off. Both games were DECISIVELY over before that time. In the 2nd game which IMO is the most relevant, the end screen showed just 466 trade profit for you. If as you said you invested into around 10-20 carts, thats definitely not good ROI. When I have some time I will record the replay and post to yt. I am curious to take tactics out of it and see who had more resources at 35 or 40 minutes of straight booming. I will also post the scenario which anyone can use to test this vs another equally skilled person.
Heres my question for you: if you had to play me 1v1 in that scenario for real $$, would you trade or not given what you now know?
Expanding that argument, me and my clone go all in vs two thehands on one side of a 4v4 BF teamgame. Then the other two enemies for the other team lose all their trade when we overrun that side. You keep acting like the counterargument is to just play better, or rely on teammates. I think thats invalid and defeatist. If I have a tactic that gives me a well over 50% chance to push right into my opponents base and kill their trade, you should be able to stop it with a tactic or solution that doesnt just involve "play better, rely on teammates".
One of the challenges thehand has in the scenario, which is relevant to 4v4 teamgames is that he has to defend his markets and his base. I just have to defend my central base. So after the first game I realized just go a bit at both and he cant economically defend both. So for example I just built 2 castles compared to his 4. Thats a lot of extra gold I have to sell because I dont have to project power for a huge stretch of the map.
Expanding that argument, me and my clone go all in vs two thehands on one side of a 4v4 BF teamgame. Then the other two enemies for the other team lose all their trade when we overrun that side. You keep acting like the counterargument is to just play better, or rely on teammates. I think thats invalid and defeatist. If I have a tactic that gives me a well over 50% chance to push right into my opponents base and kill their trade, you should be able to stop it with a tactic or solution that doesnt just involve "play better, rely on teammates".
One of the challenges thehand has in the scenario, which is relevant to 4v4 teamgames is that he has to defend his markets and his base.
Does this mean he had to defend the AIs markets?
Walls dont help vs Onagers cutting woods.Yes but there is a strategy to counter that: it's called wall-wall-wall! Which usually is rather easy to do on a map like BF.
And as the thehand already suggested, you need to realize that good players (usually) don't die to a single push.
I suggest you watch some of the 4vs4 arabia games from the later stages of the Nations Cup. And see how hard it actually is to finish a 4vs4 game vs good players.
Or better even, watch some high level DM team games and see how fast they start trading.
You need constant production of quality units. If you stop producing for a few seconds, your enemy catches up to you and the momentum is lost. It's actually incredibly difficult from a macro point of view.
If you can't replenish your quality army of 40 mangudai after 1 push I can almost guarantee you will be pushed back by a team with good trade.
A great point that should be aimed at Henk who created the scenario. Btw in the first game I attacked his base and the AI markets which were in the same location of the map and he cut in from his markets (located at the far other side of the map) and caught me completely unawares. Plus I had 181 vils and 6TCs in what I thought was 300 pop but was 200 pop yikes.Well, that isn't normal, as whichever players on your team are anchoring the markets at the other end would be defending them, not you. You should only need to defend your own markets which are in your base.
This is the meta, and we all know it. But its not correct based on my math. 30 trade carts is ~40 Mangudai worth of resources which I view as decisive all other things equal. You then breakeven a full 14 minutes later. Breakeven. Takes another 5 or so to have an equally 40ish mangudai advantage over the chopper. So yes, it is sustainable to do this without trade and keep making gold units. Its literally all I do in my games. I didnt make any trash units vs thehand.Even when it takes awhile to get even with trade carts, the delta won't be so poor throughout that (whatever time) it is. Selling wood won't sustain gold units for long, leads into having to go into trash army (weaker, less population effective) the resources saved for the early push shouldn't have minimal benefit as you won't be starwing out of gold even when you are making trade, and even that advantage will even out with aggresive siege (your onager cut will cost 1300 resources which btw is not possible in voobly, adding treb/sram etc.) (not to forget defender will have advantage)
And just for kicks, you say the delta wont be so poor. What is the delta? Do you know what it is, or do you just say it wont be so poor without having a number in mind?Even when it takes awhile to get even with trade carts, the delta won't be so poor throughout that (whatever time) it is. Selling wood won't sustain gold units for long, leads into having to go into trash army (weaker, less population effective) the resources saved for the early push shouldn't have minimal benefit as you won't be starwing out of gold even when you are making trade, and even that advantage will even out with aggresive siege (your onager cut will cost 1300 resources which btw is not possible in voobly, adding treb/sram etc.) (not to forget defender will have advantage)
Do you ever even consider that fact that I am also selling resources while making trade carts and army?
Also the person that usually sells the market the hardest early on is the person that has the best boom in that game.
And again, as good and logical as what you say is, it isn't backed up by my math which shows a huge amount of additional resource advantage to the non trader.
Perhaps at this point it is a good time to step back and consider whether your math is actually backed up by reality, instead of the other way around.
You are very adamant about the results you calculated, but the game is very complex. It is much more likely that there is an error/oversight in your model (no shame there, happens all the time, that's how people learn), than that 20 years worth of meta evolution and everything the pro players know is all wrong.
It seems like you got it backwards here. Normally you would take many (hundreds/thousands) experimental results and try to build a model that fits the real data. What you did at the start is make a theoretical calculation, and then try come up with scenarios to make real gameplay conform to your model.
I don't mean to offend, but you seem very set in the ways of pure maths. Perhaps try to look into statistics or some physics/engineering to better understand what we are criticising here.
Walls dont help vs Onagers cutting woods.
And again, as good and logical as what you say is, it isn't backed up by my math which shows a huge amount of additional resource advantage to the non trader.
And how am I supposed to respond to people saying this scenario isnt a valid test? Henk made it, wasnt willing to step up to the challenge, thehand did, and we played 2 games that were decisively over before trade paid off.
If the argument is that good players are better at repelling an attack than we are, which is obviously true, then why hasnt anyone responded by saying "definitely dont trade until you are over 2000ELO hd"? Weve come a long way from me being an *****, obviously wrong, carts pay off in one trip to where we are now where people are arguing that of course in our level games the trader is making a bad investment but better players in conjunction with their great teammates will defend better and then win after their trade starts paying off.
So lets compare this to another thing we teach new players, which at first hurts their game until they master it: luring boars. We never tell a noob to forget it because they'll screw it up and get their vils killed. I get that. 300f is a demonstrably advantageous edge provable in simulation and in spreadsheet.The idea not to invest in early trade until you've reached a certain level of competence is interesting, but was answered by an earlier point made, perhaps by Melkor I forget. Inexperienced players, especially if they want to improve, should aim to play as 'correctly' as possible to foster good habits. I speak from a pedagogical perspective, as this is at least an area in which I have some expertise. Complete beginners may well gain a competitive edge by not bothering with trade, but this might stunt their growth long term. AoE is of course just a game; players can compete just for fun, and they're probably not fussed about improving. In which case, sell away!
Now that you mentioned him ... I wish Tocaraca and RicoJay had an argument, that thread would break all records!