Community Economy Tips
More from PVE perspective, but some of these could be applied to PVP.
1) Hunting, Berries & Farms
- Huntables like deer gives fastest food gathering of all food resources, always prioritise first, Also shift click to quickly kill them all and place storehouse nearby for efficient gathering. Additionally to be even more efficient, space out villagers on each deer to avoid any collisions.
- Berries should only be taken after any huntables or fish, and only with the storehouse upgrade for quick and efficient gathering, Again TC or storehouse should be close by to minimise seconds lost on walking to and from berries.
- Farms is the final phase of food production, due to their high cost in wood, should only be used to boom in food & gold focused economies, wood & gold economies don't even need them. And in rare case like Babylon, gardens can give plenty of food so not many farms may be needed for say Lancer spam.
2)Houses
- Houses are always needed for Pop Cap, and altogether will always need 24 houses for 1200 wood, if you don't have reduce cost gear on them already. But some people make the mistake of just chucking down houses randomly, in certain quests, houses can be handy as a sort of temporary wall, Although legendary units will go through houses like nothing, they can be used smartly as sort of chokepoints, this is often seen more in PVP, but can be used well in PVE.
3)Storehouses
- Storehouses are quite important with their early upgrades and not only for effective placement for efficient gathering, but always remember for gold and stone, leave some space between storehouse and mine for villagers to mine, but not too much space.
- As for upgrades, Key early upgrades is definitely the wood and huntables, stone can be good for early defence and stone conservation, but if there is little early pressure then focusing on booming and buying minimal upgrades is the way to go.
- Also bare in mind this may depend on your economy style, food& gold focus more on food upgrades, wood& gold, just wood, in either case can get stone but can just as easily buy stone from markets when stone runs out.
4)Markets
- Markets are probably the most important part of your economy, it is imperative that you learn how to trade properly and efficiently.
- In any leg quest you will need a market to trade resources, so putting them on a known ctrl+hotkey is basic and important macro.
- So keep in mind, solo will give base gold for caravans trade, co-op gives double.
- Distance between markets and town centres is a key part of trading, further away the more gold, however it will cap at 150, a common noob mistake is to put as far away as possible and think your fine as your getting 150 gold anyways. This is actually bad because 1 your caravans are travelling too far for 150 gold, 2 the final upgrade is useless in this case.
- So, you will want to aim for a sweet spot around 120 gold(co-op), this can change depending on gear, but the idea is that once you get the final upgrade in market on Age 4 you will get to 150 gold and your caravans will be travelling at a optimum distance, making yourself far more efficient than someone trading much further away for same amount of gold.
- Additionally you will want to keep your trade route as clean and clear as possible, never put a choke point for your caravans, this will slow them down to the point you wonder wheres your gold???, again you want to make your trade route as fast as possible so keeping it clear of buildings or wood is important.
- Furthermore going for 2 markets to pump out caravans is the best for starters, if you can go for more markets only do so if you can keep up with resource cost of pumping out caravans on each market constantly, otherwise this is a waste of wood.
- Lastly Caravans will automatically go to market which gives max gold, you can use this to your advantage when building markets and may only need 1 market at desired location, the other could be built elsewhere to save space or perhaps pump out caravans closer to trading town centre.
- P.S Also always try to get the trade discount upgrades on market as early as possible for minimal resource lost in trading.
5)Town Centres
- Making town centres is a obvious and important part of your economy, pumping out more villagers = more resources = earlier boom = earlier push. So making more Town Centres to pump out villagers ia no brainer for most, but a mistake new players make is forgetting to build one straight away, most quests will give you enough wood and stone to build one straight away, in this case you will always want to, of course will also always want to get out a market as well.
- So Simply build Town centres as soon as you can, ideally get 3 TC's pumping out constant villagers to boom your economy really quickly. And keep an eye on food production, you want to sustain the production till you reach the desired amount of villagers, this can be hard when huntables run out and have to resort to berries or farms, but never forget your market is your friend.
6)Villager & Caravan Compositions
- It is important to how you play to keep in mind how many villagers and caravans you build, more caravans = more gold to buy upgrades through market, more villagers to give one particular resource, like food or wood for the economic styles.
- New players will rely on villagers more than caravans, advanced players will heavily rely upon markets through their macro skills. But generally in legendary quests, you will build as many villagers as what you need to get your economy going, its hard to pinpoint a specific guideline amount of each, as of course its different for each Civ, EG egypt caravans focused, and only really need villagers to build frontline forts for ele production.
- But my advice would be as you get faster and more efficient to slowly rely upon market and caravans more than villagers, and once you've mastered macro, find your own sweet spot for each civ in terms of villager & caravan compositions.
7)Resource Management
- Resource management is pretty simple but very effective for keeping your economy booming efficiently, quite simply you just need to keep a eye on your resources and make sure none of them are stockpiling too much, if say you have too much gold lying about, invest it through market to boost your economy that much quicker, eventually this will become habit and you should get faster and faster.
8)Economy Styles, food & gold, Wood & gold
- As I mentioned before your economic styles will heavily influence how your economy develops, food & gold economies like Norse (berserker), Celt (Woad or Champs), Babylon (Lancers), will each need much more food production to sustain the output of these units when pushing. From my experience, a good 20 on farms in late game is enough to deal sustain production however if you prefer to go through markets with minimal farms or none at all, this is also fine.
- Likewise Wood & gold will need much more wood production, Greek ( Gastaphetes), Persia (Archers), Egypt (Eles only need gold), the greek and persian example will need significant wood production to boost your economy fast enough and sustain the heavy wood cost of these ranged units, so can advise around 30-40 on wood.
- Egypt being so unique with only needing gold (khepri), the only civ of its kind to do this and so the easiest to sustain with mass caravans.
9)Early defense quests
- In the case of quests where you will get attacked early and simply not enough time to boom your economy, a focus on getting up walls/guard towers/fortresses depending on optionals will be important.
- However always keep your economy going at same time, of course keeping yourself and you partner alive is more important to actually beat the quest, BUT if you want to the beat the quest efficiently and in time, always keep your economy moving forward while you defend, so simply keep a balance of focus between economy and defenses.
10)Docks, fishing & Merchant Ships
- A often overlooked part of the game by new players, (AoE2 veterans will probably know this), but fishing is actually another fast source of food production, simply getting nearby fish with villagers or investing in a dock and couple fishing ships can give plenty of food for your economy.
- Just keep in mind, fishing boats are expensive, and most maps won't have much fish, or uncontested fish if enemy ships are patrolling/taking it already. So you should see how much fish you have and build your fishing ships accordingly, the only real exception to this rule is euphrates in disorder, with its utterly insane amount of fish.
- Merchant ships, generally the same rules that I mentioned earlier apply to merchants as well, keep them far away, keep the route clear.
- However Merchants ship are bigger than caravans and are really clunky, so it is even more important to keep their routes clear or otherwise if both you and your partner are using a tight merchant trade route, a traffic jam is only a matter of time.
- Additionally can build a couple docks each, and split production of merchant ships between each dock on each far side, this way could perhaps avoid traffic jams and keep merchant ships spaced apart.
So overview, Generic economic focuses is your town centres, your market/dock trade routes, storehouse upgrades, whatever build order you do on any civ or legendary quest, these 3 things are absolutely key to having a early efficient start, you should prioritise these on any quests and eventually develop your own build order through these key economic components. (Also always keep in mind key information about each x) )
Ok that's all, please please please feel free to point anything I've gotten wrong or quote something and reword it better, I will likely use this as a base script for my future video.
If you would like to help, making a video on one of these top 10 categories, would be very useful for my video, also read out the whole text yourself to see how much time you need to give me to read everything out when making your video displaying a example of what has been mentioned.
I would like to work on the video tomorrow morning, and maybe finish if possible tomorrow or next week. But depends on help I get
Alright thats all, have a nice weekend everyone~
Muffins x)
Gear and Advisors, probably make another video including economic advisors and gear.
Oooooh interesting, yeah Im thinking of making another video on gear and advisors in terms of economy, and depending on how long each civ takes, be one video or 6 videos. Then could include those as I go along through each civ.