Age up times

[Magic Bagel]

What is the average age up times? From dark to feudal, etc. Im averaging around 12 feudal. And 22 castle. And imp just depending on the situation. Just curious what are recommended times.

[Experienced Noob]

Depends on map and strategy. If you're scout rushing you'd want to Feudal in the 10-11 minute range. If you're fast castling you'd be aiming for the 16-17 minute range.

[Magic Bagel]

I mostly play spanish. So im aiming for strong castle age.

I usually wait til 25 pop in dark to age up.
I usually age up with ~40-45 pop in feudal.
I usually play defensively, wall up with pallisades late dark and some stone in feudal.

[Solomon]

Originally posted by ZeToastedBagel:

I mostly play spanish. So im aiming for strong castle age.

I usually wait til 25 pop in dark to age up.
I usually age up with ~40-45 pop in feudal.
I usually play defensively, wall up with pallisades late dark and some stone in feudal.

28/29 vills fast castls build orded and you should get a 20 min castle even if u play bad

[Leston]

First principle is to be economically efficient. If you get into remarkable disadvantage even before facing your opponents troops or village, something is wrong...

So your main goal at start is to increase your eco/ressources income by producing more villagers. You aim for constantly produce them in your initial tc, one each 25 seconds, until you click feudal age research. The only exception is to research loom somewhere in between. The later the better (economically), but best before you lure your first boar. You shouldn´t skip loom in feudal, better gain survivability in case of early attacks or if you want to forward build yourself. Even a scout is a threat to a unloomed villager, especially when injured by boar or wolf. Losing a villager is far worse than not spending 50 gold an 20 seconds on loom research.

With mayans, you loom first (1 more villager initially, so you´re hosed ad start), then start vil production. With chinese, you have 6 villagers (+scout) but no food. So you loom first and gather food to start production asap. All other civs allow to constantly produce villagers.
Maybe you find your first sheep quite late and have to loom after your initial food is spent to fill the food gap. Sometimes you have your food gathering villagers to drop their food by hand to avoid gaps in vil production. Do it, it´s worth it.

I didn´t consider water starts (if sufficient fish grounds are available, getting a dock soon to produce boats and villagers simultaneously in dark age), it´s just a separate little chapter :)

There is almost no reasonable strategy that needs/allows to stop villager production and wait for enough food to click feudal research. With a few civs you can go ultrafast feudal with 14+1 pop for a really early tower rush, khmer even can go bowmen then (no need to build a barracks to access archery). Here you have to wait 30-60 sec, and afaik it´s the only one strategy that allows idle tc before clicking feudal.

Why do I point that out this extensively?

Instead of talking about age up times, it makes more sense to talk about population count (villagers+scout). You don´t play by fulfilling a time schedule, but you head for specific economic or military goals. Then you think about how to reach them as efficient (technically) as possible in time and economics. The resulting close-to-perfect time (always ingame clock, it differs to external stopwatch due to different game speed settings) is only worth to evalue if your strategy is effective to reach the goal to gain advantage over your opponent.

As said before, you play different maps (with water or not, good for early aggression or not, different amount of fast food like sheep/deer/boars...) and play different civs with bonuses that support specific strategies. So you may get started with one standard opening to learn and become familiar with, but without the ability to vary you won´t get better and likely lose a lot of matches due to being technically efficient, but in result not effective.

On open maps, early aggression is a good option. If you don´t go aggro, your opponent likely will. Being unprepared sucks, but to prepare in advance slows you down if there is no attack. So better go aggro yourself or scout good enough to know as early as possible what he´s planning. If your scout sees 6 archers close to your base it´s too late, but scouting 5+ gold miners 3 minutes earlier when he´s still in dark age will let you know to expect a heavy feudal archer rush. If you see him on stone, prepare for tower rush.
Walling is an option, but in the end no effective solution to win the match.
Buildups for these early strategies usually do 20-23 pop when clicking feudal, less to speed up tower rush (with lower eco, then) is possible, but rather uncommon. Without civ specific bonuses of chinese/maya/malay/persian, the resulting ideal feudal time is some 10:00 - 11:xx minutes.
There is also the so called dark age rush: Building a barracks quite soon and produce 3 militia in dark age (Mine 10 additional gold without mining camp. Aztecs can produce 5 without mining due to initially +50 gold). You disturb your enemy very early, but delay your feudal time (extra wood and food needed in dark age). Feudaling with 24 villagers (24+3+1=28 pop) works fine, resulting 12:30 - 13:00 feudal time. Follow up strategy depends on success and opponents reaction.

Another option on open maps, e.g. when your opponent likely won´t feudal rush or if you´re in pocket position of a 3v3/4v4 match, is to go fast castle to harass him with a few knights early (or support feudal wars at the flanks in team games).
For economical reasons, you want to stay in feudal as short as possible. Better produce enough villagers in dark age and manage to get enough ressources to go caslte age right after reaching feudal. Of course, you need two feudal buildings and produce 2 additional villies while building them, but you shouldn´t have to wait for the ressources needed (wood for buildings, food+gold for upgrade). Don´t go wheelbarrow in feudal then, it takes longer, costs more and causes less effect on your income than 2 more villies at these pop counts.
Usually you go fast castle with rd. 25+2 pop (25 dark age, 2 additional in feudal), maybe one more or less. Specific buildup differs due to different economic bonuses of the civs, resulting castle times are rd. 16:00. In 1v1 matches, getting a barracks before reaching feudal to build the needed stables (or stable+blacksmith) as needed feudal buildings is a good plan, in team games the market is useful to get cartography for better support at the flanks (and get information about teammates and scouted oponent bases early).
Going fast caslte with lower pop works technically, 20+0 is possible with some civs (good early eco advantages), when you skip mining gold, build market as feudal building and sell your initial 200 stone. But it´s hard to set up and maintain a sufficient powerful castle age offensive with such low eco, not to speak about increasing your eco the same time (not only producing villagers, but additional town centers). You could reach castle age times round 14:00 with pop 20+0, but an opponent still in feudal would be rd. 8 villagers ahead, also likely having eco upgrades (doublebit axe etc.) you hardly can afford with such a tight buildup. Likely he will defend against your early castle age good enough to reach castle age later with a better economy than you have.
The only senseful offensive strategy with such low pop castle age i know is the monk rush, executed with saracens (mining stone and sell is more efficient than mining gold due to trading bonus), civs with gold income/price bonus (malians/turks/portuguese) or civs with monk-specific bonus like aztecs or burmese.

The last option for less open maps (early aggression not likely/successful) is about how to get the best economy boom to support a strong later military engagement or reaching imperial earlier.
The earlier you advance to feudal+castle age, the earlier you have a stop in villager count (=ressources income) and the less ressources you´ll gather while transition to the next ages. On the other hand, advancing in ages gives access to eco upgrades and -most important- reaching castle age allows you to build additional towncanters to produce multiple villagers simultaneously, increasing your eco like an avalanche. So, what is the perfect pop count to feudal/castle for the perfect boom?
It may be possible to answer that question in exact mathematical correctness. But on the one hand, it differs slightliy between the civs due to different bonus effects on specific ressources etc., on the other hand you may not build any military (not even buildings) theoretically, but in a real match, having some spears or knights for defense (or at least the buildings to produce them) may be a good idea. So there is only an at-about-answer.
Going castle age with 25+2 or below hardly allows you to instantly build 2 tc when reaching castle age and having enough farms to produce villagers from all 3 simultaneously, even if you skip any military building. With one additional tc to build and feed, you have some leftover capacity in ressources income to build 2-3 military buildings and maybe a few defensive troops, an early castle, save it for early imperial or go for a third tc a little later.
With 20+0-like super fast castle age you have to sell your stone, so you have a problem to pay even one tc.
The best boom is with 28+2 pop, resulting castle time civ dependant rd. 17:xx. Going heavy on wood (all villagers that aren´t on the last fastfood or already farming) after clicking castle research, get doublebit axe and horsecollar upgrade asap and laying farms (should be rd.10-12 and some food count to resume vil production when reaching castle age). Build 2 tc, start multiple vil production, lay more farms (successively up to 20) get bowsaw, plow and wheelbarrow upgrades soon. Handcart upgrade will follow around pop 50+.
Villagers from first tc are sent to wood, second tc to gold (build tc close to gold pile), third is stone. Lay additional farms as your woodcount rises. Build fourth tc as soon as you have 100 stone etc...
Don´t forget to build houses early as your pop count increases rapidly. No need to be pop blocked.

So far about my thoughts about "age up times", hope it helps ;)

[T-West]

Your "Age up Time" depends only on the number of villagers you create (25s each), and whether or not you research loom (also 25 seconds). Aging up later than the ideal time means that you have some idle time where your TC is not doing anything.

If you go for a 22-pop Feudal build and research loom, then the best possible time that you hit Feudal would be 10:05. Since there is a bit of lag in games, there is a bit of delay in your time, and realistically the best players (Viper, DauT, etc.) consistently reach Feudal around 10:10 with such a build.

There are lots of different fast castle builds. Some civs can skip loom and go for a pure boom with a 22+2 or 23+2 up directly into 3 TCs, other times you want to make more vils in the Dark Age and go up later. It all depends on the situation.

It takes 130 seconds to research the Feudal Age technology and 160 seconds to research the Castle Age technology, so you can just do the math to figure out what the ideal up time is for your build. Reaching better times certainly takes some practice :)

[Leston]

Originally posted by TWest:

...so you can just do the math to figure out what the ideal up time is for your build.

To complete information, the gathering rate for ressources is basically around 0.30-0.35 per second and villager. Deer/boar is faster, around 0.40 (but need to lure, walk or build additional mill). with civ bonuses and eco upgrades, rates can be increased up to rd. 0.45, depending on which techs/bonuses are available.
As this is the pure gathering speed without varying delay of walking to deliver or villagers hindering each other, too exact values and calculation don´t make sense.
Just calculate roughly e.g. 22 villagers can collect while feudal upgrade of 130 sec.: 22x130x0.30= almost 900 ressources. Don´t forget to reduce the amount if villagers have to do buildings or shift to other ressources (non productive walking time).

A special is about farming: While farming rate itself stays constant on a quite high level, you have to add the time you need to chop 60 wood and to build the farm. As woodcutting speed increases by upgrades and the amount of food you get for your 60 wood increases by mill upgrades, the overall inclusive rate of farming rises from low in dark age to really good in late castle (with upgrades) or imperial.

[Selaya]

play malay then you can castle at 16mins and 41 pop :^]

[Leston]

Originally posted by Selaya Jenkins:

play malay then you can castle at 16mins and 41 pop :^]

Building 37 villagers 25s each (+3initial + scout = 41 pop), getting loom 25s and add malayan 100% faster upgrade times (add 65s and 80s) results in 1095s or 18:15 as perfect castle time without any delays. When skipping loom, it´s 17:50.

In fact, malayans shorter upgrade time allow to speed things up. But it doesn´t work to just substract half of the upgrade times and get the same buildup results just in shorter time. Shorter time means, your villagers collect less ressources. A buildup that grants a certain amount of ressources when reaching feudal or castle age with a specific amount of villagers, will bring you to the desired age faster, but won´t grant the same ressources count to go on then. In this context, malayan having no eco bonus on land maps at all (only ones are about fishing and later on cheaper battle eles) gives no compensation at all.

To adapt existing openings to malay, the best way I see is to produce more villagers and click age up research later, so you end up with the same timing as standard, but higher pop. For feudal it´s 2 or 3 additionals, for castle research 3-4. If you go straight castle, it´s economically efficient to build all additionals in dark age and do the transition in feudal as usual.
Then you can take a look at the extra income (due to more workers) and find out, if you can reduce the build by one or two villagers to speed things up.

[sam.k.lewis21]

Just got through to FC with Franks 9:18 with sheep and deer still remaining and only 16 vills.

[edwardalbee]

Originally posted by sam.k.lewis21:

Just got through to FC with Franks 9:18 with sheep and deer still remaining and only 16 vills.

How is that possible?
13 villagers x 25 seconds each = 325 seconds
Feudal = 130 seconds
Castle Age = 160 seconds

Total = 615 seconds or 10 minutes and 15 seconds

This doesn't even include the time at the start of the game where you have to find the sheep and bring at least one back to the TC.

[KaRma]

Depending on the map. Level: 1800-1900

BF pocket-boom. (more or less)

1. 28 pop dark age (27 vills+sc)
2. Min 10,30 / 11 go to feudal (researching in 2min 10 sec)
3. Min 13, do market + blacksmith + 2 vills
4. Min 14 go to Castle age (pop 30) (researching in 2min 40 sec)
5. Min 16,30-17,00 u are in castle age

Arabia pocket-kts

=~ BF pocket boom but 26 pop dark age - 28 in castle

Arabia flank-archers (no drush)

1. 22-24 vills go to feudal (i prefer 23)
2. Wheelbarrow in min 17
3. Click to castle age in min 20-21