I have recently seen a trend for Maya players skip loom in 1v1 arena. I wasn't aware of this until I saw Yinghua skip it against Skittle in Masters of Arena, and then again when Edie didn't do it against Stark. A quick glance at a few recorded games shows other players are doing this as well. I am surprised at this trend, and am sceptical of its viability. The motivation for skipping loom is as follows: If you build a house quick enough, you can start producing villagers sooner, and at the same time save 50 gold. We can estimate the gain by comparing town centre idle time in both methods. Suppose a latency time s and a keystroke/mouseclick time r. Then under a standard loom start, we have total town centre idle time t given by
t=s+2r
On the other hand, if we decide to skip loom, we have to wait until a house is built before starting villager production. The build time formula is
b=b'/(2/3+n/3)
Where b' is the time taken to build with one villager and n is the number of villagers. For a house, this is 25 seconds, so we have
b=75/(2+n)
Typically, skipping loom entails building a house with 3 villagers. The build time for this is 15 seconds. In practice, the villagers will not all be adjacent to each other, so there will be time spent walking by one or more villagers. A more realistic estimate is 17 seconds. The total town centre idle time is given by
t=s+4r+17
The difference here is 2r+17. r is small, but it's there to show that sending the command to build a house takes slightly longer than queuing loom and the first extra villager. We're looking at a villager production headstart of around 7 seconds or so. In the games I have observed, the time difference between the first villagers was 5 seconds. Economically, that's a very small difference, and it's reversed whenever loom is researched.
As for the loom trade-off; On one hand, fifty extra gold becomes available in the short term, which is a minor bonus. However, the question of loom is one that remains at large; you will eventually have to invest that 50 gold later, as well as 25 seconds of town centre time. Although it is tempting to postpone researching loom on arena for as long as possible, it is inevitable that you are going to have to expose your villagers to risk. Be that collecting resources towards the front of your base, going forward into the centre or even fighting off wolves in the back of your base, it's in your best interests to research loom sooner or later. Maps like arena certainly have a much larger margin of error for loom, but in general, I would see skipping loom as a Titanic waiting to happen (it has certainly happened at the higher levels). For that level of risk, I don't see skipping loom for the Maya on arena as being justified.
Anyway, that's a short little calculation. Maybe we can hear a bit from arena players.
t=s+2r
On the other hand, if we decide to skip loom, we have to wait until a house is built before starting villager production. The build time formula is
b=b'/(2/3+n/3)
Where b' is the time taken to build with one villager and n is the number of villagers. For a house, this is 25 seconds, so we have
b=75/(2+n)
Typically, skipping loom entails building a house with 3 villagers. The build time for this is 15 seconds. In practice, the villagers will not all be adjacent to each other, so there will be time spent walking by one or more villagers. A more realistic estimate is 17 seconds. The total town centre idle time is given by
t=s+4r+17
The difference here is 2r+17. r is small, but it's there to show that sending the command to build a house takes slightly longer than queuing loom and the first extra villager. We're looking at a villager production headstart of around 7 seconds or so. In the games I have observed, the time difference between the first villagers was 5 seconds. Economically, that's a very small difference, and it's reversed whenever loom is researched.
As for the loom trade-off; On one hand, fifty extra gold becomes available in the short term, which is a minor bonus. However, the question of loom is one that remains at large; you will eventually have to invest that 50 gold later, as well as 25 seconds of town centre time. Although it is tempting to postpone researching loom on arena for as long as possible, it is inevitable that you are going to have to expose your villagers to risk. Be that collecting resources towards the front of your base, going forward into the centre or even fighting off wolves in the back of your base, it's in your best interests to research loom sooner or later. Maps like arena certainly have a much larger margin of error for loom, but in general, I would see skipping loom as a Titanic waiting to happen (it has certainly happened at the higher levels). For that level of risk, I don't see skipping loom for the Maya on arena as being justified.
Anyway, that's a short little calculation. Maybe we can hear a bit from arena players.