Best way to get food fast?

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

In AOE, there's many ways to make food, but is there a fastest fastest way?

The windmill contains infinit resources of food. Hunting is good, but the animals are limited, far away and my settlers are left even more vulnerable by scouts. I can make sheap and let them grow. I can make small boat and fish, but if i don't protect them, they're gonna get destroyed by roaming boats looking to destroy them so this mean i also have to make my own battle ships to protect them.

I ask this to know if there is even an incentive to go hunt far away or if i should simply create 1 or 2+ windmills and eating.

[Cooper Kid]

Hunting (early on at least) is much, much faster than using Mills. Same goes for mining rather than using a Plantation. The trick is to start off with hunting and gathering, and using resource buildings later on in the game when it's too dangerous to leave your Settlers outside your base. Just remember to use your Market upgrades early on so that you get the most of your resources quickly.

Fishing boats are all well and good, but I find they don't tend to last very long as the fish near your base are soon exhausted. I don't bother with them at all, but it's worth getting some War Canoes or Caravels to gather some Whales that are relatively near your base and thus safer. If you have a navy at all, keep your Caravels fishing unless they're being used - every little helps!

Livestock is by far the fastest way to gather food, but it takes a lot of concentration to keep your Settlers gathering. You need to have two or three Settlers at your Livestock Pen, and remember to keep building sheep or cows at regular intervals. There are some Home City cards that make livestock fatten faster too.

[Inquisitioner]

Factories

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

Originally posted by Sco Cooper Kid:

Hunting (early on at least) is much, much faster than using Mills. Same goes for mining rather than using a Plantation. The trick is to start off with hunting and gathering, and using resource buildings later on in the game when it's too dangerous to leave your Settlers outside your base. Just remember to use your Market upgrades early on so that you get the most of your resources quickly.

Fishing boats are all well and good, but I find they don't tend to last very long as the fish near your base are soon exhausted. I don't bother with them at all, but it's worth getting some War Canoes or Caravels to gather some Whales that are relatively near your base and thus safer. If you have a navy at all, keep your Caravels fishing unless they're being used - every little helps!

Livestock is by far the fastest way to gather food, but it takes a lot of concentration to keep your Settlers gathering. You need to have two or three Settlers at your Livestock Pen, and remember to keep building sheep or cows at regular intervals. There are some Home City cards that make livestock fatten faster too.

Yeah, while playing, in campaing mode and note that i play at very hard, on the act 2 of the second mission, it was very hard for me so this mission was the part where i really had to learn about everything to get pass it. Once i learned about everything, it wasnt that hard no more.

In this mission, we start with a windmill so i ordered my settlers to work in there and wood aswell and later on, on gold with the extra's. I sooner or later found out that i wasnt getting food fast early and i kept getting destroyed because i wasnt fast enough.
So after many games, i decided to completely ignore the windmill for a start. I was instead hunting, training 5 sheep, waiting for them to get fat, gathering their food.

In the long run, when i felt i had enough settlers hunting, in the wood and on gold mines, my extra's would go on the windmill with the last upgrade for it. Once my hunters were done, i started making an other windmill for probably a total of 3 max.
I quickly started to understand that the windmill and plantation are there to keep a steady flow of the income so that you never stop gaining something plus it's easier to protect them and now i know that you should use them as a last resort or when there's nothing else on the map near you.

Same with the plantation. I build planation, but i favor the gold mines first and later on, i build 2 or 3 plantation once there is no more gold mines.

[iSnack2.0]

Always hunt first before shifting your villagers/settlers to mills. You can avoid getting raided by herding (where you move your villagers to the far side of the animals before killing them so that they run towards your town centre).

Never gather from berry bushes unless you have special upgrades for it's rate. They have the same speed as an un-upgraded Mill.

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

Never gather from berry bushes unless you have special upgrades for it's rate. They have the same speed as an un-upgraded Mill.

I disagree with that 100%. Berries are free and static and they're Always located where you usually build up your main base. It's like a free none unlimited windmill with no upgrade, but note that where these berries are and where your settlers gathers them, they are 100% safe. You get underattack and your main base is not too far to secure your settlers.
In a real game, you mostly need to build towers far away just to secure your settlers where ever they go to work, but towers cost 250 wood each and easy to destroy if not defended by an army around.

In an online game, the scout can easily locate the settlers and early archers who only cost wood and food will easily wipe the floor with their blood.
In AOE 3, it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of time to make a lot of settlers and they can be destroyed instantly if not well defended.

[iSnack2.0]

Originally posted by Stackofbeef:

Originally posted by Anterior2:

Never gather from berry bushes unless you have special upgrades for it's rate. They have the same speed as an un-upgraded Mill.

I disagree with that 100%. Berries are free and static and they're Always located where you usually build up your main base. It's like a free none unlimited windmill with no upgrade, but note that where these berries are and where your settlers gathers them, they are 100% safe. You get underattack and your main base is not too far to secure your settlers.
In a real game, you mostly need to build towers far away just to secure your settlers where ever they go to work, but towers cost 250 wood each and easy to destroy if not defended by an army around.

In an online game, the scout can easily locate the settlers and early archers who only cost wood and food will easily wipe the floor with their blood.
In AOE 3, it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of time to make a lot of settlers and they can be destroyed instantly if not well defended.

You're joking right? Watch some high-level replays (PR35+) and you will notice that in the early game they only ever hunt. It's relatively safe because they herd the hunts back towards the town centre.

Berry bushes gather so slow it's like a joke. You will lose a crucial eco advantage early on which may result in less resources to rush / recover from rushes.

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

Originally posted by Stackofbeef:

I disagree with that 100%. Berries are free and static and they're Always located where you usually build up your main base. It's like a free none unlimited windmill with no upgrade, but note that where these berries are and where your settlers gathers them, they are 100% safe. You get underattack and your main base is not too far to secure your settlers.
In a real game, you mostly need to build towers far away just to secure your settlers where ever they go to work, but towers cost 250 wood each and easy to destroy if not defended by an army around.

In an online game, the scout can easily locate the settlers and early archers who only cost wood and food will easily wipe the floor with their blood.
In AOE 3, it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of time to make a lot of settlers and they can be destroyed instantly if not well defended.

You're joking right? Watch some high-level replays (PR35+) and you will notice that in the early game they only ever hunt. It's relatively safe because they herd the hunts back towards the town centre.

Berry bushes gather so slow it's like a joke. You will lose a crucial eco advantage early on which may result in less resources to rush / recover from rushes.

First of all, we can become very good, but we are not pros. The pro RTS players do things that humans can't do and they are very very edgy(their playstyle that is). They see everything, they don't even need an alarm to know something is being under attack. When they scout, they know exactly where to scout to guess where their opponent is gonna be next(they got that mindgame). They exploit so much it feels like they're cheating.
I use hotkeys, i hotkey my groups in different part, i do hotkey my buildings too, but the pro's, they don't only place an hotkey on everything and use only hotkeys, they do it very fast and if they have to, they download a program called AHK(Autohotkey) To create their own scripts, their own modified hotkeys. They never do nothing for more than 1 sec.

I play mostly warcraft 3 and i see pro taking down a medium neutral camp with 3 weak ass archers at night: no hero included except for the fact that the hero has to comeback at some point to pick up the chess left behind.

With that being said, you can't look at a pro game and say that something won't work, we are not pro's.
Pro players don't get pass tier 2, they don't build walls, they don't build canons, they never waste their time with settlers, they don't build native's tent. Basically, they don't waste no time coz they know their opponent is just as fast as them.

Differece between us,
we go for walls and canons coz it's useful against average and above. Once the walls are built, we focus on economy and defense at first so as a result, the settlers must build windmills, plantation to build economy behind walls with no downtime. As a result, the settlers working on mind and animals are the only thing we see left as very vulnerable. As a result, you must build towers near animals and mines coz if not, you easily lose 10 settlers in 1 sec, but the lonely towers are easily destroyed and they cost 250 wood each.

As a final result, for normal games, berries are useful coz again, it's like a free none upgraded plantation. Plantation cost 600 woods, you don't need that ♥♥♥♥ early, but you never know, your opponent can build aggressive units early just to mess with your settlers. The best strat in an RTS is to use something that your opponent will never expect ATM.

[iSnack2.0]

Originally posted by Stackofbeef:

Originally posted by Anterior2:

You're joking right? Watch some high-level replays (PR35+) and you will notice that in the early game they only ever hunt. It's relatively safe because they herd the hunts back towards the town centre.

Berry bushes gather so slow it's like a joke. You will lose a crucial eco advantage early on which may result in less resources to rush / recover from rushes.

First of all, we can become very good, but we are not pros. The pro RTS players do things that humans can't do and they are very very edgy(their playstyle that is). They see everything, they don't even need an alarm to know something is being under attack. When they scout, they know exactly where to scout to guess where their opponent is gonna be next(they got that mindgame). They exploit so much it feels like they're cheating.
I use hotkeys, i hotkey my groups in different part, i do hotkey my buildings too, but the pro's, they don't only place an hotkey on everything and use only hotkeys, they do it very fast and if they have to, they download a program called AHK(Autohotkey) To create their own scripts, their own modified hotkeys. They never do nothing for more than 1 sec.

I play mostly warcraft 3 and i see pro taking down a medium neutral camp with 3 weak ass archers at night: no hero included except for the fact that the hero has to comeback at some point to pick up the chess left behind.

With that being said, you can't look at a pro game and say that something won't work, we are not pro's.

We can't be pro, but we can sure try. And copying the pros is the best way to do it. Everything the pros do, they do for a very good reason.

Pro players don't get pass tier 2, they don't build walls, they don't build canons, they never waste their time with settlers, they don't build native's tent. Basically, they don't waste no time coz they know their opponent is just as fast as them.

Differece between us,
we go for walls and canons coz it's useful against average and above. Once the walls are built, we focus on economy and defense at first so as a result, the settlers must build windmills, plantation to build economy behind walls with no downtime. As a result, the settlers working on mind and animals are the only thing we see left as very vulnerable. As a result, you must build towers near animals and mines coz if not, you easily lose 10 settlers in 1 sec, but the lonely towers are easily destroyed and they cost 250 wood each.

As a final result, for normal games, berries are useful coz again, it's like a free none upgraded plantation. Plantation cost 600 woods, you don't need that ♥♥♥♥ early, but you never know, your opponent can build aggressive units early just to mess with your settlers. The best strat in an RTS is to use something that your opponent will never expect ATM.

Walls are useless in rush (but mandatory in treaty). As for cannons, only build them if you can micro them. If you can micro them then they are great, otherwise the risk of losing all those resources when one dies is just too much.

As for settlers, pros constantly produce them. That you are claiming they "don't waste their time with settlers" shows that you are clearly unfamiliar with what the pros do.

Furthermore, who do you mean by "we"? Nobody in a serious competitive match uses berries (unless they are playing as the Japanese or have a native upgrade etc.), and you don't need to worry so much about losing settlers if you herd the hunts back towards your town centre, it's not that hard.

That 250 wood could be spent on a foward barracks for a quick rush, or on some houses for getting your early unit mass faster. The only reason you make towers so early is if you need it for a foward HC shipment point to move your shipped units to the enemy faster in a rush.


This is all assuming you are talking about regular supremacy, not treaty mode. Everything changes in treaty.

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

Originally posted by Stackofbeef:

First of all, we can become very good, but we are not pros. The pro RTS players do things that humans can't do and they are very very edgy(their playstyle that is). They see everything, they don't even need an alarm to know something is being under attack. When they scout, they know exactly where to scout to guess where their opponent is gonna be next(they got that mindgame). They exploit so much it feels like they're cheating.
I use hotkeys, i hotkey my groups in different part, i do hotkey my buildings too, but the pro's, they don't only place an hotkey on everything and use only hotkeys, they do it very fast and if they have to, they download a program called AHK(Autohotkey) To create their own scripts, their own modified hotkeys. They never do nothing for more than 1 sec.

I play mostly warcraft 3 and i see pro taking down a medium neutral camp with 3 weak ass archers at night: no hero included except for the fact that the hero has to comeback at some point to pick up the chess left behind.

With that being said, you can't look at a pro game and say that something won't work, we are not pro's.

We can't be pro, but we can sure try. And copying the pros is the best way to do it. Everything the pros do, they do for a very good reason.

Pro players don't get pass tier 2, they don't build walls, they don't build canons, they never waste their time with settlers, they don't build native's tent. Basically, they don't waste no time coz they know their opponent is just as fast as them.

Differece between us,
we go for walls and canons coz it's useful against average and above. Once the walls are built, we focus on economy and defense at first so as a result, the settlers must build windmills, plantation to build economy behind walls with no downtime. As a result, the settlers working on mind and animals are the only thing we see left as very vulnerable. As a result, you must build towers near animals and mines coz if not, you easily lose 10 settlers in 1 sec, but the lonely towers are easily destroyed and they cost 250 wood each.

As a final result, for normal games, berries are useful coz again, it's like a free none upgraded plantation. Plantation cost 600 woods, you don't need that ♥♥♥♥ early, but you never know, your opponent can build aggressive units early just to mess with your settlers. The best strat in an RTS is to use something that your opponent will never expect ATM.

Walls are useless in rush (but mandatory in treaty). As for cannons, only build them if you can micro them. If you can micro them then they are great, otherwise the risk of losing all those resources when one dies is just too much.

As for settlers, pros constantly produce them. That you are claiming they "don't waste their time with settlers" shows that you are clearly unfamiliar with what the pros do.

Furthermore, who do you mean by "we"? Nobody in a serious competitive match uses berries (unless they are playing as the Japanese or have a native upgrade etc.), and you don't need to worry so much about losing settlers if you herd the hunts back towards your town centre, it's not that hard.

That 250 wood could be spent on a foward barracks for a quick rush, or on some houses for getting your early unit mass faster. The only reason you make towers so early is if you need it for a foward HC shipment point to move your shipped units to the enemy faster in a rush.


This is all assuming you are talking about regular supremacy, not treaty mode. Everything changes in treaty.

I just watched a pro match and i can now completely agree with you. I've seen one of the best out there, but man, i can't help, but to say that they do make the game look very bad. I wanted to be a pro at first, but not anymore.

AOE3 is all about raiding, raiding, raiding, raiding. ♥♥♥♥ is not what i expected it to be. I rather remain an average player for this one and doing what the AOE devs intended us to do while playing online.

If i want to raid, raid, raid raid, i play warcraft 3. I raid to level up, i steal neutral camp kill with a death coil or windwalk, i invade your army from behind while you're trying to clear a camp, i raid your base while you are away looking for a camp to clear and ♥♥♥♥.


All in all, they need to patch the game for that direction, to make AOE online play like it was supposed to. It should probably cost 1 wood to build 1 piece of wall and building the gate should probably cost only 5 or something so that way, everyone will be encouraged to build walls and capable of upgrading, building an army.
They can still save this game coz from what i see, i don't see what it got over warcraft 3 online when we take it seriously.

[iSnack2.0]

I just watched a pro match and i can now completely agree with you. I've seen one of the best out there, but man, i can't help, but to say that they do make the game look very bad. I wanted to be a pro at first, but not anymore.

It's good you have now seen how the game is played in the top-tier. The way to improve is to copy it.

AOE3 is all about raiding, raiding, raiding, raiding. ♥♥♥♥ is not what i expected it to be. I rather remain an average player for this one and doing what the AOE devs intended us to do while playing online.

What's wrong with raiding? Raiding is a core part of the game.

The game was originally designed to be friendly to both competitive and casual play. The developers wanted to make it so that someone can have fun without trying properly, but also so that a "hardcore" "pro" could utilise their tricks and skills at a high level. Cash prize tournaments used to be common in the early years, AoE3 was even one of the games at the World Cyber Games for a few years.

If i want to raid, raid, raid raid, i play warcraft 3. I raid to level up, i steal neutral camp kill with a death coil or windwalk, i invade your army from behind while you're trying to clear a camp, i raid your base while you are away looking for a camp to clear and ♥♥♥♥.

????

AoE is a completely different game to WC3.

All in all, they need to patch the game for that direction

The developer no longer exists, and Microsoft has confirmed there will never be another patch.

to make AOE online play like it was supposed to

This is how it was supposed to be.

It should probably cost 1 wood to build 1 piece of wall and building the gate should probably cost only 5 or something so that way, everyone will be encouraged to build walls

The developers never wanted you to build lots of walls. In one of the Ask Sandy's they said that they wanted to make AoE3 more fast paced than AoE2 (AoE2 relied on turtling and walling a lot more, it resulted in very long games).


Maybe AoE2 would be more to your tastes. The games in AoE2 are more friendly to slow basebuilding and walling. Or you could try Treaty mode in AoE3. Treaty mode gives 40mins of no attacking at the start, which allows you to build walls, develop your economy and get upgrades before the fighting begins.

Other treaty times are available (10mins, 20mins, 30mins), but they are less popular (because 40mins is the perfect amount of time for a good player to get to Imperial Age, get 99 villagers/settlers, upgrade everything, and build 4 or 5 layers of walls - obviously you won't be able to do all this in 40mins when you first start, but practice makes perfect and eventually you will manage it).

[W1ne-Ton Hammer]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

What's wrong with raiding? Raiding is a core part of the game.

to make AOE online play like it was supposed to

This is how it was supposed to be.

The developers never wanted you to build lots of walls. In one of the Ask Sandy's they said that they wanted to make AoE3 more fast paced than AoE2 (AoE2 relied on turtling and walling a lot more, it resulted in very long games).

Maybe AoE2 would be more to your tastes. The games in AoE2 are more friendly to slow basebuilding and walling. Or you could try Treaty mode in AoE3. Treaty mode gives 40mins of no attacking at the start, which allows you to build walls, develop your economy and get upgrades before the fighting begins.

Other treaty times are available (10mins, 20mins, 30mins), but they are less popular (because 40mins is the perfect amount of time for a good player to get to Imperial Age, get 99 villagers/settlers, upgrade everything, and build 4 or 5 layers of walls - obviously you won't be able to do all this in 40mins when you first start, but practice makes perfect and eventually you will manage it).

First of all, i refuse to play in no rush. That ♥♥♥♥ is wack. I am more like the aggresive type, but i hate the fact that it is the only option in competitive play.

Now, you wanna tell me that it was supposed to be a fast paced game? You even managed to back this up. So wait a minute.



Starcraft, starcraft 2, warcraft 3. 3 fast paced competitive games still alive.

Is it a good strat to turtle up in these games? Yes and a game still last around 20 minutes most of the time.

Do they always have the time to reach end game units before the end of each games? Absolutely, but many games still end under 12 minutes or even 6.

Do they have the time to take every upgrades necessary for the unit they use in order to counter play? Yes, but that is if they want.

Do they build up walls? Yes, but indirectly.WAR: Night elves build walls with moonwells and movable Ancients(the buildings that can move).Terran build walls with movable buildings and supply depot. Protoss build walls with buildings and 1 zealot(we call him bob). In fact, every races in those 3 fast paced RTS got their own ways to build walls. Both pros and casual can do it and succeed the same way.
...

It was probably flawed as hell in AOE 2. They probably ddint even forsee the competitiveness of that game, but it still worked for the same reason that it worked for Mount and Blade Warband(A game that probably never intended to be online one day).

I agree with the fact that they rooted for a more fast paced game, but removing the defensive aspect of it completely added more cons than flaws. There is no defensive option at all in AOE 3. You only build cannon towers for shipping something somewhere other than your main building.

Finally, you can't even rebuild your main base in AOE 3 unless you decide to build an other main building which is a very good change.
You can build multiple main base in AOE 2. That's probably why a game of AOE2 lasted so damn long in the first place.


In some AOE 2 games, you see walls. In some other games, you don't. Wow, diversity. No games feel the same. In AOE3, no walls, never ever. No diversity between each games.

[iSnack2.0]

Well, there are a couple of strategies that require walls. In the recent PK tournament a few of the pros did a water boom strategy, which meant they fortified along the shore and hogged the water for the economic advantage.

[Cooper Kid]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

Well, there are a couple of strategies that require walls. In the recent PK tournament a few of the pros did a water boom strategy, which meant they fortified along the shore and hogged the water for the economic advantage.

In maps with a bit of water this is a brilliant military strategy, as well as an economic one.

[iSnack2.0]

Originally posted by Follymuncher:

whats the point of even buying settlers if it means you cant rush faster...save those 5 usless settlers for ageing faster and get troops to harrass and then get settlers to support that? whats the point of even getting more than 10 settlers? 20 settlers=lose, so...why not even just get all wood and trade routes just to get troops from the home city and harrass with that, again all means to an end...♥♥♥♥ the other guy while hes not prepared, that seems to be the only trend.

I take it you are new to the AoE series...

[Cooper Kid]

Originally posted by Anterior2:

I take it you are new to the AoE series...

Just a troll reviving a 2-year-old thread. Let it die