The Strategy that is BANNED in Tournaments! 

The best thing about this strat is seeing the Siege Tower put to good use.

soccersmed here, After this game we decided to do the same thing and matched up vs this same team. We did condo spam into each other and it was epic.

grey's reaction was perfect. i believe he's the one who saved his team. he saved most of his vills and managed a very fast reboom after losing his entire base. teal got damaged worse despite having a heads up and more time to prepare. I think surrounding grey's base with a few condos on each side to catch villagers might have actually sent grey out of the game for real.

A strong reminder as to why Goths never got an eco bonus for a very long time.

I remember the very first days of AoEII, me and my friends used to do this on matches, it was called Boosting or Sharing. We had a lot of fun doing that, I can see it being banned in tournaments but it is indeed fun to do lol, I never liked to attack and manage armies, so I always used to play as an economic support

Red should have waited 3 minutes, made 4 mobile towers and put 20 units in each of the 4 opponents bases at the same time.

This feels like a campaing scenario: You start weaker than the AI and have to hold the attacks until you are strong enough to fight back

I do agree that Red pulling a 4 way ambush would have probably been more devastating, but it also would have needed a lot more micro.

The purple player's name is "i don't drink water i do give tasty kisses" in spanish

My man literally unlocked the Zerg in AoE2. What a legend.

I wonder if it would have worked better if red had siege-towered condos into the others' bases more quickly instead of focusing on destroying 1 base at a time.

Huge skill to have in any non 1v1 game is rebuilding. Knowing how to retreat and rebuild as quickly as possible without getting in the way of your teammates can and will win you games.

I thought the idea of sling was to boost one player to post-imperial so they'd have all the potent late-game economy and military techs. But with the slung player not developing their own eco, all the other team had to do is stall long enough to reverse the advantage - which they did.

It's an interesting strategy, for sure. If Green and Blue hadn't been knocking it out of the park from the beginning, they likely would have had a harder time fighting off Red while Grey recovered enough to also be a threat. I wonder if they would have started that as they did, and Red focused purely on removing Grey. Once Grey was removed, he focused on his economy while his allies focused on developing themselves to the goal of it evening up into a 4v3?

Blue and Green's eco was insane, and with grey coming back like that, it's honestly hard to tell how strong the strategy is. And you're right, it all turned around the instant red stopped getting resources. The momentum stopped and blue and green pushed their advantage right away.

That was crazy. I was sure the American team had lost once teal was nearly destroyed. They did a hell of a job weathering that storm.

Super entertaining. You know, I played this game for countless hours as a teen but I could never play online with others but I essentially did this with AI teammates a long long time ago, constantly spamming them for extra resources so I could advance super fast. I loved playing as britons and would fast castle and just pump out yeomen faster than the AI could keep up with. I would have 150 yeoman on the field with a handful of trebs and just take players out one after the other. I was told that the britons were nerfed a long time ago but I think this system still works

I feel like this could be countered by attacking the slingers…2 petards and 5 knights should idle an entire eco. A second option, which is probably less viable, is building a second layer of war, and you wouldnt be able to use a siege tower to get over the second layer.

I knew about this strat once I was playing pilgrim nothing. We were 8 random guys (suposed random, later on most of us in lobby noticed) and 4 of them allied from start, but stood enemies to us the other 4. They slinged one of them and easily defeated us one by one.

Hey T90 thanks for more sleeping content. It's already past mid night at my place.

The main mistake red did was sending them one by one. He would've probably dispatched green if he didn't do that. But amazing come back from the US team.

its crazy how it already got nerfed multiple times before it even started being banned

Oh man I remember doing this in various RTSs that allowed this back in the 90s. The traditional glass cannon as seen in the video is fun, but speedrunning eachother in sequemce thru setting up a boom ecom while also teching up can also be very powerful.

We had a 4v4 on arena against a team with goths and italians. They went full sling to the goth player to let him flood condos. Doesn't exactly work when it gets sniffed and our team walled behind preemptively. Just BM on ladder.

I think having a weaker team try something unorthodox is a smart and interesting play. I think of famous generals in history who had to pull out the bag of tricks (or tactics) to win battles. However, a lot of those generals still lost the war. As strategically, they couldn’t overcome the inherent advantages or skill differences of the OpForces. Also, I note that this would be incredibly frustrating for two evenly matched teams… and I wouldn’t call myself a great player (or even that good). I would likely be pretty Frustrated

The Goth spam probably wins against most other civ combinations for the final two opponents. Boyar / Eth Arb is a brutal comp against infantry.

I'm so glad they turned it around, boyars are cool as hell. I love that in these team games the great wall strats become meta, always cool to see something such a newbie idea be the way to play. Thankyou for the video

Thanks for putting it out the T90! I would like to see a sling contest! Also looking forward to some of those wacky T90 vs. Dave with viewer buying things and all kinds of weird gia stuff popping up.

Teutonic Knights can have 9 melee armour in Castle Age so the Condos would only do 5 damage instead of 8 that they do against Boyars, AND they're hitbox is smaller so they're harder to surround(not sure if thats a thing but it probably is). Just saying that they would be more useful then Boyars 15:00

It's the Poop Lord strategy. Playing with him is so much fun. He comes up with some of the coolest civ plays.

Have seen this on pooplord vids and have done this strat quite a bit a while back when playing team games. Burgundians is a strong civ to sling also. We would often sling into imp then move 2 people to build up or sling on the other side and make army to help prevent the counter attack and be able to push from 2 sides. I also liked to build a bit more eco so not relying entirely on sling

Viper always said that when being slung, you don't stop making vils and eco until you can sustain yourself....

IMO sling is a fun part of the game, and if anything I wish we saw it more in TGs & tournaments

We didn't sling, but dravidian wootz steel with condos brought me and my brother back from the dead

Burgundians are the best sling civ now over Vikings I think. Burgundians can get their castle age eco techs in Feudal, waaaaay more rez coming in.

I used this strat 18 years ago with my cousins but it was common diplomacy with lan parties like that. Back before trolling was a word.

T90 ty for the amazing content. You work very hard to bring us good games. It’s a small community, and someone like you is essential to the success!!!

i faught this strat a couple of days before, it was impossible to stop, it was a little diferent tho, once the goths invaded one of our towns, the other team members stopped giving him resources and kept booming, which didn't gave so much time like it happened here... and the game became a normal 3 v 4, which defeated us at the end

If this wasn't banned in tournaments, the opposing team would just rush the goth player.

There are so many weaknesses to the sling method so I don't see why it's banned.

I don't think there's that much value to hiding this kind of info. You definitely held back long enough on this. If it really becomes a persistent problem with no proper counter it just has to be patched one way or another. This was an interesting game, thanks!

I like this strategy, because it requires team communication. Not something you can pull off with random dudes from the internet.

I busted out laughing at “teal not having fun, does not think this is funny” dead!

Few things to note: A) Huge amounts of resources were lost to Tax, so at an even trade, it was a massive loss. B) Not hitting Slavs first was a big mistake, spawn positions definitely gave some favours here. C) Mass slinging works great for the short term, but it can only be sustained for so long. If it doesn't completely knock someone out very quick it gets progressively harder to maintain. D) Everything that those Condo's were up against just eat them once the ball gets rolling. As for the Slinging Ban, I don't like that it is banned, but I would want it to be a case where players were allowed to sling resources 5 times each (shift+click counts as all 5). 15 slings wouldn't be enough to get this kind of momentum going, and it would create some play for trade oriented civs.

The long name was "i dont drink water, i give sweet kisses"

I want to see a tournament with only strategies like these

Very enjoyable game and casting as always, T90. Thank you for bringing that game to our attention!

Ahh I remember this resource stacking technique from way back in the day, when I was playing Supreme Commander FA! Pretty much was the go to strategy for everything 3v3 and upwards.

there should be a "you can only sling" tournament before devs nerf it

Awesome strat, the slingers should have sticked to attack just 2 and make sure one of them is finished. After that stand by until teammates catch up.

i used to play this style with my cousin over a decade ago. was easier for me to focus on a defensive boom while i slinged res to a quick spammer. and we've always wondered what if we had multi sling lol

Honestly, there's also the option of slinging a Portughese with team-victory and without locked-teams, having the Portughese fast-imp then build Feitorias in the allies' base, then help the allies fast-castle and get redemption to convert the Feitorias, so by the time everyone gets to Imp, the slingers' team would have a bonus of at least 1-2 feitorias per person, which would be destroyed to create more villagers when close to the population cap.

sling should be a game mode, 3 people with resource stocked bases, 1 person with a fortified military outpost per team.

What they should do, and hear me out - progressive tribute tax. The first time 100 tribute it's free. Then you pay 1% for the second 100 resource. Then 2%. Then 3%. etc. This way you can keep tributing, but you balance out slinging in general. I mean this is what you do with Market buying and selling. Just do it with tributes. That way you can still provide help in sticky situations, but you punish players slinging a lot of resources. Slinging a thousand resources is powerful, but it makes it much more difficult to close out games through slinging alone.

I don't follow AoE2 very often, but this match is hilarious. Very fun to see the plays happening from both sides.

Watching high level games where both teams sling could be really fun to watch! Still lots of strategies

to my understanding, red plays zerg....

If you want to see this executed well, @pooplord and crew have this down to a fine art. Well worth the watch

I'm having flashbacks to when i first played against the barbarian AI? (There were a bunch in there) in the original AoE2 fan patch. THE WAVE. IT NEVER STOPS!

This reminds me a Viper Arena game with Mayans and Sarracen allied that slung to hace 180 arbs with obsidian arrows

I don’t play this game or interact with it outside your channel, but I love this strategy. I think people should react to it and start bringing their own sling strats. I want to see two pre planned teams go face to face, really, because it seems like it’d be a totally amped up game, aoe on steroids.

Me and my buddies lost to this tactic 3 years ago. Enemy team had cumans, turks, aztecs and something else that I cant remember They slinged the turks and he had 14 range bbc + janissaries super early and just nuked our TCs before we could even make some knights. Our flanks were in feudal trying to annoy the others, thinking "yay! we're winning" until the first bbc shot

I remember watching team tournaments where fast castle into sling was used as a strategy.

Fire content bro, rerunning the old classics always fire

I don’t like the idea of this strat being banned, purely because slinging resources was how my dad, little sister and I all played the game back in original aoe2 versus the hardest computers, where us kids would be focused on resources while dad did the military. Ironically, my dad has never liked the economy part of these kinds of games, and to this day plays with either infinite resources or by using cheats at the start to give himself all he will need

It would be cool to see a team tourney where slinging is allowed.

31:52 KEKW that reveal got me so good lmao. How absurd.

14:48 Actually before that DLC came out, this strategy was actually the one and only multiplayer game I ever won (FFA with unlocked diplomacy, allied victory on). Idr what I was playing, Koreans maybe? Huns? Tried to secure some resources early game, lost a few villagers to sneaky raids though. However, my scout found that the Vikings to the north were building a massive force, and I wasn't going to survive if I tried to solo it. So basically ally Vikings -> Sling (they already had a small lead, so I pretty much just helped them expand it). Basically I kept a minimalistic force to not die while focusing economy and Slinging super hard. Eventually others put it together and formed a 3 player alliance against us, but too little too late. Also, the name is "I don't drink water... (something about wealth?)". Without looking it up. Looking it up the last part is "if I kiss up to the rich" (I had to make a slight alteration to the online translation just based on my judgement of what made sense).

I can see why this is a banned strategy in tournaments, but I could see it become a fun game mode if both teams would go into the game knowing that they would both sling. There had been entire game genres created from more weird strategies.

Think, maybe, if AoE2 devs implemented a change to tax, it would fix things. Make the tax more intense if you're sending resources up an age or make the tax start high and drop as you age up. Something like 40-50% in Feudal, 30ish in Castle and 20% in Imp without techs

I remember doing a similar strategy in 4 v 4 team games in Empire Earth back in the day.

This was crazy fun. I'd love to see another game with equally skilled players in both teams!

I love how t90 is a true American! He doesn’t even Google Spanish words because not knowing Spanish is actually a personality trait here! Terrific!

Red's allies should have moved into the bases as they evicted the enemy team, so once Red is forced to slow down. His team is in a strong position.

1 player focus on military, the other players focus on resource. Finally, feudalism in AoE 2

You need to do a sling wars tournament where in every game teams have to pick a player to sling and have sling offs

How is this banned?? It's called teamwork! Forget about forcing meta. Learn to adapt and expect teams to try things like this. Other teams need to work together too. Have support civs, ADC civs, etc.

I don't like things being banned in tournaments. Removing strategies only detracts from the diversity of the game, as opposed to balancing them. Nerf slinging, 100%. Maybe remove coinage entirely. Maybe up the base tax. Maybe add a market-buy-sell type thing where it gets less efficient as you send/receive more. Maybe add a piracy/banditry tech to the game, available in Feudal at the market, where you receive a small portion of whatever is sent by your enemies.

I love the cliff at Red's Left corner, very Aesthetic

Felipe's team needed better execution of the strat. Goths needed to mix in huscarls earlier to deal with arrow fire and help pull down buildings faster. For his team, the poles probably should've stopped slinging and gone up to castle after grey was knocked out, as he could then boom and expand his economy a lot. Red could've gotten by with two slings for awhile, and then the poles could've stayed in castle forever, only building economy and slinging to red/others. After red knocked out teal, the two other players could've stopped slinging and gone up to castle and make this 1 imp+3 castle civs, vs 2 imperial civs. That would've won the game I think. Also I am unsure on this, but I think red probably could've benefited from building 1 extra town center to help build up his economy during the slinging so that *eventually* he wouldn't have to rely on the sling.

It's banned because tournament hosts would rather show off good micro instead of good strategy.

This was very refreshing, but I wish there were more team game videos in general. I guess I should watch Nations Cup more.

That's crazy, I always go fast imp with Goths in team games with Italians just for condotierro. It's a crazy power spike for a short period of time

Knew it was gonna be dumping resources into a single player before I even clicked on the vid. This was a really common strategy back in other old RTSes like Starcraft. You'd have one buddy who was actually good at the game while the rest of you were clueless dopes, then you'd basically serve as additional expansions he wouldn't have to worry about managing himself.

"I don't drink water if I give yummy kisses" and "Felipe yummy kisses" cracked me 😂😂😂

I think that what makes slinging so powerful is that you don't have to coordinate. All you need to do is make sure that the three eco-players are solid on building up their ecos and that the combat player is a good player. Not needing to coordinate or even communicate more than compensates for the tax. You see the same thing with, for instance, tabletop war games with single players facing off against teams, or in the Archenemy format in MtG - everyone's playing by the same game rules (that is, the basic mechanics each player's using is the same as the next guy's - not the scenario setup but the actual rules of the game itself), but one player's the designated "big bad" and gets increased resources or some other benefit, which makes them a much more potent combatant.

I havent played this game properly in decades but the way you narrated the match was very entertaining.

I'd say the way to counter sling tactics in Fortress without slinging yourself is to, first of all, expect it and see it coming, second is having a player that with an UU that can really *hard* counter Condos in castle age and go all in that unit to stall, slow and maybe even push back the horde, Samurai, Jaguars, Boyars, maybe even Plumies too, I want to say Teutons too but condos can simply ignore the TKs, and teuton knights/longswordmen won't be enough. Viking Berserks are good but probably not enough. Third is that the player directly facing the Goth to brace for impact and try to a desperate hold out at any cost. Imagine if for a moment the American team saw it coming, if the Japanese would be the one facing the Goth, he should have got a second castle, obtain range, melee damage and inf armor in blackmith, and also get masonry, murder holes and ballistics, just for spam a gorillon Samurai, deeply entrench himself and make it as slow and painful for the Goth, buying more time for the team. Do notice that red never got a treb and simply razed the castle with condos, if you can force the goth to get a few trebs or a foward castle that's still a net positive.

Hey there! I just got into RTS recently, and i have never played with this game, but man its looks so much fun! Great video, thank you!

great strat, was very fun doing this in the 2000s

The Romans (Italians) Hiring Goth Mercenaries, incredibly flavourful.

This is more of a 3v3 strat. In 4v4 I’d feed 2 players and come from both the top and bottom at same time. Our team was rank 1 in Age 4 and we did all sorts of sling strats depending on the map / situation.

Purple's name translates to "I don't drink water I do give delicious kisses"😂

I always knew this strat as "funneling" and it has been used all throughout rts games. It's awesome to see in action.

Thank you for your work, Mr Editor.

I remember the War is Coming Grand Finals where the meta was to sling the Mayan player. 26:20 yup, kabb slinging as the vikings for Tyrant Legends vs the Tyrant Warlords. almost 10 years ago now.

Thats a crazy strat, interesting game, I thought for sure red wouldve taken them out but amazing come back.

Oddly I recall this same tactic of sending resources to one player in late 90s under original aoe and i haven't played it since early 2000s back when I had a win98se PC. Interesting to see how the aoe series has kept going and kept peoples interest for so long.

Never played Age but love your videos, always wondered if something like this was viable in the game.

Once red started the onslaught, for quite a few minutes of the match it felt like Xerxes's famed "immortals" army. Whenever a soldier died, another one appeared in it's place, it was like red was taking no casulties, just kept marching trough opponent after opponent. Seeing how grey and cyan were being obliterated really makes one ponder how did it end the way it did. Sustained waves of 50 then 100 then 150 military, sheesh.