Sneaky AoE2 farming hack for extra food

Here's a sneaky AoE2 farming hack to gather food a bit faster than you're supposed to. Whether or not it's worth the effort is up to you.
0:20 Farm work rate vs villager work rate
2:10 Breaking the farming speed limit
Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsou...
Game: Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, with Forgotten Empires, African Kingdoms, Rise the Rajas, and Last Khans expansions

[@Phoenix-zu6on]

next update: -impoved AI to micro the crap out of its farmers

[@divaldosilva7789]

11111111

[@MrPonchoCho]

more like micro the crop out of its farms 11

[@Goldenblade14]

*Only available on Extreme difficulty

[@LeftJoystick]

The way AoE 2 handles farms seems so convoluted

[@petersmythe6462]

11 11

[@Mr_Kiwi_the_Wizard]

I feel like this was implemented to make less optimal farms stronger.

[@Walkop]

That's actually quite logical. Good point.

[@Tocaraca]

Hot take: this was completely unintentional and was a result of a scrapped farm growth mechanic

[@LeftJoystick]

My god, T90 had it right all along

[@zachariastsampasidis8880]

I feel handcart's numerical tuning confirms that it was originally designed to do that but still ended slightly too strong so they reduced the original farm food growth rate

[@darthteej1]

@@Tocaraca yeah wasn't crop rotation originally slated to do something with the farm grow rate?

[@BlabbyElm]

What a great effort from the devs of definitive edition: even fixing old cheats!

[@arvidhaag582]

I remember always using fish traps playing with aegis. Fish traps next to docks was amazing!

[@michaelandreipalon359]

And the best part: the cheats are still free and not DLC.

[@michaelandreipalon359]

@Emre Vural I see what you mean, but I don't give a darn when it comes to timed events though.

[@Nirual86]

I feel like that might've been a handy side-effect just from general changes made, since there are now factors in the game that can alter the farm growth rate itself via the slav bonus. Though its kinda interesting either way that they kept that mechanic at all, so it must serve some purpose.

[@MikeEmpires]

The new pro meta is farming micro management.

[@rentabledwarf578]

I mean, what else do you have to do early game?

[@azura8675]

@@rentabledwarf578 As is explained in the video, this doesn't make sense until handcart is researched, and by that time you don't really have the time to micro manage that much. Also, this requires a additional upfront investment of 60 wood.

[@DarkOmegaMK2]

Oh yeah because there isn't a lot to micro early game or anything...

[@EliasHasle]

@@azura8675 The optimal setup would probably not have two farms per villager anyway. More like having six villagers micro eight farms, or something. Dancing around the mill.

[@cytomegalovirusxTT94]

Hey guys, Spirit Of The Lawn here

[@karimshebeika8010]

didnt know I needed this

[@hazin9279]

😂😂😂

[@reaperxdarkx4161]

Brilliant

[@athada2]

Thank you for my new display name!

[@adosaro]

So you can garrison for 40s without any loss in food income This could be somewhat useful for late game raids

[@benmuller5618]

thats actually a good thought

[@anupammishra8374]

Yea so if you get raided lategame and idle your farmers for 40 seconds, 15 minutes later it would be as if the raid had never happened.

[@jefffinkbonner9551]

Teuton tower defense, baby!

[@brijekavervix7340]

Maybe raiders should start destroying farms to counteract this

[@CrnaStrela]

@@brijekavervix7340 finally, saracens archer bonus can works.

[@tomasangel797]

This farming saga keeps going deeper and deeper

[@JonathanMeyer84]

There's a lot of data to cultivate there.

[@rentabledwarf578]

Still waiting for the anime crossover with fishing traps.

[@temkin9298]

Next one is probably about if farm is viable ;D

[@LeftJoystick]

it is going to come full circle and we will all find out T90’s farms are actually the most efficient by far.

[@Michal235]

It's now even its final form... You can build a farm with Khmer hunters instead of the mill and make each of them work on this farm for 0.1s to make them drop the food. I bet there's a lot more stuff like this.

[@mattnasty3]

The extreme AI should take advantage of this.

[@DarknessTemplar6]

forget economy, micro, unit composition and map control... this is the real meta

[@petersmythe6462]

This is micro, helps your economy, and improves your unit comp by having it be less vills.

[@ErikvO]

Damn Spirit forgot about the most important situation where it matters: 256x tech mode.

[@Wannabepirate]

Yes!! It is most apparent then. All your other resources are flowing in rapidly except food and those farmers never drop the food off - you gotta hit the town bell

[@Gunth0r]

@@Wannabepirate FISH.

[@waterfallhunter9642]

New Meta- House walls around the Magic Square

[@Gunth0r]

Not for me. I do this all the time (with some 1 wall tile gapes for quick walling and logistics)

[@withinfinite5104]

3:17 man, those windmills are going into overdrive, that must be the slav farming secret

[@eduardo4235]

I remember the weird AI from before HD would lay down a lot of farms in the beginning of the game and not use them for a while. Maybe that's the reason behind it.

[@OverusedChewToy]

The first Age of Empires also had a cap on farm work rate (even with the steroids cheat which has the same effect as aegis in AoE2) so presumably they lifted some of the code from the first game into the second and modified it from there or at least drew inspiration from it. So the rationale for a gathering cap might rest way back in the development of the first game when farms were solid structures. It makes me wonder if it's there to stop more than one villager collecting from a farm at once (multipe villagers can do this in AoE1 but the second villager gets virtually no food from it).

[@Flavourius]

Secretly T90 is paying Spirit in the back to make videos about farming so he can justify his T90-farms. Well played, but not well enough.

[@TPerm-hj4sf]

You are a true genius!

[@SiteM16tv]

SOTL Back in the days: "Today I'm gonna Review the Celts. " SOTL Today: Still Loving this content

[@jefffinkbonner9551]

A hoe bunch of time must’ve gone into this video. Thanks, Spirit!

[@raspootin7555]

Any sneaky hacks to make you do a video about tree hp?

[@JNCressey]

Pros weaken trees with their T.C.

[@Goldenblade14]

Spirit, say "hey" twice if T90 is holding you hostage.

[@poppingfreshjpofboyn5654]

Hey hey guys! Krusty the clown here.

[@TPerm-hj4sf]

@@poppingfreshjpofboyn5654

[@michaelandreipalon359]

"hey" twice if T90 is holding you hostage.

[@Mic_Glow]

"competitive aoe2 farming"

[@hallo918]

I almost feel physical pain when I see this terrible "Rise of Empires" add before a SOTL video

[@theobsidiangaming5381]

Yep,the trailer is a complete rip off of AOE 2 DE.

[@JNCressey]

"this two-decade old game was very desirable on release" *shows age of empires on a beige CRT desktop, and a dvd case showing the age of kings chainmail king. How can they even get away with this?

[@jurgnobs1308]

@@JNCressey well, the mobile game farmscape recently got successfully sued for wrongful advertisement. this should be done a lot more, then such practices would die off quickly

[@ohaidare]

@@JNCressey because youtube cares more about advertisers than users&content creators

[@kodacv1612]

>using YT without adblock >lul

[@XzMondayNightzX]

"Beat the farming speed limit". Just read that aloud for a second.

[@justxavier9999]

1:52 villagers tea bagging the dead farms

[@arkalis_]

the villagers are tea bagging the farms to death

[@yannickvandervenne5270]

KZbin commercial before video : Stop deforestation to build farmland for mass-production. Spirit: Breaking the mass-production record.

[@andrewbrown6745]

Now I need to know how many villagers can build each building in less than 38 seconds so I can use all of my farmers to take advantage of this slight bonus of free build time

[@TCWordz]

This is actually huge

[@Infinite_Jester]

It still takes a pretty long time for the farmers to catch up and regain the resources that you've delayed. Still, I suppose it's better than outright losing resources.

[@zackestin1368]

To give a number to this, each 25 second house takes roughly 4 and a half minutes to catch up on food once finished.

[@zachariastsampasidis8880]

You should make a compendium on the farm mechanism one day. Also, stuff like this could help conceptualise a buff to crop rotation: increase the stored food limit among others.

[@juliannavarro3440]

I always wonder why the aegis cheat wouldnt work with farms, 15 years later I got my answer. Thanks, SOTL

[@agihammerthief8953]

"MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA" - farming villager with Aegis on

[@vincentturcotte3118]

Hey Spirit, just a random comment for you... after this video KZbin rolled automatically on Comment #6 you did in July 2019 and had the laugh of my life! I love your sense of humour and keep it up. Cheers!!!

[@Dewition]

Spirit of the Law. I have never played AOE2 and I’ve watched nearly all your videos! Love it

[@ThePeacemaker848]

4:51 YOU READ MY COMMENT ON THE LAST VIDEO! I mentioned that it's better to take a farmer to build something rather than a different resource worker. And we these details we now know why the distance to drop off point affects the food collection by so little. I think we might see a shift in very competitive play where you build a farm and then go make a building and back to farming. This is very good for khemer.

[@pierre-mariecaulliez6285]

SOOOoooooooo... It DOES teach us something (for the ultra-platinum-micro/macroers out there) ! It is less damaging to your economy to pull farmers out to build rather than other villagers ! Get on it people !

[@jarkkovahamaa7272]

Kudos to Spirit for also giving kudos to earlier pioneers of the farm hack meta

[@TirOrah]

"Competitive AoE2 farming" Yes, please. Oh, I'd also like to see people making the prettiest cities! Efficient ones aren't nearly as beautiful.

[@lordaloa]

I love this wholesome, friendly age of empires channel it's my favorite to come back to, even though I hardly play any AOE anymore.

[@unusual9026]

This answers my question on your previous video. Thank you, have a good evening.

[@srbishkrst]

Sotl’s new video about farma brought me here because he forget about (his own created word:) “15 food basket”

[@Jake-rj4tc]

I believe this feature was put in place to boost a farms output if its farther away from a collection point. But only for late game, since that's when handcart gives the boost that goes above the farms production cap. But also, this boost only works given a specific distance, because the farther away the farm is, the more time the farm has to cap.

[@Radmetalmonk]

Competitive aoe farming or other eco based competitions sounds fun, you may be onto something Spirit!

[@firockfinion3326]

I like when he triggers aegis in definitive and the villagers at the town center become intense metal heads.

[@Murtage33e]

This does help address the practical question for which villagers to remove from a task if you need more builders. All resources equal, the farmers should be selected, since their farms still produce while you are replacing them.

[@nanoboso3656]

Remember it only work with hand cart researched

[@PeteGavrov]

Gonna call you Spirit Of The Farm with all the recent videos xD

[@phdbot4483]

That's very interesting to know, especially that last bit, because I HAVE had my farmers make buildings before just because they were closer to where I wanted to put them! Now I won't too many regrets doing this as long as I make sure I don't slow down on the food production too much. :o

[@christopherg2347]

I think the 24 food/minute production rate was added, so it would act as a upper bound for the longterm. In the short term a building delay allows you get use out of the extra farming rate. But in the long term, it is capped at 24/minute. And the 15 storage cap was added, to not make this switching around viable. If it was not there (or much higher) the technique could work - causing a potentially annoying gamestate.

[@godshades]

What about if a slav makes a farm and then another civ steals that farm? Does the slav's 10% extra growth speed stay or does it switch back to normality?

[@herbertvonmuesli4274]

Nice question. I like these kind of thinking.

[@hanskrautenbichler5352]

I guess it says "farmERs" are working faster, not the farms

[@herbertvonmuesli4274]

This leads to the next question. Does the slave's 10% extra growth speed stay or does it switch back to normality when u steal a worker from the slaves? I guess it switches back but not sure

[@etuanno]

@@herbertvonmuesli4274 We need the answer to that question asap! Imagine teamgames where one Slav player seeds the farms for his teammates. That might make a difference

[@Mamenber]

@@hanskrautenbichler5352 The description says the farmers work faster, but the game data says that both farms and farmers work faster. Spirit even mentions that in this video.

[@sandmaster4444]

I think the most applicable way to implement this knowledge is based on what slothismysin shows at 5:29 : use farm vills to build houses, but one at a time e.g. grab farm vill, build one house, shift-task back to farm. So the micro time may not be worth it... which is especially applicable as this trick is only useful lategame given Saint_Michaels_ 's rates making it only useful if the farmer's gathering rate is >=24food/min.

[@jayvishnuvenkatesh870]

I would say this video was the best among all the farm ones. Luv u spirit 😊😇

[@Michal235]

There's one more thing... I've seen it during some Viper team game but I don't remember what exactly this hack was, it was something about taking allied farm... What was that? I wish I remembered. Also there's a thing with farms: khmers can take food from a deer and then start working on a farm for 1 sec instead of building a mill. You save 40 wood and a lot of work time as a farm is built in 2-3 secs. It would be awesome if you'd look for such mini perks and hacks and make one more farming video! Cheers

[@Tei]

I just realized that your 3 recent videos including this one started to have 60fps instead of the previous 30fps.

[@bryanandrews1652]

love your content man! keep it up! I have a video suggestion, in the event you haven't covered this somewhere and I missed it - could you do an analysis on when it's best to mill deer as opposed to long distance harvest them? How many tiles is the breakeven and make it worth milling them? Assuming lower level that isn''t pushing them, or higher level that prefers scouting info over pushing deer. Also, assuming no wheel - this is dark age. Would love to see you break this down!

[@hugosanvicente8808]

SOTL This si a Great work!! Thanks for all the videos!

[@nevermindmeijustinjectedaw9988]

already put this together from your other videos, i just didnt know the exact max food limit on farms. could be better, could be worse in both senses.

[@BobfromSydney]

Okay I'm so excited now about using farmers to build now!

[@ArchbardWava]

Next up: Spirit of the Law straight from a farm giving us seeding tips. 🌱

[@Calebgoblin]

Dude I am so here for your farming videos, lay them on me

[@Lightning_Lance]

*This Just In: Farmers Working Too Hard!* "Farmers would produce just as much food if they took short breaks every once in a while", says Spirit of the Law. Of the Law, a resident resource gathering rate expert, is well known for his previous work on lumber and mining camp (re)placement. Now he focuses on farming. According to his calculations, our imperial age farmers with handcarts are overworking their fields; taking more food than the farm ground can produce. This has no negative environmental effects, but..." READ MORE ON PAGE 4

[@SephonDK]

ok is it just me or is this the best shade ever sent towards a particular situation

[@69edbear69]

I imagine the easiest implementation of this that would gain at least some of the benefit is if you were planting new farms around a town center and the tc is making villagers to go farm. So you send one villager to build all the farms before starting farming on their farm, and then as each new vill is created, they are taking advantage of the “basket” of food that has collected. The only thing is that you have to have the upgrades and by then you’re probably not building more vills and tcs for farming.

[@Sceme1991]

If only 10 year old me knew that 20 years later I would still be obsessed about this game and to what extent one can take playing it.

[@jonahblaymires3482]

Good to know. Ive always struggled with who to take off a resource to build

[@Martnmaceda]

Spirit of the Law is farming farming videos

[@Gauss4724]

I see that the T90 Farming research grant is paying off. Spirit.

[@le_chiffre_]

I just realized how much I love the animation of the villagers putting the food into the baskets. It's so cute.

[@GepardenK]

This is the true reason why aoe2 is timeless: it's a better lemmings than lemmings.

[@petersmythe6462]

This might be worth it on post-imp 25 pop BF games where squeezing the absolute max out of your villagers is important and you don't really need to worry about raids.

[@markus5507]

At this rate Spirit may have world hunger sorted out by december

[@jqerty]

Spirit, you never cease to amaze me!

[@isezgz]

Kudos for giving kudos to others, that's the Spirit (no pun intended)

[@MikeEmpires]

Spirit of the law is enjoying the simple things in life these days. Just farming and chilling.

[@grammaton3773]

Farmers has random movement patern + they are gathering from left side of the farm. I believe this was supposed to flatten the RNG aspect of farming. That was probably reason of this mechanic. But its value was set so it does not remove effect of T90 farm placement (probably cutting handcart by accident). Also nobody knew about Slavs being added into the game aprox 9000+ years later and having this completly randon bonus (farms were supposed to stabilize economy across the board but Slavs didnt get the memo)...

[@metaalloy2131]

Hopefully this will encourage people to pull from farms before other resources for adding buildings. Those vills are safer and hopefully close to the site already.

[@einstein_711]

Aoe2 competitive farming let's go!

[@reeceengineering3560]

Interesting. I always used farmers to build and shift clicked them back to their farms. I had no idea that was such a good move.

[@Arkios64]

I mean, the obvious reason why the "growing" of the farms was likely implemented, is that it makes sense to work that way. Farms have an initial cost to set up, but after that they continually produce food, but only up to the point that they are fully grown. If they are not harvested, the plants simply live and die where they stand, dropping the recources back to the soil, enabling new growth, keeping the available harvest are "fully grown". Remember, in early development, wild game was SUPPOSED to ALSO be something that accumulated over time; basically working like a farm, that needed to be left alone to regrow it's food supply. Farms are simply more steady streams of food, less than a giant hunk of meat overall, but ALWAYS available.

[@rahulgr3167]

Oh lord, wherefore don't thee asketh dave the lumberjack to buildeth the next house, mine farming hands art did tire. Because spirit of the law, Jim

[@minikawildflower]

New farm meta - calculating the exact optimal location to build houses in farm territory to maximize building time

[@elmanhux]

Dayum right with the "much farming" on this channel! I kinda feel the urge to play harvest moon again! >:3

[@UnfamiliarPlace]

1:57 The headbanging power of these farmers though

[@sethheristal9561]

I want "You have underestimated my gathering power" anime farm clip with Slavs farmer with Aegis code at 1:58

[@GambitChess]

When 4v4 co op becomes a regular thing, one team member will be solely dedicated to farm micro, one to overall macro, one to micro, and one to production.

[@TheSaxRunner05]

Spirit of the Farm - agricultural tips for the new generation

[@Lopoi]

Now I want to see the pro farming tournament

[@theodentherenewed4785]

That required some advanced thinking to balance farms out, so that all civs can farm at nearly the same rate.

[@Carpatouille]

This is some advanced Minecraft tricks and techniques

[@volition142]

As son one who plays ai and abuses pausing this is useful the optimal is to have one more farm around your tc and rotate vills in a clockwise your counter clockwise pattern

[@sarimcmorrow5590]

for every game there should be a nerd guy who did all mathematics for us to improve thank you Spirit OF The Law ❤️

[@darkequation]

And that's how we reinvent Shifting Cultivation in AoE2.

[@XavierXonora]

I think there is a better application for this: take builders off FARMS instead of wood/stone/gold once you have your food eco sorted, because the farms will store food while the building happens and you will lose less overall eco idle time than any other resource

[@Nirual86]

Now I wonder how that mechanic works regarding farms being taken over by another player. Incase people don't know, you can send villagers to work on a farm belonging to an enemy, which will turn the farm to your side.

[@AgeofNoob]

4:10 - God level Micro to switch farms for each villager's 2 farms :D

[@DenisLyamets]

Even more resource micromanegement. Brilliant idea...

[@CountlessPWNZ]

appreciate the 60fps upload, my guy.

[@Juanguiii13]

This channel is so impressive! so quantitative and specific! you could work in IT or consulting

[@bjornlepisto1716]

So my takeaway from this is to try to always use farmer villagers to build houses or other quick buildings, and then maybe assigning a few more farmers than you need to compensate for the lost build time

[@FrogMast3r]

build a house wall around ur farm with farmers to save time and get abundant collective food... THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!

[@Binarokaro]

This is really hilarious not gonna lie, I love this obscure and completely impractical exploit that you found. When's the mod that gets rid of the farm food cap so you can have infinitely beefed up farmers?

[@macdam11]

So its better to first make the farms and then the mill? Interesting :)

[@ark_knight]

you are hardly making any mills in the late game though

[@ashmonkey2572]

@@ark_knight you should though

[@zachariastsampasidis8880]

@@ark_knight Are you laying 10 tc's or so in late game? You certainly need a bunch of mills when you need 80+ farmers

[@sevret313]

Having an Expert+ AI that did tricks like this and didnt' care about human like behaviour could be interesting, just to see how well it would outperform the normal expert AI.

[@RoshFragger]

Fun and informative video as always. :)

[@Balbok7721]

Microing your farms is the new Meta no Daut. He wants to give the other players a chance

[@Galva94a]

That is basically a real *crop rotation*