The last game was just such a clean inversion. Byz secures map control and advantage. It then decides to do the classical strategy to widen this advantage: To level up, leveraging the map control. Due to the map control, the Malians only realize this, and react, once it's through, and therefore only then Byz has to pull back to the base. And the walking time alone is enough to get the relevant upgrades and some castle units, which together with defender's advantage mean just as the Malians arrive, their window to deal damage is gone. If they had committed, it had played right into the hands of Byz. But now the Malians have map control and go T3, so the walking time as they retreat covers the time to age up. But as Byz follows right behind them, this buys way less time than the move the Byz pulled with their age up. Against any other nation, Byz now would have a nice window to deal damage. But Malian's get their veterancy techs twice as fast, and they can build the MAA counter pre-age-up. So the window isn't as big as Byz expects, and the Malians don't even need to sacrifice much to let it pass, and once the upgrades are through, it's now more or less even armies, but the Malians play with defender's advantage. And as the armies cleaned up another, it becomes painfully obvious just whose economy benefited stronger from the age up.
glad you wrote this as I was trying to figure out what had happened in the macro... it seemed to me that Byz had won the feudal fights but then wasn't able to do anything with it, and the Malian economy in castle age just won it for them. I couldn't see what Byz could have done differently -- I don't know the civ well -- maybe a feudal all-in instead of taking the age-up?
@@Ajfmaizy It's a difficult question. As he played it, it made a lot of sense: With the cow count maxed out, Byz can't keep up with the Malian's Jav Thrower production. And playing Horsemen against it gets quite difficult if the Horsemen would have to dive to hit the Javs. And with how the map is laid out, Demu couldn't really circle around to the other gold and burn it down or make pressure at multiple locations. So keeping up the pressure would have been difficult for Byz. So it seemed smart at the time to fall back, tech up, and then deal enough damage to buffer the Malian power spike long enough for the farm transition. With replay vision, I'd say he had pretty good chances with going keeping the aggression. He had enough of a lead to do the farm transition while keeping up the pressure. Even if the aggression wouldn't have netted much damage, it would have decoupled the power plateau of the farm transition from the power spike from the Malians.
The last game was just such a clean inversion. Byz secures map control and advantage. It then decides to do the classical strategy to widen this advantage: To level up, leveraging the map control. Due to the map control, the Malians only realize this, and react, once it's through, and therefore only then Byz has to pull back to the base. And the walking time alone is enough to get the relevant upgrades and some castle units, which together with defender's advantage mean just as the Malians arrive, their window to deal damage is gone. If they had committed, it had played right into the hands of Byz.
But now the Malians have map control and go T3, so the walking time as they retreat covers the time to age up. But as Byz follows right behind them, this buys way less time than the move the Byz pulled with their age up. Against any other nation, Byz now would have a nice window to deal damage. But Malian's get their veterancy techs twice as fast, and they can build the MAA counter pre-age-up.
So the window isn't as big as Byz expects, and the Malians don't even need to sacrifice much to let it pass, and once the upgrades are through, it's now more or less even armies, but the Malians play with defender's advantage.
And as the armies cleaned up another, it becomes painfully obvious just whose economy benefited stronger from the age up.
glad you wrote this as I was trying to figure out what had happened in the macro... it seemed to me that Byz had won the feudal fights but then wasn't able to do anything with it, and the Malian economy in castle age just won it for them. I couldn't see what Byz could have done differently -- I don't know the civ well -- maybe a feudal all-in instead of taking the age-up?
@@Ajfmaizy It's a difficult question. As he played it, it made a lot of sense:
With the cow count maxed out, Byz can't keep up with the Malian's Jav Thrower production. And playing Horsemen against it gets quite difficult if the Horsemen would have to dive to hit the Javs. And with how the map is laid out, Demu couldn't really circle around to the other gold and burn it down or make pressure at multiple locations.
So keeping up the pressure would have been difficult for Byz. So it seemed smart at the time to fall back, tech up, and then deal enough damage to buffer the Malian power spike long enough for the farm transition.
With replay vision, I'd say he had pretty good chances with going keeping the aggression. He had enough of a lead to do the farm transition while keeping up the pressure. Even if the aggression wouldn't have netted much damage, it would have decoupled the power plateau of the farm transition from the power spike from the Malians.
DeMu is a gold 3 player when it comes to villager reaction time
Ty
I've seen this somewhere before
Let’s go!
20 seconds
3 hours.....?