Age of Empires 4 - $20k GENESIS - TheViper vs TheMista - GRAND FINAL (Bo7)

uh gets the better spawn or at least that's the theory i thought it's always viper getting the better map spawn with that being said welcome to game number one in this best of seven in between the mysta and the viper on the right side is the viper as blue english and to the south west it is mr playing as yellow episodes this is an incredible series that we are going to be bringing you this is a best of seven series so if you're just watching this and starting it up i hope you've got something to drink uh and i hope that you have buckled up your seatbelts because we are about to take you on the ride of your life viper now going to be opening up with just all of his villagers on food at this point in time playing on the english mr gonna be doing the same thing and going for that early mining camp so not out on those berries just yet we'll take a look at the map spawn specifically i wanna have a look in the middle of the map we've got a little bit of a forest happening there it looks like it might be walled in completely uh how are these players going to make their way around this or through this can you see any way through uh at the moment i don't think there's a way through you can loop around this way or you can loop around this way but probably this is the shortest path in between the players kinda reminds me of the game that the mr played in the semifinals yeah it looks very similar but i think this is actually it's not a bad spawn i i will say that much obviously that middle is is just sort of uh you know it's it's just uh tucked away there but i still think it's quite reasonable both players are still going to be very close to each other um main thing that i am concerned about for the mr and this isn't a balance issue this is just me being concerned is his gold spawns take a look at that he's got three golds up on this northern face of his base so in the event that viper comes in puts a little pressure on this gold mine he's not going to have anywhere to run other than towards the eastern side of the map there is one gold mine that sits down there as well as a larger gold mine a little bit above that as well but uh viper gonna be able to lock that down very easily i suspect it definitely helps a lot for viper that his gold mines are a lot more spread out there is one on the right side there is one behind this base and this one is fairly well defendable as well because you can sort of fall off the right side if needed and this one is also somewhat vulnerable to your town center so this is a very well defendable backup gold mine if viper needs it and speaking of map spawns can i just compliment the map spawn or the map generation for viper right now literally every resource is behind his town center woodline behind the tc gold mine behind the tc stone out cropping behind the tc and then scroll down a little bit and of course you've got the berries that have spawned essentially behind the tc the only thing that's missing is the deer which isn't towards the back it's actually towards the front of his base so that is the only exception so really really nice spawn there proving that it doesn't matter what color you are it just matters if your name is the viper he's going up with the council only using two villagers to build it whereas on the other side as expected we'll have the economy wing coming in for mista going very heavy on vood it's possible we're going to see a second town center now he said in the interview that he probably would have gotten two dc is going if he knew that the map was this defensive yeah my suspicion is that he's probably scattered this one out are we able to go check and see whether he's got sight of that stealth forest just yet yeah he's got side of the stealth forest he knows that it's not too bad to get over towards his opponent's base and i think that he's probably gonna be looking to delay that uh he does have two villagers on gold so perhaps we'll see him opt towards a fresh foodstuffs opening and then look to transition into that all-important stone but at this stage he's quite heavy on wood isn't he he is heavy on food but even if he's not going for a second town center the alternative is that he can go double ranges he is going to need double arch ranges to match the archer production of the british player with the council hall yeah this is pretty big um the council hall is in my opinion one of the st landmarks or one of the best landmarks in the game and the reason why is just because of how effective it is so a lot of people don't realize that not only does it act as an archery range but it technically acts as two archery ranges being able to train longbowmen twice as fast as a normal archery range can so it's essentially like dropping down two archery ranges at the very beginning of the second age and the thing that's impressive about it is that you have to spend zero voodoo making that so you just age up with that in comparison the mr has to make the economy wink and then invest 300 wood into double archer ranges just to be able to match the same production yeah and now going to be going up with the economic wing we don't actually see any stone brought in for the mr at the moment no stone for the viper either so looks like it's going to be one base play for now we will take a look at the mister and see exactly what he's going to be starting off with as we spot in his base he does have some military buildings going down behind his base it looks like a double stable opening now viper's scout is hovering around towards the east of his base probably going to be spotting this one out almost immediately we'll take a look from his perspective he does indeed spot the stable going down towards the back side of the town center and viper now going to be looking to potentially add a barracks of his own to defend against this he is going to need the barracks but we also need to consider that a good mass of long bows is able to pick off horseband quite easily the horsemen have zero pierce armor by d4 so they die fairly easily to a big mass of longbows yeah so we might not even see a single barracks go down just with you know the potential for there to be a double step already we're seeing that blacksmith come out this is really nice from the mister being able to drop this blacksmith down we are going to watch him pick up plus one pierce armor very very early in this game four longbows already moving out down towards this uh this mill and gonna be aiming to protect it provide a little bit of cover and at the same time look to move out across the map keep in mind they are able to access each other's base through this stealth forest you do not uh you you do not have uh or you're not blocked off by going through this stealth forest now viper doesn't have a huge army right now and this is the moment where the horseman can really make a difference when it's only a small group of longbows the horsemen can really easily pick them off we already have the blacksmith up as well as the defense upgrade is on the way and this could be a great fight for mister yeah he's already looking pretty good we're gonna see some nice micro out here from viper i do suspect probably get some splits going he's gonna have to look a little bit like a gymnast but poke's already happening on that one uh one horseman he brings it back actually doing a pretty decent job at five hp so trying to get it into the mix and now that second horseman gonna be coming out and helping with a little bit of the damage and uh mr very happy that he would have been able to force those units back not take any idle time and take a look at this outpost very preemptive output he's actually got a couple of horsemen that he's going to be hiding in here very sneaky viper moved out with just a handful of archers so i don't think that he was expecting horseman against horseman you wouldn't really move out that much and once the defense upgrade comes in mr might be able to force an engagement here yeah mister's gonna be looking very strong keep in mind he's got units inside that outpost now vipin might not realize that there's units in there but so he is gonna be dropping down a barracks behind this keep in mind viper does love his uh his barracks play so we may expect to see some potential rams coming out very shortly set up camp now being completed for viper as well going to be able to heal himself up and uh look at this palings very very cheeky gonna use a couple of longbows to potentially bait out the enemy uh horsemen and then bait them back to the palings where you'd be able to pick them off taking out one of those villagers now on the south side this is very very smart by the viper that is such a viper move he knows exactly that the appropriate response from mister is to jump on those archers because you want to pick off those low amounts of longbows with your horsemen however mister doesn't have horsemen back at home to take them down simply because he's launching a counter-attack and not only that but can we take a look from the perspective of um his opponent the mister i'm curious to know uh obviously dropping down that outpost did he have line of sight of the palings being dropped down i think he actually would have had line of sight of those palings being dropped down so viper thinking he's got a five head but actually having a three head moving in with the archers is viper not a lot of damage to be done here you see that uh there is no voices on the right side that could be picked off mister gives up on the berries but he's got horsemen harassing viper potentially able to hit the gold mine here yeah he's looking pretty strong as he comes around towards this gold miner it looks like a blacksmith gonna be dropped down as well here but now gonna be forcing an isolation from this gold mine and preventing any of that gold income coming through he needs to get these upgrades in and he's gonna be able to sit on this gold mine and just have a little bit of a party while uh he waits for reinforcements the viper does viper needs that gold because he needs to get the attack upgrade on his longbows so far it looks like he's pulling back all the longbows but that's all missed the ones because the real problem for abba sits fighting the english is in feudal age once we get to castle age the abbasids will just love it with the men at arms and spring golds yeah viper's army looking quite formidable at this point as well he's got a whole bunch of horsemen out in his base as well as the five horsemen that are doing a bit of a raid over towards the east that have now evacuated out but uh mrs army looking quite formidable now scout's going to continue spotting out the enemy base and the enemy units and uh whose position do you favor at this point i think i like mr's position at time it better although it depends on how aggressive viper is going to go because viper can still pump out archers like crazy fast and turn this into a very good ram push but i feel like if this game goes long that actually favors misters yeah i'm of the same mindset as well i think the longer this goes the more advantageous it is for mr keep in mind viper does have access to the king's palace as a potential age up landmark a very very strong landmark uh but interestingly mr putting down a a tower in the middle of the map in it a kind of a weird spot yeah that's a weird spot indeed because there's just no way to cross the middle there it would have been way better either on the right side or the left side i think he knows that this is not crossable so it's a little surprising there from mr maybe he's expecting a little bit of a sneaky viper snake move through that forest he could expect a slithering of some sort of uh units coming through be very active it's actually very quick to go through that forest if you want to you just got to send out one villager to do it and micro it for about 60 seconds and he'd be straight through so players can look to do that it's always a possibility yes especially when you're fighting viper plus of course the fact that you believe it's close doesn't guarantee it's closed we have seen games where you thought it's closed and then suddenly you get killed by a bunch of knights yes games that you actually lose because of that uh but now down towards the south of the map we see a continual expansion by the mr moving out with just groups of five villagers everywhere and i do like this from kim so we see five villages up on these berry bushes here above his base we see five villagers moving out towards the middle of the map and keep in mind this map is lippini so you're going to see extra berry patches so as the game continues to move forward viper is going to need to add farms mr isn't going to need to do that because he's very happy collecting these berries he's got very bonuses including the double bonus for berries which gives him 100 more berries in his berry bushes and he's also got 25 percent gather speed on these as well viper doesn't have a lot of mobility for his army so the fact that these vultures are spread out pretty much guarantees that viper won't be able to deny all barriers from his opponent as he's moving in from the right side yeah now we'll have to look and see as to whether the viper actually spots out this expansion down towards the south he looks to be moving up around the north and uh face and he is going to be spotting out these villagers managing to get a volley off and taking out the first villager the remaining villagers are going to manage to make their way out mr looking like he's in a pretty solid position but he is trying to get up to the castle age and that this has come at the wrong time for him he needs to avoid fighting until he is able up or up to that castle age but look he's got quite a decent composition here if it comes to it i think he's actually got enough units here to be able to put the viper down this is just enough units to scare viper away he doesn't want to take the fight but he can take the fight if he needs to and as you said it's all about getting that castle agent that very bonus helps him get a decent amount of food in and he's going to be the first one to click up to castle age by far yeah there's a huge amount of difference between these two players uh so he's gonna be able to click up to castle age and have a window a timing window here and it actually looks like looks like the mr is sizing up his opponent right now viper's gonna be careful the mister is definitely jostling for a potential counter attack or not a counter attack but a little bit of a flank and viper what is he doing right here is he trying to bait out his opponent with this smaller force it's a possibility but mr doesn't need to fight this one at all he can just sit back it's not like viper is threatening him at all but mr continues to come in gonna have a little bit of a collapse here viper dropping down the healing circle got paling set up on the back line as well and he needs to be careful because those palings they're gonna do a lot of damage viper definitely happy with his performance here and really using those palings to great effect so splitting up his army baiting out those forces from the mr and then getting them to come towards those palings and mr obviously respecting that and saying hold on a minute i don't want to fight around those palings but they're going to do too much damage to my cavalry mr retreating for a time being as he's planning a counter-attack notice how viper was hiding his scout in the stealth forest helps so much to find those counter-attacks and he can react to it immediately yeah viper doing a great job here just really keeping an eye on all spots of the map and you can see that that horseman manages to survive having that plus one armor really helped him out in that situation now viper gonna be looking pretty decent but keep in mind his opponent is heading up to the next age have we got any sign that viper is heading up himself it seems very unlikely he's going double barracks and we also have quite a lot of long boost coming out he's just spending all his food on units he's added a second tc liter core i don't like this i don't like this at all and part of the reason why i don't like this is because as the english the king's palace is a second tc and it's also an age off and so now you're in a difficult spot where you're committing to the second age your enemy's gonna be up in the third age you're gonna be fighting downhill or uphill rather against your opponent and be in a very difficult spot and you can go for that king's palace to look to age up as well but then you're gonna be on three tc's and if your opponent sitting on one base that's a window that is a big window for your opponent to attack you to kill you and have we got has he chopped through or has he just made his way around oh he just made his way around he's got to be careful looks like mr is not grabbing the upgrades just yet no veteran horseman no defense upgrade yet looks like he's a little low on resources for that instead he's making manganals oh no viper is going to be in tough positions right now that was a beautiful magnel shot just cleaning up all those spears on the front line manganell reloading beginning to move forward as a couple archers move back towards that springhold and viper realizes he might be in trouble as he needs to get up to the castle age and he needs to get up right now that's a difficult thing to do right now because he also needs to reinforce his army if mister gets those castle age upgrades and viper is going to be in a pretty difficult spot mr once again going for a couple of camel archers he went with the poacher ring again so that's a little surprise did he go with culture wing again did he he did the scorcher ring oh my i don't know why he's got he's gone up now twice with that i feel like military wing is much better in these situations but we'll have to wait we'll have to see what he's able to achieve uh he's going to be moving in now with the manganese and looking to potentially siege down this fortified tower take a look at viper's tower 2000 hp on this bad boy gonna be an extra tanky boy but he's gonna be careful as he moves the springholds into point-blank range and takes out a villager and now gonna be tanking that tower ever so slowly a battering ram would help quite a bit here for mistake but of course he wants to spend all his food and gold on mangano's plus of course sprinkles some lancers coming in and that's the real problem that viper is gonna face soon a wonderful composition at this point from the viper or from the mr rather uh viper now gonna be going up with the white tower so once again a player going up with the white tower it's rare that we see this landmark coming out and now that manganese gonna continue firing down we do see four units inside this it's just a bunch of spears horsemen got to be careful as viper looks to pick up a couple of units and trade out with them but not managing to take any of them down and now the battering ram continues to batter down the remaining parts of viper's base viper knows he's in trouble that's why he's going up at the fight tower but the thing is that mr can just change the angle of attack and hit this part of viper's eco and still be very efficient yeah he's looking to take down some houses viper's got plenty of population space at the moment he's got to be careful though this house goes down he's going to be down to 110 population and there is a second house that does remain and we can actually see mr moving towards it and a manganese shot landing on the mana arms not doing too much damage at the moment and the townsend are gonna be begin firing on that that manganell so now behind this i'm curious to know has viper got a springwood queued up viper he doesn't have anything europe he's getting the defensive spring hold at this point i feel like network of citadels would be the best thing for him he needs that extra 25 attack rate boost when he's fighting close to his base yeah i'd also love to see from him in addition to that look at all the spring old towers that are coming up now from viper he's got one spring or tower uh second tower is coming out or second outpost coming out viper actually canceled the springwood on his uh white castle to the south uh so he's gonna be just looking to continue to make springholds here but doing a great job the mr is as he continues to build up this siege force on the front line mr right now at the 38 army quite a decent amount of lancers in now with i believe the defense upgrade as well no he's still missing the plus two defense he's got plus one is it gonna be enough for him uh he's the enemy does have veteran archers so it's important to note these guys are gonna be putting out a lot of damage so any armor that you can have is gonna help you out but now viper probably gonna be losing this second town center i don't think there's any way you can really hold on to this he's bringing a spring goal and then there's only one battering ram that's quite heavily battered viper will lose his spring gold in the process though i think at this point viper needs to sacrifice this dc to buy himself some more time yeah this is a tough position for viper because he didn't go up with that king's palace he has only got this as his only expansion so by losing this it's going to even up the town center numbers we can see the manganese just trying to take out those uh those sprinkled towers over towards the northern part of viper's base and having quite a bit of trouble with that viper is trying to transition into minute arms here we are seeing an increased amount of minute arms hitting the field but those will still struggle against the lancers here so i believe mr's unit composition is still far better yeah mister's got a lot of different units we've got horsemen scouts in there as well a couple of lancers we've got archers on the back line that just continue making this siege sprinkles manganese rams you name it he's got it the only unit he's missing at this point uh are spears and and uh mana arms viper's got a lot of long bows though but he's already forced to mass migrate so at this point the problem is that his economy is falling apart yeah now mr being pop capped a little bit but uh managing to now train it out and we can see the difference between population between these two players as mr continues to come around the back of the base of viper and really respecting that white tower and forcing himself to stay away from it that white tower sitting at the front of the base and just making sure that he doesn't go anywhere near it gonna be coming in for the infrastructure of the viper at this point and looking to take down those houses that's going to be annoying for viper especially considering that he had to relocate his entire food income those pringles will be able to take some down some of the rams though yeah a couple sprinkles are going to be able to do or dish out some damage here on the back line uh but the main concern that i've got is those sprinkles coming up now from the mr we see them moving up managing to get out one shot it seems like but managing to actually do a pretty decent job and viper once again doing a great job with the micro on his spring hood actually gonna be able to take out that ram viper also intercepted quite a lot of reinforcements here with his longbow force he's looking to turtle this out but behind this he has actually fallen behind an eco it's 57 villagers right now for him mister is at 65 and i believe mr is still one down center yeah so not even adding a second town center so losing a fair amount of villagers there as well as obviously losing a second town center for viper so he's in a bit of a difficult spot now does mr he seems not to be pressing his advantage he's moving his whole army very slowly springholds moving up towards the north looking to intercept it they get a couple shots over on towards that lancer at the north side and viper now looking to close in and seal the deal for him look how many lances are on the front line i'm a little bit concerned right now for viper because all of these lancers are going to be coming straight on top of the arches of his opponent is there any way that viper holds right now he needs to retreat to the range of the white tower that's his only chance his archers are spread out he could try to deploy the failings but he's getting pushed back quite relentlessly here do we have any technologies that have come through on this white tower if we got any potential boiling oil that comes out no we do not we don't even have a sprinkle at this point the network of castles still not being upgraded to the citadel's upgrade and now we see a battering ram going to be going down for these archers on the back line and viper falling back to that castle and being able to hold for the moment but with battering rams come in that's going to spoil the end for him undoubtedly the lancers are still missing the plus 2 defense which starts to be a very annoying problem for mr because with that he could easily take this fight without it's a little bit sketchier it makes it difficult for mr are we able to take a look and see whether he's got that upgrade coming through surely he should realize at any point there it is finally coming in wedge rivets gonna be giving him that plus two ps armor and really helping him out are we able to take a look from viper's perspective has he got that that plus two armor just or plus to attack just yet through his blacksmith he does not indeed have that uh no plus two upgrades for anything actually he's actually just getting military academy gonna look to reduce the train time on all of his military production buildings definitely makes sense but once again we see a player dropping down a siege workshop when they've got the white castle which could very easily be making that uh sprinkled instead so white castle or white tower uh is is down here uh and then sprinkles and a second siege workshop coming in players just failing to realize that uh that their white castle can actually be utilized to construct sprinkles viper is very very heavy on stone so it's possible he wants to store this game out with another defensive castle in the north and just play a slow game mister will see that and viper is gonna have to react this one with his peers yeah a little villagers here on the back line stone miners as well as gold miners and gonna be chasing them away with the spears these do look to be upgraded spears veteran spears invite for dropping down tc and giving that information to his enemy as he does it as well so now gonna know that he is looking to expand as well so once again that opens up a timing window for the mister when you when you drop down a town center that right there is a significant point of investment because you've literally just invested 700 resources that you can no longer build sprinkles with that you could no longer get the springhold emplacements with that you can no longer upgrade towers with and on top of that you're going to need to invest further resources in villages viper is moving into the right side getting the network of castle's bonus expanded to all the way up his hill looks like we might have missed the moving in soon though with just a single battering ram for the time being yeah this battering ram could spoil the end for viper once again uh we have seen battering ram pushers get shut down by all those sprinkled towers so perhaps we'll see the same thing villagers now on this front berry patch no outpost to be saved and unfortunately they're gonna try their best to get out of here getting chased away with a couple of spears and now moving down towards the south reaction from mister is to pull back his forces which i believe is perfect for viper he just made his opponent withdraw his entire army from the siege just by probing her this berry patch killing a few wills yeah very very nice moves there from viper and i i suspect that uh the mister is not going to be too happy with the way that that that one has been played but now mr going to be looking at doing some multitasking multiple raids going to be hitting the viper as he's under attack in different parts of the map actually towards the main base of viper as well there is a lancer that continues to attack underneath that main town center and we can see it's now been cleaned up by those sprinkles that uh the spring was now looking to get out on top of these lances and really we can see this is this if there's one word i would define this tournament as i would say spring oats absolutely sprinkle is currently looking very very powerful it's a great general purpose unit that also happens to counter all other siege now the night numbers are getting very high for mister here it's soon pretty close to just jumping on the entire army of viper no matter the circumstances yeah viper looking to slowly get that massive sprinkles up you can see sitting up about that six seven sprinkled mark right now if he can look to get that up towards double digits he's gonna be in a very decent spot even against a significant mass of knights just because obviously the citadel uh or the uh tower of castle's bonus is going to be buffing up those units making sure they fire extra fast looks like the economies are still pretty close one thing that mister could do is drop a siege workshop and get some trebuchets out because that would help immensely taking down the white tower taking down the dc and these are the three landmarks to destroy if mr destroys these it's game over yeah i would love to see that as well my main concern is in the event he does go for a trebuchet he's not really going to be able to defend it against a a sprinkled snipe so we would need to see maybe even a forward castle come in for him or a forward keep uh combined with a trebuchet that way he'd be able to hold out because otherwise that trebuchet is just gonna get sniped down by those sprinkles you can see the sprinkler bass really beginning to build for the viper and keep in mind i've said this before i'll say it again springboards really are the uh the anti-air of the the uh the land if that makes sense so if you can have artillery superiority you can maintain that over your opponent and it means they can't make manganese it means they can't make bombards because you maintain that superiority because of your sprinkled mass and that's what viper is looking to achieve right now we've got three manganese coming out for the mr which is enough to one shot any infantry unit by the men in arms mr is looking to try and control the gold mines here and start viper out of gold viper pretty much deplete this gold mine at the back of his base this one is being overseen by the lancer and the right side one is also getting depleted so soon viper is gonna have to make a move to secure some more gold for himself yeah viper is gonna be in a bit of a difficult spot unless he secures that gold we see the mr actually camping on both of those gold mines and really looking to shore up his line of sight down here towards the south as well dropping down another outpost and veteran upgrades gonna be coming through for mr and now we've got ourselves a little castle on the hill ed sheeran taking a a notepad out and gonna be documenting his experience here with this castle that uh mr definitely gonna be happy with the line of sight it provides and the dominance it gives it's a beautiful cast that also overlooks this sacred site and speaking of sacred sites mr could force viper to make a move just by starting to control all three sacred sides because it's definitely an option for him yeah one of the things i noted when this game started uh was that the sacred sites are actually pretty favorable towards the mr a couple of them down towards the south very accessible to him whereas that one on the north a little bit more favorable towards the viper mr looks like he might be getting raided a bit back at home but manganell shot oh my god manganese go back please go back oh my lord the manganese on the hill they're gonna do it oh they're gonna do it on the stone mine taking out all the villages on gold he's found himself a nice little angle here right now that's a beautiful angle imagine if he can get trebuchets up here he is literally gonna be able to sit up here with impunity i think this is the literal definition of the hill advantage that you have over here viper will be forced to make a move soon as he's moving to the left side all the spring holds i wonder if he wants to push this side does he know about the keep uh he does he does okay he must have is there outpost line of sight on that keep uh what is he looking to push that keep with because i'm assuming boiling oil has been 100 research by the mister he is no slouch when it comes to that upgrade it would hasn't a little bit of a slouch right there mister what are you doing mate letting yourself down letting the team down right now you know a little nice raid coming in on the top side as well viper looking like he might be in a bit of trouble here but i really feel like the walls are closing in on him absolutely he's got so so limited map control and this castle also protects this gold mine so viper is starting to run out of resources not only gold but also food look at this this food line is getting close to being depleted mr could contest that and on the north he doesn't have a huge amount of wood to work with so in like the next 10 minutes or so he could run out of wood that's a really good point uh there's obviously the wood in the middle he's got to be careful with that wants to avoid an overchop there but yeah three forests to work through in that direction but now triple rams gonna be coming out for the viper looking to secure his point here realizing that he needs to not only secure a woodland but also needs that late game gold spearman coming from the north as well mister has some knights here to defend the viper's got quite a lot of spearmen to support and mrs army is on the wrong side of the map right now for this fight yeah no real way through the center either he's gonna be in a tough spot otherwise he'd have to walk past that white tower you and i both know he doesn't want to make that trek so this castle is going to go down village is getting chased away by some spears and it looks like mr just trying his best to regroup a lot of infantry here for viper and my main concern at this point is that if one manganell shot gets off the game is finished it is indeed the case there is viper moving up to secure that hill with the castle mr is doing some raiding but i feel like the outcome of this battle will be decided by the upcoming fight yep i've definitely got to agree with you there and mister definitely heads into it as a favorite he's got a significant military advantage a lot of units begin to fold their way through the stealth forest as they begin to hit the front line manganese shots going off on those spears and looking pretty decent as he's coming in from multiple sides a huge flank coming in from the north at the same time with a whole bunch of lances managing to connect and viper right now is in disarray as he continues to be chased throughout the game heading towards that castle there's remnants of his army that remain but unfortunately it looks like it's been completely exhausted as manganelles now begin firing at those units as well mr is looking incredibly strong in this game one and i think we might have a little bit of an upset on this game one what do you think littecore mr they're just disintegrating five percent army viper dropping to 30 army but that will just drop even further once viper has to fight those lancers i don't think that mr lost the significant portion of his army in that fight that was just the perfect surround using the knights incredible surround and we did indeed see an overmake of longbows here we talked about it before the game we talked about early in the game and we have definitely seen a little bit too many longbows made at this point and this is so many nights that you can just start running in the range of down centers just jumping on pcs with your lancers you see mistakes even splitting his forces focusing down villagers focusing on the town center i think it's only downhills from now on here for viper has viper got veteran spearmint yeah they okay they are veteran uh he does have the plus two armor as well uh but he's gotta be careful as this siege force now begins to move up i love how i love how mr is moving up all of his forces together it kind of looks it looks very funny because they just move so slowly that uh obviously doing that to keep them safe uh mister now gonna be taking out shots on those sprinklers losing one man canal it's the manganese gets a shot off it looks like it misses those spears but now we're gonna see into the north of the battle that uh those knights are looking to regroup down here with the main forces and so many nights here i think he could probably just take this fight considering the upgrades that he's got more knights up towards the north and really looking overwhelmed at this point it looks like viper has got less units than his enemies got knights and that's never a position you want to be absolutely the castle's getting denied viper losing all the villagers and he's dropping below 100 population this is the end for viper in game number one and he calls it gg over to the mister a little bit of an upset in the first game a lot of people coming into this game thinking that the english would have the advantage with the mr definitely showing his skill right there with a single town center throughout that 32-minute game was viper a little too passive here he had a pretty big mass of archers but he sort of just tried to play a double down center game and allowed mister to get the lancers and that was really the the the uh the difficult spot as soon as i spotted that second towns and i said we have a problem this we're now moving into this final game 15 seconds to go ladies and gentlemen if you haven't already make sure you get your bet in for those juicy juicy egctv channel points i'm going to be watching as the mongols take us in to this first game or rather second game in this series with that we are welcoming you to arabia to the north we will have the viper playing as blue mongols and down south mr is now playing red as the french yeah so mr not on that yellow anymore so i'm not going to be able to get that that spawn a little bit of a pause at the moment that is normal as these games do start keep in mind these are live games so that is why you're seeing that little that slight little pause and mr opening up with a lumber camp immediately one of the things i mentioned is that you may need to go for blind outposts on your gold mine and that's exactly what we might be seeing right here as mr looks to outpost up the entire part of his base he will need to looking at the gold mines of mr his safest gold mine is at the back of his base though and it's very easy to wall off the left side so it's more than possible that we're going to see a wall here on the left and just try to focus on defense on the right side yeah one thing to note he's keeping all of his buildings very close to his town center what normally what you will see players do is they will go and send a villager out to their gold put a house down with that villager next to their gold mine and then a gold camp or a mining camp next to that gold mine and mr almost losing his scout there that would have been terrible for him now moving up towards the north this could be bad for him he may lose this scout on 36 hp it's gonna take another 17 shots at 17 shots i'm gonna have to do the math here scout actually gonna be healing up never mind he's gonna be fine yeah it looks like the con actually has lower damage output than the healing rate of the scouts so mr will get away with that one more volley from that thousand and he loses that scout it was very very close to being good game before it even started is that a second scout coming out for the mister it is indeed the second scout something that he loves to play with he's probably going to play the professional scouts build as well here so he's looking to ferry in some deer from the more distant parts of the map yeah a really smart move from him to be able to do this because it's going to guarantee that he's got a safe food source against this mongol player it means that he's going to be able to avoid berries as well and not have to limit himself but now we actually spot that barracks coming down we talked about this earlier so we may potentially see a an early uh tower coming out here for the viper i'm very curious to see what he's looking to exploit here in this early game one thing that i'm noticing is that viper is still not on gold so it looks like he's going to have a pretty long dark age here he's coming in with a couple of spearmen is it possible that we're just going to see a full spearman rush to deny that goldmine i think that's what he's going to try for and now we actually see exactly what i pointed out i'm really glad that i got this one i tell you what i made a lot of predictions so far today not a lot of them have been right but now we've got that villager that's going to be coming out looking to place down that tower and take a look in the base of the mr we have an outpost coming down on the opposite side of the gold mine so this is going to be able to defend this gold mine completely it's going to mean that his opponent viper isn't going to be able to get any guaranteed effect from his enemies from his outposts viper's game plan is absolutely amazing here as you pointed out the problem for him is that his opponent's map is just very suitable for his defense and i love this palisade over here if he extends it a little bit more to the north it's pretty much going to prevent viper from towering that gold mine and he's gonna have a super safe gold at the back yeah we're able to take a look at the perspective of the mister and just see how much of the map he's uncovered so he has actually scouted out did he scout that barracks from his opponent is that why he knows i think he scouted it out but it's a spectator box so we can't tell for sure but i very much suspected because he had his scout close to the oval so i'm fairly certain he saw the barracks yeah okay so viper's rush getting shut down before it even begins we see an outpost or a tower coming up but uh this is really not gonna be effective uh viper does actually spot this wall coming out so a bit curious that he is going to commit to this rather than look to change his tune now here's the deal that wall is nice but it's still open on the right side and spearman can come in and this gold mine is outside the range of the town center so if there is no one garrisoned inside the star the spearman can deny the entire gold mine speaking of denied we've got a khan going down ladies and gentlemen that is quite early it did get its movement speed off but taking a few too many hits in the midst of really punishing out his opponent there okay here comes the school of cavalry mr accidentally pulled all the lumberjacks as well but even without them that is at least six voyagers in fact it's seven building that school of cavalry he wants to get up to feudal age really fast here yeah this is a difficult spot for him and we can see those spears sitting there jostling but keep in mind those spears are gonna have to deal with this outpost viper did scout this outpost and he said you know what i'm still gonna try to take you out there is probably a little window that he can look to uh put this outpost down but it's a difficult spot because this uh is coming up very very quickly uh but a second outpost now gonna be going down not the right direction for him he needs to needs it to be going in the other direction i think he's playing for food denial at this point he probably understands that he can't deny the gold entirely as mr has a scout inside a tower that also provides an arrow so i guess that's the idea behind it yeah there is a little spot that he could be placing down an outpost but mr actually going to shore that up and make sure nothing comes through no sneaky outpost shenanigans i think he identified that hold on a minute the angle that he's coming from i could potentially lose this gold mine and he doesn't want to lose that uh spears were looking to move in but uh have decided against it keep in mind the viper can always sneak villages up towards the north side of the map or the west side of the map now going to be able to get up to that second age the mr is we able to check on viper see how he is doing with regard to his age up deerstones 50 of the way at the moment not too long to go for him before he's in that second age as well he's got to go up on the hunt and so far mister will be busy defending so viper should have a fairly safe hunt in fact viper is garrisoning all the spears inside the towers waiting for the knights to come out but it looks like there is simply no knights here for mister he's a little low on foot for that yeah he's doing pretty well at the moment keep in mind those scouts are moving out across the map we don't have any mill just going down at this point but he's going to need quite a fair bit of gold if he is going to be looking to afford that keep in mind he is playing french there's that mill and he is going to have not only a reduced cost for placing that mill it comes in at half cost he's also going to have a reduced cost for his economic tax by playing the french so it means that that professional scouts technology is going to be much cheaper for him than for other civilizations like the fact that he's dropping this mill over here is just a clear signal that all he wants is scout hunting because this mill is not on any kind of food source so it's all about grabbing that professional scouts upgrade i think he wants to blame the hunter balls of viper on this side yeah really smart move from him viper obviously investing a girl to come out here place that one down so if he's able to deny that hunt or at least reduce it he's going to be hurting the economy of viper even if it is a little bit it's going to mean that he's going to need to move onto pastures sooner rather than later power is not up for viper over here also harassing the outpost of mr but the key thing for mr is that his economy isn't getting pushed right now yeah he's very happy right now uh this is where we have seen mongols beat the french in most of the cases it has been in games where they've been able to access that economy and get in there disrupt it and cause a lot of pain to these players but today with the mr playing on the french we have seen him take a very cautious approach placing down walls preventative outposts and it look it's taken a lot of resources to invest we actually see him dropping down a second gold mine or a gold mining camp brother uh on the opposite side of his uh mine and just making sure that if viper looks to push in here that he's going to have that secondary camp to be able to go to he also has two towers in here which means he can garrison all the nine voters he has on the gold mine and now he's up to four scouts so he's looking to take those hunter balls in viper won't be able to stop this yeah now gonna be able to pick up those uh those lovely deer gonna be able to bring them back 350 food on each of those guys and keep in mind they do gather much faster than their sheep counterparts uh so it is very nice for him to be able to do that now we see those spears moving out uh to try and look to deny this but mr gonna be very happy this is definitely gonna power his food economy for at least the next two to three minutes that is definitely a nice approach for mistan you did mention that mister is playing very safe that has been his playstyle for the entire tournament and it just helps so much when your natural playstyle is something that is causing problems for the mongols yeah this is absolutely huge at this point so one of the things to note uh with these players as well is that even if if viper looked to deny this hunt that he would be able to move out into onto the map and look at taking other hunts as well so potentially denying the hunt from his opponent so we see those three remaining deer gonna come in now seizing up or shoring up that entire hunt but uh undoubtedly going to be looking to grab the rest of the hunts that are out there he does have four scouts that are out right now and this is going to skyrocket mister's economy at this point it's 1000 for both players and viper is already forced to invest into pastures which is not necessarily ideal plus of course faster working town center for the french helps quite a bit taking an eco lead for mr yeah that's a a massive point mr now going to begin diversifying out into archers here and really securing himself in this mid game as we transition both players not really looking to hit the castle age at this point but mr has gathered up 704 gold so there could be a potential window for him maybe we could take a look at the incoming uh resources uh or yeah income per minute and there we go so we can see mr look how much food he is on per minute so a lot of villagers out at the moment he does have survival techniques researched and uh there is the potential for him to actually click up to the next age uh but uh spending a lot of his resources actually a whole bunch of gold just uh i actually know that that is income per minute i take that back let's take a look at current resources 700 gold now for mr so i don't know whether that's miss macro whether that's just a man who likes gold it's probably because he wanted to grab the hunting upgrade first and he was like okay i'm going to make knights i'm going to make the upgrades so i'm just going to have like 6 seven eight nine villagers on gold and he only recently pulled the villagers off from gold leaving only five yeah that would make a lot of sense obviously the gold has always been the question mark when it comes to his build order so the fact that he's sort of used his advantage in the early game to guarantee that supply mine it out as much as he can and then he said you know what i'm going to need to age up at some point i'll just keep it banked up that way if he does deny my gold i can still age up behind this now here's where this gets interesting because if mister decides to invest a lot of resources into castle age vikr could easily punish that he already has a decent amount of orchards and spearmen in here soon will be boosted by the yum speed all the way around here and the push is very possible here in fact for viper he's got a blacksmith top and he doesn't have the siege engineering upgrade just yet yeah it's kind of wild isn't it the fact that he's going to be able to potentially push in here no siege engineering upgrade just yet so uh we're still going to see a while before those rams come in but take a look at the food income right now for the mr sitting up on almost a thousand food a second or a minute rather but viper now pushing in gonna be taking out some villages of the mystery he's got to wake up as three villagers go down on that tree line the fourth village are gonna get picked off on that lumber camp and a difficult time for the mr viper looking to even up those economies let's take a look and see the village account did he manage to even that one up we've got 36 for the viper his opponent the mr sits on 40. so still a bit of a way to go for him but uh nonetheless a decent trade there for him he'll be very happy with himself it was a much needed trade because otherwise the french could just carve out an even more significant eco lead and it looks like misstop on seeing viper's forces coming in decides not to go up to castle age and just start adding more knights and also grabbing irendermash yeah there's a lot to say about this one uh now viper is looking pretty decent he's shoring up this defense and you can see he continues to add outposts around the base of the mister if viper's able to get up to the next age he could potentially add a whole bunch of sprinkles in here and really just keep the mr locked into this base what i love about this for viper is that he's going to cut off the path of the scouts so mr won't be able to ferry indeed any longer and the entire foodie over mr relies on those deer being brought in consistently yeah well speaking of food inco or food income brother we can take a look down towards the south of his base because he does still have access to these berries in fact he hasn't even touched these berries just yet there obviously are units down here but the mr actually realizing hey wait a minute i can actually take this out there are arrow slits on this bad boy but it's not going to take too much damage for him to do that and now gonna look to seize up this bottom side and he's got plenty of resources down here for him to access not only this one berry patch on the south side of the map but there's also a second berry patch down towards this back corner and a sheep that's a that's a consolation prize i'd say here come the rams though from viper and this angle is more than exposed this side is well defended by the tower center but this left side could be pushed really heavily yeah this is a little bit concerning now for the mr he is moving down towards this side but his mass continues to build up he's got a lot of uh enemy units to deal with that is for sure but i kind of like the mrs position at this point despite the uh the score drop or the score difference between the two players keep in mind the viper is playing the mongols a civilization which notoriously is a little bit bugged at the moment when it comes to score so ignore that score gap i would say at the moment that uh scores are quite even uh irrespective of that little gap indeed viper has a quite sizable army right now with 48 army and mista is sitting at 33 looks like viper is thinking about committing but there is a big force of knights looking to flank once again yeah there's a lot of spears out as well for the viper i've been doing a great job of just making sure there's a balance between these two and take a look on the back side we've got the guild hall going to be going down now mr has taken out all the towers back here so viper is unaware that there is an age up in process and mr wants to make sure he is able to age up before he takes this fight this is you do not want to be aging up and fighting at the same time because you are fighting in lieu of your upgrades it's jostling for position now underneath this town center as two battering ramps begin to batter down the hatches we see the knights on the front like getting getting uh skewered by their opponents as the spears managed to connect and there's a lot of spears underneath here but i don't know whether it's going to be enough as the scouts now get on top also distracting the spears as those spears get recalled and now move towards the front line and take a look at the knights now that begin to overwhelm the spears on the front line it looks like mr may be able to clean this one up that is just an absolutely beautiful fight for mister and viper did everything perfectly he braced his spearmen and actually canceled the charge of mysta now mister is not only cleaning up the archers but he's up to castle age and all he needs is just a defense upgrade and things could start snowballing and this is exactly where the snowball begins once you take out those spears from your enemy they're going to need to create not only twice as many spears as you have knights but they're also going to need to make up the difference because you've already got that night advantage over their spears and this is where the snowball begins and i love how there's a road leading uh there's a very faint road leading from the town center of the viper out towards that outpost of his enemy and uh now we see that trickle beginning across the map as viper really looks to put the uh the nail in the coffin uh so to speak but he's got to be careful because he's lost the majority of his siege he's only got a few archers and a few spears that remain viper is not far away from castle age either his opponent now has veteran royal knights and we are even seeing cantal settles come in mysta still has to hit this timing here because viper is getting close to castellage and if viper gets to castle we are talking about an even game here in fact the second townsend is already on the way for our blue player yeah viper going for a second town center a lot of pastures back there as well we'll take a look what uh what he looks for he's going up with the step redoubt here i'll be honest i i sort of expected the cruel tire coming in just considering how big viper's economy is going to continue to grow throughout this game with the second town center and definitely viper showing his uh his prowess when it comes to booming isn't he absolutely in fact i feel like he feels confident with his army for the time being plus the two dc's that's why he's going for the step without almost up the castle he is so as much as it felt like mr could have the game snowballed out of control it just doesn't seem to be the case anymore because viper is almost up as well yeah i agree with you completely viper has still managed to keep his head above water despite investing so many resources in the early game in these outposts in these towers and he's managed to do pretty well managing to get up a second town center also getting up to the third age now so gonna be looking to get those upgrades in hopefully you saved up enough resources for it we see he's doing a bit of market trading right there so probably gonna be getting that plus two upgrade in we'll take a look at the blacksmith and see whether we can spot that upgrade coming in no upgrades in just yet have we got any potential there's the veteran upgrades coming in for the spears definitely a wise choice and i wouldn't be surprised to see some crossbows getting thrown into the mix here that should be legitimate edition for him for now he's focusing on the spears and i think i like the fact that he's adding the veron upgrade first and not the blacksmith upgrades he will soon add probably the attack upgrade just so that his arches will perform slightly better but it looks like we're not seeing any more crossbows from him yeah i wouldn't be surprised to see that uh beginning to come out the main concern i've got is though how does his enemy so how does viper deal with manganese being added because at this point we've got the possibility that there's going to be knights there's going to be archers you're throwing manganese into the mix and now you've really got something difficult to deal with so we may see a potential sprinkled switch we may see that mana arms plus springless combination that we have been seeing throughout the day that is a potential thing but vipen now picking up veteran upgrades for both his archers as well as his spearmen and looking to transition into that infantry based composition in the castle age as well the unit compositions currently are very similar to the previous game and that was a problem for viper in that game look at this group of archers very sneaky but i think that uh viper has spotted that out keep in mind the scouts have got a little bit more long range yeah you can see right there they've got a slightly longer range when it comes to looking into stealth forest so you might be thinking he's doing a sneaky right now mr once again uh demonstrating that his uh his big brain is not so big the mystery's got a scary amount of knights now and as i said the compositions are same as the previous game this time around however those royal knights even get a bonus attack after a successful charge so this force is even scarier than the lancer force was in the previous game have we got cancelled saddles uh research just yet for the mister he started castle h with that wow okay so really going to be doing a lot of damage once he gets into the fight so you can see the importance of having those spears in the appropriate formation and making sure they all get down and they get their skewers out and they put him on the barbecue it's really important that he does that because in the event that those knights come through and they do collect that charge not only are they going to be getting 13 additional damage for their first two hits but they're also going to be uh doing a whole bunch of damage on that charge you got the skewer out and they don't do that damage they don't do the charge damage either indeed it's just extremely important to get those spears down but it's also a difficult thing to do especially if you're getting attacked from multiple directions because from what i've seen viper is using the brace ability by clicking the stand ground button but that means that he needs to face the knights directly because the spearmen will brace their spears in the direction that they're facing the moment you press that button yeah it can be a little bit difficult getting it to work there's also a bit of a delay when you do that stand ground as well so if he is managing to do it and get it off with the stand ground then he's definitely you know not doing it the optimal way but uh we'll take a look now towards the north of the map as viper is under a little bit of siege here needs to call stevens cigar i think our is gonna go down i see a couple of crossbows mixed in and that's the place where mr could be in trouble yeah he's gonna need to respond to this with a mangano i think that's gonna be the appropriate response but attacks happening all over the map at the moment now down towards the south it looks like a little bit of a raid was happening is that a third town center that was going down oh my lord please viper don't tell me you're making a third town center playing the mongols instead he decides to go for sprinkles and now i feel like viper's army is growing extremely huge he's at 63 army as opposed to mrs 41 yeah viper actually looking very strong right now in this mongol match up against the french and honestly if he pushes in okay i'm actually thinking this might be good game for the mister this is the issue springholds so part of the reason why the mongols are so damn strong at the moment is because they're able to construct this siege with their improved siege engineering and you can see now this sprinkled mass is gonna be very difficult for him to deal with because the counter to springboards when the the army mass is this big it's not pretty it's we're talking fast imperial to try and deal with this because you're gonna need to have royal cauldrons out dealing with these sprinkles and you're just not gonna have the time to do it speaking of fast imperial mistakes floating a lot of resources which is a pretty significant problem right now he's not going into imperial but he is also floating a lot of resources that could be spent on army yeah you can just see the khan out from them the uh the viper at the moment really looking to scout this out and more sprinkles gonna be going down on the front line right now plenty of resources in the bank for viper he needs another 20 gold is going to be able to drop that down a second sprinkled now we've got four springers out on the front line and viper doing his best to try and siege those down on the front line also mana arms going to be engaging with the knights and trying their best to block that one off but keep in mind there are crossbows here springholds continuing to work their way through the hp of the enemy knights but it's a difficult spot as these arches are steadfast the knights finally gonna be able to connect with the archer ball but keep in mind there are crossbows in here and the mr realizes he needs to react he needs to have something more in here this is where the manganese needs to come in there is no uh way that he wins this fight without that maneuver and we do see the siege workshop sitting on the front line we don't see or hear him any manganese at the moment have you heard that whiplash yet ludicrous he had a mangano that got sniped by viper absolutely amazing move there from him to snipe that before it could get a hit out and as you said the crosswoman are just tearing apart the knights here of mistakes dropping in military population at a dramatic pace i tell you what watching these matchups between the mongols and the french it really makes me start to respect the mongols a lot more throughout this day we have seen mongols as a constant top top tier pick and i think in every single matchup against the french they've won so it really goes to show that not only are they just a counterpick for french but they are just an incredible all-round pick viper now coming out with some of rather mr coming out with some villagers and looking to siege down these springholds it is a large last ditch effort from him the difference is that if you look at their unit recall for mista it's almost non-existent whereas if you look at viper it's just a flood of units and he's doing this without the double production yeah he's doing a great job sitting up on about 400 stone at the moment so he's got plenty of resources to invest in that if he does want to but this siege workshop a little bit too far forward i suspect because any units that come out of this are just going to get picked off immediately mister's got to be careful if he lets this unit come out he's just going to die almost instantly and that's exactly what we see now the the springhold's coming out we can see it getting focused down viper going to be looking to get both of these sprinkles on it and unfortunately going to be losing that sprinkle not even able to trade out with a spring out of his enemy yeah that was very unfortunate there and as you said the crossbows are just doing such a good job taking off both the minute arms and both knights when you have some meat shield in front of those crossbows they really deliver and the springboards are just tearing apart whatever has left off mrs army he taps out and viper evens the series out very well played from the viper now that he's won with the mongols that's going to be eliminated from his map or from his pool his civ pool very well played from him and congratulations to all the faithful for viper winning all those egc channel points we take a look at the village account towards the end despite the mr being on one tc that entire game he still manages to maintain an economic lead for most of it considering that viper was actually sitting on two tc's for a significant portion on the other side it is a massive achievement from viper that he was able to prevent mr from booming away a lot more often times the french will have a much higher vulture count than you do so the fact that viper was able to keep it even is a massive accomplishment and in the end of course the unit flood for the mongols just ground down the forces of misstep as we jump into game number three here we'll welcome you on mountain pass on the left side is the viper in blue and on the right side is mister as mongol was in red yeah mister going to be starting off by placing his town center right down next to this tree line a little bit of a pause there you guys will see and keep in mind this is a live game that's why we've got that pause coming in because the players have only just gotten into the game themself bringing back those sheep over towards his town center going to make sure his villagers are on that one as soon as possible and we'll take a look at the mini map or rather the map and and see exactly how the spawns have occurred for the players uh it looks like this spawn is pretty balanced i would say little we've got two large gold mines down the south two large gold mines of the north double deer for each player on their respective sides boars on both sides large stone for both players sacred sites at the north of the map markets on the opposite sides of the map but everything is looking very even at the moment one thing that remains a questionable is as to whether we have got uh any ability to transition through this middle other than uh other than the direct middle so it looks like it's completely closed off from the southern side the northern side almost looks to be closed off take a look at that one it is uh there's a forest that is almost blocking that little entrance now keep in mind the mongols don't have access to walls so he's not gonna be able to wall that one off is gonna be mainly coming through this this main choke point and we already see a stable going down for the mr the choke point in the middle is quite wide so this would be very very difficult to viper to fall off and of course the mysta can't even involve with the mongos pulling the stable close to the uvu and we're mostly going to see scouts i believe here trying to set that gold mine on fire interesting you reckon scouts ah yeah scouts would make sense i agree with scouts uh just simply because he is the kind of guy who is going to do do we see scouts here yeah it's gotta be scouts it's surely gonna be scouts scouts boss champs scouts scouts okay here they go oh no it's scouts it's scouts uh okay so scouts are going to work here why are they going to work here because he is going to be looking to secure his hunt he's playing up against the english and he's very cognizant of a potential push that may come through so probably going to be seeing a an early professional scouts he loves this technology he gets it in almost every game that he plays and it's going to be no exception here i totally agree now we have two civilizations that both benefit from the presence of towers so whoever gets towers up here in the middle either for the english player to get the network of castles bonus expanded here or the mista with the yam speed will have a massive advantage when it comes to taking fights around the middle yeah that's really important to note uh so it's gonna be important for these guys to make sure they extend that creep out there that's the best way i like to think about it if you've ever played starcraft and you've ever played the zerg think of those network of castle bonuses or the uh or the yam network bonuses just like creep and you want to extend those out using your uh what are they called creep tumors for the zerg in starcraft 2 i can't remember what they're called in uh starcraft 1 but uh the sunken colonies that's the name of those bad boys and spore colonies but anyway focusing more on this game uh let's talk a little bit about how these players are looking to transition into the second age we've got the viper who's gonna be going up with the council hall almost certainly i will take a look at his base and see that he has dropped it down with one villager two villages three villages on that at the moment uh and it looks like he's just gonna be a very happy campy camper with that the mister on the other hand yet to drop that down but gonna be looking to transition in the next minute or two as we sees now up to almost 200 gold viper sticks with two villagers on gold so it's likely we're either going to see some economy upgrades or potentially a fast blacksmith for him he's moving on stone so he's preparing for a long game yeah one of the things to note that uh with this build order is actually by taking the stone uh if mr scouts that he is going to be very very happy and i think this is this becomes concerning for me so this is twice that we're actually going to see viper on the english and twice we're going to see him going for a i'm not going to say an early town center because this is the first game we're seeing at super duper early town center in this series but he did go for that second town center as the english in that first game that we watched um and obviously there was a window there it did get punished it's going to be the exact same thing here right now viper is giving him a window and uh it looks like mr will be climbing through that definitely mr hasn't really been aggressive with his scouts in fact he has been just hunt scouting for hunt so i'm fairly certain it is indeed going to be professional scouts and just try to join as much hunt as he can from viper's side give him an advantage yeah i suspect that's also gonna be the case now we actually just saw mister down towards the south scout that stone mine now keep in mind the line of sight on these scouts is quite large he had double scouts just underneath that gold mine he does spot the stone he would have clicked on it he said okay he's on one oh he's on one base he's going for two that's fine i know exactly what i'm doing the mr puts his game plan into action and so we can expect to see what do we expect to see from here little what's your suspicion i think he can think about the second town center but he doesn't have a lot of vultures on boots so it's more likely we're going to see an aggressive gameplay in fact we're seeing some horsemen coming out he's probably going to try and steal as much hunt as he can from the viper and then just put one scout in this stealth forest one over here see if viper wants to cross if viper is not really aggressive he might drop a second down center if i replace a little more aggressively then he's probably gonna continue with horsemen yeah that is my suspicion as well as we see has he got a girl dropped down anywhere at the moment is he gonna be able to get that professional oh there's the girl right there so professional hunters coming in any second here it comes three or professional scouts rather three two one count us in here it comes there it is there it is here it comes there it is scout's now coming in and uh he's going to be ready to steal joint this hunt away now my suspicion he's going to take professional scouts and he's going to go straight up to castle h i don't think we're going to see any more units out of him we might see a handful of horsemen just to look to take out you know any sort of stragglers but viper is on two tc's and he knows he's got time so now that we see these uh these long bourbon coming out i i do expect that it's gonna be some time before viper actually makes the decision to push out viper is coming out to the second pc close to the hunt something that mister could easily join and when you play two town centers you're usually placing your second dancer on the hunt simply because the biggest bottleneck you have is food income so if mister is able to pick up all that hunt from viper space that's going to cause viper's problem arrow slits now getting completed for the mister and this is very curious arrow slits uh are we able to check exactly what happened with that it looked like they were researched back here he's gone arrow slits i'm i'm curious what do you think might happen i guess maybe just securing this gold source but very curious that he's gone for arrow slits so early here in the game mr is one of those players that loves to prioritize safety as much as possible so he isn't shying away from investing a lot of resources into just some additional safety yeah one of the things to note is he has upgraded those horsemen now professional scouts has come in so he's gonna be looking to clean up all of those uh those deer towards the north scout gonna spot those uh returning back but uh five longbows looking to make their way out now keep in mind there are plenty of horsemen out on the map right now so we could look to see them push that back but it looks like they're just gonna be heading back towards the center with the khan who's sitting safely inside the stealth forest the horseman gameplay that we're seeing from mr is actually very similar to what we have seen in the first game and it worked out nicely against the english blacksmith gonna be going down now for the mr i do suspect he's gonna be looking to get up to the castle age sooner uh rather than later and then potentially uh look at moving into that improved uh the what's it called improved uh so uh that's my expectation of what is gonna happen in this game uh very similar to his play style that we saw on the uh the game that he played against marine lord uh the game number five on boulder bay i would expect that we're going to see something similar so he's going to look to age up and then get all of those sprinkles out and really just build up a nice sprinkled mass and dominate his opponent i totally agree with you in fact if you look at his resources he's getting close to castle he's even grabbing survival techniques so his food income is going to skyrocket right now looking at the economies better gold income from mr is also a sign that he wants to age up faster than viper does yeah viper sitting on two tcs it's gonna be a little while before he's able to prioritize getting up to the castle age also going to be investing more resources into farms here so we see multiple farms going down three farms coming down on this back tc on his top tc's already got farms going down there as well uh but uh looking like they're being placed slightly outside that uh that radius and yeah take a look at those uh those little longbows that are just slowly sitting there with their palings out on this northern front waiting for any cavalry to charge in them daring them to charge speaking of cavalry here come the horseman mister is trying to probe around and see if there is any villagers that he can pick off but he doesn't need to be very aggressive he's getting very close to castle age with those resources and once he gets to castle age manitoba springs can be something that the english struggle against quite badly in castle yeah this is going to be something that really is is very potent against them and keep in mind that one of the reasons why mana arms and sprinkles are so difficult for the english to deal with is because if they want to try and match that with their own mana arm sprinkles they can do that but the issue that they're going to have is that the sprinkled numbers numbers from the mongols is going to be so great that they are just not able to overcome it and once you have better springboard numbers that translates into a win over manat arms as well because if you have some sort of meat shield in front of your sprinkles like your own men at arms they will just pick apart vipers minotaurs so that's gonna be a concern for viper especially knowing that he's gonna get beaten to castle h quite badly here yeah how are we doing on current resources for viper he's sitting at about five or about 500 food or 600 food less than 100 gold now just hitting that three digit mark himself so he is going to be behind the curve when it comes to this he's got plenty of villagers over on mining that goal but it's going to take time before he gets up to that next stage now we see what's this moving out on towards the front line there was a single unit that was rolling out towards the front line for the mr uh i'm just thinking it's not the cruel tie because he hasn't aged up just yet oh it's the deer stones moving out and now we've got ourselves a little bit of an engagement gonna be looking to pick up a couple of longbows and managing to do pretty effectively despite that town center looking to fire down you see that network of castles buff coming up the khan getting sniped out there that's okay he's got another two minutes before he really needs to get everything into action it's gonna take time for that to regenerate and picking off a couple more uh a couple more deer up there as well deerstone's now gonna be going down in the middle of the map the last time someone tried to pull their deerstones closer to viper that one specific person lost the deerstone so you got to be careful with that there is improved c engineering engineering already in for mista and i think we're just waiting for the mana terms to pop out and start the springboard rush yeah it's going to be men at arms here coming out for the mr undoubtedly uh potentially uh we could expect to see from the viper as a response crossbows but keep in mind that is a castle edge unit viper now gonna be able to click up and once again going with the white tower so second time we're seeing viper go with the white tower and once again i i look the viper one of those top level players so i'm not gonna dispute what he's doing but it just seems a bit strange to go double tc uh opening and then going up with the white castle versus going just one tc into a second king's palace it's a little bit more more quick a little bit swifter and a safer route up to that castle age but we'll see if he can potentially use this white tower to get a sprinkled mass lead on his opponent one of the things that viper gets with the double dc in feudal though is that he can pop out military units it's not like a fast castle when you got to get up to castle before you can do anything and of course he's going to have those vultures for a longer amount of time in this scenario i think the white tower is the better choice simply because he knows exactly that mister is about to push him yeah i do agree with you in that regard it makes a lot of sense uh one of the things to note is that with this uh this technology or with the uh improved siege engineering you're not actually gonna be able to make trebuchets uh from with your units you will need to make a siege workshop if you wish to get trebuchets out so one thing to note is that if he wants to get in underneath that white castle he's either gonna go with rams or he's gonna go with trebuchets and if he wants trebuchets he's gonna have to make a siege workshop viper is adding crossbows immediately so he knows exactly it's either mata arms or lancers coming potentially both as mr looks to try and bash his way through the right hand side voice here yeah i think it's the wise choice as well he knows about this white castle he has scouted it out and we now see those springholds coming down he's gonna be careful with that lancer taking a few hits there i wouldn't be surprised to see plus two coming through for him any second now as that khan begins to move forward towards the front lines plus two defense is still missing for mrs heavy cavalry over here and it is not even on the way he seems to be pretty late with those plus two defenses in most cases yeah you're not wrong uh now we've actually got an outpost going up for viper he's got to be careful here as a scout moves out to provide a bit of line of sight and uh gonna begin focusing down those villages no textiles there for those villagers is gonna mean that they get one shot and more villagers now moving in on to this outpost he realizes how important it is to get this down but look at the villagers that are gonna get taken out here on the front line battering ram going to be coming down on the back line as well and looking to get through this wall begin penetrating the defenses of the viper mist is at 36 army right now viper is sitting at 23 so viper cannot necessarily take this fight as he's getting great on the left side by a single lancer yeah a bit of a tough spot for him now that springboard mass beginning to build up to three springboards now and viper in a tough position now look at the lancer master it's beginning to build behind this he's got plenty of armored units here he's got sprinkles that are going to be able to deal with enemy armored units he's got knights or rather lancers and he's got those mana arms which are going to be able to deal very effectively with his enemy stuff but take a look at all of this the outposts that are coming up so viper looking to respond with spring orders uh on these these uh these towers uh to try and get through the battering ram uh battering ram gonna be taking a lot of damage from those sprinklers towers so you'll see it firing out now uh looking like it hit the one of the spring orders so he's gonna be careful there he's gonna move that back wall gonna be going down and viper needs to be careful as uh mister moves in with the majority of his units mrs got quite a lot of horsemen as well that's gonna help a lot against crossbows though the horsemen don't have the veteran upgrades so they are no more than an auxiliary unit speaking of auxiliary unit we've now got crossbows out for viper how do you feel about that i like it this build is usually built on the lancer slash minute arms play of course if you only have two or three crossbows those get picked apart by the sprinkles but once you get like 10 15 your opponent won't be able to break this defense without manganose yeah and that's exactly what i think is going to need to happen here it actually looks like viper may have held uh for the moment so those crossbows are probably gonna be the indication uh that that mister needs to pull back at least for the moment uh needs to just chill out uh he's probably gonna have to invest a little bit more resources into manganese and not gonna be able to mess up the spring orders in the same way he had hoped and as long as that power stays up the network of castles bonus supplies in this entire radius viper is still without the network of citadels though something that could help with this defense even more but you're gonna love how he's revolving this one just to make sure that he can delay mr even more yeah really smart from him here and once again i'd really like to see mr just at least try and get a trebuchet or two out um obviously for the mongols they do a little bit less damage but have a look at mister being so obnoxious up here towards the north a single sprinkle coming out and raiding this gold mine using a scout to provide a line of sight as well really really cheeky he's looking to play a gold control game over here you see that he's trying to deny these gold mines he has been scouting this one extensively as well as he moves him with the horse on the left just grabbing the veteran upgrade yeah good timing on that veteran upgrade going to give him that little hp boost that he needs to get through but now having that plus two ranged armor it's gonna help him out a fair bit as he tries his best to escape and those units do look very similar to their lancer counterparts uh for the mongols so really really nice uh nice uniforms it's interesting because i think mr could have uh potentially taken this fight against the crossbows and longbows he does have the plus two defense and crossbows struggle quite badly against horsemen but it looks like he's playing this one save just like always yeah a wise choice for him now for anybody looking at those scores and wondering okay how is viper still in this he's down seven or 1500 points at this point keep in mind the mongol score is bugged if we take a look at the population difference we see 57 54 versus 72 51 so still quite close on economic unit count military count a little bit behind there that uh viper going to be doing his best to try and hold for the moment and if viper manages to hold with the english here he's going to be looking very comfortable in this series especially because the english league game economy is one of the best in the entire game not only do is their farming bonus incremental so it gets an additional five percent gathering rate boost once getting up to imperial he can also grab the enclosures upgrade which gives him a very nice trickle for every farmer he has it's going to be an insane late game economy for viper yeah basically works out to be if you've got 32 villagers on farms it's equivalent to having five relics so if you can double that up obviously you can get the equivalent of 10 relics which is a huge amount of gold in the late game for the english only enough mr could take both sacred sites and fo for swiper to make a move but it looks like these players are not really playing for sacred sites it's all about destroying the opponent and that's it yeah that's exactly what we're seeing but you hear those bells ringing out across the map and that is because viper has that network of castle going he's scouting out the enemy units and that is alerting everybody to his presence that villager inside that radio it's going to be lighting up everybody here do we have that network of citadel's upgrade coming in just yet for the viper negative on that yeah he's got 45 outposts coming in with spring holden placements as mr is looking to expand his young network aura all the way out here with the outposts he's got the majority more from the map control but vipers has had a lot more villagers for most of the time so it's starting to get concerning for mr yeah really smart move here by the mr to come down here obviously appreciated that his enemy was fortifying up to the north and he said you know what you can fortify to the north i'm gonna just come down to the south that's exactly what he did with a huge mass now beginning to build up for the mr as he looks to come in on his enemy and so many enemy units gonna be out here we see the mana arms on the front line gonna be getting buffed up by that aura which gives out plenty of additional armor and we see plenty of horsemen also gonna be looking to get in onto that back line spears gonna be having to deal with these units and spring orders firing off villagers evacuating the dance floor as they try their best to stay in the game and viper having a difficult time but getting a pretty fortunate little pocket that he's got up here he's gonna try and hold on and i think he's gonna be okay is he all the spearmen are gone and now it's only horsemen i feel like you have been a little too positive on viper situation right now because this bush is getting kind of scary it's tough for viper to defend but i think it's even tougher for the mr to be able to push through that there's four houses there defending and viper making a little bit of a mistake right there losing two of his springboards to the enemy springholds and sort of like uh walking forward village is getting pulled now ten villagers moving to push up and viper looking to repel these sprinkles attack and we see the sprinkles on the back line also looking to get a couple of cheeky shots in on viper on mr rather as he pushes away and manages to take out that final sprinkled viper holding strong this was such a clutch move from viper and mister needed those sprinkles to continue pushing this one the fact that villagers were pulled and they destroyed all those sprinkles is massive mongols looking in a difficult spot right now viper on the other hand managing to almost even up the scores and keep in mind mongols have got a bit of a score advantage when it comes to uh the current patch and the way that it works that battering ram gonna be going down did you see viper doing the fade away right there he fires off the torch with his villagers and then walks away cool guys don't look at explosions ladies and gentlemen and viper is definitely a cool guy going in on the stone and oh boy that's a bit of a trouble for mr if i've ever seen beer stones being destroyed this might be it again it looks like he might be going for the block with some of his archers as he heads up look at him going he's trying to sneak this block up he's actually going to pick at the wall in the quick wall and this is going to potentially lose his deerstones unless he can find a way out of the base of viper he's moving at the deerstones of firing off their rocket ship they're looking to get out of here but viper pulling villages to the front there may be a potential castle drop that happens right here no it's going to be a forward outpost we see double outpost getting dropped down from him deerstone's looking to make their way through don't want to meet the enemy white castle because i tell you what that is not a castle you want to visit they do not serve the best burgers at least in the english version of them looks like the deer stones might actually get away but i have to say that mr was playing with fire over there yeah and it looks like he may get burned now look at all the crossbows that are in this mass as well on the front line there's plenty of spears here that are gonna be able to tank it out and crossbows do a lot of damage as long as they've got a decent front line and now mr trying his best and deer stones deer stones not like this the deer stones the second deer stones in a day that viper is going to claim and that dear stones if that goes down it is gone for good landmark destroyed repair fully to restore apparently that will just sit there uh a little bit i'm not sure exactly what's happening right there uh but uh nonetheless a little bit confusing but uh viper now still gonna manage to hold his front line as the crossbows continue to fall back and he's extended out this network of castle upgrade do we have network of citadels in just yet it doesn't look like it's still only getting that 25 bonus players continue to forget this bonus exists the network of citadel upgrade is incredibly strong and viper looking to push the arrow through the heart of his opponent he's sitting at 32 army right now mister all the way down to just 12 and viper's army is looking very formidable here as you said manitoba is here now spearman to tank up the damage and he's got crossbows supporting the only thing that he is missing is siege but he can just start taking on these buildings with the man at arms yeah and that's exactly it the amount of arms have got plenty of seats here we see some lancers now gonna look to try and collide in with these units but the crossbows the springholds the spears the mana arms they all do so effectively against these units you feel i feel like it's the the only unit you wouldn't want to be making against this composition you need right now what do you need i feel like you just need even mass sprinkles just not gonna work good game gets called mr taps out viper victorious viper leads the series 2-1 that's such a difficult situation to be in for the mysta because he needs horsemen against those crossbows but on the other hand if he makes horsemen he will just die to the spearman so badly but if he makes a mixture of horsemen and the lancers eventually the lancers would just get picked apart by the crossbows i feel like the key thing was that a very very costly push was made and mr lost like six or seven sprinkles to those villagers something that he couldn't afford in that very moment yeah it was a really difficult spot for him and take a look at that last fight right there that villager pool really cost the mist of the game uh and he tried his best to get a timing window there but viper actually looks to have found an effective counter to it who would have thought outposts with their own sprinkles in it are an effective counter they counter both the battering rams and they counter the spring orders themselves with this much as we head into game number four of your series on the egc tv channel in the genesis grand final spawning in on the east of the map it is the viper playing as the french and his opponent spawning in on the west of the map it is the mr playing as the french this map is boulder bay and it's looking like spawns are pretty fair at the moment uh what do you reckon about these two spawns i like mr space a little bit better it's absolutely incredible that he's got all three big gold mines behind this town center very easy volatile over here and here as well so this is a perfectly defendable base for him even his hunt is at the back stone mines are at the back as well and he's got an incredible amount of deep fish close to his shoreline whereas for viper if he wants to get a lot of deep fish he needs to place his dog around this area which i don't think is gonna be the case i think he's gonna place it some around over here yeah has he scouted out exactly what's on his shoreline one of the things i love to do on this map is just scout my shoreline you can see he's only spotted that one deep fish out so far perhaps he will send a villager down towards that way or maybe he'll look to head up towards the north if he goes to the north side of that uh that large stone that's on his shoreline he's gonna be a very happy camper but i think this this is a perfect dock he'll be very happy with this placement and very happy with the fish that he's about to pick up yeah he has to be happy with that looks like both players are pretty aggressive coming in to scout trying to join as many sheep as they can as yeah we should wait a minute you notice this forest oh okay wow wow okay um this is good this is also bad the reason why this is good and bad so for anybody unfamiliar with what's happening right now this map gent is of course a little bit hokey a little bit pokey two forests connect to make a super forest uh that's what happens when two florists love each other uh they also combine with a cliff face uh which just decides that it is going to provide a little bit of further assistance and we have ourselves a very difficult choke point to get through because the mr has only got one way to get through here but keep in mind okay if you've ever watched age of vampires too if you're you're familiar with fat slob you will know that if there is a will there is a way and in between these two forests there is a small point between them which may be cut open with just a single villager who is a very healthy lumberjack probably a male probably named sven and probably a man with a mission he will need to cut through there because one thing that we haven't talked about yet is that the market is in this corner so if mister doesn't chop through here the only way his traders can get to that corner is by going all the way out here and i'm fairly certain viper is going to set up his defenses around this yeah area undoubtedly gonna realize this and uh going to recognize and make sure that he uh he is going to be able to uh to take that to school uh i am very curious to see how this game unfolds this is already shaping up to be an incredible game uh just from i know that people they meme a lot about the french mirrors but personally i don't actually mind them especially on boulder bay we really get to have a laugh about that uh that spin to win micro one of the more underappreciated things that viper is doing here is getting two villagers out the idea here is that a scout cannot kill two villagers but it can kill one so if viper went in here mister could potentially lose his vulture at least it would be forced back to the tc whereas mister wouldn't be able to do the same thing to viper yeah that's a great point now keep in mind viper's actually gone in and stolen a whole bunch of sheep he's looking very healthy right now but the majority of his food is going to be coming from those deep sea fish throughout this game it is going to depend uh typically uh whoever wins the water will win the game but that's not always the case we actually saw the mr in his earlier game now play on boulder bay and win despite losing the water and by the same token we saw the viper do the exact same thing so now we've got the chamber of commerce gonna be i was gonna say the chamber of secrets now we have the chamber of secrets going down for each player i didn't no that is the chamber of commerce tell us a little bit about this landmark lyrical the chamber of commerce is basically a market that's the main function of it early game and the thing that you're trying to achieve with that is that you have a lot of excess food when hitting feudal age selling that allows you to get hulks out a little easier because you can just buy a bit of a wood with that there is also an added benefit because once we get deeper into the game you get a massive boost to your trade income once you have this building up so whoever takes control over the water could start the naval trade and have an insane amount of gold income from that it's interesting to see oh yeah go ahead no no go ahead i wanted to hear what you're going to say sorry um i was just about to say that it's interesting to see that back when we started watching border bay games in egc genesis most people went up in the school of cavalry so they can pop out one or two nights for harassment and now everybody is going up with the chamber of commerce yeah the chamber of commerce is definitely one of those landmarks the sooner you get it the better we see viper about to go up now he's only got one villager on his chamber we're able to check in and see who is gonna be up first we've got four villagers on here but viper might actually i think probably his opponent's gonna squeeze it out viper looking a little bit slow with his uh actually i think viper might just get it we're going to take a look at his perspective as he's about to sell 400 uh 400 food at least he should uh we'll take a look now here he goes uh watch his food count as it dwindles down right now he's not rushing it actually it's exactly on the moment wow they're both up at the same time and viper not actually selling uh any of his food so a little bit of a mistake right there we'll take a look at the perspective of his opponent though have we got any food oh we've got plenty of food sold from the mister you can see sitting up on 600 gold in that stockpile right now indeed you can tell that the price decreased viper just saw the resources you could see the price drop for a moment but mr got the advantage when it comes to selling so his exchange rate was slightly better yes yes so one of the things to note is even though you might not think selling food is efficient uh what is very efficient though is gathering food especially in the early stages of the game so a dock only costs 150 wood a town center 700 resources so we basically got a town center that costs only 150 wood on top of that your fishing boats they're 60 wood compared to 50 wood for the villa or 50 food rather for the villager so it's not a huge difference there so you've basically got access to an age one second town center and that's why it's incredibly efficient to sell that food because it's incredibly efficient to gather that food in the first place it's literally efficient oh my god what are we gonna do with the euler core geez louise we'll take a look at how these build orders are beginning to shape up now viper gonna have a single hulk out gonna be training up a second one does he have a second dock out there's the second dock now gonna be also getting in that additional sales technology uh we'll have a look back over at his opponent the mister and see what he's got going on second hole going to be popping out for him and do we have double hulks in training for him or is he going to for additional sales as well so just going to be the one hulk no additional sales at this point for the mister he's going in with the just four hulk play without sales he has done the same thing against his opponent in the semifinals if you think about it the concept is that he's got more fishing ships than his opponent he's at nine right now and viper is on seven so it's all about defending those fishing ships with your slow moving hawks and that's exactly what he's gonna be doing as he spots those hulks out towards the north he's gonna be looking to get a little bit of a spin going on here no harpoon's fired off just yet uh what just happened there did you guys see that the mister just looked to be like you know what we're gonna call this one a treaty and then the ships from viper opened fire upon them and slaughtered them all maybe it's the mutiny of the sailors perhaps it is uh they've decided for peace instead of war now there might be an opening here on the right side i'm not exactly sure if this is traversable but it's somewhat inconsistent when you see this terrain so this in theory could be open for viper yeah i've got a sneaking suspicion it's probably not but take a look at viper using this little bit of hidden fog over towards the right of the uh the opponent or the mister's base and now mr getting a little bit of defense going on from multiple angles he's got to be careful here as there are looming hulks in multiple angles and they're going to be able to snipe out that fishing boat doing a great job there going to be dashing its hopes its dreams as it sought to get more deep water fish viper is using his mobility advantage very nicely over here and mr seems like he's just refusing to go for additional sales for a time being he's even transitioning to shore fish now that his fishing eco is a little more exposed yeah really smart move from him to fall back onto this straw fish so often people will see that they put down their docks indiscriminately taking out multiple shorefish when they do it but the fact that he's left a couple shorefish here really enables him to continue gathering despite being under pressure mr starting to mine stone back at home so we will probably see a second town center but for now he's gonna have to keep his fishing eco alive yeah one of the things to note is he's got plenty of wood saved up here so he's going to be able to get out this second town center sooner rather than later i'd expect to see it going up within the next minute by the same token viper on his back line looking to gather up a lot of gold so we could potentially see a castle edge coming out of him but keep in mind differences between castle age isn't that significant on french water maps obviously you have access to the explosive uh ships that you're able to get out but realistically you've already got access to the hulk which is the king of the water at least until the fourth age and so as a result it means that the bonus isn't that big it isn't that big and it's just very expensive to start investing into land at this point so both probably both players will focus on water for the time being which means that mr could have an advantage if he starts adding additional eco behind this one yeah it's typically something that we see the gl members do so both viper and doubt are somewhat infamous uh for adding uh huge amounts of booming uh but now uh villager gonna get picked off here unfortunately that villager somehow manages to escape the attacks of the vipers large hulk mass take a look speaking of mass have a look at how many boats we've got out now for the mister he is on the hunt he's indeed on the hunt now mister has additional sales as well and he's got numbers advantage here but viper is coming with the reinforcements a fight mr cannot take yeah there's a significant amount of hulks coming out for the viper two plus one plus his original five he's up to eight compare that to the seven of the mr and he realizes that's a fight he cannot take all right we take a look over at viper's base uh and it looks like he's still not yet to age up mr gonna be dropping down that second tc as well actually i said as well but that's gonna be the first second tc that we see viper not actually on stone yet so viper really focused at the moment on his second age push have we seen a third dock getting thrown down yet from viper we've got two docks that's it for the moment so really just looking to focus his his uh dock production on these ships more hulk's going to be coming out here as well for the mr as well uh healing up ever so slowly though he's got nine right now viper's fleet seems a little bit more convincing he's up to 11 but as you said viper is only on two dogs his resource income i don't think it's sufficient to facilitate triple dox production so he's gonna be more than happy to just produce ships consistently on two docks speaking of resources has he got that those double bid axe upgrades just yet or double broad ax upgrades i think they're called in ancient rome players it does indeed uh not yet having the forestry upgrade he does have the mining upgrade coming all the way in the specialized pick but no wheelbarrow yet for him though looking at the mr real quick mr is missing the mining upgrade as much as the lumberjacking upgrade as well looks like his dock here will be delayed by a couple of seconds yeah very curious that the mister would be behind on upgrade so i'm definitely liking viper's position here considering he has got those additional upgrades it's really going to be helping out considering how many villagers are actually on those resources so when you consider there's 25 villagers on wood right now for the mr i think it's a 15 upgrade so you could consider that the equivalent of like a five villager uh difference there so that is quite significant but now gonna be heading up to the third age of the viper dropping down his guild hall no real surprise there in a boomy game and viper now gathering up stone as well looking to potentially drop down that second town center or looking to potentially get some stone walls up speaking of wars looks like mr is moving villagers all the way up here and he's just trying to blow a viper in now i don't think that he can defend this wars for long but one thing that he can accomplish is get alerted in case viper wants to make any kind of land push yeah i will note here that hulks are gonna have a an ability to come in and take down these walls and as long as viper maintains the hulk mass i would expect that that is gonna continue uh so one thing to note though is that as we transition into the third age we're gonna see a number of upgrades coming through for these ships and we may see a diversification of ships out on the water so one of the things to note is that the french have access to a unique uh boat or a unique ship called the gallius i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly because it is french it's probably gallius uh but uh it is a cannon ship so it's a bombard ship it's got a front-facing cannon it's got a longer range on it so you can definitely bring those out but keep in mind those hulks do so much damage uh considering they have double harpoons viper is going for defense upgrade but at this point he might lose the dog before the upgrades come in as his navy is quite mispositioned that's a disaster for him there goes the extra defense upgrade and speaking of extra defense take a look at the extra ships that have now showed up for his opponent the mister has a significant mass out here if we double click those it's going to indicate the viper is sitting on how many ships viper sitting on 13 mr sitting right now on 13 as well and really looking to chase him down uh keeping in mind that uh mr may have reinforcements joining the battle at any time we see a 14th one navigator lookout is coming in right now so he does get that plus one attack does he have ballistas on here what is going on is the way that he's firing here looks like he's firing from the back of his ship that uh mister trying to force him up into the corner and doing a pretty decent job of it one ship gonna be going down for the mr one ship gonna be going down for viper and he's in a difficult spot now do we have any demolition ships coming out just yet for either player both players have now reached that third age we've got demolition ships from viper being rallied towards this battle but viper doing his best to try and keep his head above water over on this western front viper does have the range advantage but the distance is now so so close that mister is going to be happy to take this fight despite the fact that his navy has less upgrades he's doing a great job of just forcing it back and we actually see viper manages to actually seal the deal over there he manages to get out doesn't lose all of his units he was getting pinned back into the corner that managed to keep a lot of them alive viper is down to one dock now so reinforcing that army is gonna be much much harder he has lost his armored whole upgrade and he's now going for a couple of demos speaking of demos oh boy oh oh no oh no this is terrible for the missile this could be a good game right here this is going to be good game he hits the q button and all of the ships take huge damage two of the hulk's going down he manages to pull back a lot of these hulks but it looks like a single demo changes the game great pickup there little core i can't believe we caught that on camera absolutely great pickup there for viper he has shown that he loves to use the stealth for us to his advantage if you think back on game number one the way he tried to bait the cavalry into his spikes in the style forest this time around this style play works out really nicely for him yeah and speaking of ultimate stealth play viper forgetting everything he knows about stealth and moving in to really seal the deal right here another demolition ship sitting hovering waiting and undoubtedly looking to move in and seal the deal another demo ship now gonna be coming out he's got to be careful as this demo manages to connect with a single uh explosive charge on its enemy hulk but not doing anywhere near the damage that the mister experienced himself mr could really use the extra ballista over here because he's got multiple dogs so he definitely has the capacity to research it whereas viper needs to reinforce his navy all day all night with that single dock i can't believe that we just saw that that was an absolutely huge explosive charge out of that demo ship looks like he may have over chopped on the front there the mister uh and potentially opened up a bit of a hole in his wall but obviously gonna have plenty of foresight about any potential raids from his enemy with that wall up towards viper's base both players looking pretty close to each other on score about a 200 point difference at the moment can we take a look at the village account and see how those players are doing 91 villages for the mr compare that over to the viper who sits on 80 uh and keep in mind that when it comes to military count that's mainly looking at this water battle that is happening right now before us we do have double stables coming in here for mr so it probably feels like okay i'm falling behind on water might as well prepare a land push we're going to see storm wars in this tournament not something that we see every day yeah this is the first stone wall that we're probably gonna be seeing out in the uh in the main event definitely uh so the first time we're gonna be seeing that keep in mind stone walls unable to be attacked by regular units uh and viper actually coming out and seeing these walls for the very first time uh and going oh oh uh okay well i guess i won't go that way then uh but now that demo ship gonna be moving out across the pond we spot that mr is just sitting ever so patiently and keep in mind viper is not gonna be able to be spotted uh considering his position uh with his own demo ship and now a single demo ship gonna be looking to enter into this pond do we see these players looking to collide or do they just manage to sit ever so slightly apart from each other very very sneaky little core yeah that's just beautiful those two snake little demos gotta love that viper is now using the hoax though to break through the walls and this is where things could get problematic for the mysta those demos will probably avoid each other for quite a long time yeah we got to keep an eye on them though really really important because there is the potential that uh that there could be uh a little bit of an explosive uh nature careful the demos have just knocked each other out that's okay they've gone their separate ways uh to the bottom of the ocean but now more demos gonna be moving out and take a look at what mr is doing he's got a villager up on top of this wall down towards the south and he's actually hammering away on top of the wall at the stone wall tower which is going to provide a really nice overview of the base in front of him it's also going to have a ballista on it already so he's not going to need to research that if i remember correctly it should automatically come with the ballista nice move from mister to pick up one knight here with the hawks and the other beautiful thing with that tower is that that's the only way the villager gets on top of the wall but that also means that the knights can't jump on this villager so this vulture survived because that wall was there and he could just jump on it and the knights couldn't take it down i've got no idea how the villager got up there though a little bit of magic tricks happening but speaking of magic tricks over towards the middle of the ocean it looks like we've got ourselves a little bit of a battle about to unfold is it even a battle or a slaughter because it starts as a slaughter demo coming in here from the viper gets a pretty nice collision and there's an even bigger one oh that demo is going to be massive as it takes out a whole bunch of hulks on the front line those guys are all down to about half hp now and viper gonna be trying his best to survive through we see that demo gonna be meeting up against the hulk of his opponents and now we see the real battle on water begin to unfold looking at the ship numbers it's only seven for viper and i feel like mister is taking over in terms of navy numbers he is missing the armored hall and the extra ballista looking at the viper he has gotten the armor though yeah in this match up to me it doesn't really make a lot of sense to go for that armored hull because keep in mind two damage not a lot of damage so if you're if your enemy is dealing 50 damage at a time it's 48 damage but obviously that does begin to add up if we're talking about say 900 it's a nice and flat number but speaking of flat numbers it looks like the viper going in now for a little bit of a flattening himself but managing to survive more demos coming in that's a lot of demos he's got to be careful three demos looking to pile their way in all the double shot managing to get off and not taking out a huge amount of damage but a lot of ships gonna be going down and viper actually looks like he's gonna be able to capitalize and capsize the enemy ships right now that little fight was just enough but there's a demo coming in here from mr failing to connect however and that's going to be a massive loss there for mr we do enjoy our little bit of age of vampires for bailings unfortunately they're over on the water we don't get to see him in the land or under the ground or on the creep but i tell you what we take him we take him now since viper is still playing on only two dogs the fact that he could destroy so many ships still just evens out the water and viper is going heavier and heavier on demos makes me feel like he wants to go to land and just say like okay let's stop water fighting shall we yeah i suspect that they both you know getting a little bit not attritioned over there i don't know what the the correct term is but viper actually going to hit the imperial age now uh so curious which landmark he did go up with but we do see a bit of a battle about to unfold as demos on demos happen and mister gets an amazing shot right there landing that huge demo but by the same token he gets a demo on the backslide he's got to be careful three hulks against two and we're back down to the very beginning baby because these hulk numbers are just baby steps demos now gonna be coming in and looking to secure more points on these ships and they managed to get a huge shot taking it down to one hulk that remains at the 22 minute mark in this game it kind of feels like that dawn from age vampires too which is like you play two hours to die like this that's what the water fight reminds me to because in the end everybody just destroyed each other's navy and that helps mr quite a bit because mr has a serious map control advantage here already with quite a lot of knights and he's on the way to imperial himself yeah you're 100 right with regard to that map control so in addition to having this weird little wall that is managed to get up and this stone tower on the front line that continue to sprinkle his way through he's also got a castle that sits very safely very snug uh back behind the gold mines so if we take a look just down a little bit more to the south you'll spot that castle out a little bit more there she is and we now see those stables being dropped down right next door now we did spot towards the north that viper looks to be getting in that bombard which is going to begin moving out and undoubtedly going to begin hitting these buildings and there she comes look at her with her big wheelbase and a large long cannon she's doing a great job and a second one going to be coming out here as well now i'm curious we actually see the mr going up to age four and check out that landmark that he's going up with yeah there's the college of artillery and he's gonna go royal coverings gotta love how he's placing his tables close to these keeps so he's getting the unit discount as it looks like mr wants to jump on those cannons while he can yeah trying to get in on there uh we don't actually see any boiling oil out from the viper at this stage uh but keep in mind he has got that wall to get through before he even decides to be bothering to research that now we spot out for the mr he as he continues to put on a little bit of aggression towards his opponent a single hulk remains for him can we see how much hp that hulk has got oh he's actually got two he's got 38 hp on the first hulk a thousand hp on the second hulk and it looks like he might actually have a little bit of water control right now as a third hulk i think has actually made its way towards the shoreline just down to the south nope that's them or it's a demo it's a demo it could be a big bait this could be dangerous oh this could be really bad oh viper's got to be so careful here for anybody who's seen the reddit posts you will know how powerful these demos can be they have an absolutely huge range on them we've got any culverins coming out just yet we do indeed a royal covenant gonna be coming out here for the mister and little i'm liking the mister's position more and more despite him falling behind his score i also like that position quite a bit he could start adding naval trade if he wanted to or also add some cannon ships so a single carrot would start leveling down the base of viper at a very rapid pace yeah that's a great point we actually see now uh more of these uh bombards gonna be trying to take their shots at this keep keep trying to heal through it but the covering gonna be a little bit too late to the party as it manages to make its way over and i think this castle this keep is going to go down and i don't think that there's anything that mister can do to save it it's unlikely the next ball is going to take it off and look at viper he's already moving in the spring holes he might take down the covering before he can even take a shot yeah he needs to get some villagers over there to heal up that culver and that cauldron is going to go down he's got to be careful that culver has gone the way of the dodo he's managed to heal up in the meantime uh his castle is keep got it up to 1600 hp as it continues to take down plenty of hp but he's got to be careful underneath this castle it does have the boiling oil i'm not sure whether we've spotted out any boiling oil at this stage but i can see flames on the roof as the keep slowly begins to burn the villagers tapping away at it hoping that this boiling oil continues we see a huge uh push coming through here from viper as well where he looks to secure a castle on the back line and he's gonna be able to overwhelm him at the moment as hand cannon is beginning to push out and mr actually looks very strong in this position despite losing his castle and going to be able to chase away this cannon from his opponent looking to probably look to uh source out some cannons of his own but managing to do incredibly well mister could have even saved that castle if his knife that came a little faster he bought himself some time by sniping down the first scanner using the covering now the spearmint come in in increasing numbers and that's going to push the knights back but mr already working towards second castle and i feel like with the handcannon is hitting the field viper is in for a tough fight yeah hand cannon is gonna be a big oof uh coming into this late game situation but one of the things to note is viper might be in a pretty good spot uh right now he's managed to take out multiple cauldrons the sprinkles coming out a bomba does remain it was healed up so he is going to be able to push this position and if the mr loses this position he's going to be losing these forward gold mines now keep that in mind he's got lots of gold back in his base but he doesn't want to give these up he never wants to give these up he never wants to be let down by these gold mines and his castle he's probably gonna go down he probably needs to cancel it uh he's got 383 hp in that castle he's going to go down not going to get up at all looks like he's just missing the royal bloodlines from his cavalry and once that kicks in the spearman from viper will no longer crack it so viper is climbing spearman right now but i feel like mister just needs to regroup rearrange his army and then he's going to be good to take this fight but as you said this corner is most likely going to be lost here for the mister yeah this is a big deal the one thing that was missing for the mister was a villager pool what he needed was about 10 12 villagers up on the front line healing up his cauldrons as they were coming into the battle because they just got sniped off ever so slowly but it was just a matter of having a couple villages there would have really sealed the deal but keep in mind as viper moves closer towards the sacred site that heat risk of getting demoed is increased significantly meanwhile mr tried to chop through this forest over here although he actually started the wrong side so definitely there is an idea for him to secure that as we get some demos moving in for mister to try and snipe the fish i think they might just be fishing boats um that's actually fishing boats they're very similar to demos in their look yeah or i think all demos should just be on fire like that should just be their their aesthetic they should just be on fire everybody on board the demo should be screaming about the fire like fire fire i imagine that's the french way to say fire i don't actually know but uh here's a camera spin to win baby spin to win carrick is a very expensive vessel but it's very good against buildings and it's also pretty decent against attack ships so carricks can easily level viper's docks and can start cleaning up the buildings on the shoreline harassing the eco and the bigger thing is i believe these little boys the traditions yes indeed i was gonna say to you political i've got two words for you right now trade ship trade ships are out take a look at how many resources these bad boys are gonna bring in combined with the house of commerce or the chamber of commerce 141 gold 70 wood how much do these things even cost we gotta check we gotta check how many trips is gonna take to pay these off they're 300 wood a hundred gold so two trips and these bad boys are paid off yeah insanity that's insanity and they will just provide that gold for a long long time they're also moving pretty fast so that turnaround rate is also pretty significant as the characters getting closer to the shoreline sprinkles can still snipe carrots but i feel like this is what mr has to do just use that water control try to play a long game and start viper out of gold yeah he's got to be careful he's actually put his house of his house of artillery his college of artillery on the front line uh so if he is needing if he's wanting to get covered out he kind of needs to do that now because it's only a matter of time until this does go down he has got a upper keep on the back line but it's not going to be anywhere near forward enough to defend this college of artillery that is indeed the right assumption here come the carrots though now the carrots are very exposed to demo ships just like hawks are and viper is messing those demos a single volley of damos could easily sing this bad boy yeah it looks like he might be going down unless he can get defended by his call his comrade but it looks like he's going to be going down with very little remaining hp as those blasts do get through carrick now doing his best uh on the on the north side but a battle gonna be happening down as well towards the south it looks like there may be a bit of a no it's just a wall never mind uh as uh yeah never mind there's i saw red dots on the map i got excited but it seems that the majority of the action is gonna be out on the water for the moment as a monastery goes up and the sacred site capture may be happening here it's a possibility it's going to give you a nice trickle of gold but you also gotta consider that viper's got multiple relics on his side and he knows exactly that in a long game relics can be a difference maker yeah speaking of difference maker now we've got ourselves a very nice composition out here the royal knights combined with the hand cannon ears this is an incredibly potent combo gonna be effective at taking out anything and another carrick goes down to a demolition ship keep in mind these demo ships are very effective at at uh dealing with slow large ships and the problem with the french is that they don't actually have access to any arrow ships so it means that they don't have any real way to deal with them because arrow ships actually get a really decent bonus against their uh against the uh the demo ships but now three demo ships gonna be coming in and one of them going to be taking down that character great use of demos there by the viper and not overusing it's so weird that the demos are actually not on fire some of them are but these guys for example have no flames on them it makes it pretty difficult to identify in some cases looks like viper is moving in with some more fortified outposts also looking to take that college of artillery down slow and steady yeah it's gonna be a while for it before it goes down but behind this the mister sitting up on 188 population and straight away that hulk just he's taken one for the team he's taking one for the team uh demo ships doing great work there now keep in mind demos aren't free they do cost resources so it's not like he's getting free trades out there as the mister looks for that economy of his enemy and continues to trade up towards the north speaking of up towards the north take a look we got ourselves a little bit of a drop up there what is happening right now on hello hello we've got eight villagers and they are very very happily making themselves a secret little defensive place uh viper does not spot this viper is gonna be in a little bit of trouble i suspect because mr is playing the long game i feel like now the fact that mr has some trade going for him and that this will be a perfect diversion will allow mr take a good fight right in here in this battlefield like elite royal knights with full upgrades and handgun ears they might be able to just destroy everything here anyways but if viper is even distracted then it's even better for mister yeah and one thing i really want to point out here is that the royal knights they are only one population they're going up against the uh enemy spears which are despite having their elite upgrades and the ability it's important to remember that they are all one population so these nights they are incredibly expensive three times the cost of spearmen which is why you're going to see them absolutely eat up this army because the mr right now is sitting on max population 190 out of 200 more units going to be coming in for him and he completely destroys this fight hand cannon is behind as well incredibly efficient population and now viper is in a bit of a difficult spot because he's just lost the first front and he's about to find out about the second front indeed he does and that's gonna be a lot of stables mr can easily afford to spam nights all day and viper's got absolutely no defense back at home as you said the population efficiency of mrs army is impressive here and that's something extremely important in post imperial yeah it's really really important to make sure that you've got those units that are very uh uh highly effective in post imperial so that's hand cannon is that's if you're playing the chinese the grenadiers uh but once again now we actually see viper gonna be struggling he's looking to get up this castle and having a bit of a tough time because those knights are beginning to harass his economy and viper really gonna be holding on the edge of his seat speaking of the edge of his seat we do have trade ships going all the while and those trade ships are gonna continue to be funneling resources in for his opponent and mr gonna be very happy with those trade ships now keep in mind he's actually trading the most inefficient route and still making an absolute killing doing it as mr now looks to expand down towards uh the south of viper's base plenty of influence going on here and viper managing to hold on the first front second front is where the battle is going to be unfolding though we'll take a look inside viper's base and see what else we've got coming but now viper actually doing a bit of trade himself using that market that he does have access to all that trading post that he's got access to to try and shore up a little bit more of a defense but uh i do expect that we're probably going to see um i don't i don't know i really don't know i don't know where i was going with that uh it's a difficult spot for both players let's just say that much literally it's a difficult spot and now this is a game of attrition the key thing here is that mister might be able to hit viper's straight equivalent it's going to be more difficult for viper so if mr chops through here he can hit that trade but mister is going to lose that castle very easily yeah those cannons take it down incredibly quickly keep in mind these cannons don't have to pack up they can just simply scoot and shoot very very quick with those additional siege upgrades as well and we see that the mr has now got out some cannons of his own but he's gonna have a difficult time going up against all those spears without any real backup of hand cannon is on the front line with him there so he's gonna have to turn around and we see those bombards actually turning around and looking to fire off a couple of shots i don't think they're going to make it all the way down but i would expect to see a couple villagers get pulled just to try and save the day as those elites look to continue moving up the shoreline a sizeable force of royal knights now coming in here and despite the fact that there's a keep here it doesn't have boiling oil or cannon and from this point on mystic can push viper zico and viper cannot do the same to his opponent are we able to check the guild hall i just saw the guild hall there for the viper what does it have on at the moment it's on gold 1680 we are able to look for the guildhall of his opponent uh what have we got we're on gold 580. so both players on gold at this point realizing that it is the late game and viper has probably had his trade exposed now we can see there's plenty of knights running through the base the knights are actually tacking away at those traders as they try their best to get in there but a little bit of a mistake from viper in not getting that boiling oil a lot of people don't realize it is not an emplacement it is a technology research you get boiling oil and you have got it for every single castle every single keep in addition that also failing to get the unique french upgrade which reduces the cost of your stable units and your archery range units even further we do have another force assembled here by mista he knows he's starting to run low on gold so he's going to start using more gold efficient units in fact horsemen don't even cost gold so that's as gold efficient as it could possibly be yeah he might actually get caught off as that raid was looking to hit the front line uh viper sitting at 200 out of 200 population at the moment beginning to really stack up those resources as we enter into the post-imperial game and the question is going to be asked how does he finish this game and speaking of finish this game he doesn't even have royal bloodlines just yet i mean he is running a full infantry comp uh managing to do pretty efficiently against his opponent could we expect to see some manganese come out here perhaps that would seal the deal for his enemy he kind of needs to because so far mister is getting pushed back on land despite the fact that he seems to have a more reliable gold income looking at it it's actually pretty close mr could add some trade ships but he's pop capped maybe delete some villagers he's got an insane amount of vood income deleting 20 villagers might help and replacing them with knights yeah i agree with you i think that would be very helpful uh just deleting all the food gatherers at the moment would be very very uh helpful for him he's got 8 600 food he doesn't need any more oh a viper is coming in here with the hawks and that could be a game winner yeah this is actually really important because viper's economy continues to grow with his traders towards the south and it actually looks like we've got towards the north of the map his opponent the mister is going to be looking to seal that sacred site and uh now viper holding on as uh as these trade ships begin to make make their way past he's actually got them spaced out perfectly they're gonna be able to take out all the trade ships as they come through on their trade route and uh it's only a matter of time until the viper continues to push through his opponent knocking on the front door he's shut down completely on the top side the trade economy of his opponent is looking like it might be in shambles and i expect that we're gonna have a difficult time right now for the mister how does he get himself back in this game it's a very difficult scenario first he needs to secure his own trade because post imperial games usually end by one player losing their trade and that so far seems to be messed up and as he said viper has secured a lot of map control so mr has basically no minor bulgard in fact mr's only gold income is from trade he's in a really difficult spot now going to be pushing out onto these habla trio let's see if they get their pavis out are we going to see that little shield drop down in the front no shields drop down just yet viper's got to remember to use that special ability i love the sound that it makes but it doesn't even matter because it looks like he's doing a pretty decent job of holding this off and managing to escape viper now in a pretty decent position we'll take a look over at his banks we can see that many things are under attack over there and it looks like a cannon's actually being brought back up to deal with this and this cannon is going to be able to shut this down is that a was that an a uh a culver in there was that just two cannons uh just down towards the south yeah just there cannon cannon why they got such different aesthetics on them oh they're on different angles that's why so now we've got viper who has shut down the trade of his opponent he has shut down the primary front of his opponent and now he's also shut down this back door route that his opponent tried to get through vipers in a significantly but he continues to lose on this front he needs to be able to reinforce here what units do we have coming in from the snake viper can keep adding arboletria because he also has the gamba zones upgrade so these bad boys have 10 milli armor those horsemen aren't really doing much against them in fact they are not even elite horsemen and the viper's resource bank is looking better and better whereas the mysta is running out of both food and gold with basically no gold income for mist anymore yeah that's a massive problem for the mr he's had his trade interrupted he never really secured the water 100 despite having those carricks out and as a consequence it means he's going to fall behind i mentioned at the start of this game that my pick was the mister because he was cognizant of water trade but it seems that viper has been a little bit more aware of the consequence of maintaining water control viper has a lot of experience when it comes to closing out long and grinding games he just has such an awareness when it comes to evaluating where the most important parts of the opponent's economy is and you see that he's slowly grinding down the mista picking off the trade and from this point on after cleaning this up i think viprin is in a commanding position yeah i've got to agree with you viper's looking incredibly strong at this point despite having the less population efficient army with those spears on the front line the orbital tria in the back line are really going to enable him him to dps out and we see those hand cannon is struggling on the front line against the spears you never expect to see that in this late game but it is post imperial viper is grinding away at his opponent and the mystic types out he's called gg it is absolutely well played going over to the viper and he is up to 3-1 in this grand final where he moves on to match point the best of seven may be sealed in game number five such a great play from viper he was on the back foot for a long long time but he knew exactly where he was and i feel like the key thing was that he could take that keep down on the top of the hill and then deny the consequent one because from that point on his base wasn't under attack mr tried a landing but that never really materialized and then viper just coming back on the water shattered all the gold income from the mysta it's one thing that he's the most accomplished player of age vampires 2 but he comes in and he's playing at such a high level at aov4 right at the beginning doing that with a wrist that hurts quite badly for him something that wasn't discussed so far viper is having wrist issues for quite a lot of time so his wrist isn't even perfect and he's delivering on this level speaking of this level we have entered in now to the fifth game in this series viper is up three the mr currently sits on one and we have got viper spawning in on the west of the map going to be playing the russ his opponent who spawns in on the north side of the map going to be playing the mongols and let's take a little bit of a look at this map see how it's generated and get a feel for it now we're playing on mongolian heights do note that players are going to look to expand towards this center potentially a bit of a fishing boom we may see from players but one thing to note is that viper his side is looking very very hilly over there all of these heroes are also very rectangular on both sides so it's an interesting looking map as i said before when we have taken a look at this map this map has a lot of sheep to work with so you can definitely justify adding a second scout at the beginning to try and secure as much as you can yeah viper already with that second scout gonna be coming out we'll take a look over at the mrs base and see whether he has gone uh for a stable whether he has just gone for a scout from his main uh town center and it doesn't seem that he has just a single red unit gonna be out on the map so i think this is one of the differences between him and recon i think recon did open up with a scout from his uh from his town center uh but now we are gonna see a dock getting dropped down for the mister on that north side a villager walking its way out gonna be slowly but steadily placing that down in a very nice position and already we see the mongol khan with a whole bunch of uh harem of sheep behind it he's trying to snipe down the sheep from the back of viper scout because the khan can't kill the scout so the best thing he can do is try to snipe off the sheep because viper has been very aggressive collecting sheep from the opponent's side yeah now one thing to note that in this matchup obviously the rust player he wants to be able to kill as many gaia as possible we see that back in viper's base is actually killing off a hunt very steadily but the mongol player is going to have difficulty killing any hunts primarily because his khan can't actually be animation cancelled whereas the scouts can and the khan also needs three shots to take down a deer whereas the scouts only need two and knowing that it's even more surprising that we haven't seen a second scout from the mid stand oh boy this could be a disaster for him yeah i think this village is gonna be able to get this dock up but i do think this villager is gonna go down if it makes that decision looking to actually commit to the retreat at this point and viper definitely picking up a bit of an early advantage here now if he's paying attention the mr will spot that villager heading out towards the water and he's saying hey you get back you don't you don't come out here boy and that's exactly what he does looks like neither of the players will get their talks up viper probably won't be able to get this villager kill although it's gonna be pretty close oh he might actually get this he's to sacrifice the scout if he goes for it a whole bunch of villagers entering into that town center denying that mongols or that uh russ scout and actually keeping that villager alive he's gonna have to keep that one extra safe a second village are now gonna be going out and take a look at viper he's having a bit of trouble here because mr has spotted this one out and viper already saying hey stop it man i'm just trying to put down a dock out here i just want a boom and mister's having none of it missed us having none of it that's such a good map awareness and we have seen a really efficient use of khan throughout this entire main event i think vortex was the one that used con to perfection but right now mister is doing an excellent job with it right now and the scone is single-handedly denying the dogs yeah now one of the things to note is he is going to be able to get a fishing uh or a dock up rather uh out on this south side of villager is making its way towards the middle now keep in mind he doesn't need to keep this dock alive all he needs oh my gosh you got to be careful with that that villager is very low how many shots is it going to take to actually kill that villager it's going to be 20 more shots so i don't think that he can stop the dog but he might be able to snap the villager on the way back although there is a spear man the spearman the spearman it does 9 damage here oh no it doesn't do 99 he's going to deny the dock he's going to deny the dock he denies the dock and this is exactly what viper does not want he doesn't care if that villager dies he just wants that dock to get up and the fact that this dock is delayed means he's going to have to send another villager out he needs to bring that spear back he needs to make sure that these spears are guarding this dock he can't let any fishing boats get up for his opponent and mr off to a incredible start here absolutely i would say even a life-saving start knowing that he is behind by two games now and the thing is that he didn't go for a double spearman at the beginning so he was just like okay i don't have the stone vipers making a run for it he's gonna make it he's gonna seal this deal right now uh let's see he gets it up and he's looking to evacuate the dance floor as we actually spot that he just looks to commit towards this dock so he spots the villager he says no i'm not gonna fall i'm not gonna take the bait and now the village are gonna move in and look to get a little bit of a repair on the back side here more spears across the river he needs to bring a spear down onto this south side of the dock and really secure this one out as viper now still yet to click that age up button at this stage mr needs to stop those repairs because at this point viper just wants to delay the destruction of this dog he knows exactly he's gonna lose it and it's a little bit weird from mr that he's not killing that wheelchair that would allow him to destroy this dog really fast it's really curious why he doesn't just move to the okay now he's finally realized that his is he just gonna maybe he was just waiting waiting for viper you know what that's that's actually a big brain that's 900 iq right there that's five head right there that is massive okay what he did was he waited he gave viper the sense of security that oh he's just gonna seize it down he's not gonna come after my villager the viper takes his eyes off that villager for a second and the mr goes yank and he puts it in the ground he buries it he gets his spears out he digs a hole and he puts that villager inside it we could just get some f's in the chat for that poor vulture that was sacrificed to keep this dog alive at least until viper gets two potentially free fishing ships out oh the timing wow very nice timing there uh i would look to see at this point uh whether viper is gonna get chased along these shorelines now he's heading towards the north side of uh the island the mr is up with some spears this is uh this is curious interesting he might be looking for another dog here from viper but reality is that viper if we'll just be satisfied with free fishing ships he doesn't need to drop off the fish he's on the way to feudal age with the kremlin and for anybody wondering why it's so important for russ to get these fishing boats out as little core alluded to they don't actually have a drop off site these guys once they hit 40 fish gathered up they just deliver it direct deposit it's like a credit card for fish essentially they just magically deposit it back into your deposit or into your inventory and you don't actually need to return back to your dock so you can have these bad boys out a million miles away and they're still going to be gathering up safely for you it will probably convert them to attack ships but there's a defensive power here for mysta so i don't think that the attack ships will do much a bigger thing is that right now vipers has a lot of unclaimed hunt and he's already at 275 bounty so that's gonna be a lot of gold to work with yeah doing a pretty decent job of getting up some line of sight along the edge here as these attack ships slowly convert in uh we are going to see those spears try and get in that tower before they get taken out managing to uh to seek shelter and we see just how much they get burned through and viper gonna be heading up that river the fishing boat is gonna be heading down it the lawyer attack ships are fairly big they only have 400 hp so the tower actually does quite a lot of damage and a single light chunk here for mr could swing the battle in his favor viper has no tools to reinforce this so all mr needs to do is just make sure he doesn't lose his own fish yeah i think at this point it's a very difficult spot for viper because once this junk comes out it's obviously gonna be three against one it's gonna have a difficult time on its hand the fishing boats together with the natural heal from the dock are really gonna help it out here comes the first junk and that should be more than enough to deal with viper's fleet here if not then there's a second junk coming in as well but mister can probably start taking this fight and just use the repair ability as you said yeah so now he's gonna begin focusing it down but keep in mind he does have that repair ability so he's gonna be fine uh trading out here and if he needs to he's gonna be able to heal that one up with his fishing boats and actually doing a pretty decent job now as he scouts out the archer push that is coming towards the center and cancels that dock that was going up he needed to cancel that because otherwise the villager does get picked off i guess what mista is playing for is just using the water control to try and prevent viper from crossing and sort of play a fast castle style play as you're looking at the resources something that recon did against viper as well yeah if he can get to fast castle there's a couple of different options he's got once he gets there uh first and foremost he's gonna have the option of uh sprinkles but second of all if he maintains control of this uh this small river he may get some demos out on the crossings and let me tell you ladies and gentlemen there's something about these explosive junks that is not junk at all it is not trash it is some of the best rewards the best bang for your buck that you can get now where did burpees arches go have they garrisoned inside oh no there they are heading up towards this northern pass that's a nice idea from viper he probably knows that mister is trying to control the other crossing so he's gonna send his archers forward but they shouldn't be able to do that much of a damage you see there's already stables out two horsemen should deal with that no problem yeah i think that's gonna be absolutely fine for him i wonder what viper is actually looking to achieve here on this northern side of the map with these arches so maybe potentially there is a hunt up towards the north of the map so whether he spots that out and whether he's looking to secure that interesting to note that neither players actually spotted that one just yet so neither player yet to secure up that extra bounty gold or rather the viper neither or yet to secure it but uh yet to have it denied from the mister either we do have castle h coming in for viper he's going for a high trade house this time around i think he went with the abbey of 20 the last time they played yeah not the best high trade house i don't expect that's going to be getting too much gold income maybe about 70 maybe 80 uh income so not the best but uh it's in a safe position it's back there uh and now the step redoubt going to be up for the mister not too long but uh viper gonna be scouting out from his enemy uh plenty of infrastructure and is he gonna spot this hunt finally it looks like viper he's gonna get spotted out as he picks off this hunt and picks up that bounty gold viper still needs to be happy despite the fact that he's gonna lose these archers simply because he's at 460 bounty and with the high trade house he's gonna have enough gear to get to 500 for the boost yeah that deer will take him up so within the next four minutes he's gonna be hitting that 500 boost and that's going to be really important for him uh picking that up but now we've got the step redoubt coming in for the mist up we'll take a look at what he's got coming in it looks like he's got some mana arms gonna be being produced a thousand gold in the bank at the moment for the viper so curious as to what he's gonna be doing with that but we do see siege engineering slash improved or rather uh what's it called bracket uh improved bracket uh so gonna be able to construct sprinkles out on the field manganell's out on the field ludicor how's this game shaping up so far i feel like it's going to come down to how many sprinkles viper has because he's gonna have the crossbows to mouth the minute arms as you already see the barracks moving up close to gir so from this point on it's gonna come down to mr having sufficient amount of manganals to take down the crossbows and sufficient amount of sprinkles to just prevent viper from killing the manganos yeah that's a really good point the crossbows have been potent throughout this series so we've seen habla tree in the last game in the france mirror we saw crossbowman being used very effectively in the mongol versus uh england game and i suspect that we are going to be seeing no shortage of crossbows here as i accidentally whistle into my mic apologies guys oh demolition ships for viper he just converted his attack ships to demos and i think he's just gonna come across at this dock as it is yeah there's one going in second one looking to connect now third one coming in and gonna be taking up the full water economy of his opponent uh that dock still standing at this point but uh viper gonna be happy with the effectiveness of that had he gone a little bit further downstream he may have been able to pick up uh a little extra prize but uh nonetheless they probably probably would have been able to take out the majority of that army if i'm being honest i feel like he could have even taken on the dock those those lodia demo ships do a lot of damage so if that would have prevented going for the fishing boats again for mista still i think he has to be happy he killed the fishing echo of the opponent in fact the explosion was so big that this net just sticks to the fish forever yeah it is a very sticky net but uh now springhold's gonna be moving in and viper in a difficult spot because his economy is now gonna begin to be threatened as the sprinkles look to take out villagers that are on this uh this wood liner at least they they look like they want to take out villages but they're just they're looking like they're a little bit uh hesitant at the moment there's a bigger deal for viper this is the gold mine that he has been using and if you look at possible alternative gold mines there is one over here and one over here viper will not be able to access gold right now and he's gonna need those gold mines for the spring holds yeah speaking of gold some heavy gold units coming out the crossbow 40 gold on each one of those bad boys and viper in a bit of a difficult spot we were sitting at more than a thousand gold before now he's down to less than 400 and he's gonna have a difficult time as we enter into this period because the spring orders are coming out for him but as you mentioned it's that shortage of gold that is all important now we have seen in one of the quarter finals yesterday that mass crossbows actually perform pretty decent against springholds because they are sort of low hp units you can have a lot of them and they have a lot of firepower to destroy the sprinkles with yeah this is a really good point uh they have a very high base damage i think it works out to be about 14 on those bad boys 13 at the moment so not too bad uh so they get through that armor because the springholds i think have got eight armor on them but you seem actually sniping out villagers here doing a great job uh so yes eight armor so managing to do five damage each so compare that to a normal archer which is doing at this point probably about eight or nine damage it's not gonna be pretty speaking of not pretty goodbye high trade house you will be missed piper had to relocate his gold income all the way to the left side of the map as indeed the high trade house goes down viper was able to secure bounty level three before that happened but now he's gonna have a tough time getting those sprinkles out he's even getting a second siege workshop in yeah and this is exactly this is what makes the mongols so difficult to deal with their springboards out on the field are really going to enable them to leverage uh this this bonus that they've got and continue building up an advantage so just to match this viper's gonna have to invest 500 wood in double siege facilities but the problem is even that isn't going to match it because when you've got the the amount of men arms out on the field that the mystery's got it's gonna mean that he drops down these sprinkles and he makes them within five seconds six seconds and you're never going to be able to catch up to that plus mister is the aggressor which means he's the one forcing viper off from wood so viper is gonna have a tough time even getting the resources he needs for the springholds yeah so now we do see more sprinkles coming out about six sprinkles for his opponent and looking pretty healthy on that 57 village account i didn't spot how many villagers vipers got at this point but we'll take a look it is 41. so a 16 villager lead at the moment for the mr he's in a strong position right now uh springwood's now going to be coming out for his opponent he's got to be careful and viper looking to really try and defend this point trying his best to hold on as the sprinklers move in underneath the range of the kremlin you've got to be careful the the kremlin does have a sprinkled emplacement on it uh ready to fire off i'm curious what the range is on that bad boy though uh it does have a nine thousand range so slightly lower than the range of uh a standard spring hold yeah so surprising but uh they are indeed different um so now we are going to make sure that we continue to follow the action as the forces move around the north of the map and outpost gonna be going down looking to extend that line of sight out a couple of crossbowmen beginning to move out as well with those springholds and viper probably in a bit of a difficult spot i would say helicopter he's in a difficult spot because he's got the army to defend but his eco is not so amazing it's 44 villagers versus 58 from mr so mister is leveraging this aggressiveness and just building up a much much better economy than his opponent has and that's going to start snowballing the game at some point yeah now dropping down that wooden fortress you see eight villagers gonna get inside it he is dropping a sprinkled emplacement in that as well but now the springwood wars begin as the players open up on each other's back lines and we see that viper springholds are unfortunately going to have to fall back as a couple of spears move into position and getting cleaned up completely over on that left front those crossbows try their best to climb away but the horsemen gonna be dealing out plenty of damage to them and the khan going down as well so is the entire army of viper there is a couple of towers over here which i believe have spring golden placements as well but now we have a lot of minute arms here quite a lot of lancers and you can start pushing this side of viper's eco yeah so this is something that i talked about in the last game in the game before as well in this game as well springhold emplacements are actually underrated incredibly strong and we see a battering ram coming out but keep in mind battering ram is going to get effectively countered by that sprinkled emplacement sure you're going to be able to push in underneath that wooden fortress sure you're going to be able to have a little bit of cover but it's still going to do significant damage to that battering ram mr looking to expand his vision a tiny bit and the real thing that he's missing is this gold mine on the left which is wide open for raiding but he doesn't know about it yeah so yet to even spot it so a difficult position for him that khan obviously going down a little bit earlier as well is gonna mean that um he has no vision uh provided on this map at high trade house getting repaired up veteran khan's still got about 60 seconds to go but that high trade house now uh gonna be collecting about 100 gold a minute so not doing too badly uh they're considering how poor it looks to overlap those trees indeed that's a pretty decent gold income would be even better for viper if he could take the deer but for now he has to be satisfied with this given how little map control he has and those horsemen are getting dangerously close to viper's gold mine which is almost like this yeah if he spots this is probably a good game uh viper's army is not really in a position and yeah now we see a few villagers going to begin running across uh just to sort of bait out those horsemen he doesn't want them to make it all the way to the corner they're gonna spot the gold mine they're gonna spot all the villagers on it no those villages have where have those villages gone there were more villages there they must they've gone down to the south potentially yeah there they are there they are oh my gosh jeez that was that was close that was close the big thing for mr though is that he sees that that gold mine is also almost out so he knows exactly that even if i can't kill the villagers on it the thing is that viper is starting to run out of gold and now with the con in plus a couple of battering grams this is going to be very difficult hold for viper yeah viper now moving out with a couple of those villagers and immediately uh brings them back into the wooden fortress and now we see those battering rams looking to take in the front damage uh from his opponent with those huge sprinkles on top and look how much damage those sprinkles are actually doing to the battering rams if we click on those battering rams they're gonna be very low hp already at less than half hp at this point and gonna be trying to take these units down but having a difficult difficult job he's got to try and uh and get a trebuchet out i feel i think he's fine if he just commits with his lancers in fact these are horsemen even even better for him because he's only up against crossbows and horsemen will just tear apart this entire army from viper is just i think a decision away from mister if he commits to this one he can destroy everything and just steamroll viper's base with the rams yeah one of the things to also note is he could he bring out some villagers to just heal up these battering rams the first one has taken quite the beating uh so if he he's got some villagers out here he could definitely help out with that looks like that's not the case and it's probably going to be easier for him to just bring up some more siege himself looks like the deer stones are moving all the way up here so he's preparing for a final assault against viper space behind this one mrs at 70 villagers whereas viper is sitting at an underwhelming 50. not looking great for viper yeah definitely looking like a tough match up for him we've seen viper go down before in this matchup and it's no surprise that mr is really trying to test the balance of power as he continues to add horsemen into this composition so many horsemen how many have we got out here i think it's in the range of 30s and if viper had some sort of spearman or even knights to his army it would be or right against the horsemen but only crossbows will die really badly to the horsemen especially if they are supported by 12 springholds there's so many springholds at this point and keep in mind even if viper had been producing double springholds this time uh he still wouldn't be up towards this count there's just so many springhills out on the field because of those mana arms they're able to produce them incredibly fast now i'm gonna be taking down that sprinkle tower we've seen more sprinkled bolts coming in gonna be walking away with that bounty and definitely gonna be very happy with their gains today indeed it's like sniping off that sprinkle that just came out as well tough for viper this is getting very very tough for viper looks like crossbowmen are also on the right side so mister knows exactly this would be the time to push and as you said they can just get away with the bounty so this could already snowball out of control but the fact that you can set buildings on fire and get even more resources for mister is just absolutely impressive yeah has he got any of those bounty upgrades are we able to check the uvu and and see whether he's got those bounty improvements just yet uh doesn't look like it so yeah the bottom one stone bounty as well as the top right one uh also another bounty that he's got raid bounty yeah so neither of those upgrades coming through at this point not really looking to utilize that too much in this game but uh the mr his score is now pulling ahead significantly now keep in mind as i do reiterate with every mogul game that the scores for the mongols at the moment are bugged a little bit while there is probably a score lead for the mister it is not accurately accurately reflected in the score that we've got for this game and now gonna be cleaning up a couple villages up towards this western flank there mister is viper in a difficult spot dropping a second town center how do you feel about that one i think he needs to protect this high trade house you see there's so many deer here that could help so much to recover so it's more like a defensive building simply because he can't afford to keep but he's not completely out of gold so no more crossbowmen for him and that's a lot of horsemen to fight against crossboss could get annihilated here yeah there's a big annihilation that is about to come in here uh very very merciful of of the missile to fall back then i think he's also got the uh an additional upgrade are we able to check the armor of those units he's got the plus two range upgrade on that as well so he's gonna be doing absolutely fine against any repeat offending uh habla trier esque units at this point we're looking at 33 army for the viper mista is sitting at 61 and that is a scary group of spring golds if i've ever seen one yeah 14 springholds if the developers are watching this and they're wondering whether the springhold needs to be nerfed let this be an example let this be exhibition exhibition exhibit a uh this game because springholds are an incredibly strong unit especially in the hands of civilizations like the mongols and like the abbasid dynasty mr has been playing this game very very safely he never over committed and for now he's going to wait as well to go into imperial but viper says no it's over viper just tapping out his opponent doesn't even get the chance to finish him off viper says hey you're imperial don't worry about it we'll we'll just gg go next he just ran it down mid at that point wow beautiful not a lot to analyze from that last one other than viper c4 viper go next with the sixth game coming up in the grand finals of egc genesis we welcome you to hillandale one of the more defendable maps of the tournament on the right side we have the viper playing as the more obvious civilization pick the opposite dynasty in blue and somewhat curiously we're going to have mysta picking the french in red he's going to have to pull out a trick to stop the abbasids but he is the one that loves the abbasid siege and infantry push the most he he's the one who said he thinks he has an answer to that yeah looking forward to seeing exactly what he's gonna bring out today he's got a lot of options open to him so whether that means we're gonna see a big scout play from him potentially in the second age to try and shut that down whether we are going to see a fast imperial interculveran to try and shut that down i'm curious to see exactly what he goes for but one thing is for certain we are going to see a little bit of a boom happening on this map this map obviously being kill and dale we take a look towards the north of the mister's base and you're going to see a small entrance into that base very easy for him to wall down towards the south of his base he's got the same thing as well as in the middle so very small choke points for him to get into by the same token over in viper's base we've got an entrance over here which is guarded by a very large forest and down towards the south of his base guarded by a single hurdle sheep another chokepoint and then finally to the north of the map again a third chokepoint so very simple you wall these three bad boys off you make town centers you make villagers and you see your opponent in the imperial age or sometimes in the castle age depending if they make battering rams or not looking at the gold mice those also seem to be fairly even both players have their major gold mine close to this crossing over here a little bit more exposed for mister but in exchange for that he's got the more forests close to him on the lowlands area of this map yeah i think this is a definitely a super duper balanced spawn here uh deer looking a little bit exposed in the middle of the map there for viper but other than that i think it's pretty darn decent um barry's gonna be kind of forward as well but as you would expect a lot of gold out there towards the center of the map and once again uh sacred sites towards the center of the map as well so that that one that is uh in the middle as well as those two on the extremities but take a look at this mr already dropping down a stop a mining camp on his stone no stone mining just yet from viper but it's very likely we're still going to see a double down center boom from him he can of course delay stone mining in fact it's a little surprising that mister is going on stone this early but viper of course needs more time to get up to feudal age with the house of wisdom in fact he could pop that upgrade in a moment most likely going up with the economy yeah so just to talk about what the mr is doing so he actually helped me with my abbasid uh fast town centre build order uh he said that there is a a certain build that you can get where you you're able to drop a town centre at four minutes 40 uh with the abbasid dynasty and the same principle applies to all of these civilizations and weirdly enough it is to do with villager walk time so what the mister has done by getting these two villagers out here early is he knows that these villages are going to be chopping stone a little bit longer but he mitigates that walk time that is going to be expected as he now continues to gather up more stone with more villagers he's looking to make sure he's got that 300 stone in the piggy bank and then he's gonna make sure he chops up that wood and drops down that second town center he's going up at the school of cavalry so he might make one or two knives just to make sure he secures map control but he probably won't invest a lot into his army as the wars are coming up for both players yeah we do continue to see that those walls coming up as earlier mentioned and as a result you are typically going to see a boomier game here so viper gonna be dropping down his own town center as well shortly we see he's now on stone but uh i would expect to see mr coming up a little bit earlier than his uh but we'll have to see how these two play out and i think the misters coming to the base he's spotted the stone and he's immediately just retreated viper actually getting a hit right there saying see you mate keeping a shape for himself poor little sheep what he has ever done oh it doesn't tell you you're a monster when you select a dead sheep but that i can say to one viper here you monster for killing that you monster viper but uh he's he's gonna spot that one out so let's talk a little bit about what he's done so he's running into the base of his enemy he spotted that he's on stone and he says okay you're on stone you're walling up that's fine i know what you're gonna do he says you're gonna play fast castle you're gonna play two tc that's okay i'll meet you there and now we we sort of play the waiting game how is this game gonna unfold it is going to be a waiting game the real question is what exactly mister is up to because we know exactly what viper is thinking about the bigger question is mister's approach looking at viper he's a little low on wood and stones so he won't be able to drop the town center immediately whereas for mister he's gonna be a slightly slower to feudal age he's gonna have enough resources for the dc immediately though yeah i'm curious to see how the mr is gonna play this one whether he's going to be looking uh for some sort of potential um play with regard to knights i'm suspecting we're not gonna see a single night out of him uh i wouldn't be surprised if we actually saw some additional scouts from him and a mill getting dropped down eventually so that he could bring those hunts in he's gonna spot out that hunt in the middle of the map and he's gonna say you know what that looks kind of juicy i might take that for myself in addition to that he's obviously got his own hunt uh that he can bring in as well and this nice hunt sitting back here very open gonna be dropping down that second town center on that safe berry patch as well as that wood line feeling very good about himself notice that he could delay his balls knowing that viper is also rolling up he sees that viper is rolling so he's like okay i don't need to rush my voice because there is no aggression coming yeah it's uh it's definitely a really important point because it's gonna delay any town center that you do try and put down uh speaking of town center viper now dropping down his own town center looks like he stopped gathering up all of the stone uh at the moment the mister sitting on 105 stone is he gathering up morse oh my lord is mister doing it is he going for a triple tc with the french is that even legal it's a possibility on alternative is that you're just going with two dc boom and slowly pile up stone for a defensive keep because a keep can hold off uh spring gold bush quite nicely especially if you've got boiling oil because you can just use your villagers to take down rams after that that's a lot of town centers i'm not good at counting but i think three is more than two and viper he stopped gathering stone he's gonna be going up with the economic wing fresh food stuffs coming in for him as well so he's gonna have those cheaper villages and look to transition into a castle age but by the same time the mr not only having three tcs but playing as the french he's going to be having faster villager production as well so now you've got to think about this right this is two villages per 20 seconds over on viper side versus three villages every 17 seconds how how long do these bad boys take to train are we able to check the time 17 seconds in feudal age and i think it goes down to 14 in the castle so we are gonna have some serious villager production over here they're going to be making babies and it looks like we have a second layer of was coming in now the thing i'm thinking more and more with that stone being gathered is that even if you drop a third dc which seems likely now with those resources you could still keep some of your vouchers on stone and if you remember the border big game mr actually went for stone walls and the defensive towers on it with spring holds that could also work stopping the aggression from viper really good point actually that is that's an incredibly good point actually is that potentially what we see but now it looks like the mr gonna be dropping down that third tc down towards the south of his base gold mine gonna be what he's prioritizing and still not dropping off stone is this a four town center play right now little corp there's no way i'm not gonna answer that like i was like even free tc is a little greedy but what if it's for holy potatoes is if it's four tcs i'm not sure how viper is gonna be able to fight that because of course mister will have no army but mr will have such a big economy that he can just spam whatever unit he wants and still win a battle what the heck are we watching right now who would have thought that in the sixth game match point of the grand finals of genesis the egctv twenty thousand dollar age of empires four tournament that you would see the viper potentially losing to a four tc boom and if this is the answer to the opposite the minute arms spearman spring gold push i'm just going to be so disappointed i was thinking about something super interesting something super cheesy surprising and then it's like i'm just going to boom on seven dc's and win no no it is think about this okay think about this he's got four tc's right if if he has four tc's he's actually going for stone walls right now a lot of villagers on this stone but if he goes for four tc's okay think about how many villages he can make he's making four villages every 14 seconds right you can just suicide villages you get your textile upgrade yeah that's fine you want to push in here's 50 villagers go for it and you go and burn down all those springholds and then you just rebuild them in six seconds because you're france look at this stonewall however it's not even just to completely fall off his base i think it's just for towers it is this is beautiful this is artwork right now we are witnessing right now the pinnacle of age of empires meta developing right before our eyes you still gotta consider something the one that's very very important you need to have some sort of palisades in front of these stone walls because as much as viper is able to make sprinkles he can also make siege towers right at the beginning and if he gets on top of the wall he's going to have the wall advantage and not mr yeah that's actually a really good point are we able to check from the perspective of viper we see him running up towards the north how far does that uh that scout actually extend so go head back over to the base yeah i'm curious to see how far this goes up it actually looks like it's got a pretty decent line of sight on it he may have been actually able to spot out those walls does he oh let's go he spots out the first segment does he spot out the second segment though because that's going to be the giveaway he does spot out the second segment so maybe he looks at that and realizes hold on a minute he thinks i'm going to go for a sprinkle timing push i'm going to add a town center behind it and i'm going to go for three tc's we have got the battle of the brains right now little core we have got the battle of the brains such a nice reaction from viper here really he's like okay he knows what i'm going to do so he's got the appropriate defense against it there is the stonewall tower i think he also got this outpost here potentially fortified with a spring gold but this bad boy is pretty sturdy 3000 hp and as you said before it does have a spring gold by default yeah how much stone does that bad boy cost i'm curious i love that we call them bad boys uh 200 stone on that how much is it for a sprinkled emplacement on a tower it's 125 stone is it yeah 125 stone so probably more effective it's or 225 to get them fortified so probably more effective to just go for the standard outpost but one thing to note he is going to be running out of stone very shortly he's got the single stone mine in his base obviously dropping down the three tc's he's invested quite a lot of stone into it he's got a couple more walls up as well and i tell you what i am uh i'm enjoying this match quite a lot right now it's an interesting switch after seeing all those intense very aggressive games and that's what we associated with age vampires four minute three or the spearman pumping out burning dogs and now we are at the 12 minute game and everybody is just sitting behind 15 layers of various walls i'm not gonna lie mister's base looks extremely ugly with all these buildings scattered around but if it works he's gonna be happy with it yeah i'm gonna agree with you on that one uh this is not the prettiest bass i've i've seen a lot of beautiful basses this yeah this is not one uh mosque gonna be coming up now for viper gonna be looking to secure control of these sacred sites but i've got a sneaking suspicion that mr's economy is going to be sufficient to take him up to the imperial age look to push out here and he could actually push out if he just makes full imperial uh or full upgraded elite royal knights i don't know how viper would deal with that yeah that's the thing that viper has spearman working for him of course camos are in theory an option but i've seen a hera versus uh i'm not even sure who he played but hero actually played four camos versus four nights and he died really badly he said that the camels feel very underwhelming and i'm fairly certain they will struggle quite badly against fully upgraded elite royal knights yeah and take a look right now at viper's macro it looks like he is saving up to go imperial himself so will we see a potential or there's a springhold coming out right now for viper but i suspect he knows exactly that uh he he's just having a bit of a laugh at this point uh so are we gonna see hand cannoneers come out in response to this from viper that would be a great unit in fact hand canary with some sort of miss shield is just an ideal composition for him i love how mr is hiding the scout inside the stealth forest knowing exactly what viper brings on and he knows exactly that viper has a couple of spears with a spring hold and that's it yeah so taking a look from viper's perspective i'm thinking what does viper do in this position how does he play this so number one he needs to get out on the map which he's doing he needs to make sure that he gets some form of very disappointed scout going down right there after his horse gets impaled with a very large harpoon uh so number one is he needs to get out of the map he's doing that number two he needs to get a a foothold outside his opponent's base so i'd love to see a castle sitting right outside the base now you probably don't want to put it too close to the base maybe even in the middle of the map just outside that sacred site that is spawned in the center uh and number three he needs to be thinking about the imperial age himself he's got 1800 food at the moment that's stacked up the mister not yet aging up behind this how many villages is he on mr is at the 96 right now and the viper is sitting at 78 so viper is not that much behind but that's a fairly decent lead for uh mr neither viper nor mr imping just yet though yeah no imps coming out just yet but we do see that castle getting dropped down right outside the sacred site as i had alluded to so it's almost like uh viper is listening to me cast right now not really there is a uh there's a five minute delay so he is of course in the future to our cast but uh take a look at what he's securing up now he's looking to secure this other stone mine that is right here next to him he's also securing the hondas when he finds the scout of the mister so no more information for our red player viper is also expanding aggressively towards the berries which is a very very nice food source for him and it looks like his imperial age click up will be delayed by lack of gold yeah not a real a significant amount of gold he's obviously got plenty of gold still in his base at the moment but he wants to begin diversifying it's so important for him to be able to do that we take a look in his base check how much gold he's actually got back there he needs to keep these gold safe so his initial gold is gone but he's still got 7.5 k and 3.9 k on these two golds he wants to keep these back here just in case he loses at the front and that's why he's got all these villagers forward right now and beginning to get out on the map now speaking of out on the map capturing a sacred site here i'm curious have we got any relics that have been picked up just yet for vital um viper has been moving out with multiple monks and indeed there is already two relics for him going for the sacred site he's trying to force mister to make a move before mr is ready yeah this is exactly what the mister wants viper to do he wants him to just sort of hey you know you set yourself up that's fine i've got something prepared uh mr going absolutely ham as well if we take a look at the military count at the moment he's going to be looking very healthy sitting up on 19 with 108 villagers getting plenty of farms up as well he's going to be very happy with himself our ballet with the extra milli armor is already in for him going to be a very powerful unit on the battlefield although he's gonna need something more against the spider-man because arboles are mostly good against heavy units not light units like the spears yeah that's a great point and towards the north of the map it looks like we did we have a castle going up towards there as well or was i seeing things i might have been saying things uh we'll take a look from a viper's perspective what is that viper just has the sacred sides and he's getting the third one so from this point on the countdown begins for the secret side victory and you see that he just wants to know when and where mr leaves his base he's spamming outposts everywhere so when viper gets this sacred site a 10 minute countdown for a sacred site victory will begin and if mister cannot neutralize at least one sacred site then viper is going to take the game 26 minutes 35 seconds write that one down ladies and gentlemen put it on your calendar i'll meet you back here then because that is when our timer is going to be running out for the sacred site so viper gonna be looking to secure up these ones now keep in mind he's not really looking to win the game with this one he is just coming out on the map securing these up and we've got ourselves our first engagement of the game as a few spears look to take down their counterparts over on the opposite side of the map viper now in the middle of the map here gonna be laying down three siege workshops and the mr has got himself a little bit of a timing window right now because viper is heading up to the imperial age he's prepared all of his resources but take a look how many he's got in the bank right now i don't know if i feel that good about viper's position he's got a lot of resources but he's not he doesn't have a lot of units coming out yeah oh my goodness you just said that viper isn't going for a win there he's bowling up the north only palisades for now but he just wants to bowl off those sacred sides and now it's only nine minutes for the mista if we get some castles up on those key positions mister could be in a significantly troublesome spot he's still in castle age and viper is an imperial mist isn't even going up this is the way viper could win a 20 000 aoa4 event in the cider game he's actually going for it he's walling up these sacred sites like it's nobody's business i mean granted they're only palisades but he's trying to hold them and now i'm gonna be taking out the first outpost looking to expand out towards the middle here and viper's lead beginning to build sitting up about 500 points mr finally getting in wheelbarrow at 18 minutes a little bit of a delay that he's going to help out with his farmers and viper sitting on 104 units at this point in time going to be taking out the first villager mr up on 112 so very very close to villager numbers uh for these players and a lot of scouts out right now this is going to be a very effective counter for those sprinkles but keep in mind there's not a lot of spring or out and i think the mr was somewhat expecting a little bit more a little bit more sprinkles but look at all these spearmint it's the perfect unit composition crossbows struggle quite badly against the spearman and there is manganese to take down the crossbows if you just look at the army numbers it also looks quite promising for viper missed at 54 viper at 66 and it's only eight minutes away from victory and keep in mind viper is up in the imperial age right now mr is fighting for his life against imperial elite spearman bombards coming out as well three big bombards sitting out the front and viper now looking to take an engagement here he's got to be careful these knights going to be moving through between the two spears as the spears now move back towards the bombards get a pretty decent surround as the scouts get on top of it they're going to try and focus down that bombard there's no villagers out for them but it looks like he's actually going to be picking apart the units the ablatria on the front line gonna have a difficult time they've got that extra that extra and melee armor gonna be helping them out but it's not gonna be enough to be able to hold on right now as viper looks like he might be going in for the victory here keep in mind we are on match point right now viper is up in this series 3-2 if he wins this game he wins this series he wins this tournament and he goes on to be the very first victor of the genesis the first age of empires for estea tournament mr is through the worst he actually neutral at the sacred side so at least he's no longer on a timer but he's stuck in castle age and you see viper already has 45 towers with cannon emplacements over here it's going to be a very difficult fight from this point on for mr viper looking incredibly strong at the moment i remember asking a little bit earlier in the stream what did you guys think the score was going to be i remember you came in and you said little you said 4-2 to the viper and it looks like we may indeed have a 4-2 to the viper he looks to continue to show up his position as he pushes into the base of his opponent and really the fact that his scout spotted that single stone wall was really what gave this game away we saw the immediate reaction from him he drops down a third town center and he looks to keep up in village account with his enemy he does that he heads to the imperial age he gets the bombards out and tell you what bombards absolutely destroy these stone tower defenses viper once again has the sacred sights back so even if mister holds this he's gonna have to launch a counter attack but this just feels extremely difficult he's still stuck in castle age and i feel like we could see the end of mr soon i i definitely feel that may be the case viper really looking to get in and do some damage mister trying to distract him and say hey come away from my base come away from my base i i i have things back there that i need you shouldn't push my base but now we see those elite spearmen continuing to push in what kind of upgrades have we got on these bad boys if they got their plus threes out just yet all those are men at arms we've got mana arms out now as well getting in the mix but we've got the plus three melee up upgrades the crossbows on the back line are gonna try their best to get in on on it but it's not gonna work viper looking like he will seal the deal right now as he pushes in with his bombards and viper takes the victory he's crowned the victor of the very first st age of empires 4 event winning genesis and taking the game by storm absolutely amazing performance for him just the way that he could react to the build that mister was doing in here mister thought he had an answer to the obvious abbasid the castle siege push viper reacted so nicely realized that map control could give him such a big advantage picked up the relics picked up the sacred sides and he was able to beat mr to imperial age and just flood his base with imperial spearman whereas mister was stuck in castle age absolutely incredible game amazing response despite seeing that village account if we go back to that timeline i just want to reiterate okay he's playing up against france france have got a significant bonus when it comes to training those villagers so we take a look at that village account and you see how fast the mr is going up but look the viper catches him it's only a minute or two behind and that's all that matters because even though viper is behind for a short period of time he's able to hit that same ceiling that the mr hits and he's able to catch up and keep up with him incredible play there from the viper indeed and in the end of the day mister wasn't able to capitalize that much on that economy count and viper's superior mitch account just snowballed the game out of control looking at the economy mister had better food income but everything else in the favor of viper 8 000 gold advantage partially coming from those relics and partially coming from those sacred sites absolutely incredible game the fact he was able to get out on the map that early he did everything right i talked about it i said you know he needs to get out of the map he needs to drop down that castle he needs to get that siege out and that's exactly what he did he played it incredibly well absolutely out of his mind i just

Channel: EGCTV - Age of Empires

Views: 148,970

Keywords:

Id: jzLdZ2h6M-w

Length: 172min 24sec (10344 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021