3. Let me elaborate on why I think the game pace right now is rather fast. I took an hour yesterday and examined the startup 300 res 4 civ 4 mil 1 scout from my point of view, mainly being the basics of competitive AoE2 gaming. The basic goal for me at the start was to get as much population as fast as possible. Afair that is achieved by constant shift (5) production at the towncenter. So I geared my eco only for that goal, to enable constant 5batch production right from the start, something along these lines: 2 mil on house 2 mil on wood 1 scout on hunt/chicken 4 vil on chicken/hunt 5 vil on berry 5 vil on wood (1/2 of those go to help building the next house) 5 vil on wood 5 vil on farm (if all other food has run out) etc, switch to soldiers for wood, then mining as soon as wood is spare after building houses, farm, and dropsite for wood. Something along these lines, far from perfect and has a bit idle TC time at the start, but I got the general idea I think. The constant 5batch production boosts population so high that once I upped comfortably to the next town level, I had 70 - 80 or more population. This is from a perspective without raiding / getting raided ofc. Now I didnt do this, but theoretically once in the next town level, you can add more TCs and militia barracks to multiply Worker production. Given that the civilian soldiers can also act as workers and the MAX population of this game currently is 300, one can reach this number oh so fast if you can keep up constant 5 batch production everywhere. The current gatherer rates, building times for units, and unit costs make it easy to support fast production of vast amounts of units. I will play around with this a bit more, but what I wrote earlier was the first thing that stroke me there: While the building times for buildings are good, either the gatherer times andor costs andor the building times for units could be upped a little bit. As I said I like the fast pace, I just have the feeling that the rate at which mass units can be produced could lessen the value of micromanagement, strategies etc in the long run. Hypothetical example - i dont know if this is accurate: We are dealing with territories. Player A makes an early army, sends it to Player B, small map. Now players cannot simply place forward buildings, so that reinforcements have to be produced far away then sent in. Player B can reinforce his army very quickly. Now soldiers of player A have to walk slowly across the map to reinforce, while Player B pumps 5batch reinforcements straight into the fight. So it becomes a contest whether player A can hurt the eco of player B bad enough to actually outproduce him over time. What I am getting at is that the value of units has to be strengthened a bit more, so that outproducing is not the only way to win. The level system for units is a great way in that direction, I absolutely LOVE strategy games with these elements. Now if costs, build times, or gatherer rates were upped a little more, the value of units automatically rises and so does the significance of losses, economical damage, strategy, micromanagement etcetc. Mind you I have no idea how the game is played atm in multiplayer, these were all impressions from my test run earlier.