This video took me far too many hours to make, so if I catch any of you researching Lumber upgrades at the wrong time... my disappointment will be immeasurable, and my day will be ruined. More content on the way folks, thanks for stopping by as always. :)
This is a gem of a video. Someone finally solved the mystery of when to optimally research the eco upgrades. Now take it down so my opponents don't see it.
The time and effort you put into this really shows. I'm subscribing for that fact alone man. Your dedication and research are fantastic. Thank you for doing the work most of us don't have the time or energy to do. Much appreciated. You have no idea.
You know, these payback times make it look like dehli are even better then I thought... There is a good 7-14% extra gather rate that they can typically , as they are only waiting a minute or two on the low level upgrades that the enemy isn't paying back for 3-4 minutes (and probably are starting these upgrades sooner,) but the payback time on the higher level upgrades is also instant, so they can pick up efficiency bonuses that other civs should simply not think about.
I'm late, but add in the Chinese IO and the additional income they generate out of thin air and you can easily skip some of the eco upgrades, which would the same cost as the IO. I'm going to try this next time -> Get the IO and skip some of the lumber upgrades.
As someone who's tried to do similar tests to measure the effectiveness of the Mongol resource upgrades, I totally understand how much effort you must have put into this one. And I only did them for non-wood resources, as they are way easier to create somewhat consistent setups for. So thank you so much for doing these tests for us so we don't have to
I will definitely be covering Ovoo upgrades for sure, but they're a tad later down the line as I'm covering more general videos first before getting there. Thanks Kanu :)
Great job on this video buddy. You saved me a lot of time (and tbh i dont know if I ever brang up the patience for this). Keep going, you're the Spiritofthelaw of age4!
As a Delhi main this video would be a lot shorter if I made it. "As soon as you build your first lumber camp, get Forestry. As soon as you get to Feudal Age, get Double Broadax. Upon hitting Castle Age, get Lumber Preservation. Get Crosscut Saw as soon as you enter Imperial Age." Vid done.
I think something overlooked in this video is that all resources are not equal. You seem to be basing your conclusions off the fact that an upgrade costs x resources. In some maps, some resources are more easily accessible and abundant than others. Villagers have to travel to new patches of resources and in reality, 1 wood does NOT equal 1 gold or 1 food. If you play real world matches you will find that doing these upgrades is still beneficial, almost immediately. I certainly notice it when I forget any sort of wood upgrade. Wood is actually they most important of them all, because wood gathers have a travel distance, vs something like miners and farmers. This means more time is lost traveling and having a higher % gather rate actually goes further than it would with mining. You test this in the video by placing lumber mills constantly as you chop, but in high APM games, that's never going to be consistent, so more travel time will be put in place, and these upgrades will matter even more. And like mentioned, trading 75 food and 175 gold, resources which you gather with minimal travel, to increase your wood producers (Who have higher travel) gather rates, is going to be beneficial. When I play, wood upgrades are top priority, above mining and gather rates, because of this. This seems to be overlooked in the video. I would not recommend taking your advice on holding out on any of the lumbar mill upgrades, unless you're an advanced A.I. who has an APM of 2000 and can individually micro each unit on wood to maintain its optimal gather rate throughout the game.
Can we get focused videos specifically on HRE eco with the 40% carry and 40% gather rate? And then a mongol video taking into account ovoo-steroid-ed eco upgrades? Great work!
Wouldn't it have made sense to test skipping/postponing forestry and see if the numbers vary? Would you need even more than 25 lumberjacks? Same with wheelbarrow, as you'll have other villagers adding to the payback time and - unless you eliminate most walking - you should probably pick it up before broadaxe anyhow. Just to be thorough and see what the optimal order is.
Laughs in Delhi. 😁 Maybe you can use the maps seed number for consistent woodlines to decrease randomness a bit. It probably has minimal effect but for more controlled experiments. I don't even know if the seed system works atm. Lastly thank you. Optimization on every aspect of life and a game is my addiction. Keep it up. 👍🏻
Great video! I'd like to see how this applies to Rus. Because of the wooden fortress' wood bonus, hunting cabins and colecting food from deer most of the game, I tent to avoid all eco techs until castle age. And even without them I feel like you can achieve a pretty solid eco if you really exploit those bonuses.
@@AgeofNoob glad to help! Thank you so much for your time to investigate the eco tech. Most people goes by intuition and pure game experience. Data driven analysis will save huge amount of time for other who can't afford playing all day but still want to know! Great topic
I have two things to point out. The first is about forestry and HRE. With inspiration, is like having villagers with 2.5 upgrades right off the bat, so forestry matters more. 10 seconds chopping down a tree is 10 seconds not gathering (which is like 11-12 wood or something like that), so reducing that to 5 seconds is very nice. So you propably would reduce the number of villagers to research ONLY FORESTRY to like 12-15 villagers or something, depending on how much wood you'll need in the next 5 minutes. If you are getting into a heavy feudal age, probably getting it as you go up is a nice one, as you start moving your vills into wood. This is a niche take, but valid, I think. The second point is exactly about pop efficiency and economy transitions, and not only as you get to 200 pop. All upgrades, except whellbarrow, do not cost the resource which you will gather faster. This means you can have smoother economic transitions, with less villagers necessary for the gather rates you need. I mean, having the math and the numbers in linear tests is nice, but we can all agree that as the first contacts start, everything have a tendency to fall into chaos. You can get denied of resources, forced to transition into farms, or just see a great opportunity to finish the game instead of going to the next age. Resource upgrades helps all of that to happen more easily, increasing the chances of your short term plans to actually work, which is an invaluable and immesurable asset to have. Of course, check with your own game style if that suits you, but be mindful that's an option for players who want a little more reliability.
I love this video, but there are a few critical caveats here regarding the rules at the end. This has to do with the fact that you don't spend WOOD to get WOOD upgrades. You're trading one resource for another over time. Most notably, food and gold are at the end of the day "renewable" resources. Especially food. Often in the mid-game ramping up production is critical, and adhering to strict rules where all resources are equal to each other isn't a great rule of thumb. I can think of civs like HRE which further devalue gold (and other minor gold devalue civs like Delhi with ez sacred sites, Rus with Golden gate and hunting cabins, English in imperial, etc), and basically any water and hybrid map that auto-break the rules you recommended above, because squeezing every ounce of wood is going to be critical whereas especially food but also gold will be trivial in comparison. This also applies to heavy siege production, though of course that's more late game and you accounted for that. Sorry if this was a bit incoherent, didn't have much time to edit. Definitely worth a longer conversation imo, I just think there are many situations where 10+ and ramping on the wood line is enough to make a big difference with those upgrades.
Thanks Xeslaster! While I agree with your general point, there will always be what-ifs when it comes to these scenarios. This is why general rules of thumb are applied, and the rest is up to your game sense. It's impossible to make an analysis without making a few generalized assumptions (such as all resources are of equal value). Otherwise, this 10 minute video would be 5 hours long. :D
@@AgeofNoob appreciate the reply, and I hope it didn't come across like I didn't appreciate your hard work. I know content creation is rough, so not hating at all : ) I do till think that at the very least, hybrid/fish maps are a major scenario as that accounts for a little less than half of the maps total, and I think that would be worth checking out. Otherwise, thanks again, and keep up the good work!
Awesome video. I would like to add that if you are on a single TC these eco upgrades are another way to "get more villagers" without increasing your villager production capacity.
Since upgrades for farming and ore gathering pretty much equal in cost and reward; it is safe to assume the same logic applies to these as well? I can imagine that in some cases it might be worth earlier as lumber may have a higher value than other resources. For example when much palisading or outposts are needed in the somewhat near future. But this breaks the rule of thumb (assumption) that all resources are of equal value.
Great video! So for my newbie friends, would you say a good rule of thumb is to delay each lumber upgrade by at least one age? Generally, should players avoid picking up eco upgrades in the dark age?
If we have to reduce the argument to age, I'd say research Dark and Feudal Upgrades in Castle, and Castle upgrades in Imperial. :) This is too general of a statement though, so adhering to vill count is the better approach!
I noticed and I just wanted to mention that inconsistency on the amount of vills building the lumber camps can screw the numbers because it's inefficient to build it with 5 vills
In 4v4 team games get them asap because the earlier you get them the more resources you'll get in the long game that it will always be especially in maps where you are the safest player "pocket"
i mostly used it on watermaps as chinese. During vil production its may not be ressource efficient but it gives a Bonus production instead of none. consider in my case : vills are produced constantly
Great vido! Just a small hint for other metric - its allways hard to find a metric for this, since its not linear problem. I found, i have a good idea when i wanna "add more vills" and when not. So i try to count when each upgraid gives me same increase in collection rate, as adding vills in the same cost (i.e. when upgraid cost 75 resources, when it will give me same increase as 1,5 vils). This gives some good basic idea - when i know f.e. if i need 10 vils to be upgraid as effective as next vils, that when i want to "boom" i go for it under 10, if i want to cut and slow down vil prodcution i will go for it way after 10, etc..... found this realy good metric system, since "do i wanna go hard on vils or not" is a taught process each must do in each phase of the game, so in this way i tie the eco upgraids to it, so i simplify my game.
This would only make sense if you're not continuesly producing vills and could build more if you had the ressources. Never the case. No one will ask themselves: Should I get double broadaxe or another villager? :D You'd have to compare getting an eco upgrade earlier vs the gain from getting another TC earlier if you want a purely economic metric. Basically, you would have to calculate the surplus of your entire economy, then see how long that takes to pay for the upgrade. Assuming roughly similar res collection rates, those res could've gone into another TC. But this is a solely economic view, so only makes sense if you can boom undisturbed. His metric seems much more realistic for most games - whether you spend those resources on military for more cost-efficient engagements, better raiding (widening the gap between both ecos instead of just imrpoving your own) or rushing other sources of income like relics, holy sites, fishing, boars, whathaveyou.
@@Muenni well the problem is no metric is "ideal". There are too many variables and you allways need to simplify it in some way. I do some way, the autor does other way of simplifying, i just suggested what works for me. I'm aware of all the problem you pointed, on the other hand i see alot of problems in the metric used here. That's normal, its simplifying the problem, so there will be problem. Just wanted to point out what works for me, and i'd say it works fine. (DISCLAIMER: I was never a pro in any RTS game, any RTS game i play i get into top 1% without trying too hard - in wc3, sc2 i played 5-15 games/week and was top 1% ladder, now i have eaven less time, so i'm somewhere about top 3k ladder only atm, from new patch i'm 8-0 or so on games. So i'd say my view of the game isnt completly broken). And again, i dont push this to anyone. I just point another intresting way to think about it. The more "models" you use to think about this problem, the better idea will you have how it actualy works.
My operating assumption was: “Each upgrade will further improve the resource gather rate” And what do you know, of course we found this to be true 👀 It might have been significant to find that one or more of these upgrades had a NEGATIVE impact, but that would defeat the game designer’s intent (right?) But I do appreciate the contextual breakdown of when* to consider these upgrades. That was helpful!
Take crosscut saw upgrade if you want to fast collect forest from the map and do not want to give it to your opponent, for example on sea maps, where wood is key to victory (ships) because you cannot get it like Gold by traders of food by vilagers, only trade but cost will increase
I actually skip forestry and go straight for the double broadax, was hoping this vid would tell if thats right or wrong as I see many pros doing it (just copied them tbh)
Thanks for the detailed video you’ve earned my subscription! And I’m sorry but I’m still getting forestry ASAP. I like my wood..I agree with the rest of your findings tho
Interesting video, thanks! One thing I still don’t quite understand is what Forestry actually does. “Doubles the rate at which villagers cut down trees”, sure. So I can see this being useful for niche strats where you want to clear pathways in forested maps. But what effect does this have on wood gathering? It seems from the video that it offers a slight boost, but how? Do villagers not gather wood from a tree until it is chopped down? Is the analogy with hunted animals, that must be killed before villagers can gather food? So Forestry doubles the “damage” villagers do to a tree, and enables them to gather wood from a fresh tree sooner. Is that right?
@@AgeofNoob i’ll send a sizeable donation if you do a study on chinese imperial officials and the imperial palace upgrade. I often do not know if I should have them collecting gold and what upgrades are worth it
This really makes me think the devs should buff all these upgrades and lower their cost. THere is no coherent reason why they should make almost no difference.
I have a question: Do you think Mongol improved ovoo upgrades are worth it? They cost fair amount of stone. but does it make up for it when it comes to unit production within set time limit?
I usually get mongol forestry - think of forestry less as a tech to improve total wood gathering and more as a way to reduce villager 'idle' time (chopping down trees) and you can see its value more readily
@@AgeofNoob yay! i'll be looking foreward for it. I regularly play the mongols and sometimes I wonder if its worth having a GER close to a stone cropping to get the upgrades with stones. Early game especially considering that stone could be used for double production instead.
Aren't your recommendations a bit too strict? If you manage to deal with early aggression, you'd still be getting a couple of minutes of an economic advantage if you're opponent waits for those 20-25 lumberjacks while you've started earlier, right?
what you forget is that, depending on how the game is going, and other unique civ bonuses, you may want the cushion of more word for the cost of 1000 resources becuase you have 8k gold from mongol trade for example.
Tbh I don't know if "how many villagers do I need so it pays itself in 2 minutes," is the best factor to judge the upgrades. If I wanna go for 20 villagers on wood, why not get the upgrade if I have some food and gold left earlier so I don't lose the improvement from the upgrade.
If you think about it just from wood collected, then yes it is probably not a top factor, if you take it however from game perspective and how much advantage or disadvantage it gives you against your opponent, then its is great way to judge it. It shows how long time you will be behind your opponent and when you will get ahead, it also help you with decision when it is better to build additional TC rather than research eco upgrades. Also tied to it, if payback time is 20 minutes and game will end in 15 then it is clearly waste of resources.
@@belisarian6429 yeah but let's say I scout my opponent going 2nd TC or something greedy which doesn't look like feudal pressure. Isn't it then just worth it to go for the upgrade as early as I can since otherwise I am gonna be missing out on the bonus. Even if it does take 3 minutes till it pays itself. Afterwards it's just free ressources basically
@@caspuchiha Of course if you have lot of resources and lot of time then taking it as soon as you can is good thing, however you will not always have spare resources or time. For instance if enemy is going 2 TC and you want to go eco too then you want to know if when your investment will pay off and if it will be sooner than enemy second TC investment. For instance according to video Double broad axe upgrade takes 3:45 (5:55 timestamp on video)seconds to pay off with 25 villagers, lets say enemy is going for second TC, you dont need wood that much and have 7 villagers on wood, in this case payoff will arrive after roughly 16 minutes which is probably not worth it, since enemy second TC will pay off probably sooner than that. If however in same scenario you will go for 20 on wood then payoff is around 4:30 and will probably pay off faster than enemy TC so it will give you window between enemy payoff and yours where you will have an advantage. To further illustrate the point, let hypothetically say that even first upgrade will cost 2000 gold(so payback time with 20 vils will be like 30 minutes), if that is the case then it is much better to skip upgrades till late game when pop efficiency is the thing and build second and third TC instead as that will be much better choice.
@@belisarian6429 true and I'm not saying you should get it every time or smth like that. In the video it seemed to me that you should only go for the upgrade once you have 20 vills on wood. But I think if you can see the gamr going longer it should be worth it sooner. But of course many online games get battled out in feudal and then you should basically not go for any eco upgrades at all (except wheelbarrow I guess)
I can’t understand how you say to do not do these upgrades before 20 lumberjack as these upgrades are profitable the earlier you do them, it gains in profit
Because you can do other things with those resources - payback time is important in game in which you can be attacked at any time late Dark, Feudal onward
I enjoy those videos because you literally do the work that most of us want to know but are just too lazy. Not just for me, it increases the average skills of players
While I would love to exploit this against my opponents, I think you should probably bring this video to the attention of the devs as these techs don't seem to function as intended. Some of them are available in Feudal Age, and no-one has 20 Villagers on wood at that point.
That's a good point, i usually only get 10-16 villager max at early mid game and they are not even fix number( move them around to other resouse so much that the number of vil on wood constanly is about 5 only ). But the thing is i did see alot of resouse/ min increase alot from the ingame calculator( ex: 10 vil on wood with no tech and the one with tech is double the resouse/ min accoreding to ingame calculator ) so this make me really confuse. If the effect of the tech is so small long term then why did the ingame calculator bump it up so much and from the experience playing the game, it feel like the tech did help abit
Maybe they toned it down a bit so delhi wouldn't be broken 😂 But I feel most are underwhelming and especially imp upgrades should hit harder than they do now. Most military imp upgrades have significant impact, the eco upgrades feel lackluster compared to them
@@jeremyjean13 depen on what ur built, team or solo play is but if ur built seige or got any unit that use wood then yes u need 20+ vil or just like me switching them onto diffent resouse and also u need wood to built building and if u built less than 6 military building than i say u are not building enough
@@gokudo-cf5pt I main HRE, so my units are mostly food/gold, with the odd pikes thrown in or horsemen in Feudal for harassment. I usually end up with 10 military buildings, being 6 barracks, 2 ranges and 2 stables. 20 lumberjacks mid/late game is usually too many as I'm getting wood from relics and don't make that much siege
It feels like eco upgrade in AOE4 isn’t really worth getting for most part especially when the game is short, this is a huge depart from aoe2 where even bow saw might be useful sometimes and double bit axe is an absolute must have for every game.
You didn't talk about abbasid I always get 30% off in age3 and then i start make all this upgrade ( in this time in the game i probably have 25-30 lumberjacks cuz im on 2 or 3 TC )
Shouldnt also be taken in account, that if you upgrade eco techs, you need less vills to reach the wood per minute you need. So those vills can be send elsewhere.
How does this change if you get Preservation of Knowledge? I assuming you can just half the payback times. Delhi must be the only civ worth getting all upgrades for since they're free
The conclusion seems to be wheelbarrow always viable. But almost never level 3 lumber, so my question was more whether it’s also true for the unique food and gold techs (level 1 and 2 mostly viable but never 3)
This video took me far too many hours to make, so if I catch any of you researching Lumber upgrades at the wrong time... my disappointment will be immeasurable, and my day will be ruined.
More content on the way folks, thanks for stopping by as always. :)
i think the best time to research wood upgrades is in the morning when you wake up and its really hard. cheers newman
Your lumber icon lacks the middle bottom log! It bothers me more than it should 😂
Are wood lines different if you use the same seed?
Don't most pros skip forestry and go straight for db axe?
Each map has an ID so you can always chose the exact same map when testing.
This is a gem of a video. Someone finally solved the mystery of when to optimally research the eco upgrades. Now take it down so my opponents don't see it.
Glad you liked it Christopher! Plot Twist: All numbers are wrong, and I'm doing this to get an advantage myself
no sht sherlock!
delet this
@@lucaxtshotting2378 I can tell you now most players wouldn'tve , I def appreciate this guys informative fantastic channel.
@@AgeofNoob D:
Forestry is a very good update if you want to chop the trees around your opponent walls! 😁
You can't put a price on big brain strategies... :p
you could use map-seed to archive same maps for your testing
We already had Spirit of the Farm, now it seem we also have Age of Wood. Not that I am complaining, great work as always.
Age of Wood sounds like a good name :D
The Delhi care not for your puny concerns about return on research investment. 🐘🐘🐘
*_*spam clicks all techs upon aging up*_*
The time and effort you put into this really shows. I'm subscribing for that fact alone man. Your dedication and research are fantastic. Thank you for doing the work most of us don't have the time or energy to do. Much appreciated. You have no idea.
Thanks for the sub Traey - glad you liked it!
You know, these payback times make it look like dehli are even better then I thought...
There is a good 7-14% extra gather rate that they can typically , as they are only waiting a minute or two on the low level upgrades that the enemy isn't paying back for 3-4 minutes (and probably are starting these upgrades sooner,) but the payback time on the higher level upgrades is also instant, so they can pick up efficiency bonuses that other civs should simply not think about.
I'll definitely take a look at Delhi specifically at some point as well, but yes - the high cost of Eco upgrades Castle onward helps Delhi the most :)
I'm late, but add in the Chinese IO and the additional income they generate out of thin air and you can easily skip some of the eco upgrades, which would the same cost as the IO. I'm going to try this next time -> Get the IO and skip some of the lumber upgrades.
As someone who's tried to do similar tests to measure the effectiveness of the Mongol resource upgrades, I totally understand how much effort you must have put into this one.
And I only did them for non-wood resources, as they are way easier to create somewhat consistent setups for. So thank you so much for doing these tests for us so we don't have to
I will definitely be covering Ovoo upgrades for sure, but they're a tad later down the line as I'm covering more general videos first before getting there. Thanks Kanu :)
Thank you so much!
Great job on this video buddy. You saved me a lot of time (and tbh i dont know if I ever brang up the patience for this). Keep going, you're the Spiritofthelaw of age4!
Glad you liked it Stephan, thanks for stopping by :)
Love your videos!! It is really interesting all this things that improve the way that we see AO4
Thanks Khajiit!
I could always watch a ten-hour long video of villagers cutting wood with that soothing music on the background, you know 😍
I believe there's a channel that has 1h+ AoE4 ambiences.. Search for Medjay I think and you should find it :)
As a Delhi main this video would be a lot shorter if I made it.
"As soon as you build your first lumber camp, get Forestry. As soon as you get to Feudal Age, get Double Broadax. Upon hitting Castle Age, get Lumber Preservation. Get Crosscut Saw as soon as you enter Imperial Age." Vid done.
Next video 10 seconds long confirmed!
Women love 10 second Jim!
I think something overlooked in this video is that all resources are not equal. You seem to be basing your conclusions off the fact that an upgrade costs x resources. In some maps, some resources are more easily accessible and abundant than others. Villagers have to travel to new patches of resources and in reality, 1 wood does NOT equal 1 gold or 1 food. If you play real world matches you will find that doing these upgrades is still beneficial, almost immediately. I certainly notice it when I forget any sort of wood upgrade. Wood is actually they most important of them all, because wood gathers have a travel distance, vs something like miners and farmers. This means more time is lost traveling and having a higher % gather rate actually goes further than it would with mining.
You test this in the video by placing lumber mills constantly as you chop, but in high APM games, that's never going to be consistent, so more travel time will be put in place, and these upgrades will matter even more. And like mentioned, trading 75 food and 175 gold, resources which you gather with minimal travel, to increase your wood producers (Who have higher travel) gather rates, is going to be beneficial. When I play, wood upgrades are top priority, above mining and gather rates, because of this. This seems to be overlooked in the video. I would not recommend taking your advice on holding out on any of the lumbar mill upgrades, unless you're an advanced A.I. who has an APM of 2000 and can individually micro each unit on wood to maintain its optimal gather rate throughout the game.
I've been hoping to find a video like this. Keep it up!
Glad it was of use :)
Can we get focused videos specifically on HRE eco with the 40% carry and 40% gather rate?
And then a mongol video taking into account ovoo-steroid-ed eco upgrades?
Great work!
Wouldn't it have made sense to test skipping/postponing forestry and see if the numbers vary? Would you need even more than 25 lumberjacks? Same with wheelbarrow, as you'll have other villagers adding to the payback time and - unless you eliminate most walking - you should probably pick it up before broadaxe anyhow. Just to be thorough and see what the optimal order is.
Laughs in Delhi. 😁
Maybe you can use the maps seed number for consistent woodlines to decrease randomness a bit. It probably has minimal effect but for more controlled experiments. I don't even know if the seed system works atm.
Lastly thank you. Optimization on every aspect of life and a game is my addiction. Keep it up. 👍🏻
Yeah many folks have mentioned the Seed number, which I totally forgot about! Good to see you here again Mustafa :)
@@AgeofNoob I'm always here, was a bit quiet lately that's all. :)
The production quality of those video are impressive
Thank you!
Great video! I'd like to see how this applies to Rus. Because of the wooden fortress' wood bonus, hunting cabins and colecting food from deer most of the game, I tent to avoid all eco techs until castle age. And even without them I feel like you can achieve a pretty solid eco if you really exploit those bonuses.
For French, since their eco upgrades cost 30% less. Is it safe to assume that 20 lumberjack rule goes to 14?
Thanks for the video! if you leverage the map seed you should be able to maintain consistency across tests on any future tests
Ahhh you're right! It didn't occur to use the same seed at the time.. I'll try that next time, thanks!
@@AgeofNoob glad to help! Thank you so much for your time to investigate the eco tech. Most people goes by intuition and pure game experience. Data driven analysis will save huge amount of time for other who can't afford playing all day but still want to know! Great topic
best aoe4 breakdown channel out there so far.
I have two things to point out.
The first is about forestry and HRE. With inspiration, is like having villagers with 2.5 upgrades right off the bat, so forestry matters more. 10 seconds chopping down a tree is 10 seconds not gathering (which is like 11-12 wood or something like that), so reducing that to 5 seconds is very nice. So you propably would reduce the number of villagers to research ONLY FORESTRY to like 12-15 villagers or something, depending on how much wood you'll need in the next 5 minutes. If you are getting into a heavy feudal age, probably getting it as you go up is a nice one, as you start moving your vills into wood. This is a niche take, but valid, I think.
The second point is exactly about pop efficiency and economy transitions, and not only as you get to 200 pop. All upgrades, except whellbarrow, do not cost the resource which you will gather faster. This means you can have smoother economic transitions, with less villagers necessary for the gather rates you need. I mean, having the math and the numbers in linear tests is nice, but we can all agree that as the first contacts start, everything have a tendency to fall into chaos. You can get denied of resources, forced to transition into farms, or just see a great opportunity to finish the game instead of going to the next age. Resource upgrades helps all of that to happen more easily, increasing the chances of your short term plans to actually work, which is an invaluable and immesurable asset to have. Of course, check with your own game style if that suits you, but be mindful that's an option for players who want a little more reliability.
You take the place of spirit of the law i aoe4! Love your videos. Keep it up :)
Thanks Max!
Wow this is fantastic. And here I am just blindly clicking on all my economic upgrades as soon as I age up.
As Delhi, this is the way
"Do not research any lumber upgrades until you have 20 lumberjacks."
I'm just going to research them harder now.
I love this video, but there are a few critical caveats here regarding the rules at the end. This has to do with the fact that you don't spend WOOD to get WOOD upgrades. You're trading one resource for another over time.
Most notably, food and gold are at the end of the day "renewable" resources. Especially food. Often in the mid-game ramping up production is critical, and adhering to strict rules where all resources are equal to each other isn't a great rule of thumb. I can think of civs like HRE which further devalue gold (and other minor gold devalue civs like Delhi with ez sacred sites, Rus with Golden gate and hunting cabins, English in imperial, etc), and basically any water and hybrid map that auto-break the rules you recommended above, because squeezing every ounce of wood is going to be critical whereas especially food but also gold will be trivial in comparison. This also applies to heavy siege production, though of course that's more late game and you accounted for that.
Sorry if this was a bit incoherent, didn't have much time to edit. Definitely worth a longer conversation imo, I just think there are many situations where 10+ and ramping on the wood line is enough to make a big difference with those upgrades.
Thanks Xeslaster! While I agree with your general point, there will always be what-ifs when it comes to these scenarios. This is why general rules of thumb are applied, and the rest is up to your game sense. It's impossible to make an analysis without making a few generalized assumptions (such as all resources are of equal value). Otherwise, this 10 minute video would be 5 hours long. :D
@@AgeofNoob appreciate the reply, and I hope it didn't come across like I didn't appreciate your hard work. I know content creation is rough, so not hating at all : )
I do till think that at the very least, hybrid/fish maps are a major scenario as that accounts for a little less than half of the maps total, and I think that would be worth checking out.
Otherwise, thanks again, and keep up the good work!
Love your vids man, always learn some good stuff. Thanks
Awesome video. I would like to add that if you are on a single TC these eco upgrades are another way to "get more villagers" without increasing your villager production capacity.
Hey Age of Noob, please do a video for food upgrades, would definitely be interested in watching that.
Good video tho noob as always!
I will circle back on this topic at some point, no worries :)
Since upgrades for farming and ore gathering pretty much equal in cost and reward; it is safe to assume the same logic applies to these as well? I can imagine that in some cases it might be worth earlier as lumber may have a higher value than other resources. For example when much palisading or outposts are needed in the somewhat near future. But this breaks the rule of thumb (assumption) that all resources are of equal value.
Great video! So for my newbie friends, would you say a good rule of thumb is to delay each lumber upgrade by at least one age? Generally, should players avoid picking up eco upgrades in the dark age?
If we have to reduce the argument to age, I'd say research Dark and Feudal Upgrades in Castle, and Castle upgrades in Imperial. :) This is too general of a statement though, so adhering to vill count is the better approach!
Thanks for this. very valuable info. I will be looking forward to more similar videos for the other resources.
Glad it was helpful! More coming soon
The hero we all deserve and need.
Excellent research. Thank you.
No problem!
I noticed and I just wanted to mention that inconsistency on the amount of vills building the lumber camps can screw the numbers because it's inefficient to build it with 5 vills
Wonderful analysis
Thanks Huseyin!
I’ve often thought that most eco upgrades are kinda pointless until castle age.
Yeah they're just too expensive for what they provide :D
In 4v4 team games get them asap because the earlier you get them the more resources you'll get in the long game that it will always be especially in maps where you are the safest player "pocket"
i mostly used it on watermaps as chinese. During vil production its may not be ressource efficient but it gives a Bonus production instead of none. consider in my case : vills are produced constantly
Great vido! Just a small hint for other metric - its allways hard to find a metric for this, since its not linear problem. I found, i have a good idea when i wanna "add more vills" and when not. So i try to count when each upgraid gives me same increase in collection rate, as adding vills in the same cost (i.e. when upgraid cost 75 resources, when it will give me same increase as 1,5 vils). This gives some good basic idea - when i know f.e. if i need 10 vils to be upgraid as effective as next vils, that when i want to "boom" i go for it under 10, if i want to cut and slow down vil prodcution i will go for it way after 10, etc..... found this realy good metric system, since "do i wanna go hard on vils or not" is a taught process each must do in each phase of the game, so in this way i tie the eco upgraids to it, so i simplify my game.
This would only make sense if you're not continuesly producing vills and could build more if you had the ressources. Never the case. No one will ask themselves: Should I get double broadaxe or another villager? :D
You'd have to compare getting an eco upgrade earlier vs the gain from getting another TC earlier if you want a purely economic metric. Basically, you would have to calculate the surplus of your entire economy, then see how long that takes to pay for the upgrade. Assuming roughly similar res collection rates, those res could've gone into another TC.
But this is a solely economic view, so only makes sense if you can boom undisturbed. His metric seems much more realistic for most games - whether you spend those resources on military for more cost-efficient engagements, better raiding (widening the gap between both ecos instead of just imrpoving your own) or rushing other sources of income like relics, holy sites, fishing, boars, whathaveyou.
@@Muenni well the problem is no metric is "ideal". There are too many variables and you allways need to simplify it in some way. I do some way, the autor does other way of simplifying, i just suggested what works for me. I'm aware of all the problem you pointed, on the other hand i see alot of problems in the metric used here. That's normal, its simplifying the problem, so there will be problem. Just wanted to point out what works for me, and i'd say it works fine. (DISCLAIMER: I was never a pro in any RTS game, any RTS game i play i get into top 1% without trying too hard - in wc3, sc2 i played 5-15 games/week and was top 1% ladder, now i have eaven less time, so i'm somewhere about top 3k ladder only atm, from new patch i'm 8-0 or so on games. So i'd say my view of the game isnt completly broken). And again, i dont push this to anyone. I just point another intresting way to think about it. The more "models" you use to think about this problem, the better idea will you have how it actualy works.
@@naz-ghul6327 Sure thing! I'm by no means an expert, just wanted to share my critique on your metric. Have a nice day!
My operating assumption was: “Each upgrade will further improve the resource gather rate”
And what do you know, of course we found this to be true 👀
It might have been significant to find that one or more of these upgrades had a NEGATIVE impact, but that would defeat the game designer’s intent (right?)
But I do appreciate the contextual breakdown of when* to consider these upgrades. That was helpful!
I naively assumed that forestry would double my wood income lol. why on earth is the icon for crosscut saw an axe?
Take crosscut saw upgrade if you want to fast collect forest from the map and do not want to give it to your opponent, for example on sea maps, where wood is key to victory (ships) because you cannot get it like Gold by traders of food by vilagers, only trade but cost will increase
trade ships return wood as well
Heya great video! But what about mongols wood upgrade? Is it worth?
Will investigate Mongol's Ovoos soon as well :)
Great.stuff. Just out of curiousity, do you play the game often? Like 1v1's or teams on quickmatches?
I actually skip forestry and go straight for the double broadax, was hoping this vid would tell if thats right or wrong as I see many pros doing it (just copied them tbh)
The payback time for both become reasonable at the same time - so I'd pick them up both back-to-back, starting with Broadax first.
Thanks for the detailed video you’ve earned my subscription! And
I’m sorry but I’m still getting forestry ASAP. I like my wood..I agree with the rest of your findings tho
Thanks for the sub! :)
I have never seen that wind effect before.
Interesting video, thanks! One thing I still don’t quite understand is what Forestry actually does.
“Doubles the rate at which villagers cut down trees”, sure. So I can see this being useful for niche strats where you want to clear pathways in forested maps.
But what effect does this have on wood gathering? It seems from the video that it offers a slight boost, but how? Do villagers not gather wood from a tree until it is chopped down? Is the analogy with hunted animals, that must be killed before villagers can gather food? So Forestry doubles the “damage” villagers do to a tree, and enables them to gather wood from a fresh tree sooner. Is that right?
Yes.
Yes. Instead of 4 hits u only need 2 to fall a tree and be able to gather from it
Villagers can't gather wood until they chop down the tree first. Forestry saves a tiny bit of time getting those trees down quicker. :)
You could use the same map-seed to test on the exact same map multiple times.
That's why I'm playing Delhi! ^^" no ressource cost, just click everything. Simple! :-D
i usualy take my eco updates in castle age when the need for siedge starts to add up , but in team games i take all eco updates as soon as posible
If you could change the upgrades what would you choose for cheap cost or shorter time?
I think cheaper for Imperial Age techs, but the others seem okay. Maybe a slight tweak, but nothing too major :)
Is there a possibility to keep the same map seed throughout all trials, or is that not part of the game yet?
Don't know how Noob does it, but there is an option to manually enter a map seed in custom lobbies, giving you the same map layout every time
This is true - someone else also mentioned this, and I completely forgot about using the same seed! Regardless, the margin of error is very small :)
Amazing! Now do the mining camp xD
I will cover this soon as well :)
Love these videos. Thanks.
Glad you like them!
@@AgeofNoob i’ll send a sizeable donation if you do a study on chinese imperial officials and the imperial palace upgrade. I often do not know if I should have them collecting gold and what upgrades are worth it
Could you check the case for French as well when doing videos on eco techs please?
There is one more map where the final upgrade can be useful - its that map with a gap in between mountain ranges (not french pass)
Before watching the video, I bet I upgrade them to early lol
I suspect most do - including myself before I investigated :D
This really makes me think the devs should buff all these upgrades and lower their cost. THere is no coherent reason why they should make almost no difference.
I have a question: Do you think Mongol improved ovoo upgrades are worth it? They cost fair amount of stone. but does it make up for it when it comes to unit production within set time limit?
I usually get mongol forestry - think of forestry less as a tech to improve total wood gathering and more as a way to reduce villager 'idle' time (chopping down trees) and you can see its value more readily
I will investigate Mongol's Ovoos soon as well :)
@@AgeofNoob yay! i'll be looking foreward for it. I regularly play the mongols and sometimes I wonder if its worth having a GER close to a stone cropping to get the upgrades with stones. Early game especially considering that stone could be used for double production instead.
Aren't your recommendations a bit too strict? If you manage to deal with early aggression, you'd still be getting a couple of minutes of an economic advantage if you're opponent waits for those 20-25 lumberjacks while you've started earlier, right?
Thanks so much! I always research those upgrades which apparently is a big mistake!
No worries Samuel :)
Tbh I only get forestry on black forest to get into that back corner and place my wonder xd
to make sure next time the forest is always the same, just use a seed :D
Indeed, many have pointed this oversight to me :D
what you forget is that, depending on how the game is going, and other unique civ bonuses, you may want the cushion of more word for the cost of 1000 resources becuase you have 8k gold from mongol trade for example.
3, 5 and 10+ min pay-off times? Sounds suspiciously like Delhi research times with a handful of scholars.
Tbh I don't know if "how many villagers do I need so it pays itself in 2 minutes," is the best factor to judge the upgrades. If I wanna go for 20 villagers on wood, why not get the upgrade if I have some food and gold left earlier so I don't lose the improvement from the upgrade.
If you think about it just from wood collected, then yes it is probably not a top factor, if you take it however from game perspective and how much advantage or disadvantage it gives you against your opponent, then its is great way to judge it.
It shows how long time you will be behind your opponent and when you will get ahead, it also help you with decision when it is better to build additional TC rather than research eco upgrades.
Also tied to it, if payback time is 20 minutes and game will end in 15 then it is clearly waste of resources.
@@belisarian6429 yeah but let's say I scout my opponent going 2nd TC or something greedy which doesn't look like feudal pressure. Isn't it then just worth it to go for the upgrade as early as I can since otherwise I am gonna be missing out on the bonus. Even if it does take 3 minutes till it pays itself. Afterwards it's just free ressources basically
@@caspuchiha
Of course if you have lot of resources and lot of time then taking it as soon as you can is good thing, however you will not always have spare resources or time.
For instance if enemy is going 2 TC and you want to go eco too then you want to know if when your investment will pay off and if it will be sooner than enemy second TC investment.
For instance according to video Double broad axe upgrade takes 3:45 (5:55 timestamp on video)seconds to pay off with 25 villagers, lets say enemy is going for second TC, you dont need wood that much and have 7 villagers on wood, in this case payoff will arrive after roughly 16 minutes which is probably not worth it, since enemy second TC will pay off probably sooner than that.
If however in same scenario you will go for 20 on wood then payoff is around 4:30 and will probably pay off faster than enemy TC so it will give you window between enemy payoff and yours where you will have an advantage.
To further illustrate the point, let hypothetically say that even first upgrade will cost 2000 gold(so payback time with 20 vils will be like 30 minutes), if that is the case then it is much better to skip upgrades till late game when pop efficiency is the thing and build second and third TC instead as that will be much better choice.
@@belisarian6429 true and I'm not saying you should get it every time or smth like that. In the video it seemed to me that you should only go for the upgrade once you have 20 vills on wood. But I think if you can see the gamr going longer it should be worth it sooner. But of course many online games get battled out in feudal and then you should basically not go for any eco upgrades at all (except wheelbarrow I guess)
I can’t understand how you say to do not do these upgrades before 20 lumberjack as these upgrades are profitable the earlier you do them, it gains in profit
Because you can do other things with those resources - payback time is important in game in which you can be attacked at any time late Dark, Feudal onward
Liked and Subscribed. Thanks.
Welcome aboard!
I enjoy those videos because you literally do the work that most of us want to know but are just too lazy.
Not just for me, it increases the average skills of players
Glad you liked it!
thanks for this!
Np!
I don´t know. I need SOTL to research this.
But thank you for the effort.
How about Improved Forestry, which takes the chopping time from 10 seconds to 1 second?
on water map with rus I have been getting it in dark age because you go heavy wood eco pretty early but idk if it's that good now
這影片做的真好，看起來很舒服，很專業。
Couldn't have you used the same seed each time to have the same map ?
Maining Delhi since release.
Watching it just to giggle about the worries of other civs 🤭
what about mongolians stone uprades it effect more every state
While I would love to exploit this against my opponents, I think you should probably bring this video to the attention of the devs as these techs don't seem to function as intended. Some of them are available in Feudal Age, and no-one has 20 Villagers on wood at that point.
That's a good point, i usually only get 10-16 villager max at early mid game and they are not even fix number( move them around to other resouse so much that the number of vil on wood constanly is about 5 only ). But the thing is i did see alot of resouse/ min increase alot from the ingame calculator( ex: 10 vil on wood with no tech and the one with tech is double the resouse/ min accoreding to ingame calculator ) so this make me really confuse. If the effect of the tech is so small long term then why did the ingame calculator bump it up so much and from the experience playing the game, it feel like the tech did help abit
Maybe they toned it down a bit so delhi wouldn't be broken 😂 But I feel most are underwhelming and especially imp upgrades should hit harder than they do now. Most military imp upgrades have significant impact, the eco upgrades feel lackluster compared to them
Rarely do I ever have more than 20 lumberjacks during a whole game. Am I just not making enough or are these upgrades just not worth getting?
@@jeremyjean13 depen on what ur built, team or solo play is but if ur built seige or got any unit that use wood then yes u need 20+ vil or just like me switching them onto diffent resouse and also u need wood to built building and if u built less than 6 military building than i say u are not building enough
@@gokudo-cf5pt I main HRE, so my units are mostly food/gold, with the odd pikes thrown in or horsemen in Feudal for harassment. I usually end up with 10 military buildings, being 6 barracks, 2 ranges and 2 stables. 20 lumberjacks mid/late game is usually too many as I'm getting wood from relics and don't make that much siege
So helpful!
Glad you liked it!
Underrated
It feels like eco upgrade in AOE4 isn’t really worth getting for most part especially when the game is short, this is a huge depart from aoe2 where even bow saw might be useful sometimes and double bit axe is an absolute must have for every game.
What about mongol’s improved upgrades? How do they perform?
Will cover Mongols in the future as well, stay tuned!
@@AgeofNoob great, keep up the good work!)
You didn't talk about abbasid
I always get 30% off in age3 and then i start make all this upgrade ( in this time in the game i probably have 25-30 lumberjacks cuz im on 2 or 3 TC )
Good video
You're improving.
Does anyone know how many lumberjacks should you have per tree so there is not time wasted?
Great video
Thanks!
Loved this video
If you start a new game and then save it, wouldn't you always have the same map (hence the same layout of trees)?
I research all upgrades when I have the resources :)
Thank you!
Shouldnt also be taken in account, that if you upgrade eco techs, you need less vills to reach the wood per minute you need. So those vills can be send elsewhere.
This helps a lot
How does this change if you get Preservation of Knowledge? I assuming you can just half the payback times. Delhi must be the only civ worth getting all upgrades for since they're free
does the same research apply for gold/food upgrades?
Wheelbarrow applies to food and gold, but not the others. I'll cover those upgrades in a future video. :)
The conclusion seems to be wheelbarrow always viable. But almost never level 3 lumber, so my question was more whether it’s also true for the unique food and gold techs (level 1 and 2 mostly viable but never 3)
Me, a Delhi onetrick: What are you talking about???
I like you're Videos so much.
Thanks! 😃
So wheelbarrow OP
Confirmed.