Sneaky AoE2 farming hack for extra food 

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

Hey guys, Spirit Of The Lawn here

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

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

The new pro meta is farming micro management.

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

This farming saga keeps going deeper and deeper

The extreme AI should take advantage of this.

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

New Meta- House walls around the Magic Square

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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

"competitive aoe2 farming"

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

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

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

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

"MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA" - farming villager with Aegis on

1:52 villagers tea bagging the dead farms

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

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

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

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

Hey Spirit, just a random comment for you... after this video RU-vid 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!!!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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 !

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Spirit of the Law is farming farming videos

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

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.

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

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

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.

*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

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.

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.

Spirit, you never cease to amaze me!

This is some advanced Minecraft tricks and techniques

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

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

Now I want to see the pro farming tournament

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Spirit of the Farm - agricultural tips for the new generation

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Aoe2 competitive farming let's go!

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

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.

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

Even more resource micromanegement. Brilliant idea...

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

That is basically a real *crop rotation*

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!

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

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

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.

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

1:57 The headbanging power of these farmers though

appreciate the 60fps upload, my guy.

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.

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

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)...

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

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

If this was Starcraft Brood War, pros would be implementing this into their play tomorrow

>Badly placed farms aren't a big problem >Only works if your farm is placed ideally

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

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

*SPIRIT OF THE FARM*

Hey Spirit Of The Law, Guys Here.

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

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

Anyone else been plowing through Spirit’s videos, lately?

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

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.

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