How long until a town center pays off?

Building new town centers definitely pay off, but how long does that take? Let's see how great of an investment second and third towns really are!
0:35 Resource cost, converted into time
1:50 Construction time
2:26 Cost of creating villagers at the new TC
3:40 Payoff time if you only made one villager at th TC
4:10 Calculating the payoff time for constant villager production
5:00 Graph of the results
5:56 Other civilizations (Perians, Britons, Indians)
6:35 Unquantifiable factors to consider
Data in a Google Spreadsheet (you'll need to copy or download before editing):
docs.google.co...
Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Full intro song: • Spirit of the Law Chan...
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsou...
Thanks to Floria for the video topic suggestion.
Game: Age of Empires 2 HD with Forgotten Empires, African Kingdoms, and Rise the Rajas expansions

[@davidmatlock3149]

This game is so realistic, seeing that, in my experience, every newborn child is also the result of about 140 seconds of collective effort

[@krishnasriram5369]

LMAO😂🔥

[@HPMlangdale]

Having to justify one's own creation is hard

[@jamestipsfedora]

Alexa, this is so sad.

[@SY-jd7dm]

Can we get 2 likes?

[@adrim7924]

@@jamestipsfedora play despacito

[@nemou4985]

My answer is zero seconds after done. The HP and defensive ability already justifies it as a fortification.

[@greenfox1991]

hours played in AoEII: 1000 hrs hours played in Microsoft Office Excel: over 9,000 hrs

[@kyle35_36]

It’s over 9000!!!

[@Ibrahim_Orhan]

Nice video again Sotl. One more thing to mention: A town center also helps economy by making one less mill, a mining camp and a lumber camp. Also a town center is equal to one house which need some woods to support population as well as stone for guarding them like a watch/guard tower. (Edited house pop.)

[@toes5032]

1

[@mrkirby8622]

A tc supports only 5 pop. AKA one house.

[@Ibrahim_Orhan]

@@mrkirby8622 Oh absolutely right. Maybe i am under effect of JackieChan movies which include Chinatowns :)

[@ToteVirusanti]

@@VandalGaming-gw6bt if you are Spanish or Incas you can use your own villagers

[@TracerJ243]

+1 Up you go

[@Greywander87]

A town center is also a universal drop-off point for resources. It costs less wood than building a mill, lumber camp, and mining camp separately, although it does also cost stone and obviously won't be placed as efficiently as if you built those individual buildings instead of the TC. But if you were going to build one of those anyway, you're really only out 175 wood and 100 stone. A TC is never placed in a vacuum, so most of the time you're going to be placing it next to resources that you would have built a lumber or mining camp next to anyway, and even after those are gone you can still use it for farming. So really, when compared to building both a mill (for farms) and a lumber/mining camp, you're only out 75 wood and 100 stone, or even up 25 wood if you would have built all three. And that's in addition to using it for defense and villager creation.

[@SenatorAri]

And also increases your max population, so saves on houses also.

[@IamMuldeh]

Amen, this is what I was waiting for him to factor in the whole video but he missed it. :(

[@beastwarsFTW]

It also can serve as a safehouse if you start in an undesirable location.

[@misteral9045]

History fact: most European towns grew around a church or castle, followed by economic buildings such as market stalls, slaughterhouses, and banks, then finally wood or wattle-and-daub huts for villagers. Similarly Arabic and African towns sprung up around a mosque or market hub, with trade being a much more common factor for a settlement than European towns. Polynesian towns were centered around fishing and sea trade, with religious influence limited to mostly the local settlement, as opposed to the widespread organization of Catholicism and Islam. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of a town center we just built a monastery or dock?

[@PigeonAnimation]

Would be cool for a new aoe if you could choose if your nation is more economicaly (market) religiously (monastery/church) etc focused and start with an according building

[@teddywoods6463]

Yeah but how would you tech up without the TC

[@CiliophoraEuplotes]

I think that we can interpret the town center as a generic representative of the central building (castle, church, etc.) assuming there were no historical town centers or town halls in medieval times (at least I've never seen anything like that).

[@PigeonAnimation]

@@teddywoods6463 was thinking more of different town center types which you could use as usual but with different specialities like religion centered players can recruit monks from the beginning and marine centered ones start with a tc at the coast which can build ships

[@drakan4769]

@@teddywoods6463 well with AoE3 introducing the off-map home city, you could tech up from there in a future game

[@nikimaster115]

Calculating the worth of a product in workhours? *Karl Marx wants to know your location*

[@NuclearNuke41]

Who?

[@ARTEMISXIX]

@Carcantos Cartinho bruh

[@bencampbell5468]

@Carcantos Cartinho Karl Marx being racist? That's possibly the most luke-warm take I've ever heard.

[@patrickm.4469]

@@NuclearNuke41 the "Inventor" of Communism/Marxism

[@seanwhitehall4652]

what?

[@MKarvat]

This video is the kind of content that's making me love this channel. It's very scientific in the sense that it focuses on a single question and tries to analyze it in the most measurable way possible in order to get the best and most objective answer. Fantastic work, man!

[@Gigas0101]

I guessed right! Also this went way deeper than I expected, great video as always.

[@zimon129]

never thought the building time is a major resources of having a new town center. GREAT VID!

[@ExFragMaster]

Hey, it is also a Mill, MiningCamp and LumberCamp in one, you save wood by building the towncenter (if you placed it perfectly) also it shoots arrows and is an awesome defend building, better than anything that costs 100 stone. In an attack, it pays off in an instant, because you save a lot of vills 140 seconds per villager and kill enemys if you get attacked. alot of vill seconds per kill because you don't need millitary units. I know you said it at the end, but this is worth so much that it wins or loses you the game :) I don't play that much myself, but by watching others play and occasionally playing on my own, the second TC is the best thing you can go for in defending and saving res.

[@carrots1550]

0:56 Spirit of the Law explains Marx's Labour Theory of Value...

[@oscars7948]

Fin Lay even math is a communist

[@emschafe]

Well, in AoE2 the villagers are all equally competent mindless slaves. None of those variations or responding to incentives to gum up the math.

[@KC-bg1th]

@@emschafe Not necessarily. I never gave my villager permission to stop and fight the wolf, yet they still did despite glorious pallisade walls needing to be built. This just proved that they're disloyal, replaceable and only worth as much as they provide for the motherland.

[@KuraIthys]

In the real world it's hard to cleanly define what something is 'worth' because it's value to individuals is subjective and can vary. A game on the other hand, while still having elements of this (should I build a castle, or a town centre? Which do I need more right now?), has hard-coded costs that aren't based around economics. A town centre always costs X stone and Y wood, and that never varies. The time to gather a certain amount of wood is near constant. Food eaten by a villager is near constant. Productivity of a villager is near constant (barring mismanagement or stupid AI) So, of course you can calculate this in terms of 'time'. And it's not quite Marx's theory, since the 'work' of some units has more value than others. (this can be determined, ironically enough, by how much time it cost to create any given unit. - more expensive units have higher costs per unit time. Eg in a roundabout way they get 'paid' more.)

[@ARojas-dg2ce]

@jocaguz18 Just accept communism is trash.

[@OverlordGaming]

Your videos always put a smile on my face.

[@karlzobok]

Hello there

[@viethung9419]

Your VOICE is one of the best parts of your video, Spirit of the Life.

[@chuy27arts]

I stared playing this game AGAIN a few months ago thanks to you, stoped playing because I got bored, and still watching you

[@Duj1n]

I miss your intro. not sure why its not included in every episode. I've also wonder why youtubers dont include ingame music to their videos. Ensemble nailed it, and I still listen to ingame music to this day. cheers, thanks for all your insight and helpful videos!

[@whodoobucrew2960]

More than any other SOTL video, this one left me with more questions than answers

[@nurbakikasikci1065]

Hi, I would suggest considering the following factors as well: 1. Town Centers provide 5 housing. A house costs 25 villager seconds + 30 wood (approximately 60 seconds) = 85 seconds. 2. The additional farms would have been built eventually, so you could either disregard the farm cost or adjust it by a factor of 0.6 as an opportunity cost. 3. Town Centers are optimally situated between trees, and a stone/gold mine, also serving as a mill afterwards (at least half a mill until trees/mines are cleared). It becomes a full mill once all wood/mines are cleared post-TC, if we want 90%+ farm efficiency. This item should be considered as an opportunity cost as well, given that we might not want to build a mill, lumbercamp or mining camp at that moment, So applying a factor like 0.9 here would be appropriate. I pick as high as 0.9 here because we'd really need new lumbercamps, mining camps at the beginning of Castle Age anyway. I didn't multiply by 0.9 here here because i'm a bit lazy after this long comment. Based on building cost and time: a) 1 building (lumber camp/mine): 35 seconds build time + 100 wood (about 190 seconds) = 225 seconds. b) 1.5 buildings: 345 seconds. c) 2 buildings: 450 seconds. d) 2.5 buildings: 560 seconds. e) 3 buildings: 665 seconds. This adjustment would reduce the payoff duration. For option a (225 + 85 from house ≈ 300), the payoff time would be 6:40. For option e (665 + 85 from house = 750), it would be 5:50. Considerations: 1. If you think we don't need additional lumbercamp/mining camp/ mill at that moment you can lower the opportunity cost. 2. We might make seperate calculations for: a) Chinese (15 housing) - moderate. b) Sicilians (100% faster TC built) - significant. c) Spanish (30% faster TC built) - Important , but it also reduces the value it adds as an economic building. d) Huns (No house) - minor. e) Berbers (faster walking villagers) - just for fun f) Britons, Bulgarians, Incas, Malians: Less resources for TC. g) Lithuanians: 100 food ( 100 * 60./ 23.975 = 250 seconds saved) h) Tatars: 2 sheep (200 food, can delay farms). i) Japanese: Nearly halves the economic building benefits mentioned, costing 50% less wood. j) Armenians / Georgians: Decreases the opportunity costs of economic buildings thanks to mule carts, but I think it's still applicable since at the starting of castle age, you would need additional mule carts anyway. k) Romans: 5% towards everything positive and negative in the calculation, so it wouldn't affect much (except for villager creation time farmer's gathering rate, which could be neglected) l) Persians and Hindustanis: You've already covered them. m) Poles: I wouldn't place my farms around a tc as Poles, as I love the folwark + farm duo. I'd expect you to more MATHY , my dear friend :)

[@Oeraja]

Cool Video. Enjoyed it as usual! Question back: How long does it take for Spirit to do another Road to 1800? A. Bout a month B. Half a year C. A full year D. Just a little short of a lifetime

[@Nagel256]

c

[@satyakisil4289]

E. Just a little longer than an entire life.

[@eccentrichorse11]

I am off to make a graph and an equation.

[@wilderun04]

NOW. DO IT NOW.

[@johnapple6646]

But will it be before The Viper finishes every age of empires campaign ever made?

[@nibbix6970]

Doing everything in seconds so we don't know if our chosen answer is right until the end of the video. Excellent.

[@scottb9997]

does it in seconds because seconds is the si unit

[@ferblancart8669]

I haven't played AoE2 in many years, I watch all your videos as they come out. Man I love your maths

[@EnzoGarabatos]

I found out about this channel the day before yesterday. I've quite enjoyed your other videos, but this one is getting into economic theory so much it makes me want to reread Das Kapital :)

[@pyrosaurus-rex5283]

Was the intro song forgotten or left out of the video intentionally?

[@Kevin-wx7wu]

It's intentionally left out in shorter videos

[@priyagopalbiswas3358]

yeah i missed that sound.i like it very much😍😍

[@Jyukenmaster95]

A new Spirit of the Law video? Valentine's day came early this year :')

[@alistair158]

I guess you know you're a true aoe fan when you read the title and say to yourself out loud "that's a good question" *sips coffee*

[@rin-senpai7115]

Could you do a video on the archery range? I personally struggle at times at which ranged unit I should focus on (Arbalest, HC or CA). A video with all the pros and cons of each unit in different situations would be very helpful. Keep up the good work!

[@jaygaglani9377]

Hey Spirit, pls make a video on siege towers!!

[@gulparviz]

My prof also gives an option of "All of the above" and "None of the above" too. This option drives me crazy

[@lortoc]

When I see that SOTL uploads a new video, I close anything I do, like the video first and start watching

[@robinspanier7017]

yeah but you might want to add a initial travel time,maybe the cost of attention, maybe the cost of securing additonal space, and surely the cost of camps.. im realy inspired by your video though and i am looking forward to see more stuff like this!

[@patrickh.473]

I had it in my gut I said about 7min to 10min as I had the feeling that's when my economy started to prosper, thanks that you confirmed my feeling.

[@aaronsmith7946]

Yeah, I was with you. My guess was 7 minutes and my backup guess was 10. You have to have a secondary guess just so you don't feel stupid...unless, of course, you get both wrong

[@kylechildress536]

Hey, i guessed right! It's a relarively minor thing, but you didn't take into account that the new TC will generally be taking the place of one or more resource dropoff buildings. I think it would be fair to subtract the cost of say, a mill and a lumber camp.

[@dale8809]

This dude must be a stats professor. Entertaining and interesting to watch. Dumb question but where do you go play to get all the extra civilizations beyond the original age of empires 2 expansion set? I'm still playing the conquerors on a 10 year old PC!!!!

[@fsdafdsafdas]

So great, even now years later this video is fascinating

[@IceSpoon]

This video explains why after 5 minutes of creating two (almost simultaneously) TCs I felt I was really struggling to keep anything going.

[@blondegirl7240]

Thank u for the new video! Great work :)

[@bartimaus8738]

You are great! I really appreciate and love your work!

[@RockTheEternal]

guessing correctly on Spirits tests gives a sense of pride and accomplishment

[@masternobody1896]

gald you are back man

[@TheChreezyy]

not exactly the video i needed, but definetly the video i wanted !

[@viniciusklaussnerfonsecaco1952]

Another very nice vídeo! Cheers!

[@brianreynolds5342]

Great video! One subject I'd love to see a "Spirit of the Law Clinic" on is those key "first seconds" (and then first few minutes) of the game. For example... am I better hitting "H-C-C-C" first to get villagers queueing, or quickly grabbing the existing villagers and getting a house going so I don"t get housed as soon as the first villager finishes -- is there a difference in getting that first villager out most quickly or in avoiding the most amount of time being housed in between the first and second villagers? I"m guessing that both of those things are more important that (a) getting the scout moving, (b) getting the sheep over to the TC, and (c) having somebody build that traditional second house that I don"t actually need yet but efficiently uses the villager time before I have the sheep found/organized, but I then I don't know the relative tradeoffs of those three things either. Another question that seems valid... should I be grabbing ALL THREE villagers to get that key first house done (the one that de-houses me) even though it's nominally less efficient of a villager's time than having one of them build the second house, because it critically cuts the time I am housed at the TC, making the second and third villagers (and hopefully all the other ones) appear more quickly? And is there stuff you can show us about whether it's important to get that key first sheep into a perfect "sweet spot" under the town center, or is "close enough good enough" at least for the first sheep to get villagers going. Etc, etc, etc. And then should I give the scout a circular waypoint order or be manually switching back and forth. Etc. How near does a deer need to be to my TC or Mill for sending e.g. four villagers to hunt it is better than having them on berries/sheep, faster than farming, etc. I bet you could do a whole video on the first five minutes of the game! Maybe more than one!

[@ChrisWEEZ]

Love the new format sans intro!

[@iconian1387]

There's another method you could use to test out the return on investment for building a town center. First you'd probably want to use the scenario editor to start on a random map without any enemies, start gathering resources and building. Someway or another you'd want to keep track of the number of villagers and the amount of resources you have at each moment in the game, which you could feed into a chart. The first time you run the test, you see how long it takes to go from the beginning of Castle Age to Post-Imperial without building a second town center, and graph out the resources and villager count along the way as well. The second time you build a second town center, and then see how the villager and resource count differ from the first time around. This should give another perspective on just how a second town center would affect your growth and the final payoff time.

[@hansoskar1911]

great topic. wanted to know that for a long time. small caveat: I dont think the 100 Stone should be added to the cost since in 90% of games in which new TCs are placed the stone comes from the starting stone so no villager time was spend there. therefore I think the payback in practical therms is a bit faster and the britons bonus is lager in comparison.

[@generaldreagonlps6889]

Got it right. Initally I thought it would be d or e but then I remembered I tend to guess these things too high in general and remembered that repaying the cost goes faster the more villagers you have.

[@Xaintailles]

I might have missed it, but you did not take into account the housing cost of a villager, was that intentional?

[@wishcraft4u2]

good call

[@UM96lol]

Well the payoff time is at around 7 minutes, during which 20 villagers are created. The TC supports 10pop, and 2 more houses would require 60wood in collection time and the rather low build time, so I don't think it matters way too much. Even if 20 villagers will cost more because of this, 21 vills would cost EVEN more because you would need a 3rd house instead of just 2. So the optimal time would be 20 vills again.

[@martinkrauser4029]

@@UM96lol don't forget the initial 4 builder vills who also need pop space

[@babyhuey6342]

@Martin Krauser those 4 don't count, they already existed. You had them whether or not you were going to build another TC.

[@swordwarrior4586]

Congratulations on being a better math teacher then the one I had in 11th grade

[@SebastienGadoury]

With a well placed TC, you save a mill, a lumber camp and often a miner camp. So you save 300 wood plus the wood from a house and the stone for a tower (kinda). You should redoo the graph with those savings in mind!

[@Omnicide101]

0:56 SotL casually reinventing the labour theory of value in order to do maths to a video game 10/10

[@Lucas_Jeffrey]

I guessed C. (7 minutes) I play saracens extensively and frequently go fast into second tc while being feudal rushed. I have become familiar with the 7 minute mark (~22-23 minutes into saracen fast castle) being when I can finally feel the effects of my greater economy and push back against archers, scouts, maa etc.

[@obesechicken13]

It depends on what you assume for the VS(villager seconds) for different resources. I made this spreadsheet a while ago, assumed a flat 20 resources per second since villagers never gather wood at an actual 30 wood per minute due to the trees getting further and walking to the trees from the tc as well as other inefficiencies like having to build additional lumber camps. I have it around 8 minutes 45 seconds. These spreadsheets are also useful for things like figuring out when to go up as Chinese for a fast castle or as Malay. I've even used it to figure out when to go up on Turbo. People used VS a lot for AoE3 so I'm a little disappointed it's not used in AoE2.

[@MustaphaTR]

A. B. C. d. e. f. Why?

[@krakenloco]

Next letter is G, not Y

[@guido_robledo]

We can't understand superior minds

[@satyakisil4289]

I was expecting A. B. C. d. e. F.

[@JRedAoE]

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe

[@rentabledwarf578]

Gonna need a repost of the video in order to make that uniform.

[@ViciousZee]

Great video as always, thanks

[@dallasfavel4817]

1:05: Spirit of the Law accidentally discovers labour theory of value.

[@Kevin-wx7wu]

But you didn't cover what would happen if we take into account that you might build another TC to get wheelbarrow/handcart. I think that would give an edge to the Vikings

[@esven9263]

You can actually build a TC in about 6:25 if you stop making new villagers after the ninth. This makes sense if you consider that each villager can be thought of as having a hysteresis of 140 seconds. Effectively each villager will need to work 140 seconds before it's paid for itself. So villagers made after a certain point will not have time to pay for themselves before enough work has been done for the TC to pays for itself. Not that I'm advocating only making 9 vils, just that you can actually make A TC pay for itself a little more quickly if that was your only goal. I'll also mention that Instead of using a table it's of course possible to create a generalized function. Villagers are produced 1 every 25 seconds. Each villager can be thought of as working forever there after. So the rate at which a TC produces labor is ∫(t/25)dt or t^2/50. With a hysteresis of 140 seconds and a 1083 initial cost we can expand our function to V = t^2/50 - 140/25 t - 1083. Practically speaking V = (0.02)t^2 - (5.9)t - 1083 is a better approximation to the step function at each 25s interval. (the area of a triangle is half a rectangle of the same height and width) Though it assumes still that villager production and labor is continuous. Which it obviously isn't, it's a step function. Still this allows for some interesting analysis, for example by making it periodic about 1083 we can plot how long it takes for a TC to pay for itself another time over by the zero crossings. So it takes a TC approx 423 seconds to pay for itself once over, but then at 85 seconds later it will have paid for itself again, then 68 seconds later it will have paid for itself a third time over. It's also possible use this approximation to get an exact match to the actual system as well. One definition of a heaviside step function is the derivative of a ramp function. The remainder of division, or modulus, operator is a ramp function. Which means we can use it pretty easily to correct our continuous function into the discrete solution. This is a pretty tried and true method of correcting this kind of error when simulating discrete time systems. The function with this correction is (0.02)*t^2 - (5.9)*t-1083 - (0.02)*(t%25)^2 + (5.9)*(t%25). Which looks complex but really it's exactly what we had before, with all the time dependent terms repeated again using modulus as a ramp function to remove the differences between the continuous and discontinuous system. If you're using excel then =(0.02)*B1^2-(5.9)*B1-1083-(0.02)*MOD(B1;25)^2+(5.9)*MOD(B1;25) would be the function you could drop in. I hope I'm not over complicating things here, I think if you have taken any amount of Calc though this should all make some amount of sense. It's a bit of work but it allows you to just plug in any time in seconds and see what the villager seconds of profit is. So if the game goes on for 15 minutes after building a TC for example, you gain exactly 9807 seconds of villager labor, which based on your ratios would be 5117 wood. I don't think this kind of accuracy is necessary, and it makes the function discontinuous, but that's how you'd go about it if you wanted it. I'm always fond of this kind of numbers based analysis of game mechanics. Thanks for the video and I'd love to see more like it.

[@fitness-challengers]

Great video! I would also add that a town center gives you 5 more population space (10 for the Chinese, I believe, and zero for the Huns) Not really a big factor, but I didn’t hear it mentioned here. The saved wood for a house makes a small difference.

[@osianrhys1257]

Can you do a video about how units are spawned from military buildings? I sometimes use stables or archery ranges as walls, but occasionally the units spawn out the wrong way and get stuck behind the wall! Thank you. Great videos.

[@dieulemeilleur7848]

Hi, I enjoyed your video, but shouldn't you consider the price of the town center to be: (ressources you gain from building it) - (resources you would have gained if you hadn't built it) ? Then look at where that value starts being above zero. I think that's a more correct way to see how much the town center costs.

[@devilsownweaponhaha]

Could you please make a video on the different architectural styles for civilizations in the original aoe2 and the hd expansions? Thanks!

[@scottb9997]

he has alreaady

[@spartankongcountry6799]

@@scottb9997 No he hasnt

[@TrueAzrael]

Nice math, but as most others pointed out, you're getting a universal dropoff point, a 'free' house and in the end you are going to cap your villager production in game pretty much at the same count no matter if you build them from one center or multiple centers. So the costs for a villager you calculate into the costs for the tc would have been spent with or without the tc, just later in the game.

[@patrickdonoghue7522]

Awesome video!

[@KalpachekkTV]

Я НЕ ЗНАЮ КТО ТЫ ЧУВАК, КОТОРЫЙ СДЕЛАЛ СУБТИТРЫ НА РУССКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ, НО СПАСИБО ТЕБЕ БОЛЬШОЕ!!!!!

[@geotechms]

Thanks for the video, I learned alot

[@Anduardus]

Also worth considering is that buildign a tc with only 10 workers has a far greater negative impact on your economy than building one when having like 100 workers. Because the percentage of your resources needed for the tc is smaller therefore the more workers/resources you have the more sense it makes to build one as you still ahve enouth resources for other stuff like tech, army or buildings (as long as you still have a way to go to your targeted villager pop)

[@paulhowell1821]

Each new villager takes 140 seconds of work by other people to make. Sounds like the devs really thought this through, maybe a bit of an overestimate but I understand for balance purposes 😏

[@mrrhombus716]

Finally got one right. Not surprised they pay off so quickly. I am definitely a fan of getting new TCs early.

[@krankarvolund7771]

Just a remark, you have 200 stone at the beginning of the game, and I often see in pro or semi-pro games that they don't built anything that cost stone except a town center. Or if they do, they gather stone for this, knowing that the 200 stone base is for built two two-centers. So, I would said that the 200 stone cost should be deducted from the town-center price for the two first TCs ;)

[@_DK_-]

Krankar Volund Think of it as when you use the stone to build the TC, you're not using the stone for walls/towers/castles/trade etc. The cost represents how long it would take you to have the same amount of resources to spend again.

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@_DK_- Yeah, maybe. But as I say, in a lot of games I see, players don't build walls, towers, castles, etc.... ^^

[@sauravtripathi4128]

Usually, I use the 200 starting stone for 1 TC and Murder holes (unless I am playing as Teutons, in which case 100 stone is left over)

[@GummieI]

ehmm while towers and walls are rather rare, there is pretty much always a castle or 2 since it got some sweet upgrades at the very least in it

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@GummieI Well, in medium lenght games, castles are not really useful. In a more long-term game, yeah ^^

[@Snowthree]

Did you remember to factor in the comparison cost to building a lumbermill/mine/mill and producing the villagers at another TC? As well as the potential defensive advantage from having units garrisoned inside the TC?

[@michalanz2612]

Great Video! Should you have included the cost of building additional houses?

[@KetchupLoko]

it would be nice to analyze how well does creating a new TC and sending the vills to a sole resource would fare in case of a great food surplus, like in how good is the resource conversion and how long does it take to gather a set milestone (like 200, 300, 500 of the other resource - gold is the one that comes to mind)

[@The_MisTrO]

spirit of the law you are great❤❤❤💪💪💪

[@Progeusz]

You can also look at it from another perspective - if you plan to start your attack within 7 minutes after reaching castle age, staying on lower amount of TCs will improve its effectiveness. General idea is obvious but now we have numbers.

[@nikolaisafronov3452]

Hey! Maybe make some video about ways to protect against raiding parties. And thank you for all the videos, I watch and reading watch them all:)

[@DicoTheRedstoner]

There is also a cost in farms, which you have to add in sooner because you built the town center. Adding 300 wood for 5 farms might be appropriate, but it's not necessarily cost of adding the town center, so difficult to reason. It is just more early investment.

[@GeoDracu]

I'm surprised you didn't factor in the fact that the TC acts usually as two resource gathering hubs such as a Mill or a Mining Camp/Lumber camp since its usually placed next to two different resources and can always act as a Mill for farming. So this would make the cost of a TC 75 wood and 100 stone since you no longer spend the 200/300 wood and time on building 1 Mill, 1 Stone Camp and 1 Lumber Camp. Ofc it does't always work like that but I hope you get my point.

[@balavenkatesh6388]

Town Center provides 10 housing space, which is equal to building 2 house simultaneously. 2 house consume 60 wood, when we take that into an account, then Town center repay it in 4-6 minutes normally.

[@dariodimarziasalvatore971]

Bro I love your videos so much

[@NeoGaara3]

Very good video!! :)

[@enfynet]

Hmmm. Probably gonna need to update this for the Cumans feudal tc 🤔

[@suddenllybah]

given you have to front the food up front, the freshly made and ordered town center investment should be 1083+140, assuming constant villager production. ... also. we should probably consider housing requirements.

[@Klosterhasi]

Great Video as always! Have you thought about making a Video on Age of Empires learning curve? And how a new player might get into the game, whats the best way to learn the basics etc. The game doesnt really have pacing like an MMO, so i would be really interested in your thoughts on that.

[@shnoogums1]

I’d really like to see a vid where you go through all of the basic technologies and all of their uses and extra information that the game doesn’t provide. And then in another vid, the unique technologies

[@plukerpluck]

Yhis doesn't seem to take into account the lost value of investing into stuff other than a town center (opportunity cost). It's a 7 minute setback until the town center itself pays itself off, but that center then has to earn that amount again to make up for lost time. In other words, after 7 minutes you're net neutral on resources, but you still sunk time into it making it that could have been used on other stuff. It's only when it pays itself off twice that you equal out (And then technically not even then always)

[@phamnguyenductin]

You missed one small point: for every 5 villagers, you need another house. So you have to factor in the wood and time for building a house as well.

[@pteeto]

Request: Calculation of how much is getting elite upgrades for conqs and chukonu is worth. Both of the upgrades have very limited effect on the units as well as the fact that chukonu from my knowledge deal with cavalier as an example better without the elite upgrade. Just curious if the logic holds, since I couldn't find a video about this by searching. Against rams chukonu elite upgrade helps for sure though.

[@Der_Arathok]

Hmm i think its a flaw, that the ressource cost is calculated just for one villager. Because in a normal eco, you probably use at least 5 on wood and maybe another 5 on stone? so you at least for me, ressource time is divided by 5. Overall i find the questions generally asked to unspecifically. Ressourece is accounted for one villager, but building time for the tc is accounted for 4 villagers. you could have asked: "when pays tc off, if built by 1 villager?."

[@Vengeange_]

He's using villager working time as unit for the calculation. If you have 5 villagers on wood, they still collect 275 in the same total villager working time as one villagers would do (assuming they don't get stuck and don't have to walk a lot). One single villager needs about 8.7 minutes of working time to collect 275 wood, 5 villagers need 1,75 minutes of working time. You have to consider the total working time of villagers, so it's 5 villagers spending 1,75 minutes of working time each: 1,75*5 = 8,7. The villager working time for 275 wood is 8,7 minutes, no matter what. Image you have to pay your employees for every hour they work: you can assign one employee to do the job, to get it done in 5 hours. But if you assign 5 employees to do the job, they complete it in 1 hour., and every employee spends 1 hour on the job. In both cases you always end up paying 5 working hours.

[@Der_Arathok]

@@Vengeange_ okay I see that makes sense, thanks for elaborating further!

[@Clerkius]

Excellent Choice!

[@miciso666]

you forgot the cost of the lumber camp and stone camp as well as time spent on those as well. if u wanna get really technical about it

[@omargoodman2999]

So, basically, if you spot your opponent putting up a new town center, don't destroy it immediately. Wait until he's pumped out villagers for a few minutes to set him back even further.

[@theshadowswithin9896]

Just a quick idea for a future video; albeit a lengthy and intensive one. Civilization Randomizer: is it a true random or biased? It seems like almost everytime i've played, the AI seems to always bias the huns more often than any other civ. Anyway, keep up the good work!

[@Petrico94]

>Build a new Town Center >Enemy scout comes by just in range for you to both see each other > 10 Battering Rams and 20 knights roll up behind him "That's okay, we'll just come back later" You have 2:30 to make your decision

[@DIChronicAddict1]

One thing I would like to point out is that 500 resources now are worth a lot more than 500 resources in 7min. Those same resources could have been spent on units to defend friendly or attack enemy territory, which would have a snowball effect. For this reason, I think the "X min to pay for itself" number can be a little misleading, even if mathematically correct.

[@FinetalPies]

I don't even play this game but I love this channel

[@LeicaFleury]

While this is fantastic on paper, you didn't take into account the free 200 stone we get at the start of a random map. This means this video only applies exactly under circumstances in wich you're actually collecting those 100 stone for a TC, it being you constructing a TC for the THIRD time or having used stone for some reason before building TC. Great video overall, though, and does a great job at giving you an idea of the investment and benefits of extra TCs.

[@captainkirk265]

Great point although I didn't really like this video that much. I see a lot of flaws in his thinking. A lot of things he didn't bring up. Like it gives you more population so you don't have to build a house, it's defensive and offensive value if you go for a TC rush, and you can use it to research loom and the work rate upgrades while your first TC is still making villagers. If we use resources equal time then that saves you a lot of time which saves you a lot of resources which is paying back it's original cost as well.

[@LeicaFleury]

@@captainkirk265 we can also agree he didn't mention the resources our villagers didn't get to collect because they were busy walking, constructing and walking back to the resources. I still like the video, though with all of this considered I doubt the exact time invested on a new TC is 7 minutes.

[@josefha6933]

Thats true. This scenario is much more important than the one in the video

[@medditapp3267]

However you get the intangible benefit of being able to garrison and protect against attacks which wasn't factored in

[@GnanaPrakash86AP]

Great work and we all appreciate your effort here but I think you made it more difficult than it had to be. Let me explain. The easiest way would have been for you to not convert the resources into villager work time instead, lets assume the point at which the towncenter pays off for it's cost and starts to *become a benefit* is as soon as it finishes the *"n"th no of villagers*. In that case, let's assume the *no of farmers to be "A", no of vills on wood "B" and the no of vills on stone as "C"*(You may or may not include the resource deposit buildings in your calculations) Now just *solve the equations by balancing* the investment on one side to the value obtained on the other side using these resources and you should *get a value for "n"* which is probably *not an integer* and all you have to do at that point is to run the game and *note the values at only 2 points of time*. one where the "n" is rounded off to the nearest smaller integer and the other where it is rounded off to the nearest larger integer. I know this probably sounds a lot more complicated but you can *get the "n" value in mere minutes*, depending on how long it takes to form the equations. Another advantage of this method is that the result is *a lot more accurate*. I say this because you converted all the resources into villager work time but those seconds of work time put into gold mining is not equal to the work timing put into food when you actually need gold because of the changing market value for the different resources. Here on the other hand, you get back exactly the same amounts of the same resources you had to invest in. But as a side effect of all your spread sheet work, we do know of that interesting fact at the end of how counter intuitive it is to assume the moment of birth is the worst time to loose it all :) *Take care and keep doing what you always did :))*

[@taendt]

GJ. i would have trated all res as 1 collection rate average and then dive into different collection rates after. btw the graf of collection (not the cost grapf is something multiplied with (x^2+x)/2 - same formula oned when explaining why big forces beats smaller

[@Zwijger]

So they already pay of after 7 minutes, and SotL forgot that it also potentially saves you a lumbercamp, a mill and or a mining camp possible, depending on where you place it, as well as a a house,so it pays of even earlier if you take that into account.