10 Tips for Controlling Villagers and the Economy [Age of Empires 2] [ES SUBS]

0:00 - Intro
0:53 - Shift Queuing
2:02 - Fishing Mechanics
3:11 - Food Harvesting Priority
6:16 - Repair or Replace
8:20 - Saving Luring Villagers
9:02 - Dropping Resources in Any Newly Built Resource Drop-off Building
10:53 - Milling vs Long-distance Hunting
14:44 - Denying Farms by Attacking Them
15:24 - When to Collect Stone for a Castle
17:05 - Comparing Buying Food with Farming for it for Early Castle Age Boom
Chronos Craft (Video editor): / chronoscraft
1v1 Gameplay Channel: / @survivalistgameplay6593
Twitch: / survivalistaoe2de
Discord: / discord
Heroku App: aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com

[@Diurdii]

I have to say, I've watched a fair bit of AoE tutorial and guide vids, but the knowledge you put out is high quality man. Usually they focus on unit counters and build orders, but the tips you give are far more useful. Ever since I started being mindful of how much a vill collects on the way up to castle, how many vills are needed for constant production, rebalancing my eco with the market, and all the other tips you've given I have improved a lot more than with any other AoE content creator. Keep it up man

[@TheBigZeppelin]

That skirmisher trick to deny farm food collection blew my mind. Great content as always, man!

[@gamerisdc]

Market abuse has always been something taught to me as a "never do". Now I know it can be a potential opening into a boom

[@joshualeonard3831]

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis

[@thisnameisnotfake517]

Any time I need something urgently I use it. Time = mone

[@FacundoFerrara]

100 to 150 elo contained in a single video. Amazing. Survivalist, the content you churn out is just outstanding.

[@LuckyStriker89]

Man this kind of videos is pure gold!

[@boxbox2621]

Still an underrated channel. I like your insights on the game mechanics. Build order guides are a good way to improve gameplay - to a certain level. But only your videos gave me a better understanding of how and why build orders work and when it might be better to deviate from them.

[@traceystevens7701]

Survivalist videos are up there with the best..I've played over 2000 hours and still picking up new tips.

[@arjungopikrishnan1169]

Dude! Amazing content! You put so much effort into this, it's amazing

[@italianlawyer1993]

Man do I love subscribing to AoE channels

[@sharkhuntd7908]

I viewed so much videos from pro players and this kind of video is one of the best! The building -> boar trick was new to me. Keep up the excellent work!!

[@l-phantoaoe7104]

survivalist making the world more efficient one video at a time, love them!! keep them coming man, wp

[@bigbingo5837]

I need to learn more about eco Management this video is perfect timing

[@MikeEmpires]

Thanks, man. Great video. Your work definitely improves my gameplay.

[@jadearrowgamer1762]

This is very helpful! I totally relate to your opening statement and the tips in this video highlighted some things I can improve on. Thanks

[@Irish2050]

This is by far the most useful tutorial I have ever seen. Thank you for making this, subscribed, hopefully you have other friendly intuitive content like this!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

All my best videos are here if you haven't seen this playlist yet: kzbin.info/aero/PLQ8BgSJQQkY3XiYdhsAp1tcPAAJob9CJb

[@roym2185]

Top quality nerding... between sotl, t-west and survivalist we are spoiled for top quality nerding. I’m around 1350 elo and was surprised the market prices were so balanced. I’d also looked down on market abuse unless absolutely necessary. This puts it in a very different light indeed. Nice one.

[@david_oliveira71]

A very helpful video for sure! Thanks a lot and please keep uploading these types of videos!

[@atakanyildirim9392]

Excellent quality material man, thanks a lot for the effort!

[@SheeceGardazi]

dude this was so informative thanks for doing the research, villager work time is such a cool unit!

[@nymets1104]

High Quality editing, well done!

[@TheCotonBalboa]

1000 hours into the game and i never noticed that you could deny farm usage by attacking it. I always kept my range unit to stand trying to harass the villager. Thanks for the useful tips!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

I'm pretty sure I learned this trick at 5000 hours 11

[@diosn6909]

Another great instructional video! Thank you!

[@scarnove2837]

Great stuff, hard to find all of this info so well put! Spirit of The Law level content here! :)

Great content man, as always

[@dave_hun9682]

Top content as usual. Amazing stuff.

[@TimWilson89]

Nice video SurvivalistOfTheLaw 😉👌🏻

[@SurvivalistAoE]

11

[@mariobeastable]

Your videos are amazing!! Thank-you! :)

[@mickyor1107]

I wasted so much time dropping wood at the TC before building farms, that was mind blowing

[@ronaldfernandez9802]

Amazing video!!

[@SaladEsc]

8:06 this is why the planet is dying

[@0344478]

Great content. Thank u!

[@alejandroromero6464]

I love your videos. So insightful.

[@FullOilBarrel]

bro this is so good like spirit of the law but another level

[@ayylmao394]

Man thanks so much for this

[@bluesight_]

Thank you so much for this!!!

[@adamking3663]

This was all super helpful

[@Itz_Hank]

You obviously put in a lot of time on this video, thanks.

[@hrobky]

9:20 caution: building docks don't cause dropoffs despite being collection point for fishermen. Garrisoning to TC also causes dropoff.

[@beng8079]

Great tutorial. Lol at ~5:45 mark.

[@maximinomorgado2150]

thank yu survivalist, you are so cool

[@ryanforgo3500]

At 5:36 if you guys start earlier with the boar " as i do" for faster rushing. The best way to control your villagers is to slolwy build up the count until there are 10-12 on the boar. Have them all at keybind number 1 then ctrl click 6 of them so that 6 are left selected then keybind them to 2. Now that you have 6 vils on each keybind while they are still working put 2 sheeps / cows on each side of the TC and send each group to one side with shift so they finish the boar and movd to sheep. Preferably if #1 grps have more vils to the left "for example" then it takes the left sheep to avoid bumping Generally speaking though, if you start with cows or sheep as our man said ir depends on boar distance, i do like lompardia for example where boars are especially far and i always start with cow. So i end up doing 7 vils at first cow and the 8th pulls the boar then 2 or 3 on wood depends on your team and 2 builds 2 houde + mill + collects berries is what i enjoy doing. Then the rest of the vils go back to boar. I do it like this because i hate losing food to decay so i build up at least 7 before first boar. On arabia it is usually a "-1 " rule where sheep is much less meat but boar is also much closer so it is more like 6 then boar or you can delay the boar for one more vil if you hate fast boar decay which i do "thus i try to find ways to reduce it"

[@sheldonjohnstone801]

Didn't know the farms went idle when targetted by military. great tip!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

It's such a weird bit of trivia. I only learned of this once I was already 2k level.

[@benja-ssk]

great video

[@AliceLiddell_Blacksoul]

Hey guys Spiritualist here . Today we have math to do. Great and educational video , really easy to understand and use it in game. Less thing to worry about when I understand the reason for using each numbers of vill on each resources.

[@mysteriousshadow395]

Aoe is such a complex game and I learn something from every one of your videos! I never knew that you can drop off food at dock after turning hunter into fisherman, but not with non-food resources. Looks like a feature and not a bug lol

[@VGInterviews]

"instead of overly complicating things like some mathematician" -SpiritOfTheLaw: So I took that personally

[@yunusokmen]

Thanks for the video. I want to point out that regarding the decay, mathematically it is almost always best to finish the resource that has less food first then switch into the larger one regardless of the decay rate. Simply, when there are two resources decaying simultaneously, the best action is to stop one of them to decay as quickly as possible, hence your overall decay rate drops significantly in a very short time. Therefore when there is a sheep and a boar decaying, the best is to send everyone on sheep first finish it and move to the boar.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Yeah, that's usually the play. But, in an actual game, getting more of that faster collecting boar should also be considered as you may need it to reach faster uptimes.

[@Pecuniarly]

I recently did some calculations and found that the amount of food lost is usually in the order of 0-15 when staying on 2 animals compared to first finishing one. You already 'lose' that amount in terms of villager idle time by having about 5 villagers walk for 4 game seconds (rough estimate). So transferring a lot of villagers from one animal to the other, including bumping and bad pathing can actually easily have a negative effect in terms of efficiency.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@Pecuniarly Yeah, this is why you want to take the animals close to each other and only transfer the closer villagers to finish the sheep if you've just shot down the boar.

[@pepijngeorge9959]

One thing I do want to note, it's always better to collect the dear first and than the boar. The decay on the boar is higher but the time to fully deplete it is also a lot longer (*2.5) so you will lose less food if you first focus on the dear thats rotting and than move over to the boar (in situation you have to chose) not the otherway around.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

This assumes that both animals are at their maximum food. If the boar is at 100 and the deer is at 100, it's better to take the boar first. There are so many considerations when deciding which animal to take.

[@pepijngeorge9959]

@@SurvivalistAoE Well in general it will happen more often that you have a cheep / dear stil laying their whilst getting the boar. The other way around is a bit strange to happen. (Buf ofc in case that they both have 100 it's better to go for the boar). But the general rule should be if you get your boar but their is still a sheep rotting and you can't time it. Put as many as you can on the sheep and than go over to the boar. Never let the lower food animal rot when getting the boar. Also don't spread ur villagers, everyone on the sheep (if you have vills over ofc take from the boar, and than move over.) This will be the most effiecient way.

[@rynominnie83]

I feel personally attacked by that intro

[@user-sp2we1tz3h]

You rockkkkkk fk yeahhh thxxxx!!!!

[@seyproductions]

Legends say that to this day, he is still trying to use deer as fertiliser for his farms.

[@sylvaansterck4947]

Love it love you

[@LightGreenCorona]

Hey Survivalist, quality content here, thank you! :) I'm thinking about little different build orders (milling deer, 7 on sheep, etc.) and came across the idea of luring deer with a pre-mill militia (technically difficult, since you cannot attack the deer obviously, so you press follow). If done without a mistake, it leads to consistently more food (and later farms). Is it worth it?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Probably not worth it. If your militia is out that fast, then he should probably just go attack the opponent. Even 1 militia and 1 scout can kill villagers, especially since you're hitting before loom a lot of the time. You also can afford to push deer with your scout at most levels a lot of the time as you probably aren't able to use much of the information that you get from scouting anyways (of course this is something that eventually you need to improve on).

[@justxavier9999]

I have finally decided to return to AOE. This is the first video I'm going to watch since my return

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Nice, welcome back! 欢迎回来

[@justxavier9999]

@@SurvivalistAoE どもありがとう

[@jefffinkbonner9551]

I would think that using the market to buy up to Castle Age would be really good for Turks with their faster gold mining, especially considering they have no other eco bonus, plus gold isn't such a rare and important resource that early anyways. Then buy stone to get that first castle up to start making Jannis

[@TacSav253]

I started really sinking my teeth into aoe2 about a month ago and this is the kind of stuff i need! It really clears up some questions I've been asking myself. However, some question remain. With respect to boar saturation and decay, I've been approaching it with the same logic as you presented here and tend to go against my build orders (even though I assume they're correct, being they're by Hera). I go 10 on boar before sending all 4 to berries, since i just don't see the point in going berries while I have boar and sheep decaying. Why do pro build orders tend to have 7-8 on boar, then 4 to berries, before going up to 10 on boar?

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Pro build orders were mostly made before DE came out. New features such as shift queueing allow you to be much more efficient with your economy. The thing is, is that your build order is just the model which you use to practice with. Actual games don't usually play out perfectly. Learning how to balance your economy based on your strategy will help you once you get off track with your build order. The efficiency gains from optimized build orders are small compared to the benefits gained by decision making. I think that pros just don't have the time to relearn things that they've been practicing for 5+ years. If you watch some of them, they don't even use hotkeys for upgrades, select all production building, etc... Obviously using more hotkeys is better, but the skill at the top level isn't so high yet that it's required. I'm doing my best to promote 2 on wood opening as it's more efficient usually than 3 or 4. We'll see if it becomes popular within the year.

[@John11747]

@@SurvivalistAoE i had the same question about animal saturation....thanks for clarity.... I will go 10 on boar more confidently now.... 👍👍❤️

[@TacSav253]

@@John11747 One of us!

[@agencccc]

I didn't know that attacking farms denied them

[@fernandoestevez8844]

Crack

[@hrushikeshj8810]

Instead of overtly complicating things like a mathematician - spirit of the law triggered Proceeds to watch the whole video - oh it's all math. Spirit approves!!! Great video.. loved the skirm tip on farms and thanks for validating my panic market abuse

[@greenjelly01]

It is a pity that almost all help for lower rated players is focused on mechanics and not on strategy. The top players are at the top because of their ability to strategize.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

There is an order to things though. If you practice strategy at lower level, you will almost always be limited by your mechanics. For example, I played vs a 1400 the other day and won only using only long swordsmen against his crossbowmen. No matter how good your strategy is, it will lose to a player who has better mechanics and can just produce more units.

[@markvanderwerf8592]

The market point was interesting, hadnt realised buying food early is more efficient than using inefficient farms. Makes me wonder why for fast castle builds, even on arena, players don't buy 200-300 food but go with a few dark age farms. Collecting gold is even more efficient than dark age farms. Even with Turks you don't see this much for whom it is even better.

[@FirstNameLastName-tx6td]

Buying food is common for early castle age. The reason they don't do it earlier is because with farms you can do those 24+2 25+2 etc builds and that gets you to castle age at a time where you can actually do things. Going up earlier, even with market economy, will just be too early and you won't be able to do anything. That said, it is a thing to sell stone and buy food for super quick monk rushes

[@markvanderwerf8592]

You could just do 25+2 but instead of 2-3 farms in dark age as is common collect more gold and buy 200-300 food. You can put down horse collar farms in feudal then and never need farms without horse collar. Rough estimate this would net you about 3 villager minutes or about 60-70 wood. Build does get more tricky as you would only have berries for a bit so if your build is slightly off this could be ugly. Also you will be 'wasting' 400ish of your gold to save 2 trees. You'll likely be first to market though so worsening the price for opponent wanting it to boom. But if he has a build that sells stone for gold (monk rush) you'll benefit.

[@FirstNameLastName-tx6td]

@@markvanderwerf8592 farms are better long term. No point going up at the same time but using gold instead of farms

[@markvanderwerf8592]

You still go farms... just a little later so you get horse collar first..?

[@umamifriends]

boar respects building regulations and calms down 😆

[@edsherwook5196]

Some reason when I build something all my villagers stop what they’re doing and go help and it’s annoying as hell. I just want that one villager to do it and I can’t get the villagers to do anything else until there done. No idea why it’s doing this now because before it wasnt. I’m on Xbox controller if that makes difference, thanks.

[@ryanforgo3500]

Again at the last point, why not buy wood which allows building many farms with less villagers on wood than usual then juat let the new villagers go to wood automatically? I mgiht have missed something there

[@lucianghiordunescu2000]

hey can u make more videos like this with the: how many vilagers it nneds to put on a resource for 2 stables knights or smth like that

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Check out my heroku app here and you can actually figure that out for every unit (with upgrades) aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required.html

[@lucianghiordunescu2000]

@@SurvivalistAoE thx a lot and i hope u are doing ok!

[@lucianghiordunescu2000]

@@SurvivalistAoE i cheked ur heroku app it says for a knight u need 6 farms and for a camel u need 8 with the same upgrades

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@lucianghiordunescu2000 Yup! This is because camels train faster, which means you need more villagers to maintain production. The faster training units usually require more villagers to keep production running. For example, the Shotel Warrior with full upgrades requires 42 farmers with hand cart and 20 gold miners with gold shaft mining to maintain from one castle.

[@anthonyfaiell3263]

Something that has always bothered me is the maximizing food decay thing. Most "build orders" I have seen put 7-8 on boar and 4 on berries.... with berries being the slowest form of food gathering, logically it makes much more sense to me to do it like in this video with 12 on boar (also how I did it before I started checking official build orders). Then you could just send those 4 extra vils to berries and 8 to sheep/deer once boars are done. . Idk, maybe there is something I'm missing here.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

It ends up not mattering too much. You should try to do your best to minimize decay, but it's not the biggest problem as long as you're not taking like 4 animals at once.

[@mysteriousshadow395]

Hello, survivalist of the law here

[@henkstersmacro-world]

👍👍👍

[@tobiasfeil1993]

Hey just a quick notifier that the heroku app's https is broken, at least for me. So awesome what you put together there btw!!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Seems to be working for me. Maybe it was down for like 5 minutes or something.

[@tobiasfeil1993]

@@SurvivalistAoE ok great thank you!

[@damiangilz]

Supposed to be a game, now I'm studying it haha

[@tigerstripey4885]

It's more than a game it's a mind bending skullfuck, It's cool how in depth it can be, but for the casual gamer, investing all this time to learn AOE is fruitless. I wish I was really good, I'm just not, and I struggle against Moderate A.I. I can get to the castle age in like 20 minutes, but once the A.I has reached the castle age I'm preparing to be anihalated, and yep it happens, even when I hold of a couple of attacks, they just keep coming back for more, and it's too hard. The regular person hasn't got time to get that good at this. I love AOE, but the more I watched, the more I realise that it's not a game of strategy, it's a game of speed and clicking as fast as you can, which isn't enjoyable, it's kinda ruined the experience for me, because there's no escape once the game starts, you must be flawless, or you will lose. It's exhausting.

[@damiangilz]

@@tigerstripey4885 Well to be honest I don't think you need much micromanagement to beat the PC, but just learn how to be efficient with your economy and endure the pressure of early attacks. I can beat hard almost consistently and I just have a few dozen games.

[@treyyoungley6171]

How to do this on xbox

[@derikaem8021]

I love this kind of video. I still wonder though... is there an obvious reason why most build orders want only 6 vils on sheep?

[@Xnosider]

Think it is what you need to constantly build vils. Britons do 5 due to their civ bonus.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Yep, constant production of villagers is why it's 6. I've been starting to do 7 on sheep, 2 on wood these days though and it's working even better.

[@Pecuniarly]

I usually go 7 on sheep then 3 or 4 on wood, works perfectly fine (4 when going m@a). The fact that 6 is enough for villager production is not really a useful argument when you need to bank up food anyway to go feudal quickly (unless you find the need to get X wood as fast as possible, for example when drushing). Putting 7 on sheep first prevents the occasional need to force drop food to keep the TC producing villagers, which is less micro-intensive for all those non-pro players.

[@derikaem8021]

@@Pecuniarly completely agree on that. I would have more expected an answer that 7 vils bump a bit more. is that true?

[@derikaem8021]

is there a way to consistently fit 8 vils gathering from 1 sheep. then this could be even better

[@horn2102]

I play rise of nations and that market is so strong. So when I play the occasional Aoe II game I know to hit that market.

[@theevilhuman1]

How to prevent villagers from walking all the way behind the woodline when sending them to wood? This problem occurs to me very often

[@SurvivalistAoE]

If you set the rally point to a tree that the villagers can't reach, they tend to go to the other side of the woodline.

[@theevilhuman1]

@@SurvivalistAoE i see, but i tried sending a group of vils and i clicked on a tree that is the most outermost one, some of them still went behind. It was because i was being attacked and want to reassign my vils as fast as possible but it turned out disastrous

[@Triangulito360180]

10:18 Could you explain to me exactly how the "Khmer" ability works? I have tried several times to use this, but my villagers always need a mill or the town center to deposit food :(

[@SurvivalistAoE]

You must be playing on a very old version of the game. This ability to drop off farmed food directly into the stockpile was added in like 2 years ago

[@Triangulito360180]

@@SurvivalistAoE I bought the Definitive Edition on Steam two weeks ago, I don't know if anything needs to be updated.

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@Triangulito360180 You can only drop food in the farm if the villager is tasked to the farm before it's built. You can't do it after the farm is complete. It's a really weird mechanic. Khmer also only drops farmed food directly into the stockpile under normal circumstances. The mechanic I'm talking about in the video is not something that comes up too often, but does occasionally.

[@Triangulito360180]

@@SurvivalistAoE I understand, thank you very much for the help!

[@neildutoit5177]

Every time I try to shift queue wood then 10 minutes later I'll get an idle villiger on the woodline. Has anyone else noticed this? It's like after they finish the shift tasks they don't auto go to another tree

[@SurvivalistAoE]

Yep, sometimes you shift queue to a tree that doesn't exist when the villager gets to that command. Just queuing 2-3 trees in advance should help to prevent this.

[@ADCFproductions]

better click Auto Macro in the Settings tab.

[@TheSpiritedFendron]

Not 6 on sheep and 7 on boar?

[@rockin1014]

YOU NEED TO MAKE A DISCORD

[@SurvivalistAoE]

I have one with over 1500 members already! discord.gg/2uJ5Tyh

[@agustinrafaelle5396]

Now i understand why hoang puts so many villagers on gold

[@derikaem8021]

Milling deer: If I recently calculated correctly in my head, then: As Goths/Aztecs you usually shouldnt mill deer, because you can efficiently (in 1 trip) hunt with 2/3 vils. U agree?

[@markvanderwerf8592]

Agreed. With vikings you can also long distance them in early feudal with 3 vills effectively.

[@chriswhite702]

how about Berbers?

[@derikaem8021]

@@chriswhite702 thats a completely different calculation, so idk

[@chriswhite702]

@@derikaem8021 fair enough

[@victor6010]

2:24 how do you know these things what the heeck

[@ADCFproductions]

i've noticed that even with shift queuing my villagers tend to kill 2 sheep and 2 deer at the same time. Usually 3 vils go to one deer and another will go alone to kill another deer, which will run away and die really far away. ;_; stupid vils

[@steinanderson9849]

i wish i was stuck at 1200

[@pierreetiennemartineau2306]

Wtf the subtitles are in spanish? Nothing against, but as the cat, i dont do it,

[@pierreetiennemartineau2306]

Ok, my bad, i dont click the right button...

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@pierreetiennemartineau2306 Glad you figured it out 11