Out4Blood & El_Cap's Rise of Nations Strategy



Thursday, September 25, 2003

Resource equalization during early rushes, part 2
Just took a look at some games of mine and compared the economic performance of my rushes with the economic performance of some "notable" players during the same period to gauge whether the theoretical numbers I posted earlier were accurate. As my base example, I used the
Clash of the Titans: TWC Shadowz vs Mossar Grunt
game. At each point in time, I paused the game and viewed achievements to see how they were doing economically. Shadowz's econ numbers looked like this:
Time    Total
1 min    212
2 min    593
3 min    1017
4 min    1577
5 min    2053
Notable points:
  • Both players had a second town by 2:02

  • Both players had researched MIL1 by 3:48 (Grunt came in at 3:39)

  • His library tech order was SCI1, CIV1, COM1, SCI2, MIL1, CLASS, MIL2, COM2, CIV2, SCI3
I then took a look at a few of my games and chose an example rush which demonstrated typical resource levels:
Time    Total
1 min    217
2 min    540
3 min    799
4 min    1073
5 min    1398
Notable points:
  • I have 3 HI in or near enemy territory by 2:00

  • I'm hitting the capital before 3:00

  • Capital is sacked before 4:00

  • My library tech order is MIL1, COM1, SC1 (after sack bonus), CIV1
As you can the difference in economies is actually more favorable to the attacker than our theoretical assumption of a straight boomer. This is probably due to the early MIL1 research by these two players. But as you can see, it would not have been early enough to stop the sack. At 4:00, the difference in resources is just over 500. But after sacking the capital, the attacker would be 1000 to the good. Meanwhile, don't forget to add the impact razing the economic buildings will have - attacker gets salvage and defender has to rebuild them. Consider the theoretical case of the 5:00 capital sack. At 5:00, the resource delta is 655. So the attacker is still almost 850 ahead. So the previously posted theory looks pretty solid.

Another interesting note is the possibility of a quick attack on the second town at the 2:00 mark. This is less devastating than going after the capital, but it also has a higher chance of victory. There's no chance of a temple. There's fewer villagers who can garrison or repair the city. And you will be attacking almost a full minute before the capital attack. While it seems absurd to pass up the sack bonus, the possibility of taking and holding this town is pretty high. The opponent will probably still be stuck at +60/60 econ and you can send villagers to repair the town and use it as a forward base. Not to mention that you've created a 240 resource differential. You've gotten a town for free while he's still got to build another and go MIL1 and build a barracks right away.


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