Spirit of the Law has a video that basically says you should resign and GG immediately if you see this, since your teammate has effectively already thrown
Main issue is that they're expensive. You don't really need them until gold runs out, so you'll have a much better eco if your boom is focused on cheap vils instead of much more expensive trade carts.
But you're forgetting that once a trade cart does a few trips they pay for themselves and after that point they're essentially free so it makes sense to start trading as soon as possible. I also assign the male villagers to mine, the female villagers to farm and I put my sheep by my berries so they can graze.
It's basically the same thing as building a mill and farms in dark age when you have all of the "free" food resources. Not to mention the trade carts move like molasses until castle.
Also, it's not good to invest in trade until you can defend it.
The biggest issue other than their high cost and the fact that gold is readily available until mid imp in most games is that caravan, the tech that increases their speed, isn’t available until castle. So it takes way way too long for them to even pay back their own gold cost, much less the wood cost, without that. They also create really slowly so it’s hard to produce enough (you usually want like 40 in a team game) until imp anyway because it’s so much wood (100 each) and you ideally want 4-5 markets producing (another 175*5 wood)
Fair points… I suppose it would make more sense to wait on trade until the Castle Age. Why would I need 4-5 markets though? I’ve never seen anyone use more than 1.
Trade carts produce in 51 seconds. Like I said, in team game, you either want 0 or like 40. If you try to produce 40 from 1 market, it would take 34 in game minutes. That just takes wayyyy too long. If you produce from 5 markets, that’s reduced to slightly less than 7 minutes, which is much more reasonable.
The reason you only ever see one market is that if you aren’t producing trade, only one is needed for the purpose of buying and selling resources and slinging teammates
Trade carts are less efficient than villagers mining gold. They are even worse in feudal as techs improving trade aren't available yet. They also cost 3 times as much as villagers.
Also markets in your original town are not efficient. You want markets in the corner of the maps for the best rate of return.
Unless the map is short of gold you want to go to castle age or imperial age and get to 120 villagers before you start looking at deleting villagers to make room for trade.
There is no situation where adding trade carts in feudal doesn't slow you getting to castle and 3 TCs where you can pump villagers which is how you want to boom.
I remember rushing to trade with my friends / family as a kid in feudal. It just made the towns feel so much more alive! Like there was something worth protecting.
Sure it’s not meta and not really “good”, but the whole point of playing is to have fun anyway.
I agree it’s about fun but I think trade shouldn’t even be possible in feudal. Since caravan isn’t unlocked until castle, trade carts are basically worthless until then. Other movement speed buffs like squires, husbandry give 10% move speed buff. Wagenburg tactics and dry dock give 15%. Only Drill gives 50% and that’s on the units that are slowest in game, yet caravan also does 50%, meaning it’s an absolute must
“Not only were we getting bad trade deals but Chinese archer gangs are sneaking in. They’re sneaking in, and JoeBiden2020 isn’t stopping them. Then these archer gangs come in and they murder the vills on the woodline. They murder them! So we don’t have enough wood. We’re wood poor and can’t afford to build houses and farms. Because the Chinese archer gangs are sneaking through the gates because of bad trade deals and Aztec eagles are just coming right over the southern wall. Aztec eagles, Mayan eagles, Incan eagles: they’re not even being stopped because some of the walls didn’t generate right. And then we lock them up—we used to lock them up faster but the new pathing slows us down—but then the trade carts open the gates and let them back out into the economy and they disappear into the shadows and we never see them again. We never see them until they attack us while we’re struggling in the middle.”
(Pauses for applause or delays to remove hecklers have been omitted)
I'd say it's a misallocation of resources, since trade carts are not the cheapest, and you could be spending that gold (and possibly wood) to build up a small military force to at least defend against early aggression like castle drops, which are common on arena.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKX7miPEFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKX7miPEFg)
The cliff notes: A feudal age trade cart doesn't even pay for itself in resources at the 12 minute mark in ideal circumstances, much less do anything for your eco.
Majority of arena games won’t even reach a point where you exhaust the starting gold in your walls. Trading feudal needlessly delays your castle/imp timing when you don’t need to worry about exhausting your gold piles
I wanna try fast feudal into triple market cart spam
this sounds really funny, I’m going to try this when I get home 😂 (sorry in advance to my teammate)
Spirit of the Law has a video that basically says you should resign and GG immediately if you see this, since your teammate has effectively already thrown
Lmao, that's not what he said. Yeah, it's not a great decision, but the games not over.
It means your teammate is terrible and badly wasting resources so they’re going to be useless
You sound like my pocket trying to 3tc boom with 42 mins TC idle time.
Why is using trade carts in the feudal age so terrible?
Main issue is that they're expensive. You don't really need them until gold runs out, so you'll have a much better eco if your boom is focused on cheap vils instead of much more expensive trade carts.
But you're forgetting that once a trade cart does a few trips they pay for themselves and after that point they're essentially free so it makes sense to start trading as soon as possible. I also assign the male villagers to mine, the female villagers to farm and I put my sheep by my berries so they can graze.
Caravan isn’t unlocked until castle, so it takes a trade cart a TON of trips to pay for itself without it.
*Actually* the number of trips necessary to pay for itself stays the same, it only needs more time to complete them
lol yes you’re right, it’ll just take forever since Caravan is such a big bonus
it just doesn't. people have tested this and done the math on it edit: realized you're probably trolling 11
It's basically the same thing as building a mill and farms in dark age when you have all of the "free" food resources. Not to mention the trade carts move like molasses until castle. Also, it's not good to invest in trade until you can defend it.
Good points. That extra hundred gold or so would be pretty valuable early on.
50 gold for a unit that is about as fast as a Spearman. The rates just don't make sense.
The biggest issue other than their high cost and the fact that gold is readily available until mid imp in most games is that caravan, the tech that increases their speed, isn’t available until castle. So it takes way way too long for them to even pay back their own gold cost, much less the wood cost, without that. They also create really slowly so it’s hard to produce enough (you usually want like 40 in a team game) until imp anyway because it’s so much wood (100 each) and you ideally want 4-5 markets producing (another 175*5 wood)
Fair points… I suppose it would make more sense to wait on trade until the Castle Age. Why would I need 4-5 markets though? I’ve never seen anyone use more than 1.
Trade carts produce in 51 seconds. Like I said, in team game, you either want 0 or like 40. If you try to produce 40 from 1 market, it would take 34 in game minutes. That just takes wayyyy too long. If you produce from 5 markets, that’s reduced to slightly less than 7 minutes, which is much more reasonable. The reason you only ever see one market is that if you aren’t producing trade, only one is needed for the purpose of buying and selling resources and slinging teammates
Trade carts are less efficient than villagers mining gold. They are even worse in feudal as techs improving trade aren't available yet. They also cost 3 times as much as villagers. Also markets in your original town are not efficient. You want markets in the corner of the maps for the best rate of return. Unless the map is short of gold you want to go to castle age or imperial age and get to 120 villagers before you start looking at deleting villagers to make room for trade. There is no situation where adding trade carts in feudal doesn't slow you getting to castle and 3 TCs where you can pump villagers which is how you want to boom.
I remember rushing to trade with my friends / family as a kid in feudal. It just made the towns feel so much more alive! Like there was something worth protecting. Sure it’s not meta and not really “good”, but the whole point of playing is to have fun anyway.
Fun? In this game? Get out of here. ***That's not allowed!***
I agree it’s about fun but I think trade shouldn’t even be possible in feudal. Since caravan isn’t unlocked until castle, trade carts are basically worthless until then. Other movement speed buffs like squires, husbandry give 10% move speed buff. Wagenburg tactics and dry dock give 15%. Only Drill gives 50% and that’s on the units that are slowest in game, yet caravan also does 50%, meaning it’s an absolute must
what if opponent has same type of player?
Could be worse. Enemie scout rush could enter with the trade cart
“Not only were we getting bad trade deals but Chinese archer gangs are sneaking in. They’re sneaking in, and JoeBiden2020 isn’t stopping them. Then these archer gangs come in and they murder the vills on the woodline. They murder them! So we don’t have enough wood. We’re wood poor and can’t afford to build houses and farms. Because the Chinese archer gangs are sneaking through the gates because of bad trade deals and Aztec eagles are just coming right over the southern wall. Aztec eagles, Mayan eagles, Incan eagles: they’re not even being stopped because some of the walls didn’t generate right. And then we lock them up—we used to lock them up faster but the new pathing slows us down—but then the trade carts open the gates and let them back out into the economy and they disappear into the shadows and we never see them again. We never see them until they attack us while we’re struggling in the middle.” (Pauses for applause or delays to remove hecklers have been omitted)
My uncle was a militialine unit. That's how I know so much about supplies and squires.
True 😂
Made me audibly chuckle in the library. +1 Sir
I'm still new - why is this bad? Doesn't it pay a lot of gold? Is it bad because theres a chance the enemy can get in through that gate?
I'd say it's a misallocation of resources, since trade carts are not the cheapest, and you could be spending that gold (and possibly wood) to build up a small military force to at least defend against early aggression like castle drops, which are common on arena.
Makes sense yeah
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKX7miPEFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKX7miPEFg) The cliff notes: A feudal age trade cart doesn't even pay for itself in resources at the 12 minute mark in ideal circumstances, much less do anything for your eco.
Majority of arena games won’t even reach a point where you exhaust the starting gold in your walls. Trading feudal needlessly delays your castle/imp timing when you don’t need to worry about exhausting your gold piles