A question about whether to rush feudal to boom or stay in dark age

[Freshairkaboom]

What is best, 5 villagers working for 125 seconds extra, or getting double-bit axe and horse collar 130 seconds sooner? Note that during those 130 seconds, it's often likely that you will soon run out of food sources other than farms, making horse collar incredibly more useful before rather than after that happens.

What I'm asking is, for fast castling, the standard seems to be get 5 more villagers (27 instead of 22), and then go feudal. But is it worth it? With proper distribution, cannot those 22 villagers make due until you get horse collar and double-bit axe, and then get the extra 5, or even 7 villagers to fast castle with during feudal age instead?

Or doesn't it work to get both eco techs and two feudal buildings to age up? Maybe Khmer can do it?

Please elaborate with your answer.

[Pewr]

Try it, take note of the castle time. Then you'll see why 27 is faster than 22

[Freshairkaboom]

There's more at stake though. How many farms do you usually make in feudal on a fast castle build? Quite a lot I reckon. Now what if NONE of your farms have horse collar applied? That's -75 food per farm, which puts a huge strain on your wood income, which you need to buy town centers.

I did try it, and while it was a bit slower to castle up, this way, I got a much stronger economy once I reached castle. Something to keep in mind.

[SomeTenRandom]

Well lets do the math To get to castle on let's say 30 villagers takes 500 800 and 1500 food for a grand total of 2800 food. Let's do the math.
2 boar -10 per 100 food for decay 5 berries 8 sheep 2 boar 3 deer(On a bad day usually 4 though) gets us 500+(800+680+375)*.9= 2170 Leaving us with So either cut 13 villagers or spit up 630 more food. Finding your fourth deer as there usually should be down to 500 OK Now we just need 500 food froma our farms,(If we didnt get our deer we need 1000 food. Well need an extra 150 resources for your strategy or ours. Farms gather at a rate of 19.14 food per minute So well need to collect from Farms from 52 minutes to get the needed food, IDK about you but 1 farm wont cut it. We'll do 8 farms in a nice fit around out tc. Cutting out collecting time down to 6 and a half minutes. We need these 6 and a half minutes (7for your strategy)to be done at the exact moment we get 200 gold and build our market. IDK about you but those 14 villagers before clicking up to feudal will do allota work in 130 seconds. You'll lose 2.6 villagers of work for 5.4 minutes which collecting on farms(Which is slower compared to wood) Thats 268 resources or 4.47 farms back for free Out of your 8 farms. Compared to a 175->250 food balance a gain of 600 food/175 or 3.4 farms back. Not to mention if you're going archer or something that 268 resources of flexibility vs 600 resources tied up in food. Is a huge difference. Not to mention the discipline of holding off farms until fuedal and after the upgrade is a struggle not to mention the upgrade takes a bit out of 1.25 farms. Which is farms you could have collecting instead of waiting to place. The early game is a matter of food not wood. Once he hits castle hell have MORE than 268 wood(It collects faster than farms) to build a tc and he will still be able to affored to replace his farms.

TLDR: Horse collar gets 3.4 farms fast castle gets 4.47 farms.

If you are however scout rushing, or god knows why, a man at arms rush horse collar is a must.
OR
you end up building more than 10farms in feudal because you're a noob. Like me <3

[Jineapple]

Usually you can research Horse Collar and Double Bit Axe soon after you've clicked up to castle, so it's not an either/or.

[Freshairkaboom]

True, I've tested both, and it seems if you go deers you should have no problem feudaling on 27 vills and castling on 30 after market and blacksmith.

[grraf]

Umm usually yr map and closeist oponent get to decide what u should do... for ex very open map or mongol/hun/'insert other rusher civ here' means u need to fast feudal for acess to towers/spears or u are toast... then again vs a civ like china or on BF/Yucatan u wall off a few small sections and u can safely stay in dark as much as u want...
Watching a ton of pro matches these guys seem to think 22-24 vills&up is ideal on most circumstances unless u are hun/mongol and go up on 18-21vils so u can do a feudal rush...

[Experienced Noob]

An unupgraded villager gathers resources at around 100/5min. If you're fast castling, you've probably got 10 vills max on wood. Double bit gives +20% gather speed, so you'd only get about +40 or +50 wood in those 2+ minutes, whereas 5 extra vills working for 2+ minutes is going to be around +200 resources.

The farm thing is a bit more difficult to calculate, but I don't think it's a big deal. I see top experts sometimes get horse collar before planting their farms if they have good deer for luring, but most of the time they don't get it before starting to farm.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

Originally posted by SomeTenRandom:

TLDR: Horse collar gets 3.4 farms fast castle gets 4.47 farms.

If you are however scout rushing, or god knows why, a man at arms rush horse collar is a must.
OR
you end up building more than 10farms in feudal because you're a noob. Like me <3

That's interesting, because the difference between having 3.4 and 4.47 additional farms is minimal.

In other words, going to Feudal on 22-24 villagers and getting horse collar is almost equal to upgrading at 26-28 villagers and not getting horse collar. You should just have these two options in mind and pick one, depending on the game circumstances.