Age of Empires Forums

Just because I'm playing Britain and you are playing Japan don't think that you have the right to mess up my boom demanding that I make you 88 cows the instant I get to age V.

If I'm sending you sheep don't whine and cry that you want cows instead. Perhaps there is a reason that I'm sending sheep, namely that cows fatten faster and are better for my early boom.

Later on, perhaps, once I get my settlers out and my economy set up I'll trade you those sheep for cows. If not, well then just live with it. If you are playing Japan then you have to make some concessions for playing an OP civ in the first place. 

damn straight

l2p periko

sometimes when i play brit its a similar issue for me. except, team mate comes and eats my cows saying "WE TEAM MATES WE SHARE" and other stuff like that its annoying.

Haha, I get pissed off when I have to waste cow fattening time giving my teammate cows. I would rather just quit with how much it makes me cringe. Oh just the thought, and how I can't foresee the gain it would give to the Jap in the long run...

You would be better off just booming normally and feeding japan. The 88 cows you give are going to lose you 20 k or more in livestock down time and cost and it will take the shrines most of the game to recoup even the cost of the cows. Better to have someone else but Brit make sheep for Japan (Japan buys them, why should they be free?) for a moderate economy and let the Brit boom like he needs to and support Japan later if need be.

Below you can see that the difference between a sheep/goat and a cow/buffalo is only 0.14 - 0.11 = 0.03 resources per second. Multiply this by 88 and you get 2.64 resources per second difference, which is sort of like a decent trickle card.

This can be confirmed in an empirical test. A base shrine with four cows gathers at a rate of 0.70 per second, a base shrine with four sheep at a rate of 0.58 per second. (0.70 - 0.58)/4 = 0.03.

Sure, cows cost less and if you have a Russian, Ottoman, etc. teammate with a cow card then by all means fill the shrines with cows. However, losing that cow fattening time costs a Brit, so it's sheep or nothing if you want livestock from me. The difference in gather rates between sheep and cows is negligible. Remember too that you are getting a benefit from team fulling mills, your own shrine card and your shrine upgrade and wonder too. Sheep, llamas or cows, they might matter in a boom contest if you are trying to tweak the very most out of a boom but you probably won't notice the difference in a real game.

Animal gather rates

These rates depend only on the animal and are the same for all resources;

400 food huntables 0.07/s

500 food huntables 0.08/s

1000 food huntables 0.12/s

300 food herdables 0.11/s

400 food herdables 0.13/s

500 food herdables 0.14/s

well i always built a pen next to them and trained 1 cow at a time so I'm not losing too much, but now that I see the difference in sheep and cow gather rates, ftp no more cows.

OK, here is a test on Deccan, where I could get goats (same as sheep) and water buffalo (same as cows). All normal upgrades to the shrines (Kami card, Age IV upgrade, shrine wonder) here.

Sheep 1.21 resources per second

Cows 1.33 resources per second.

((1.33 - 1.21)/4)* 88 = 2.64, which is an in-game empirical verification of the above calculations. The difference between sheep and cows on your shrines amounts to a couple of trickle cards, or about two settlers.

I'm not going to mess up my Brit boom just to send you a couple of trickle cards or two settlers.

Yeah. Totally not worth losing cow eco as brit. I'd definitely ask another player to give them sheep.

I guess theres no chance of this perkino guy to justify asking for cows. We have metis giving % which would prove him entirely wrong. With storm and milky agreeing, Oh and of course lordstefan!

LordStefanIII:

I guess theres no chance of this perkino guy to justify asking for cows. We have metis giving % which would prove him entirely wrong. With storm and milky agreeing, Oh and of course lordstefan!

With storm milky and stef (some of the top 3 brit players) agreeing, I am fairly sure that there is no way any brit will give japan a single cow lol. 

Well the fact of the matter is that (at least in my experience) it is always impossible to get all shrines saturated with herds so sending sheep is worth it but yeah rather send sheep than cows it seems.

Well this is partly why I don't play random team games. Too often there is either bad communication(esp. when your teammate doesn't even speak the same language), or your teammate is just a goof.

Team with people you can trust, and always talk about what you're going to do before you start the game.

I dont think metis is right in saying that brit shouldnt give cows to a japan player in nr55, if you lose more then 1 full load of fat cows when you give them your doing something wrong. That will cost you about 10k in losses wich are regained in about a hour according to metis numbers, and if you give at 25min then at 1h 30 its repaid. And typical nr55 games take longer then 1h 30min.

Ofcourse its not worth quiting over, but cows are still a better option in my opion.

No, it's worth quitting over.