Most valuable thing is knowing just how much wood it takes to repair tc. Can help judging what to do based on timing of douche in regards to wood and vil count. Obv douche was immediate that game
What I like about TheViper and moreover generally about the AoEII high level players, is that a lot of them aren't afraid to talk about their failures, their mistakes, and how these can be used as lessons for not only them, but the community that follows them. Truly a healthy relationship to competition there.
I think a big missed point is, that the opportunity cost for feudal is comparatively lower in most games. (This one being an exception due to the very short distance between the players.) You are already working towards feudal and as such will usually have a couple hundred food banked already. Not going feudal means you cannot take advantage of that stockpile, because you will realistically only build villagers with it.
I think opportunity cost is everything. What is more important, losing a little bit of lumber on the tc to gain feudal age options or expanding the economy a bit to make it slightly more robust. Both are good options with their own merit. Getting to feudal with a fast response can end the game fast.
@@AndrewTheFrank the question is if it really is only a little bit of lumber. according to the video of TWest repairing with three vills burns the income of 18 villagers on wood. and at that point of time 18 villagers is almost your whole eco. so if it is only a few seconds that is maybe fine but if you have to do it for longer it would very quickly add up.
@@white5pace and the maker of the post sounded like he suggested you spending your whole economy to make walls all over the map was better. That also takes wood and idle villagers.
@@AndrewTheFrank the whole part about spreading and securing your eco is a bit more vague than it should be. BUT walling in a few farms should not mean spending your whole eco.
@@white5pace well it depends on what is being walled and how much. in some of the pictures there was some extensive walling. in dark age walls are fairly easily busted through. a doucher will bust them. are the walls far out or are they next to the resource? if next to the resource, and next to the new TC, then the follow up douche can be placed right on both the resource and the TC. If the douche is delayed or late then one might not need to repair, or repair much, to get to feudal. If that is the case then walling can become more resource intensive. Then there is also the villagers that have to be idled to wall. If you want walls up quick then many villagers are idled. But I understand part of the point of walling. its to slow down or limit their mobility so its harder to find where to douche.
This feels like the kind of thing where I'd wanna see a pro try to exclusively deal with douches by staying in Dark Age and then exclusively deal with douches by trying to go up and seeing which strategy has a better win rate. People don't like change, especially when something seems to work well enough. When something works pretty well, we just mark it as a situation where there is no improvement needed. However, thinking like that obviously leaves a lot of performance on the table. There's no drive to find out just how far you can take a strategy before it just falls off the edge. That being the case, I understand why umdeuter believes there's a blind spot. Since it's already a bad strategy, standard responses work "well enough", so no one feels the need to try anything different. In order to figure out exactly how effective it is, though, someone with sufficient skill would need to do rigorous testing; i.e. we need a pro to exclusively do this strat and then the opposite to see how it compares. I feel like the true answer is that you should almost always stay in Dark Age, and under pretty specific circumstances you should go up to get archers or whatever. (Maybe civs like Bulgarians should always try to go up to get the MAA power spike?) On the ladder, it prevents opponents from exploiting your predictability. Knowing where you will re-TC feels like a really important part of staying in Dark Age, but if you can stay calm, I can't see how you can ever do worse than like a 75% win rate. I say all this as a 900 player, though, so obviously I lack experience in this kind of situation.
I think the problem with the ‘testing’ always stay dark then always stay feudal is that the tester will know a douche is coming, where the power of the douche comes from surprise and confusion. But yes more data is needed
@@RobotShield i think its not that difficult, the douched player will make his standard oppening, and he will just adjust (the eco) when the Douche start. this way you can even said (for example) "Its easier to defend if you have an Drush + Fc start strat, then the archers start and the least the cav start".
@@RobotShield I mean he even says "oh my opponent is persians theyre going to douche" You wouldnt really need a large enough sample size for "win rate" to be meaningful, playing comparisons can show the players experience to judge the merits and risks/losses of eachh response against each other and go from there. If youre good you dont need 20,000 data points to prove it you only need 1
His argument should have focused more on the fact that going Feudal creates an asymmetry between you and the doucher. If you stay Dark Age, you are ahead or even in every category, and there is no weak point of yours he can exploit to come out ahead. Whereas if you go Feudal, now you are behind in villager count and wood, even though you have the Feudal advantage. It may be better overall to be in this situation, but it does present a weakness that he can take advantage of, because now he is ahead in at least one aspect of the game.
An important note here, is the suggestion to spread out your economy is not to hide it but to make sure they cannot idle you eco with a single TC placement. You do not need to spread it much. Just enough to not get shut down all at once.
Tbh that only does so much. While i'd like to agree, any food eco with no tc is exposed, and any tc is gonna get deleted 11. Spreading your eco makes our follow-ups harder though, and if we can't harass your vills, you'll be able to build up and win. So we just make sure that doesn't happen 11
@@xavierpironier59At this point in the game you are only exposed to his vils. Which you will have more of. So just fight him. Exposed eco only matters when the other person has an army to worry about.
after the douche, the one who got douched usually splits his eco up, if i then run into that with like 10 or more vills, only a tc will save him@@EagleTopGaming
@@EagleTopGaming If he does it right then the vil lead is small (maybe two?). And since your tc is down, the vil lead will quickly invert. In addition, if you spread out your eco (usually happens naturally) then you will always be outnumbered in a fight. The other issue with spreading out is that you get to fight all of the wolves instead of him, giving him yet another advantage in the numbers. I think another big factor is scouts. Whoever keeps a scout alive has a large advantage.
@@SemiMono The math does not add up there. I do not think the vil lead would invert. Even if they win the initial TC fight and you have to rebuild, at best that would make it even. You have both lost and had to rebuild 1 TC. However, they also had to walk across the map so you should still have a slight lead. And if they douche you again, it puts them behind again.
Repairing tc for a long time is not worth it is a good take away. If you can still go feudal, it is alright. But in most cases easier to not repair, build a new tc and go up.
The game used as an example is such a unique map favoring this strategy, you might as well be telling people not to fish boom ever because of one game on Arabia. Without that super close rush distance, the defender gets a bigger villager lead, closer to feudal when it happens, and a better chance to scout it early
I do not think that is how the reasoning works. The two claims that Umdeuter makes are: - Douche is a terrible strategy. - Staying in dark age is the superior strategy to fight the Douche instead of going to Feudal as the investment of going Feudal has a high chance of not paying off. So the argument is more that the Douche is such a bad strategy that on maps like Arabia you even have a chance to win by going Feudal but you would have an easier time staying in Dark Age. And on maps like Border Dispute - where the Douche has an edge in contrast to Arabia - it shows that going Feudal is a bad idea because with staying Dark Age you could easily win but in that case going Feudal falls short.
No, I think you focused too much on the Game he showed. The concept he said is the same in Arabia too. Honestly he is 100% right but his wording is wrong. You dont go feudal age with your intial TC. It will be broken down. What you want to do is just be calm, realize you are really ahead of your opponent and then start working on securing a second place either Berry bushes or gold wood line that you will make the 2nd tc. Secure that area so he cannot TC drop you again and just wait until he kills your TC. Remember not only is he many villager behind he also has 10 villager idle for the whole time. Once your TC is down you just rebuild your TC at the second spot that you have secured and then click feudal age. At this point just go archer in feudal and its GG. I have done this so many time and won every time vs a douce to the point I enjoy when people do it vs me since its a easy win. This only fails if the enemy will somehow do a second TC drop on you and then you are kinda screwed.
Isn't it the exact opposite? If this map favors douche strat, you should compare it to a map that favors fish boom. The example used is the best case scenario for douching, and he still argues against it. And I actually agree with most of the points.
His point exactly. He took the best scenario possible to prove that even if you’re as good as viper is and you do everything right, you will struggle and eventually loose if you go feudal.
@@white5pace but on maps like Arabia the douch is not likely to come in until you're clicking up to feudal so it is kind of a moot point. His examples and math wasn't using Arabia games. If he wanted to steel man his argument he would pick douches that work from the worst possible situations they are used in. To show that going feudal, even in those games, is worse than staying dark age. instead we get a game where someone doing what he said was bad actually did fairly well. which in my opinion doesn't help to strengthen his argument at all.
@@samohtgamingpro4470 not too much, dark age plays are quite standardized at the current state of the meta, so just playing "standard" dark age would be enough for testing
I think the key here is to realize that the douche isn't actually losing that much villager production time. While they lose some while they build the new towncenter you will lose just as much as you replace the town center. While Dark age vs Dark age might work, it kinda puts the players at equal footing. Doucher prepare their economy for this strat has wasted some time walking. But the non-douche also loses walking time since the villagers have to relocate away from the starting base. Non-douche in dark age has no control over any resources since douche probably walled back home and can TC contest at non-douche's base. However if non-douche goes fedual the situation with resource control flips on it's head. Non-douche can push douch away from any resource not controlled by the town center.
14:35 "If you're in Feudal Age, he cannot continue to trade town centres" EXACTLY. and that's bad for you. Because every tc he trades is putting him further behind. Don't interrupt the enemy when they are making a mistake!
I think this is what is called cherry picking. Going feudal didn't work on one particular very close in map with extra starting vills. Pretty much the best possible scenario for the doucher. I really can't vill fight so I just wall my lumber jacks in and get a range up somewhere.
Of course it is cherry picking! Giving an example can not be used to prove a theory but only to disprove it, so in this case it is simply used to illustrate the drawbacks of going Feudal and the textual arguments. Also it is unclear to me why extra starting vills are necessarily an advantage here (they might but I do not think it is clear).
@@white5pace Cherry picking data to prove/disprove a position are both bad. You can simply have a very bad game and had correct strategic response with worst excevution to a douche and that doesnt make the counter strat wrong from that one single example. Like T-west explains in his video, daut can simply eat the straggler trees around his tc immediately, and have less initial idle vill investment. So, 9 vill start+tcs within an earshot distance made the douche deadly.
@@ks_movies you are right that in this context it also is not possible to disprove by example as there are of course other factors than strategy (also a 100% win rate strat would break the game) [I was thinking of mathematics where it is common practice to disprove a statement by a counter example]. but that does not change my argument as I said that I do not think that the match example is meant as proof but for illustrative purposes. regarding the impact of the map (border dispute vs arabia): I did not question the impact of that, I think it is probably quite big. But regarding the 9 vill start the exact impact is unclear to me. how big is the difference between the 9 vill start and a regular start where you just look at the footage after the players have reached 9 vills?
@@white5pace cool. I can give 2 examples for the map related discussion.. 1. in 3 vill strat by the time opponent douches you might've very well been thru your boars and deers too,(possibly also on the way to feudal age, maybe?) so you may be dependent on sheep which you can protect by keeping at back of tc.. 2. Like I mentioned 9 vills + short distance is what made it way stronger then a nornal one, with him just chopping the straggler trees immediately while keeping his tc running, there by falling not too far behind in vill count. The diff in eco b/w 6 vills vs 9 vills is far greater than say 15 vills vs 18 vills. Hope this makes it clear..
@@white5pace more vils means getting the wood needed for the drop faster and building it slightly faster too and not needing to wait to get enough vills to fully garrison and have some spare to rush with or chop more wood. Contrast with a regular Arabia start. 3x less vills and 3x the distance to walk. If the build is good the opponent might click up before you even get the douche going lol. All they have to do then is defend with archers until they have a mass and the doucher loses.
Logical response, this topic is as you said a tough circumstance for the douch-ee decision making wise. That difficulty translates to the difficulty in douch strat analysis… but a fun conversation
it gives access to options. Whether its towers, scouts, archers, market, blacksmith. it gives all kinds of advantages that a DA opponent will have trouble dealing with.
All these options are expensive, why would you wanna go for such a risky investment when u could just continue playing a better dark age than ur enemy?
8:30 no it is a 1:1 trade because you *delete* your first tc to kill the opponents first tc. in the end you still have one at full hp, and so does the opponent. sure yours has twice the hp, but that was the case from the start so I wouldnt consider the civ bonus a gain Otherwise I agree with you, but I see Umdeuter's point. both strategies can work. it simply depends on the situation, as it does always in any RTS
Dude, Im just coming to realize that I watched a 20 min video, 50% of it of just text reading, about a strategy that I found appalling, with way more attention than I payed to my team playing a semi-final of a cup just yesterday (I’m Brazilian), and I don’t even play AOE anymore. You’re that good of a communicator. You should comment football or something. More ppl should know you… just saying. Shout out from Brazil. Huge fan.
These two viewpoints is almost like, do you want to be in a static position in chess with a pawn up, or a strategically advantagous position being a pawn down
@@Umdeuter in my opinion going feudal is the "win more" option whereas staying in dark age is the "safe win" option. These terms were popularized by hearthstone as some cards are only good if you're already winning and some are always good. The win more moves only make sense in a game like poker, where the magnitude of win matters. In AOE, chess, or hearthstone, a win is a win, equivalent to any other win. While viper might argue the EV of feudal could be higher than EV of staying dark age, EV doesn't matter. Win chance is the only thing that matters. And the "win more" strategy just creates extra unnecessary risk. While being in a dynamic attacking position a pawn down might be "fun", any chess grandmaster trying to win a game knows if you simply trade all the pieces in a static position with a pawn up, you queen the pawn and guranteed to win.
I think the reason why he suggests to spread out the economy is because, as we've seen with some games in the past with VIper, is that they may very likely continue the douche into your economy. If your whole economy is in range of the next douche then he is winning. If its only displacing a few villagers then you're winning. He is still idle and you're whole economy is still working. In the past this is why we've seen some douches work well against the viper even when he has stayed dark age. because every douche attempt is always hitting viper's full economy. for the dark age play to work the economy needs to be spread to the winds.
20 mins for an "It depends?" I could get that in 2 minutes with T90. 😂. Great video. I enjoy a lot this kind of analysis. From both sides. Wish you well
It really is "depends", for a situation like that warlord game, the map is so favored for Doucher, choose to go up and keep repairing the TC is definitely a bad move, but in other maps where Doucher need to invest way more for a douch, the downside of go up is really not that big.
Go Feudal, take a second woodline far from your original base. A few archers in the field, and that's it. I usually don't even repair my TC, I just let it go down and build a new one somewhere else. Works 90% of the time for me, but at my level, the dushers are just noob like me 11
in that map I notice that 7-9 o clock of viper's base have straggler trees that block the TC drop. Would it be possible for viper to pre-emptively drop straggling single palisades around 5 to 10 oclock to stop the TC drop instead of eating boars?
yeah not needing time and lumber spent on buildings to up sure helps with that decision. But that map and that game is a super fringe case. Honestly think his argument would be better if he used a more standard map as an example rather than one where a douche can happen instantly.
Quite interesting. We see here a common misstake with many thesis about strategy: Building your case on a scenario that *seems* to supports your thesis, while ignoring the circumstances that doesn't fit in. Overall Umdeuter makes a good case and his analysis isn't bad, but as Viper points out, the scenario was like the very best case for an Douche anyway, so while it might be correct to say that Feudal was the wrong play in this case, deducing a strategem from this is rather unwise
The guy says don't repair tc because its going to chew through tons of wood, but while you sit in dark age chew through all your wood to make walls to protect your economy. well that also chews up your wood and idles villagers. arguably less, but it still does.
The thing is, repairing tc is spending resources to do nothing. Spending res on walling eco is a net gain of having protected eco (And is usually something you do anyway unless you're Biper playing on ladder so never wall) Your TC will always go down eventually. Prolonging this doesn't net you very much. It's the same idea behind the decision to not repair some forward castles, it can be better to simply use the stone to build a new castle at home to protect yourself.
@@tarille1043 but repairing a forward castle can net you time to tech switch or build production buildings back home. so in that situation there is still reason to "waste" stone on repairing a castle that will for sure go down. its not to save the castle but to buy time.
@@AndrewTheFrank Yes and sometimes, the time you buy is not worth the resources invested (Which is not just stone but also villager time... Instead of repairing that castle, those vills could have been building those production buildings you wanted...). Which is the point. Sometimes it can be worth it to sink resources into repairing, other times it's more beneficial to just sac the building and use resources elsewhere. In the case of a TC in a douche, there's very few things you can do with the extra time AND because of how early in the game you also lose a ton of time because you don't have an up and running eco that can afford things like dumping resources (By the time you are doing things like castles, you have the market you can use)
If the town center was at full health when clicking up to feudal do it, but if you have to repair no let it die and the new town center you build will be the one to advance while you take your villagers and let them keep gathering resources...
@viper he said 18 because we are talking about dark age gathering and dark age TC armor. Stuff. If you go feudal and get the wood upgrade you will get an advantage although it is tricky to squeeze it in.
It's kind of weird just how much the entire breakdown the dude makes on reddit seems to be entirely based on his opponent just... not adapting at all to what he does. He might have gotten used to coming across douchers that just GG and go next the moment their initial douche fails and hasn't had someone follow up on it in a while. TL;DR on the matter, at least as far as my opinion goes: Most douchers I've met made it their mission to get you to break your composure, not to win the game, they'll absolutely focus on trying to make the game unpleasant and chaotic, they'll try to drag you into the mud pit, and they usually know how to villfight in said mudpit better than your average standard player does. This is why I can only concur with the advice of trying to continue to play a regular game rather than fight the douche. I believe it was one of the premier douchers that even agreed with that, and said that even trying to put down buildings and such to prevent the douche simply won't work, and will make you look like a fool for trying.
Rubenstock, a 2k elo doucher : 'trying to defend a douche is only gonna end up in you looking stupid'. And that's true for 80% of the games, the 20% that are left are when the doucher fails (cant hit tc) or the enemy has put palissades EVERYWHERE, but that's unrealistic if he doesn't know you / is SURE of your game-plan... Either way, you're right. A douche shouldn't work, but if the other play is used to that playstyle and thrives in the generated chaos, any mistakes on your end just accumulate until you lose the game. Personally, i've found that the easiest games are those where the enemy stays dark age / gets his feudal denied by my tc. Because whatever he does, i can do and he has the same weapons which i have. So he cannot ein unless i end up making more mistakes than him, and that usually doesn't happen when properly executed
Where do you read that my opponents don't adapt? My point is that they are far behind already. If you're far behind there is simply not much you can do.
Your advice is predicated on the opponent not following up in any way, and you seem to ignore the fact that, as long as both of you are in dark age, he has answers to anything you try. We'll leave aside canceling feudal: You advice placing many vills on wood... but then you have a shitton of wood, and for... what exactly? By placing a ton of vills on wood you also open yourself up to having those vills walled in, into a situation that prevents them from being able to build a new TC when the current one gets destroyed, or you're engaged in villfighting at which point you're not collecting res, or you're trying to counter your opponent's insistent disruption. Chances are the douche player's also gonna be looking for your eco as well - and they can afford to, they'll have a TC even after yours goes down, they're going to be growing while you're not. Sending individual vills far away to farm is a double edged sword, yes, you might get an unmolested farm eco... or he can follow you and make that a very molested farm eco. Or hell, you can be gathering a ton of food that you can't spend on anything because your TC is gone and you can't rebuild it, because the doucher knows what they're doing and is continuing to harass you, wall in your lumberjacks, stealing your res wherever they're found, etc, etc. You dismiss all of this as if it is totally irrelevant, but it absolutely isn't. The doucher is going to be disrupting you however they can. Placing your TC far away from your eco is also silly. It leaves your eco entirely unprotected, and means your opponent can just villrush it. All of your analysis is done on an extremely irregular game, where the Douche was vastly more effective than it would be in an Arabia game. You actually took the complete wrong lesson from this - this is a game where you are correct, the feudal play is wrong, but that's entirely because they spawn right next to each other. Ironically, you're using, as an example, a game where it actually put Daut far less behind than it would in an Arabia game, in which case the feudal play would actually be VASTLY easier to pull off than it was for Viper, purely because he'd be considerably farther ahead of Daut in that scenario, and would reach feudal with plenty of spare HP on his TC, with a regular sized economy that can easily pump out archers and even get fletching to punish Daut's douche. Douching is a terrible strat, this much we can agree on, but under regular Arabia circumstances, going Feudal and actually USING the advantage the doucher gives up to you is the correct choice, because someone stuck in dark age has zero answer to archers. That's why the default answer is "Go feudal". Because once you're in feudal and can have continuous production of archers, the doucher just loses, whereas they do have answers to anything you try in Dark Age. Your post, to me, reads like you assume your opponent genuinely doesn't and cannot have answers to your tactics.
@@bananaslamma35 you're always able to rebuild the tc, you assume crazy misplays in order to find a weakness in the strat. you put enough on food to be safe to make the tc, then you build farms, obviously you don't just bank 1000 wood. Vil fighting can be prevented with small walls. Chasing things down idles their vils even more. If the strat is right in a game which favors the douche, then why would it be wrong in a game where the douche is even weaker? Having the farming eco molested is probably the one reasonable weakness of the strat, as much as I can see it.
No, you're not always able to rebuild the TC. Hills can make it problematic. Your woodcutters being walled in means they can't get out and do so. Your distant farming eco, if you could actually create one, might be able to, but then you're just opening yourself up to another TC drop or giving up so much time that the Doucher pulls ahead instead because you only have a tiny handful of vills building your TC. Meanwhile your opponent is taking your berries, taking your stone, harassing your woodlines, building up his own eco, etc. I don't have to assume crazy misplays. I just have to not assume optimal conditions for the douchee, including the doucher misplaying by not continuing to make your life difficult. You continue even now assuming that the doucher will just leave you to build your eco unmolested, and that you'll always be able to quickwall everywhere, and that walling in your woodcutters won't just result in your opponent adding his own wall, preventing them from building a TC at all. You ask, how is the strat right in a game that favors the doucher, but the other answer is better in a game that favors the douchee? It's actually fairly simple. Because the advantage is greater. I literally spelled this out, going feudal allows you to leverage your advantage and turn it into a tangible tool that your opponent has zero answer to. Going feudal gives you an effective win condition. while staying in dark age your wincon is "outplay the dude who came into this game intending to play it chaotic and messy" Staying in Dark Age and outplaying the doucher is not an impossibility. It's not a "Wrong" answer per se, if we're being completely factual. Going feudal when you have such a huge advantage that you actually can do so comfortably (in contrast to the border dispute map where you don't) is simply the more logical and most likely to succeed choice. ALL your eco is going to be disrupted, and the Doucher is not going to stop trying to do so just because you wall in. The doucher is not just going to stay in their TC, and its immediate vicinity. When you say "oh but you can quickwall, and you can choose to run when outnumbered or fight when you outnumber him"... well... it reads like you're saying "just be better than your opponent, always do the correct move at all times, and you win" Well, yeah, if I'm somehow always in a position where I can run, if my opponent isn't trying to prevent me from getting my eco running, if my opponent isn't putting further pressure, if he's not always taking engagements with a higher number of vills, if he's not chasing me and making sure that I'm never safe or that I'm never comfortable anywhere, sure, I can just outboom them and win. But if the doucher's letting you do all that, he might as well just GG and leave and spare both of you the time spent in the game since he's not even fucking trying.
I feel like sometimes you underestimate the strategy, as you said in team games it has potential, it is not a legit strategy for you since you are such a strong player, but of course for teams with weaker players, sacrificing one weak player for one of the best in the world will always be worth
I am amazed at what I saw in the scenario editor. A TC costs 275 wood, so it should have only taken 5 lumberjacks to keep 3 villagers in constant repair, but yup it is in fact 16.
I think going feudal isn't a mistake, it's just harder to pull of skillwise. I've never thought about staying in dark age, but it seems to be the easier way. My initial thoughts are: lower elo -> stay in dark age (spread eco and such, expand eco lead) higher elo -> go feudal (kill opponent with archers) Archers can cause hell a lot trouble for sure, but if you cant find any damage it might be already over. I'd love to compare this situation to an Xbow all in: if you break in you win the game on the spot, but if you can't find damage you are probably die against the much stronger eco of the enemy.
I pretty much agree. Also would add, even for ~1900 if you go super quick as nowadays used to, it's quite rough. Maybe I mix it more with berbers vill rush, but I think in a sense they are similar strategies, where doucher wasting villagers time trying to deny you archers or any proper eco. And if you have like 18 vills and you are repairing some houses or palisades/lumber camp so opponent doesn't get in, it's really difficult to afford blacksmith and fletching. And as you said, even if you get it, dude keeps running, starts doing some of his own eco, suddenly he in feudal and gets few towers and those archers not really doing anything. Not to mention at least for slower players unlike Viper it's really difficult to micro few archer groups and if you end up losing few archers to villagers it's just really big cost in low eco game. and if you idle to get some archers, it suddenly becomes like 30 vills vs 20 game and is really difficult to avoid vills fighting. So idk, in my opinion feudal is good, but it might be good to get like 23 vills or something, so until you get to feudal you actually have tons of res and can easily afford things and don't need to idle. Basically taking middle of both ideas, get some vills to have decent eco and get to feudal to finally be able to defend properly, so you can have some vills repairing some palisades or houses and still have good resources to add archers.
I think you guys dont understand the wording. Going feudal with that TC is just too risky. Why not just wait and let him kill that TC while he has 10 idle villager idle and then rebuild and click up. Its so much safer and then you go archer and win. Thats the correct play. The point is not to stay in DARK age forever but with that TC. Trying to risk feudal age when your TC might get destroyed is not worth.
So in the end the classic "It depends", which if you EVER think that is not the right answer to ANY question, chances are you simply don't know enough about the topic.
I would like to see this type of analysis done for the opposing side. What would make a good douche? What is your goal? What are the short term actions and the long term strategy? What would be the game winning conditions? It seems like a good douche will look to deny resources and generate enemy idle time, while at the same time forcing the enemy to deviate from their original strategy, and hopefully generating mistakes.
Tldr : the point is you should make more mistakes than i, since your original game-plan is broken. But essentially, why this strat doesn't work well in normal pro 1v1 settings, is because they can adapt to it and play dirty alongside you. Whereas most players, if they make a few mistakes, i'll exploit them and make them snowball until i win. It basically comes down to 'how good do you handle messiness', and if the reply id 'poorly', you'll lose unless lucky
@@xavierpironier59 Yeah, makes sense. So if I understand correctly, it's basically a winning strategy as long as you're better than your enemy. Between equal skilled players, the strategy rarely gives an advantage.
Targeting just the TC is usually a losing strat. Try to cover nearby camps, mills, farms. Heavily map dependent. You should also add militia to disrupt the building of their subsequent TCs, and force them into undesirable positions. If you can trap and douche just six vills on a woodline, for instance, it's GG.
I'm 1200 elo and I can't remember being douched. I think I would go feudal if I can offord it quickly, not when my TC is already halfway down, because it would cost too many resources to repair the TC. I think avoiding spending too much on TC repair is the key.
This seemed to be mostly theoretical whereas there are so many thing that just thinking and doing a few quick tests won’t show like timing, res on map, the map itself, the players that all can make this, especially for the pros a whole different conversation
So many things to test and think about with it. If he has 10 vils idling in his tc shooting at you does it take longer for your 10 vils to gather the resources needed and rebuild the tc than it does for his 10 vils to destroy that tc? Then again he would have to gather the resources and rebuild his tc each time he trades. If you ignore going feudal and keep pumping villagers how many tc trades do you do that for before you go up to feudal? What if you see your opponent going feudal while a douche is going on, then you possibly have archers and towers to deal with as well as the douche. I don't know I'm just a noob half asleep asking myself these questions since I don't know any of the answers. It is interesting though.
Commenting as watching so maybe you correct this later. BUT at 8:35 the trade 1 for 1 is nothing to do with civ advantages, you delete your TC to take down opponents TC, you trade your TC first. With the mango analogy you delete a mangonel first, then build another to kill your opponents first mangonel.
I think the mangonel analogy its not for the doucher one, but the douched. The Douched player "Pull all the villagers to repair the Tc (Vills repairing and vills getting wood to repair, so he can go Feudal), and then he trade the Tc 1 for 1". I think The viper just misunderstood. and yes, the trade 1 for 1 is nothing to do with civ advantages as you said. But the mangonel analogy, i think its not for "Douche is a bad strat because of this", but a "Respond a douche going feudal is a bad strat because of this".
TheViper - Absolute correct answer (to douche) : It depends. Game balance team - Absolute correct answer (to douche) : Changes on the horizon for Persian.
Depend of the Stategy of the rival, sometimes they Dont attack important points of your Economy and their Economy is almost on shambles but FA/CA always give you Power spikes that cannot be Stopped if you play your cards well.
and the other thing is that i've seen games where people have rebuilt the tc a few times and they just continuously keep douching and it keeps destroying the economy. In which staying in dark age doesn't help. Going feudal opens up so many options that it alone, as long as their is enough economy to support the options, can alone end the game.
So in short, the player picked out a very specific game where it was more advisable to stay in Dark Age, but that heavily depended on the map and mode played in that tournament. Thats... not convincing.
"who expects a douch"..... Viper, if the enemy is Persians its 100% sure the douche is coming, 100%..... 10/10. And he is sorta right, basically what hes saying is to delay Feudal from the first TC, and make it from the Second, thats it.
I think the big takeaway is put your boars and other food on the far side and then learn how much hp a tc needs to go to feudal while being shot at by 10 garrisoned vills. This way you don't waste tc time trying and failing to go up and you don't spend wood repairing a tc knowing it'll drain your bank account faster than a billionaire's divorce.
Why not drop into feudal immediately on the second tc if you haven't upped already? Then you don't have the same time worries. I think that feudal is simpler - i think the biggest loss is zone of control which is more important than the resources. It also most importantly gives you breathing space to plan your follow up. With the posts method you'd have to plan in anticipation at the start. So easy to get caught in a bad spot if you follow this post. Viper is right, the biggest risk is it forces an error on your part- even viper put down a bad tc for him.
I think the key point for a douche to be successfull is for the opponent to be stupid enough to repair his tc. If the numbers from T-West are correct (which i believe), you need 21 vills to collect wood and repair just to counter the damage. Add to that the lost food from the area control and you are massively behind. Viper was in almost the worst situation imaginable after his tc went down. No wood for a new TC, not even enough for a military building. That was definitely a mistake on his part in that single game. Ideally you want to reach feudal with as little repair time as possible. That means, depending on when the douche hits you, you have to decide on the spot, if you either go up instantly or if you let your tc go down, rebuild one and click up afterwards. If you make a mistake, the douching player can get an advantage, if you play it right, you should be ahead. The earlier a douche hits, the harder it is to safely get up to feudal (and still have any ressources left). And if the douching player can deny you from rebuilding your tc for a while, he can get massively ahead.
As someone who got really good at some older FPS games, you should never close your mind on crazy strategies that people worse than you think of. The players at the "pro/high level" usually think about the game much differently than most people and there are random things that some people discover that the pros won't know about. Then one day they tinker with it and hone in on the idea to make it a viable strategy. In AOE2, a great example is fish booming on Black Forrest maps. When you're at a crazy high level, it's sometimes good to look at people of lower skills and see what ideas they're using to perfect, then use against other high level players to catch them off guard
I dont think the viper is taking that position. If anything he is being open minded by even responding to the person's argument of which I mostly see it holding water because of the very specific game he chose as his example. Its the best possible scenario for a douche, yet he makes it sound as if every douche will be like this situation.
It is the same with any strategy game. . When playing a tournament, during rest times Garry Kasparov is known for watching games from other categories- even Junior level. . Bobby Fischer would assiduously scour the Russian Chess journals and analyze games of all levels. He in fact found a brilliant strategy in the poisoned pawn variation and played it against Gligoric / Geller. He wrote about it in his book "70 most memorable games" . Capablanca too would observe strategies from Junior players. That way, I think he identified a future GM in Salo Flohr (when he was just a boy).
The question is can you get feudal with rebuilt TC without opponent douching that and having their working eco help them get to feudal faster? (Either you sink into repair or you keep working on your eco, but there are no towers or options besides militia and walls). Players who actually do try Persian douche may be used to the opponents misplaying and not have developed how to make it more effective because games end so quick. I am curious how Rubenstock would deal with a dark age opponent
I agree with the poster somewhat, but the better play would have been to let the tc die, then once it's dead, only then rebuild then immediately go up to fuedal, not when the tc is already burning.
I think this guy is on to something. If he duchess you, make more vills and prep for a second TC. If he duchess you again, make another. He won't have the stone to do it a third time - your third TC is safe. But you've had a working economy this whole time, and he hasn't. If he vill fights, you out number him substantial, he hasn't made vills in the last few minutes - you have. I don't it's as simple as NEVER to feudal. But will similar vill micro, you should win every time
I remember reading this back in the day, I think an important thing to note is that the poster talks about 1000 resources lost, but this isn't really the case, the idle time is only the walking time for the villagers to the new TC location, since the opponent also must rebuild their TC, the cost of the TC and build time is always lost for the other player once they rebuild their TC. even on Arabia this is more often only 600 resources lost and on smaller maps that is even less cost to the player douching. Douching shouldn't even put you behind on villagers since you can delete your TC and stop villager production only when you have reached the spot for the new TC.
@@quakesquakes you are right, the person who made the reddit post however included the cost of the TC in their 1000 resources the idle time Daut had was 730 resources worth. It should take 20 minutes of idle time or 480 resources of Idle time to take down a TC, it then takes 12 minutes of idle time to walk across a map on Arabia, which is 750 resources worth of idle time.
@@quakesquakes the TC can make villagers while garrisoned and its only idle for a short while. While its being shot down it makes it awkward for the opponent to gather food, often cuts off a few nearby resources, and later they still have to idle villagers for building a new TC as well as building other buildings to attempt to block a follow up douche. The idea is that you're idling your economy now to idle their economy more in the future. It also potentially puts them permanently off of gold and stone. a potential worth while investment.
@@sevenpolar3483 From the games I've seen the difference in res is much greater than 750. The extra 32mins of idle time in the Daut game doesn't even include walking time or vils attacking houses. You also said in OP that the doucher won't fall behind in villagers - not true, the doucher usually has a ton of tc idle time as well from lack of food (evidenced by Daut as well).
17:37 "Who [...] expects a douche?" - Did not expect that from TheViper being the troll that he is. Also how good are the following two strategies against a douche: - Simply full wall your base in dark age any time you play against persians. Remember that you should be able to wall behind / repair with 10 vills as your opponent should have at least as many vills forward under normal circumstances. - Scout your opponent early to see if/when your opponent is sending vills forward. Once the vills get close to your settlement simply garrison 10 vills in your TC. When the opponent places a TC foundation it should get automatically destroyed by one volley of arrows from your TC as the opponent will usually not be able to get all vills building their new TC directly. At that point it is pretty much gg. You can find hilarious clips of Rubenstock doing that to MBL. But I guess that is hard to pull of on border dispute to the extremely close rush distance.
I think the spread economy may work better at lower levels, a pro's going to have a different skill toolchain to scour the map, but in any aoe style rts, decentralizing throws the crap out of most players, they don't know where to send there troops if there isn't a "town" in one place.
I agree with the post, the huge waste from douching is idling 10 vills to shoot down just a tc. It's just such a huge loss for no res advantage whatsoever - just positioning. I've barely even felt threatened by a douche before just chilling in dark age laughing at all his idle vills when I instantly rebuild my tc in a nice spot, he can't even possibly vill fight for most of the time because his whole pop is in the tc. Garrisoning vills just feels so bad, it isn't even resource efficient to garrison if your tcs started next to each other, it takes 20 villager minutes (10*2) to shoot down a tc and it only costs 13.75 vil mins to collect the wood for a new one and
Omg Viper, please come do this eco theory crafting on the Lord of the Rings 4v4 Map. Its a feudal 8-ish vil start, and each civ has tons of eco boom options but its not always clear what the most efficient way to boom is. Just as an example, the Evil Men civ (Rhun, Harad, Umbar) plays as the Cumans, starts with 200 wood and 5 docks with deep fish a medium distance away. There is still debate in the community on whether it is more important to spend the first wood on fishing ships, or go for the early 2nd TC as soon as possible. (I know i know, it depends)
Ok, I've not played aoe2 in quite a while and even when I did I was bad at it but from my point of view, going up sounds like a strategy that requires more from the player, it might be better at the high end but from what I recall from back when I played, just getting a rax and spreading out feels easier (to execute)
I was scared to death on what is Snek going to say at the end of the vid..and he fking did say it...the infamous "it depends"...my heart skipped a beat, I started sweating profusely and my body temperature skyrocketed. I see red, evacuate a 2km radius centered on me, I dont know what I am capable of at this cursed time.
I cant really comment on whats right or wrong about Umdeuters approach since i dont really play the game, but im 100% sure that saying "you should NEVER *do something*" is just wrong. There is way too many variables and there will be a time when going feudal is the right thing to do. Even if he is right and going feudal is "wrong", there will always be a chance for a situation where its the right decision. I think thats one of the most beautiful things about this game and one of the reasons i keep watching matches.
I guess what I would've wanted to see is an explanation for why you lost the highlighted game. If going feudal is good, why did you still lose? Especially considering the real possibility of your TC dying before it even finished. I'm sure in your mind there are other factors of mistakes you made or things your opponent did well, but i don't really know what those are so I'm just left thinking going feudal was the mistake if it's still true that douching is definitely not a good strat.
Don't confuse losing one game with the whole strategy being bad. The main topic here is douching in general, not just that specific game. In most cases, going Feudal is a correct answer to a douche. Just because it didn't work out that time doesn't mean it's not a viable game plan in general. Viper does mention a couple factors why the douche worked so well that game, mostly the specific map and settings working heavily in favor of the douche. Between the denied extra boar under tc (denying food), extra vill start (faster douche set-up) and shorter walk time (earlier arrival, less idle time for doucher). All of that allowed the douche to hit a lot faster than usual, forcing a lot of wood costs on repairs to keep the TC up long enough to go feudal and causing a the snowballing wood crisis.
@@NivMizzet89 Yeah I did pay attention, it just still feels like a copout? Like people want to know how to not die to douches, and saying "Douches are better in situations where they are good" does nothing to solve that. Is it perhaps true that the advice to not go feudal is better when the douche is not ideal due to rush distance? I'm guessing that's what the message is, but not only is that not really stated explicitly (they seemed hesitant to admit the advice to not go feudal had any merit at all), it still leaves a gaping hole on what to do in situations like the game featured, where the douche is ideal.
@@FinetalPies I think part of the confusion is that this video isn't really a standalone guide for how to beat douching and mostly a reaction on the 'never feudal against douche' thread (and why/where Viper disagrees with it). The video is basically talking about 2 topics; 'why going feudal is usually best' (standard reasons, see previous videos apparently) and 'why it didn't work in this particular game' (exceptional circumstances). --- From how I understand the overall message is roughly the opposite of what you're saying; -Staying Dark Age can work, but in normal situations the better/safer strategy is usually going Feudal -> Archers (18:20) -Against ideal douches like this particular case, staying Dark Age probably better/Would've been the right call in this game/ (12:30)
@@NivMizzet89 That makese sense, thanks for the timestamps too. I think ultimately I just found the original no-feudal guide to be a more compelling argument, but, I'm nowhere near able to make any conclusions. So it's not even a "I think Viper is wrong" situation, just a "I think Viper's points could've been better made"
Though absolutely "Never go Feudal (the pros get it wrong)" is simultaneously hyperbolic and clickbaity, it's good to have some nuance, which this video does a good job of providing.
The entire point of the douche is to make the game an absolute mess and prevent the enemy from just playing their game plan and go for their win conditions. I agree with Viper that you should try to keep the impact of the douche as small as possible and try to stick to your plan as good as you can. If you take the dark age fight, you play into the enemy game plan. They will probably have a better economic setup for this type of game, because they started preparing this right from the beggining of the game. You on the other hand are just reacting once you see the tc or the vills coming forward. The villager difference will be very small because you won't have enough wood to rebuild your tc right away because banking 275 wood in dark age is usually a bad idea.
The argument in the beginning about sticking to your game plan is a bit strange. It's like saying: "If you plan to go crossbows and your opponent goes full skirmisher you should still go ahead with the crossbow strategy." Of course you need to adapt to the strategy of the opponent. In particular for all-in strategies like the Douche. Also the second part about not having wood for a TC is strange as you do not need the 275 wood when the opponent places the foundation for the TC but only after they have build the TC (with most of their eco) and taken your TC down (idling 10 garrisoned vills). That is enough time to gather 275 wood if you do not repair your TC.
If you go feudal and play archers, that's 350 wood + 25 each arch. = 375 wood(playing just one archer) = 275 (Tc)+100(Lj, Mill, or Mc). Moreover, there are always more than one staggler tree near the tc, each one equals 100 wood, i dont think its difficult to banking 275 wood if you react fast enough. Also you said " If you take the dark age fight, you play into the enemy game plan", and thats exactly what the explanation of "why do you never go feudal against a douche" is. You are indeed playing the enemy game plan, But with a huge Resources and vills advantage, So, what ever the enemy can do, You can do better.
Yeah, the villager difference may be small (though still significant), but it's the huge amount of vill idle time that really makes the douche a terrible strategy and sets the doucher so far behind that they depend on the douchee screwing up and reacting badly (like trying to repair TC) to get back into the game and gain an advantage - there is no amount of "better economic setup" that can make up for that within those few minutes of dark age before the douche happens.
What a weird take. A douche can never have better economy. And the only reason a douche game is 'messy' is because you haven't decided on what strategy to use against it.
![Designing Your Base Like a Pro! [ES SUBS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eoBxIUAATEE/mqdefault.jpg)
I seriously only clicked on the video because the text told me to do so 111111
I came here to comment the same 11
Lol once I saw it was viper's vid I couldnt help it either.
Yeah... same... ROFL.
Me too
Me too
Quality content, for real. Would love more Viper talking strategy in this format. Umdeuter is a prolific strategy enjoyer on the subreddit.
Most valuable thing is knowing just how much wood it takes to repair tc. Can help judging what to do based on timing of douche in regards to wood and vil count. Obv douche was immediate that game
What I like about TheViper and moreover generally about the AoEII high level players, is that a lot of them aren't afraid to talk about their failures, their mistakes, and how these can be used as lessons for not only them, but the community that follows them. Truly a healthy relationship to competition there.
I think a big missed point is, that the opportunity cost for feudal is comparatively lower in most games. (This one being an exception due to the very short distance between the players.) You are already working towards feudal and as such will usually have a couple hundred food banked already. Not going feudal means you cannot take advantage of that stockpile, because you will realistically only build villagers with it.
I think opportunity cost is everything. What is more important, losing a little bit of lumber on the tc to gain feudal age options or expanding the economy a bit to make it slightly more robust. Both are good options with their own merit. Getting to feudal with a fast response can end the game fast.
@@AndrewTheFrank the question is if it really is only a little bit of lumber. according to the video of TWest repairing with three vills burns the income of 18 villagers on wood. and at that point of time 18 villagers is almost your whole eco. so if it is only a few seconds that is maybe fine but if you have to do it for longer it would very quickly add up.
@@white5pace and the maker of the post sounded like he suggested you spending your whole economy to make walls all over the map was better. That also takes wood and idle villagers.
@@AndrewTheFrank the whole part about spreading and securing your eco is a bit more vague than it should be. BUT walling in a few farms should not mean spending your whole eco.
@@white5pace well it depends on what is being walled and how much. in some of the pictures there was some extensive walling. in dark age walls are fairly easily busted through. a doucher will bust them. are the walls far out or are they next to the resource? if next to the resource, and next to the new TC, then the follow up douche can be placed right on both the resource and the TC.
If the douche is delayed or late then one might not need to repair, or repair much, to get to feudal. If that is the case then walling can become more resource intensive. Then there is also the villagers that have to be idled to wall. If you want walls up quick then many villagers are idled.
But I understand part of the point of walling. its to slow down or limit their mobility so its harder to find where to douche.
This feels like the kind of thing where I'd wanna see a pro try to exclusively deal with douches by staying in Dark Age and then exclusively deal with douches by trying to go up and seeing which strategy has a better win rate.
People don't like change, especially when something seems to work well enough. When something works pretty well, we just mark it as a situation where there is no improvement needed. However, thinking like that obviously leaves a lot of performance on the table. There's no drive to find out just how far you can take a strategy before it just falls off the edge.
That being the case, I understand why umdeuter believes there's a blind spot. Since it's already a bad strategy, standard responses work "well enough", so no one feels the need to try anything different. In order to figure out exactly how effective it is, though, someone with sufficient skill would need to do rigorous testing; i.e. we need a pro to exclusively do this strat and then the opposite to see how it compares.
I feel like the true answer is that you should almost always stay in Dark Age, and under pretty specific circumstances you should go up to get archers or whatever. (Maybe civs like Bulgarians should always try to go up to get the MAA power spike?) On the ladder, it prevents opponents from exploiting your predictability.
Knowing where you will re-TC feels like a really important part of staying in Dark Age, but if you can stay calm, I can't see how you can ever do worse than like a 75% win rate.
I say all this as a 900 player, though, so obviously I lack experience in this kind of situation.
I think the problem with the ‘testing’ always stay dark then always stay feudal is that the tester will know a douche is coming, where the power of the douche comes from surprise and confusion. But yes more data is needed
@@RobotShield optimally this would be done on ranked, so the tester has no way of knowing whether it's a douche until it happens.
@@CalebShimomura sure, sadly the number of games involving douches will be so low though this study will take years to complete
@@RobotShield i think its not that difficult, the douched player will make his standard oppening, and he will just adjust (the eco) when the Douche start. this way you can even said (for example) "Its easier to defend if you have an Drush + Fc start strat, then the archers start and the least the cav start".
@@RobotShield I mean he even says "oh my opponent is persians theyre going to douche"
You wouldnt really need a large enough sample size for "win rate" to be meaningful, playing comparisons can show the players experience to judge the merits and risks/losses of eachh response against each other and go from there. If youre good you dont need 20,000 data points to prove it you only need 1
His argument should have focused more on the fact that going Feudal creates an asymmetry between you and the doucher. If you stay Dark Age, you are ahead or even in every category, and there is no weak point of yours he can exploit to come out ahead. Whereas if you go Feudal, now you are behind in villager count and wood, even though you have the Feudal advantage. It may be better overall to be in this situation, but it does present a weakness that he can take advantage of, because now he is ahead in at least one aspect of the game.
An important note here, is the suggestion to spread out your economy is not to hide it but to make sure they cannot idle you eco with a single TC placement. You do not need to spread it much. Just enough to not get shut down all at once.
Tbh that only does so much. While i'd like to agree, any food eco with no tc is exposed, and any tc is gonna get deleted 11. Spreading your eco makes our follow-ups harder though, and if we can't harass your vills, you'll be able to build up and win. So we just make sure that doesn't happen 11
@@xavierpironier59At this point in the game you are only exposed to his vils. Which you will have more of. So just fight him. Exposed eco only matters when the other person has an army to worry about.
after the douche, the one who got douched usually splits his eco up, if i then run into that with like 10 or more vills, only a tc will save him@@EagleTopGaming
@@EagleTopGaming If he does it right then the vil lead is small (maybe two?). And since your tc is down, the vil lead will quickly invert. In addition, if you spread out your eco (usually happens naturally) then you will always be outnumbered in a fight. The other issue with spreading out is that you get to fight all of the wolves instead of him, giving him yet another advantage in the numbers.
I think another big factor is scouts. Whoever keeps a scout alive has a large advantage.
@@SemiMono The math does not add up there. I do not think the vil lead would invert. Even if they win the initial TC fight and you have to rebuild, at best that would make it even. You have both lost and had to rebuild 1 TC. However, they also had to walk across the map so you should still have a slight lead.
And if they douche you again, it puts them behind again.
Repairing tc for a long time is not worth it is a good take away. If you can still go feudal, it is alright. But in most cases easier to not repair, build a new tc and go up.
The game used as an example is such a unique map favoring this strategy, you might as well be telling people not to fish boom ever because of one game on Arabia. Without that super close rush distance, the defender gets a bigger villager lead, closer to feudal when it happens, and a better chance to scout it early
I do not think that is how the reasoning works. The two claims that Umdeuter makes are:
- Douche is a terrible strategy.
- Staying in dark age is the superior strategy to fight the Douche instead of going to Feudal as the investment of going Feudal has a high chance of not paying off.
So the argument is more that the Douche is such a bad strategy that on maps like Arabia you even have a chance to win by going Feudal but you would have an easier time staying in Dark Age. And on maps like Border Dispute - where the Douche has an edge in contrast to Arabia - it shows that going Feudal is a bad idea because with staying Dark Age you could easily win but in that case going Feudal falls short.
No, I think you focused too much on the Game he showed. The concept he said is the same in Arabia too. Honestly he is 100% right but his wording is wrong. You dont go feudal age with your intial TC. It will be broken down. What you want to do is just be calm, realize you are really ahead of your opponent and then start working on securing a second place either Berry bushes or gold wood line that you will make the 2nd tc. Secure that area so he cannot TC drop you again and just wait until he kills your TC. Remember not only is he many villager behind he also has 10 villager idle for the whole time. Once your TC is down you just rebuild your TC at the second spot that you have secured and then click feudal age. At this point just go archer in feudal and its GG. I have done this so many time and won every time vs a douce to the point I enjoy when people do it vs me since its a easy win. This only fails if the enemy will somehow do a second TC drop on you and then you are kinda screwed.
Isn't it the exact opposite? If this map favors douche strat, you should compare it to a map that favors fish boom. The example used is the best case scenario for douching, and he still argues against it. And I actually agree with most of the points.
His point exactly. He took the best scenario possible to prove that even if you’re as good as viper is and you do everything right, you will struggle and eventually loose if you go feudal.
@@white5pace but on maps like Arabia the douch is not likely to come in until you're clicking up to feudal so it is kind of a moot point. His examples and math wasn't using Arabia games. If he wanted to steel man his argument he would pick douches that work from the worst possible situations they are used in. To show that going feudal, even in those games, is worse than staying dark age. instead we get a game where someone doing what he said was bad actually did fairly well. which in my opinion doesn't help to strengthen his argument at all.
It would be fun to watch a test of this. Get two pros and play two games. Go Feudal in one and stay in Dark age in the other.
Simply save the game at the moment of the douche and play it from there twice:)
i'm not an aoe 2 player so correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't the response completely change if you expect the douche?
@@samohtgamingpro4470 not too much, dark age plays are quite standardized at the current state of the meta, so just playing "standard" dark age would be enough for testing
Scouting it coming is important. Gives you time to prepare yourself
Imagine combining the Persian Douche, the Cuman Double Douche and the old Teuton Sniper Douche in one single civ.
I think the key here is to realize that the douche isn't actually losing that much villager production time. While they lose some while they build the new towncenter you will lose just as much as you replace the town center.
While Dark age vs Dark age might work, it kinda puts the players at equal footing. Doucher prepare their economy for this strat has wasted some time walking. But the non-douche also loses walking time since the villagers have to relocate away from the starting base. Non-douche in dark age has no control over any resources since douche probably walled back home and can TC contest at non-douche's base.
However if non-douche goes fedual the situation with resource control flips on it's head. Non-douche can push douch away from any resource not controlled by the town center.
14:35 "If you're in Feudal Age, he cannot continue to trade town centres" EXACTLY. and that's bad for you. Because every tc he trades is putting him further behind. Don't interrupt the enemy when they are making a mistake!
Very interesting video, thought provoking! Thank you, keep making these :)
I think this is what is called cherry picking. Going feudal didn't work on one particular very close in map with extra starting vills. Pretty much the best possible scenario for the doucher. I really can't vill fight so I just wall my lumber jacks in and get a range up somewhere.
Of course it is cherry picking! Giving an example can not be used to prove a theory but only to disprove it, so in this case it is simply used to illustrate the drawbacks of going Feudal and the textual arguments.
Also it is unclear to me why extra starting vills are necessarily an advantage here (they might but I do not think it is clear).
@@white5pace Cherry picking data to prove/disprove a position are both bad. You can simply have a very bad game and had correct strategic response with worst excevution to a douche and that doesnt make the counter strat wrong from that one single example.
Like T-west explains in his video, daut can simply eat the straggler trees around his tc immediately, and have less initial idle vill investment. So, 9 vill start+tcs within an earshot distance made the douche deadly.
@@ks_movies you are right that in this context it also is not possible to disprove by example as there are of course other factors than strategy (also a 100% win rate strat would break the game) [I was thinking of mathematics where it is common practice to disprove a statement by a counter example]. but that does not change my argument as I said that I do not think that the match example is meant as proof but for illustrative purposes.
regarding the impact of the map (border dispute vs arabia): I did not question the impact of that, I think it is probably quite big. But regarding the 9 vill start the exact impact is unclear to me. how big is the difference between the 9 vill start and a regular start where you just look at the footage after the players have reached 9 vills?
@@white5pace cool.
I can give 2 examples for the map related discussion..
1. in 3 vill strat by the time opponent douches you might've very well been thru your boars and deers too,(possibly also on the way to feudal age, maybe?) so you may be dependent on sheep which you can protect by keeping at back of tc..
2. Like I mentioned 9 vills + short distance is what made it way stronger then a nornal one, with him just chopping the straggler trees immediately while keeping his tc running, there by falling not too far behind in vill count. The diff in eco b/w 6 vills vs 9 vills is far greater than say 15 vills vs 18 vills. Hope this makes it clear..
@@white5pace more vils means getting the wood needed for the drop faster and building it slightly faster too and not needing to wait to get enough vills to fully garrison and have some spare to rush with or chop more wood.
Contrast with a regular Arabia start. 3x less vills and 3x the distance to walk. If the build is good the opponent might click up before you even get the douche going lol. All they have to do then is defend with archers until they have a mass and the doucher loses.
Logical response, this topic is as you said a tough circumstance for the douch-ee decision making wise. That difficulty translates to the difficulty in douch strat analysis… but a fun conversation
Feudal gives you access the market, which is such a good building for messy games
it gives access to options. Whether its towers, scouts, archers, market, blacksmith. it gives all kinds of advantages that a DA opponent will have trouble dealing with.
All these options are expensive, why would you wanna go for such a risky investment when u could just continue playing a better dark age than ur enemy?
8:30 no it is a 1:1 trade because you *delete* your first tc to kill the opponents first tc. in the end you still have one at full hp, and so does the opponent. sure yours has twice the hp, but that was the case from the start so I wouldnt consider the civ bonus a gain
Otherwise I agree with you, but I see Umdeuter's point. both strategies can work. it simply depends on the situation, as it does always in any RTS
I just love the videos from T-West
Dude, Im just coming to realize that I watched a 20 min video, 50% of it of just text reading, about a strategy that I found appalling, with way more attention than I payed to my team playing a semi-final of a cup just yesterday (I’m Brazilian), and I don’t even play AOE anymore.
You’re that good of a communicator. You should comment football or something. More ppl should know you… just saying. Shout out from Brazil. Huge fan.
These two viewpoints is almost like, do you want to be in a static position in chess with a pawn up, or a strategically advantagous position being a pawn down
Yes!
@@Umdeuter in my opinion going feudal is the "win more" option whereas staying in dark age is the "safe win" option. These terms were popularized by hearthstone as some cards are only good if you're already winning and some are always good. The win more moves only make sense in a game like poker, where the magnitude of win matters. In AOE, chess, or hearthstone, a win is a win, equivalent to any other win. While viper might argue the EV of feudal could be higher than EV of staying dark age, EV doesn't matter. Win chance is the only thing that matters. And the "win more" strategy just creates extra unnecessary risk. While being in a dynamic attacking position a pawn down might be "fun", any chess grandmaster trying to win a game knows if you simply trade all the pieces in a static position with a pawn up, you queen the pawn and guranteed to win.
I think the reason why he suggests to spread out the economy is because, as we've seen with some games in the past with VIper, is that they may very likely continue the douche into your economy. If your whole economy is in range of the next douche then he is winning. If its only displacing a few villagers then you're winning. He is still idle and you're whole economy is still working. In the past this is why we've seen some douches work well against the viper even when he has stayed dark age. because every douche attempt is always hitting viper's full economy. for the dark age play to work the economy needs to be spread to the winds.
20 mins for an "It depends?" I could get that in 2 minutes with T90. 😂. Great video. I enjoy a lot this kind of analysis. From both sides. Wish you well
"It's very map dependent" within the first 40 seconds... so, does that count as "it depends"?
@@aralornwolf3140 good point
It really is "depends", for a situation like that warlord game, the map is so favored for Doucher, choose to go up and keep repairing the TC is definitely a bad move, but in other maps where Doucher need to invest way more for a douch, the downside of go up is really not that big.
Go Feudal, take a second woodline far from your original base. A few archers in the field, and that's it. I usually don't even repair my TC, I just let it go down and build a new one somewhere else. Works 90% of the time for me, but at my level, the dushers are just noob like me 11
in that map I notice that 7-9 o clock of viper's base have straggler trees that block the TC drop. Would it be possible for viper to pre-emptively drop straggling single palisades around 5 to 10 oclock to stop the TC drop instead of eating boars?
Lots of people seem to be forgetting the reason he went feudal is the khmer bonus. Obviously its super dependant on context as he says in the video
yeah not needing time and lumber spent on buildings to up sure helps with that decision. But that map and that game is a super fringe case. Honestly think his argument would be better if he used a more standard map as an example rather than one where a douche can happen instantly.
Quite interesting. We see here a common misstake with many thesis about strategy: Building your case on a scenario that *seems* to supports your thesis, while ignoring the circumstances that doesn't fit in.
Overall Umdeuter makes a good case and his analysis isn't bad, but as Viper points out, the scenario was like the very best case for an Douche anyway, so while it might be correct to say that Feudal was the wrong play in this case, deducing a strategem from this is rather unwise
The guy says don't repair tc because its going to chew through tons of wood, but while you sit in dark age chew through all your wood to make walls to protect your economy. well that also chews up your wood and idles villagers. arguably less, but it still does.
The thing is, repairing tc is spending resources to do nothing. Spending res on walling eco is a net gain of having protected eco (And is usually something you do anyway unless you're Biper playing on ladder so never wall)
Your TC will always go down eventually. Prolonging this doesn't net you very much. It's the same idea behind the decision to not repair some forward castles, it can be better to simply use the stone to build a new castle at home to protect yourself.
@@tarille1043 but repairing a forward castle can net you time to tech switch or build production buildings back home. so in that situation there is still reason to "waste" stone on repairing a castle that will for sure go down. its not to save the castle but to buy time.
@@AndrewTheFrank Yes and sometimes, the time you buy is not worth the resources invested (Which is not just stone but also villager time... Instead of repairing that castle, those vills could have been building those production buildings you wanted...).
Which is the point. Sometimes it can be worth it to sink resources into repairing, other times it's more beneficial to just sac the building and use resources elsewhere.
In the case of a TC in a douche, there's very few things you can do with the extra time AND because of how early in the game you also lose a ton of time because you don't have an up and running eco that can afford things like dumping resources (By the time you are doing things like castles, you have the market you can use)
If the town center was at full health when clicking up to feudal do it, but if you have to repair no let it die and the new town center you build will be the one to advance while you take your villagers and let them keep gathering resources...
I really like this style of video.
@viper he said 18 because we are talking about dark age gathering and dark age TC armor. Stuff. If you go feudal and get the wood upgrade you will get an advantage although it is tricky to squeeze it in.
"Never go feudal"
-> better thesis would be
it dependsss
It's kind of weird just how much the entire breakdown the dude makes on reddit seems to be entirely based on his opponent just... not adapting at all to what he does. He might have gotten used to coming across douchers that just GG and go next the moment their initial douche fails and hasn't had someone follow up on it in a while.
TL;DR on the matter, at least as far as my opinion goes: Most douchers I've met made it their mission to get you to break your composure, not to win the game, they'll absolutely focus on trying to make the game unpleasant and chaotic, they'll try to drag you into the mud pit, and they usually know how to villfight in said mudpit better than your average standard player does.
This is why I can only concur with the advice of trying to continue to play a regular game rather than fight the douche. I believe it was one of the premier douchers that even agreed with that, and said that even trying to put down buildings and such to prevent the douche simply won't work, and will make you look like a fool for trying.
Rubenstock, a 2k elo doucher : 'trying to defend a douche is only gonna end up in you looking stupid'. And that's true for 80% of the games, the 20% that are left are when the doucher fails (cant hit tc) or the enemy has put palissades EVERYWHERE, but that's unrealistic if he doesn't know you / is SURE of your game-plan... Either way, you're right. A douche shouldn't work, but if the other play is used to that playstyle and thrives in the generated chaos, any mistakes on your end just accumulate until you lose the game. Personally, i've found that the easiest games are those where the enemy stays dark age / gets his feudal denied by my tc. Because whatever he does, i can do and he has the same weapons which i have. So he cannot ein unless i end up making more mistakes than him, and that usually doesn't happen when properly executed
Where do you read that my opponents don't adapt? My point is that they are far behind already. If you're far behind there is simply not much you can do.
Your advice is predicated on the opponent not following up in any way, and you seem to ignore the fact that, as long as both of you are in dark age, he has answers to anything you try.
We'll leave aside canceling feudal:
You advice placing many vills on wood... but then you have a shitton of wood, and for... what exactly? By placing a ton of vills on wood you also open yourself up to having those vills walled in, into a situation that prevents them from being able to build a new TC when the current one gets destroyed, or you're engaged in villfighting at which point you're not collecting res, or you're trying to counter your opponent's insistent disruption. Chances are the douche player's also gonna be looking for your eco as well - and they can afford to, they'll have a TC even after yours goes down, they're going to be growing while you're not.
Sending individual vills far away to farm is a double edged sword, yes, you might get an unmolested farm eco... or he can follow you and make that a very molested farm eco. Or hell, you can be gathering a ton of food that you can't spend on anything because your TC is gone and you can't rebuild it, because the doucher knows what they're doing and is continuing to harass you, wall in your lumberjacks, stealing your res wherever they're found, etc, etc. You dismiss all of this as if it is totally irrelevant, but it absolutely isn't. The doucher is going to be disrupting you however they can.
Placing your TC far away from your eco is also silly. It leaves your eco entirely unprotected, and means your opponent can just villrush it.
All of your analysis is done on an extremely irregular game, where the Douche was vastly more effective than it would be in an Arabia game. You actually took the complete wrong lesson from this - this is a game where you are correct, the feudal play is wrong, but that's entirely because they spawn right next to each other.
Ironically, you're using, as an example, a game where it actually put Daut far less behind than it would in an Arabia game, in which case the feudal play would actually be VASTLY easier to pull off than it was for Viper, purely because he'd be considerably farther ahead of Daut in that scenario, and would reach feudal with plenty of spare HP on his TC, with a regular sized economy that can easily pump out archers and even get fletching to punish Daut's douche.
Douching is a terrible strat, this much we can agree on, but under regular Arabia circumstances, going Feudal and actually USING the advantage the doucher gives up to you is the correct choice, because someone stuck in dark age has zero answer to archers.
That's why the default answer is "Go feudal". Because once you're in feudal and can have continuous production of archers, the doucher just loses, whereas they do have answers to anything you try in Dark Age.
Your post, to me, reads like you assume your opponent genuinely doesn't and cannot have answers to your tactics.
@@bananaslamma35 you're always able to rebuild the tc, you assume crazy misplays in order to find a weakness in the strat. you put enough on food to be safe to make the tc, then you build farms, obviously you don't just bank 1000 wood. Vil fighting can be prevented with small walls. Chasing things down idles their vils even more.
If the strat is right in a game which favors the douche, then why would it be wrong in a game where the douche is even weaker?
Having the farming eco molested is probably the one reasonable weakness of the strat, as much as I can see it.
No, you're not always able to rebuild the TC. Hills can make it problematic. Your woodcutters being walled in means they can't get out and do so. Your distant farming eco, if you could actually create one, might be able to, but then you're just opening yourself up to another TC drop or giving up so much time that the Doucher pulls ahead instead because you only have a tiny handful of vills building your TC.
Meanwhile your opponent is taking your berries, taking your stone, harassing your woodlines, building up his own eco, etc.
I don't have to assume crazy misplays. I just have to not assume optimal conditions for the douchee, including the doucher misplaying by not continuing to make your life difficult.
You continue even now assuming that the doucher will just leave you to build your eco unmolested, and that you'll always be able to quickwall everywhere, and that walling in your woodcutters won't just result in your opponent adding his own wall, preventing them from building a TC at all.
You ask, how is the strat right in a game that favors the doucher, but the other answer is better in a game that favors the douchee? It's actually fairly simple.
Because the advantage is greater. I literally spelled this out, going feudal allows you to leverage your advantage and turn it into a tangible tool that your opponent has zero answer to. Going feudal gives you an effective win condition. while staying in dark age your wincon is "outplay the dude who came into this game intending to play it chaotic and messy"
Staying in Dark Age and outplaying the doucher is not an impossibility. It's not a "Wrong" answer per se, if we're being completely factual. Going feudal when you have such a huge advantage that you actually can do so comfortably (in contrast to the border dispute map where you don't) is simply the more logical and most likely to succeed choice.
ALL your eco is going to be disrupted, and the Doucher is not going to stop trying to do so just because you wall in. The doucher is not just going to stay in their TC, and its immediate vicinity.
When you say "oh but you can quickwall, and you can choose to run when outnumbered or fight when you outnumber him"... well... it reads like you're saying "just be better than your opponent, always do the correct move at all times, and you win"
Well, yeah, if I'm somehow always in a position where I can run, if my opponent isn't trying to prevent me from getting my eco running, if my opponent isn't putting further pressure, if he's not always taking engagements with a higher number of vills, if he's not chasing me and making sure that I'm never safe or that I'm never comfortable anywhere, sure, I can just outboom them and win.
But if the doucher's letting you do all that, he might as well just GG and leave and spare both of you the time spent in the game since he's not even fucking trying.
I feel like sometimes you underestimate the strategy, as you said in team games it has potential, it is not a legit strategy for you since you are such a strong player, but of course for teams with weaker players, sacrificing one weak player for one of the best in the world will always be worth
I think we're discussing only 1v1 here. In TGs it's not weak at all.
I am amazed at what I saw in the scenario editor. A TC costs 275 wood, so it should have only taken 5 lumberjacks to keep 3 villagers in constant repair, but yup it is in fact 16.
would love to see viper vs umdeuter where viper tries to douch him
The thumbnail read me like a book and I loved it.
There is a secret move, jut buils some walls, rnd, around the tc, the enemy cannon make a tc in range
I think going feudal isn't a mistake, it's just harder to pull of skillwise. I've never thought about staying in dark age, but it seems to be the easier way.
My initial thoughts are:
lower elo -> stay in dark age (spread eco and such, expand eco lead)
higher elo -> go feudal (kill opponent with archers)
Archers can cause hell a lot trouble for sure, but if you cant find any damage it might be already over. I'd love to compare this situation to an Xbow all in: if you break in you win the game on the spot, but if you can't find damage you are probably die against the much stronger eco of the enemy.
Yeah, I agree
I pretty much agree. Also would add, even for ~1900 if you go super quick as nowadays used to, it's quite rough. Maybe I mix it more with berbers vill rush, but I think in a sense they are similar strategies, where doucher wasting villagers time trying to deny you archers or any proper eco. And if you have like 18 vills and you are repairing some houses or palisades/lumber camp so opponent doesn't get in, it's really difficult to afford blacksmith and fletching. And as you said, even if you get it, dude keeps running, starts doing some of his own eco, suddenly he in feudal and gets few towers and those archers not really doing anything. Not to mention at least for slower players unlike Viper it's really difficult to micro few archer groups and if you end up losing few archers to villagers it's just really big cost in low eco game. and if you idle to get some archers, it suddenly becomes like 30 vills vs 20 game and is really difficult to avoid vills fighting. So idk, in my opinion feudal is good, but it might be good to get like 23 vills or something, so until you get to feudal you actually have tons of res and can easily afford things and don't need to idle.
Basically taking middle of both ideas, get some vills to have decent eco and get to feudal to finally be able to defend properly, so you can have some vills repairing some palisades or houses and still have good resources to add archers.
I think you guys dont understand the wording. Going feudal with that TC is just too risky. Why not just wait and let him kill that TC while he has 10 idle villager idle and then rebuild and click up. Its so much safer and then you go archer and win. Thats the correct play. The point is not to stay in DARK age forever but with that TC. Trying to risk feudal age when your TC might get destroyed is not worth.
So in the end the classic "It depends", which if you EVER think that is not the right answer to ANY question, chances are you simply don't know enough about the topic.
I would like to see this type of analysis done for the opposing side. What would make a good douche? What is your goal? What are the short term actions and the long term strategy? What would be the game winning conditions? It seems like a good douche will look to deny resources and generate enemy idle time, while at the same time forcing the enemy to deviate from their original strategy, and hopefully generating mistakes.
Tldr : the point is you should make more mistakes than i, since your original game-plan is broken. But essentially, why this strat doesn't work well in normal pro 1v1 settings, is because they can adapt to it and play dirty alongside you. Whereas most players, if they make a few mistakes, i'll exploit them and make them snowball until i win. It basically comes down to 'how good do you handle messiness', and if the reply id 'poorly', you'll lose unless lucky
@@xavierpironier59 Yeah, makes sense. So if I understand correctly, it's basically a winning strategy as long as you're better than your enemy. Between equal skilled players, the strategy rarely gives an advantage.
sort of, but the skill you're comparing is mostly micro + ability to vill fight and quickwall and stuff@@m1st87
@@m1st87it gives a big disadvantage, which can be overcome when you play better and/or opponent uses their advantage wrongly
Targeting just the TC is usually a losing strat. Try to cover nearby camps, mills, farms. Heavily map dependent. You should also add militia to disrupt the building of their subsequent TCs, and force them into undesirable positions. If you can trap and douche just six vills on a woodline, for instance, it's GG.
Yo, that thumbnail got me good. Good work 👍
I'm 1200 elo and I can't remember being douched. I think I would go feudal if I can offord it quickly, not when my TC is already halfway down, because it would cost too many resources to repair the TC. I think avoiding spending too much on TC repair is the key.
"He might find and kill your farmers but he has to walk a long way for it!!!"
Yeah but u did as well lul
17:45 "i don't agree with him, but also agree with him", so.... IT DEPENDS!
i spoiled it
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes".
This seemed to be mostly theoretical whereas there are so many thing that just thinking and doing a few quick tests won’t show like timing, res on map, the map itself, the players that all can make this, especially for the pros a whole different conversation
3:35 so called Anti-Daut going up
Great video Viper man! Can't wait to show this guy what happens if he stays in dark age against my douches. Just gotta get my elo up from 500 11.
he should never say never, this game is very situational.
So many things to test and think about with it. If he has 10 vils idling in his tc shooting at you does it take longer for your 10 vils to gather the resources needed and rebuild the tc than it does for his 10 vils to destroy that tc? Then again he would have to gather the resources and rebuild his tc each time he trades. If you ignore going feudal and keep pumping villagers how many tc trades do you do that for before you go up to feudal? What if you see your opponent going feudal while a douche is going on, then you possibly have archers and towers to deal with as well as the douche. I don't know I'm just a noob half asleep asking myself these questions since I don't know any of the answers. It is interesting though.
Commenting as watching so maybe you correct this later. BUT at 8:35 the trade 1 for 1 is nothing to do with civ advantages, you delete your TC to take down opponents TC, you trade your TC first. With the mango analogy you delete a mangonel first, then build another to kill your opponents first mangonel.
I think the mangonel analogy its not for the doucher one, but the douched. The Douched player "Pull all the villagers to repair the Tc (Vills repairing and vills getting wood to repair, so he can go Feudal), and then he trade the Tc 1 for 1".
I think The viper just misunderstood. and yes, the trade 1 for 1 is nothing to do with civ advantages as you said.
But the mangonel analogy, i think its not for "Douche is a bad strat because of this", but a "Respond a douche going feudal is a bad strat because of this".
"I would've not gone feudal age if that was the case" 😂😂😂
TheViper - Absolute correct answer (to douche) : It depends.
Game balance team - Absolute correct answer (to douche) : Changes on the horizon for Persian.
Depend of the Stategy of the rival, sometimes they Dont attack important points of your Economy and their Economy is almost on shambles but FA/CA always give you Power spikes that cannot be Stopped if you play your cards well.
and the other thing is that i've seen games where people have rebuilt the tc a few times and they just continuously keep douching and it keeps destroying the economy. In which staying in dark age doesn't help. Going feudal opens up so many options that it alone, as long as their is enough economy to support the options, can alone end the game.
Viper should try this though
So in short, the player picked out a very specific game where it was more advisable to stay in Dark Age, but that heavily depended on the map and mode played in that tournament. Thats... not convincing.
"who expects a douch"..... Viper, if the enemy is Persians its 100% sure the douche is coming, 100%..... 10/10. And he is sorta right, basically what hes saying is to delay Feudal from the first TC, and make it from the Second, thats it.
Please do a follow up where you experiment with staying in dark age
I think you want to go feudalvin your second tc if you havent clicked up yet and in your current one if you have
I think the big takeaway is put your boars and other food on the far side and then learn how much hp a tc needs to go to feudal while being shot at by 10 garrisoned vills. This way you don't waste tc time trying and failing to go up and you don't spend wood repairing a tc knowing it'll drain your bank account faster than a billionaire's divorce.
Why not drop into feudal immediately on the second tc if you haven't upped already? Then you don't have the same time worries. I think that feudal is simpler - i think the biggest loss is zone of control which is more important than the resources. It also most importantly gives you breathing space to plan your follow up. With the posts method you'd have to plan in anticipation at the start. So easy to get caught in a bad spot if you follow this post. Viper is right, the biggest risk is it forces an error on your part- even viper put down a bad tc for him.
So the tldr here is don't repair a decoy
I think the key point for a douche to be successfull is for the opponent to be stupid enough to repair his tc. If the numbers from T-West are correct (which i believe), you need 21 vills to collect wood and repair just to counter the damage. Add to that the lost food from the area control and you are massively behind.
Viper was in almost the worst situation imaginable after his tc went down. No wood for a new TC, not even enough for a military building. That was definitely a mistake on his part in that single game.
Ideally you want to reach feudal with as little repair time as possible. That means, depending on when the douche hits you, you have to decide on the spot, if you either go up instantly or if you let your tc go down, rebuild one and click up afterwards.
If you make a mistake, the douching player can get an advantage, if you play it right, you should be ahead.
The earlier a douche hits, the harder it is to safely get up to feudal (and still have any ressources left). And if the douching player can deny you from rebuilding your tc for a while, he can get massively ahead.
As someone who got really good at some older FPS games, you should never close your mind on crazy strategies that people worse than you think of. The players at the "pro/high level" usually think about the game much differently than most people and there are random things that some people discover that the pros won't know about. Then one day they tinker with it and hone in on the idea to make it a viable strategy. In AOE2, a great example is fish booming on Black Forrest maps. When you're at a crazy high level, it's sometimes good to look at people of lower skills and see what ideas they're using to perfect, then use against other high level players to catch them off guard
Ah, good ol' cheese.
I dont think the viper is taking that position. If anything he is being open minded by even responding to the person's argument of which I mostly see it holding water because of the very specific game he chose as his example. Its the best possible scenario for a douche, yet he makes it sound as if every douche will be like this situation.
@@AndrewTheFrankexactly, he even says at the beginning that elo doesn't matter, a low elo can have a correct opinion and a pro can have a wrong one
It is the same with any strategy game.
.
When playing a tournament, during rest times Garry Kasparov is known for watching games from other categories- even Junior level.
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Bobby Fischer would assiduously scour the Russian Chess journals and analyze games of all levels.
He in fact found a brilliant strategy in the poisoned pawn variation and played it against Gligoric / Geller. He wrote about it in his book "70 most memorable games"
.
Capablanca too would observe strategies from Junior players. That way, I think he identified a future GM in Salo Flohr (when he was just a boy).
The original Maxpax build in Sc2
The question is can you get feudal with rebuilt TC without opponent douching that and having their working eco help them get to feudal faster? (Either you sink into repair or you keep working on your eco, but there are no towers or options besides militia and walls). Players who actually do try Persian douche may be used to the opponents misplaying and not have developed how to make it more effective because games end so quick. I am curious how Rubenstock would deal with a dark age opponent
But should you go to Feudal against a douche in a short rush distance map?
Something I've always wondered: can't you just fight the vils trying to build the enemy TC with your own vils when someone comes to douche you?
opponent can just wall his vills
So you don't even try? MAKE him wall his vils still seems like it'd be better and have higher upside
@@FinetalPies i don't think it's worth the idle time
@@fallen2624 Yeah seems like focusing workers works only against AI
I'm not sure Snap is a healthy mechanic
I agree with the poster somewhat, but the better play would have been to let the tc die, then once it's dead, only then rebuild then immediately go up to fuedal, not when the tc is already burning.
I think this guy is on to something. If he duchess you, make more vills and prep for a second TC. If he duchess you again, make another. He won't have the stone to do it a third time - your third TC is safe. But you've had a working economy this whole time, and he hasn't. If he vill fights, you out number him substantial, he hasn't made vills in the last few minutes - you have. I don't it's as simple as NEVER to feudal. But will similar vill micro, you should win every time
I'm pretty happy when I get douched, always seems like a massive blunder from my enemy.
And if the douche doesn't work, their game is over
I remember reading this back in the day, I think an important thing to note is that the poster talks about 1000 resources lost, but this isn't really the case, the idle time is only the walking time for the villagers to the new TC location, since the opponent also must rebuild their TC, the cost of the TC and build time is always lost for the other player once they rebuild their TC.
even on Arabia this is more often only 600 resources lost and on smaller maps that is even less cost to the player douching.
Douching shouldn't even put you behind on villagers since you can delete your TC and stop villager production only when you have reached the spot for the new TC.
good points and nice catches
You have to put 10 vils idle in the tc for a while to shoot down the TC, that's a lot of res they could have collected.
@@quakesquakes you are right, the person who made the reddit post however included the cost of the TC in their 1000 resources the idle time Daut had was 730 resources worth.
It should take 20 minutes of idle time or 480 resources of Idle time to take down a TC, it then takes 12 minutes of idle time to walk across a map on Arabia, which is 750 resources worth of idle time.
@@quakesquakes the TC can make villagers while garrisoned and its only idle for a short while. While its being shot down it makes it awkward for the opponent to gather food, often cuts off a few nearby resources, and later they still have to idle villagers for building a new TC as well as building other buildings to attempt to block a follow up douche. The idea is that you're idling your economy now to idle their economy more in the future. It also potentially puts them permanently off of gold and stone. a potential worth while investment.
@@sevenpolar3483 From the games I've seen the difference in res is much greater than 750. The extra 32mins of idle time in the Daut game doesn't even include walking time or vils attacking houses. You also said in OP that the doucher won't fall behind in villagers - not true, the doucher usually has a ton of tc idle time as well from lack of food (evidenced by Daut as well).
Okay Viper, I'll watch this video because you asked nicely
Hey Viper, what music did you use in the background??
17:37 "Who [...] expects a douche?" - Did not expect that from TheViper being the troll that he is.
Also how good are the following two strategies against a douche:
- Simply full wall your base in dark age any time you play against persians. Remember that you should be able to wall behind / repair with 10 vills as your opponent should have at least as many vills forward under normal circumstances.
- Scout your opponent early to see if/when your opponent is sending vills forward. Once the vills get close to your settlement simply garrison 10 vills in your TC. When the opponent places a TC foundation it should get automatically destroyed by one volley of arrows from your TC as the opponent will usually not be able to get all vills building their new TC directly. At that point it is pretty much gg. You can find hilarious clips of Rubenstock doing that to MBL. But I guess that is hard to pull of on border dispute to the extremely close rush distance.
I think the spread economy may work better at lower levels, a pro's going to have a different skill toolchain to scour the map, but in any aoe style rts, decentralizing throws the crap out of most players, they don't know where to send there troops if there isn't a "town" in one place.
Lol you got me by the thumbnail text 😁
Thank you Lord for this quality content, wouldn't be possible without your grace. Amen Wololo!
I agree with the post, the huge waste from douching is idling 10 vills to shoot down just a tc. It's just such a huge loss for no res advantage whatsoever - just positioning. I've barely even felt threatened by a douche before just chilling in dark age laughing at all his idle vills when I instantly rebuild my tc in a nice spot, he can't even possibly vill fight for most of the time because his whole pop is in the tc. Garrisoning vills just feels so bad, it isn't even resource efficient to garrison if your tcs started next to each other, it takes 20 villager minutes (10*2) to shoot down a tc and it only costs 13.75 vil mins to collect the wood for a new one and
Best thumbnail ever
IT DEPENDS
smart bottom text made me open the video.
Omg Viper, please come do this eco theory crafting on the Lord of the Rings 4v4 Map. Its a feudal 8-ish vil start, and each civ has tons of eco boom options but its not always clear what the most efficient way to boom is. Just as an example, the Evil Men civ (Rhun, Harad, Umbar) plays as the Cumans, starts with 200 wood and 5 docks with deep fish a medium distance away. There is still debate in the community on whether it is more important to spend the first wood on fishing ships, or go for the early 2nd TC as soon as possible. (I know i know, it depends)
Thumbnail got me
Ok, I've not played aoe2 in quite a while and even when I did I was bad at it but from my point of view, going up sounds like a strategy that requires more from the player, it might be better at the high end but from what I recall from back when I played, just getting a rax and spreading out feels easier (to execute)
Too much ads :(
New thumbnail meta, instant win
His strategy is just survive.
I was scared to death on what is Snek going to say at the end of the vid..and he fking did say it...the infamous "it depends"...my heart skipped a beat, I started sweating profusely and my body temperature skyrocketed. I see red, evacuate a 2km radius centered on me, I dont know what I am capable of at this cursed time.
That game in question is so unique given map and settings and the douche didn’t even decide the outcome.
it totally did decide the outcome
@@MrTerapak @jackwaite4035 Well Viper's poor reaction decided it.
You have a funny editor, man. Theu got my ass, i was reading it so here i am lol
thumbnail got me
I cant really comment on whats right or wrong about Umdeuters approach since i dont really play the game, but im 100% sure that saying "you should NEVER *do something*" is just wrong. There is way too many variables and there will be a time when going feudal is the right thing to do. Even if he is right and going feudal is "wrong", there will always be a chance for a situation where its the right decision. I think thats one of the most beautiful things about this game and one of the reasons i keep watching matches.
I guess what I would've wanted to see is an explanation for why you lost the highlighted game. If going feudal is good, why did you still lose? Especially considering the real possibility of your TC dying before it even finished.
I'm sure in your mind there are other factors of mistakes you made or things your opponent did well, but i don't really know what those are so I'm just left thinking going feudal was the mistake if it's still true that douching is definitely not a good strat.
Don't confuse losing one game with the whole strategy being bad. The main topic here is douching in general, not just that specific game. In most cases, going Feudal is a correct answer to a douche. Just because it didn't work out that time doesn't mean it's not a viable game plan in general.
Viper does mention a couple factors why the douche worked so well that game, mostly the specific map and settings working heavily in favor of the douche. Between the denied extra boar under tc (denying food), extra vill start (faster douche set-up) and shorter walk time (earlier arrival, less idle time for doucher). All of that allowed the douche to hit a lot faster than usual, forcing a lot of wood costs on repairs to keep the TC up long enough to go feudal and causing a the snowballing wood crisis.
@@NivMizzet89 Yeah I did pay attention, it just still feels like a copout? Like people want to know how to not die to douches, and saying "Douches are better in situations where they are good" does nothing to solve that.
Is it perhaps true that the advice to not go feudal is better when the douche is not ideal due to rush distance? I'm guessing that's what the message is, but not only is that not really stated explicitly (they seemed hesitant to admit the advice to not go feudal had any merit at all), it still leaves a gaping hole on what to do in situations like the game featured, where the douche is ideal.
@@FinetalPies
I think part of the confusion is that this video isn't really a standalone guide for how to beat douching and mostly a reaction on the 'never feudal against douche' thread (and why/where Viper disagrees with it).
The video is basically talking about 2 topics; 'why going feudal is usually best' (standard reasons, see previous videos apparently) and 'why it didn't work in this particular game' (exceptional circumstances).
---
From how I understand the overall message is roughly the opposite of what you're saying;
-Staying Dark Age can work, but in normal situations the better/safer strategy is usually going Feudal -> Archers
(18:20)
-Against ideal douches like this particular case, staying Dark Age probably better/Would've been the right call in this game/ (12:30)
@@NivMizzet89 That makese sense, thanks for the timestamps too. I think ultimately I just found the original no-feudal guide to be a more compelling argument, but, I'm nowhere near able to make any conclusions. So it's not even a "I think Viper is wrong" situation, just a "I think Viper's points could've been better made"
Though absolutely "Never go Feudal (the pros get it wrong)" is simultaneously hyperbolic and clickbaity, it's good to have some nuance, which this video does a good job of providing.
wow, this was nice video.
The entire point of the douche is to make the game an absolute mess and prevent the enemy from just playing their game plan and go for their win conditions. I agree with Viper that you should try to keep the impact of the douche as small as possible and try to stick to your plan as good as you can. If you take the dark age fight, you play into the enemy game plan. They will probably have a better economic setup for this type of game, because they started preparing this right from the beggining of the game. You on the other hand are just reacting once you see the tc or the vills coming forward. The villager difference will be very small because you won't have enough wood to rebuild your tc right away because banking 275 wood in dark age is usually a bad idea.
The argument in the beginning about sticking to your game plan is a bit strange. It's like saying: "If you plan to go crossbows and your opponent goes full skirmisher you should still go ahead with the crossbow strategy." Of course you need to adapt to the strategy of the opponent. In particular for all-in strategies like the Douche.
Also the second part about not having wood for a TC is strange as you do not need the 275 wood when the opponent places the foundation for the TC but only after they have build the TC (with most of their eco) and taken your TC down (idling 10 garrisoned vills). That is enough time to gather 275 wood if you do not repair your TC.
They won't have a better economy setup because they idle their eco for 1000+ resources and are behind in vils and busy running around the map.
If you go feudal and play archers, that's 350 wood + 25 each arch. = 375 wood(playing just one archer) = 275 (Tc)+100(Lj, Mill, or Mc). Moreover, there are always more than one staggler tree near the tc, each one equals 100 wood, i dont think its difficult to banking 275 wood if you react fast enough.
Also you said " If you take the dark age fight, you play into the enemy game plan", and thats exactly what the explanation of "why do you never go feudal against a douche" is. You are indeed playing the enemy game plan, But with a huge Resources and vills advantage, So, what ever the enemy can do, You can do better.
Yeah, the villager difference may be small (though still significant), but it's the huge amount of vill idle time that really makes the douche a terrible strategy and sets the doucher so far behind that they depend on the douchee screwing up and reacting badly (like trying to repair TC) to get back into the game and gain an advantage - there is no amount of "better economic setup" that can make up for that within those few minutes of dark age before the douche happens.
What a weird take. A douche can never have better economy.
And the only reason a douche game is 'messy' is because you haven't decided on what strategy to use against it.
That thumbnail got me dirty