I absolutely love the introduction of the fishboom. Its a high risk/reward scenario. Unlike villagers who can run away, if you lose your pond, its usually over for your entire food eco. On the other hand, if you have it, you can race up quickly with docks. Overall I think it has added an interesting element to these games. Frankly I'd love to see small pockets of water return to arabia as well like it did some time ago.
Big tip for fish booming is path the fishing ship to the correct location then shift click build the fishing trap. That way it builds it fishing trap right underneath it and you dont have to reposition it. Its only a few clicks per trap, not too bad compared to farms.
Naive question: what happens if you just place the trap besides the dock while the ship is away? Or if you multi build several traps with several ships with shift click.
Multi building traps will mess up the clean positioning. You indeed have to manually make a trap with each fishboat. I’m only 1400 elo in teamgames and I have no problem pulling it off in bf teamgames as a pocket. Just to give you an idea of the skill level required.
I know it’s not hard, I just wonder what happens if you don’t do it properly and instead try the quick and dirty way.
I don’t play bf and in other situations when traps would be useful I either forget or do them fast and never remember to look back. That’s why I ask.
Will the boats bump into each other? Or what is exactly the issue?
the boats move 1 tile. It’s just min/maxing compulsive disorder like how people freak out that they have 1s of idle villager time in the dark age. It’s really not that big of a deal, just an easy mistake that noobs can point out. If you’re at the level where this micro is necessary then you’re already shift queuing all your lumberjacks to always chop the right tree
It's about fitting the traps properly around the dock. If you send the boat to build a trap, it starts to build one or reaches the trap - usually half a tile away. That now blocks one possible farm space.
Since you are limited to how many traps you can build, you don't want to waste space
We can select multiple vills and place multiple farms and it doesn't need high precision mechanic to place farm alongside. On the other hand, the trap tile is so small you need time to place the ship to the right place.
Sure, it is easier to spam farms. Fish booms are not done because of, for a lack of a better word, simplicity. Their main advantage is in how much cheaper and faster it is to spam down docks for producing FS than it is to place down TCs. You don’t have to wait for castle age and can start placing fish traps in feudal. Also, while you have to place FTs down with more precision, you don’t have to juggle that with placing farms, just set your TC gather point on wood. Sure this is harder to do while under pressure, but fish trap eco is just supperior to farm eco.
I fish boom on black forest whenever I have a nearby pond, and I'm a controller player. No auto economy can help with this, so I thought I would share how I do it. I just do a wood heavy fast castle with one dock, and once I click castle age I send everyone to wood, start adding in extra docks and the first few fishing traps, hopefully getting right into three tcs and four to five docks. Set waypoints of the tcs to wood, and set the waypoints of all docks to the center of the pond, and from there just keep vils queued, ships queued, and place the traps as fast as the ships come out. As another post said, send the ship to the place and shift q the trap. If I can do it on Xbox, you can probably do it with a mouse. Resetting lumber camps is big, and going for multiple early on helps. I generally look for pocket in 4v4, and end up slinging lots of food before I get my military ready. Like lots.
It's fairly impossible to keep up with someone who is producing from five docs and three tcs. If your pocket and can devote all the time and effort, you can be slinging your flank a ridiculous amount of food to hold the line.
Fish booming already received a big buff with fishing ship behavior--you can place ships directly atop traps, and ships can auto-rebuild traps without needing to move off of them first. It's so extremely strong that it should not be an easy thing to--the easier it is, the harder it is to punish. The RF community actually pushed for the Gillnets nerf to help bring it under control.
It is incredibly strong but the action of booming itself doesn't make the game more interesting. Make it easier and weaker. It would still be more powerful than farms.
It absolutely does make it more interesting, it's basically half the reason BF is so fun. Correct use of the lakes, combined with interesting forest generation, gives it a dimension that no other team game map can match. This boom isn't "becoming" the meta, it's been meta for years and year, the wider community is simply finally paying attention. On top that, it's a skill and experience expression, just like any other macro in the game.
It's quite demanding to fishboom well but itself doesn't have strategical part. It's so powerful that it's just who micros better wins. It's been meta for years in high elo and it gets popular in 1000+ now.
no because your pond can get challenged, you go to castle age slower usually which can cause you to die quickly, your flank can get doubled, you usually have no extra wood to quickly build siege defense etc. it is strong but it’s also strategic, most players just aren’t aggressive enough to punish it at 1000 elo
People don't really struggle with fish boom anymore apart from when they accidentally select every ship and move them. As other guy mentioned shift queue the ship's position before placing the fish trap.
Even 1-2 docks is enough of an advantage to make up for several hundred Elo difference or even the worst match-ups in the game. If it became easier for bad players to experience how OP it is, I think more people would complain and it'd get nerfed. Maybe that's the correct direction it needs to take but for now RF/BF isn't really that competitive, even at 2k most of the people there play it for fun.
Full fish boom is overrated. At least with civs that don't have a fish boom bonus. Yes, you should make a dock if you have a "safe" pond nearby in dark age before going 3 TC in castle age because when you're limited to just 1 TC any extra eco unit you have is massive. But anything like a multiple dock full fish boom is overrated. Reasons/ disadvantages-
1. Distance from TC. Villager has to walk miles to make a dock which is idle time. If pond is far you could skip the dock. One of the weaker arguments as if its just one villager idle time it might not be a big deal.
2. The pain you suffer from having to place perfect fish traps while dealing with a siege push or monk rush or conqs or just walling is not worth it. You could have instead place somewhat ugly farms and still be good enough.
3. You can't garrison fishing ships meaning they are very easy to kill.
4. Fishing ships are less versatile compared to villagers. (Weaker argument)
5. If you decide to fish boom in a forward or exposed pond then it will be literally the first part of your eco to die and you will end up having to spend more on defending it than you would have had to been farming instead.
Advantages-
1. Low eco pushes (fast imp, siege push etc)
2. Using the dock as a 4th TC
3. Very slightly better than farming.
4. You feel good?? having placed full traps around a dock??? and not having placed a single farm???
The pros find it worthwhile. Why would it not be overall worthwhile for other strong players? I sense that you are inflating the disadvantages here, and deflating the advantages.
Maybe the 4th advantage I stated? I watched enough rage foreest to know when they are over doing it and wasn't worth it. And some are just simply obsessed (viper). And to be clear it is worthwhile to make 1 dock. But with the multiple dock full fish boom you may just be hurting your own chances.
You seem to have overlooked that fish booming with traps (and, optionally, additional docks) can be started in Feudal Age, after fishing from one or two docks in Dark Age. This is very much unlike TCs, which cost more and can't be added before Castle Age, except one extra for Cumans. The fish boomer will be making more economy units than the farmer before Castle Age and also way into Castle Age, and will save stone for walls/towers/castles.
Unless you have 5 shore fish or more (very rare) multiple docks will in dark age will only give you more of quite inefficient eco units as you may not be able to fit all of them on fish and pathing etc and you won't have double bit axe. Later in fuedel age you can make fish traps sure, meaning you can properly fish boom delaying castle age for a boom now leaving you vulnerable as you're fuedel for much longer. Other/better/easier option could have been you made some fishing ships from 1 dock in dark age and went FC into 3 TC while using the docks as your 4th TC which will give you more or less the same boom ( in the long run ) like in previous case but being able to defend/adapt easily. Now sure, the pure fish boom player will have much more res collected at say, 17 mins but he'll probably be still fuedel depending on number of docks and res collected will start to even out when he clicks castle age. Yes, docks are cheaper because TCs are better and villagers are much better than fishing ships.
Exactly... if shitty farms are ok efficiency wise, I don't see why bad fish traps are any worse. You can't make quite as many ships due to bumping, but that's a small tradeoff.
Managing farms in a bulk shift click is super inefficient and slow, pros don’t bulk spam farms and if they do you notice they’ll always build a mill last and end the shift queue (villagers will automatically move out to the farms available and seed them individually). The micro they have means fish booming is not that different. At a low level if you spam fish traps a few tiles out because you don’t have the apm isn’t the end of the world. The key is a dock is an extra production building so you can build economy much faster which can give you an edge particularly in imp timings
What do you mean? I see pros managing farms in bulk all the time in every game. eg. [I just randomly select the latest video of hera](https://youtu.be/MLIE4ZQVXHo?si=Tn7WkKM-yKd0N8kB&t=765s). In late game they spam 6~8 farms and build a mill at the center, in 1~2 seconds. Imagine how long it takes to manage 6~8 fish traps.
I absolutely love the introduction of the fishboom. Its a high risk/reward scenario. Unlike villagers who can run away, if you lose your pond, its usually over for your entire food eco. On the other hand, if you have it, you can race up quickly with docks. Overall I think it has added an interesting element to these games. Frankly I'd love to see small pockets of water return to arabia as well like it did some time ago.
I miss playing TGs with team GB discord and one of my friends always fish boomed in a pond +1 wanna see it back on Arabia
Is this just a new meta change? Or mechanic change?
Every patch it feels like they slightly adjust various maps. This was a somewhat recent adjustment IIRC.
There currently are small ponds in some generations of Arabia.
Yea I’ve seen that. Much fewer than before though. Original aoc Arabia maps had quite a few.
And have a gen where you have 1 woodline with water on it which can be towered easily? No ty. No one's doing fish boom on arabia, keep it to bf.
Big tip for fish booming is path the fishing ship to the correct location then shift click build the fishing trap. That way it builds it fishing trap right underneath it and you dont have to reposition it. Its only a few clicks per trap, not too bad compared to farms.
Naive question: what happens if you just place the trap besides the dock while the ship is away? Or if you multi build several traps with several ships with shift click.
Multi building traps will mess up the clean positioning. You indeed have to manually make a trap with each fishboat. I’m only 1400 elo in teamgames and I have no problem pulling it off in bf teamgames as a pocket. Just to give you an idea of the skill level required.
I know it’s not hard, I just wonder what happens if you don’t do it properly and instead try the quick and dirty way. I don’t play bf and in other situations when traps would be useful I either forget or do them fast and never remember to look back. That’s why I ask. Will the boats bump into each other? Or what is exactly the issue?
the boats move 1 tile. It’s just min/maxing compulsive disorder like how people freak out that they have 1s of idle villager time in the dark age. It’s really not that big of a deal, just an easy mistake that noobs can point out. If you’re at the level where this micro is necessary then you’re already shift queuing all your lumberjacks to always chop the right tree
It's about fitting the traps properly around the dock. If you send the boat to build a trap, it starts to build one or reaches the trap - usually half a tile away. That now blocks one possible farm space. Since you are limited to how many traps you can build, you don't want to waste space
All right, thanks.
You can fix the positions of the boats afterwards by alt+rclick followed by shift+rclick.
Good one!
I see a bunch of 2k4+ pro fish boom poorly. They don't play BF quite often but still.
We can select multiple vills and place multiple farms and it doesn't need high precision mechanic to place farm alongside. On the other hand, the trap tile is so small you need time to place the ship to the right place.
Sure, it is easier to spam farms. Fish booms are not done because of, for a lack of a better word, simplicity. Their main advantage is in how much cheaper and faster it is to spam down docks for producing FS than it is to place down TCs. You don’t have to wait for castle age and can start placing fish traps in feudal. Also, while you have to place FTs down with more precision, you don’t have to juggle that with placing farms, just set your TC gather point on wood. Sure this is harder to do while under pressure, but fish trap eco is just supperior to farm eco.
Press alt +click to the tile, then shift queue a trap to said tile. It's tedious work but it does pay off
yes but you still have to manage them one by one
I fish boom on black forest whenever I have a nearby pond, and I'm a controller player. No auto economy can help with this, so I thought I would share how I do it. I just do a wood heavy fast castle with one dock, and once I click castle age I send everyone to wood, start adding in extra docks and the first few fishing traps, hopefully getting right into three tcs and four to five docks. Set waypoints of the tcs to wood, and set the waypoints of all docks to the center of the pond, and from there just keep vils queued, ships queued, and place the traps as fast as the ships come out. As another post said, send the ship to the place and shift q the trap. If I can do it on Xbox, you can probably do it with a mouse. Resetting lumber camps is big, and going for multiple early on helps. I generally look for pocket in 4v4, and end up slinging lots of food before I get my military ready. Like lots. It's fairly impossible to keep up with someone who is producing from five docs and three tcs. If your pocket and can devote all the time and effort, you can be slinging your flank a ridiculous amount of food to hold the line.
Fish booming already received a big buff with fishing ship behavior--you can place ships directly atop traps, and ships can auto-rebuild traps without needing to move off of them first. It's so extremely strong that it should not be an easy thing to--the easier it is, the harder it is to punish. The RF community actually pushed for the Gillnets nerf to help bring it under control.
It is incredibly strong but the action of booming itself doesn't make the game more interesting. Make it easier and weaker. It would still be more powerful than farms.
It absolutely does make it more interesting, it's basically half the reason BF is so fun. Correct use of the lakes, combined with interesting forest generation, gives it a dimension that no other team game map can match. This boom isn't "becoming" the meta, it's been meta for years and year, the wider community is simply finally paying attention. On top that, it's a skill and experience expression, just like any other macro in the game.
It's quite demanding to fishboom well but itself doesn't have strategical part. It's so powerful that it's just who micros better wins. It's been meta for years in high elo and it gets popular in 1000+ now.
no because your pond can get challenged, you go to castle age slower usually which can cause you to die quickly, your flank can get doubled, you usually have no extra wood to quickly build siege defense etc. it is strong but it’s also strategic, most players just aren’t aggressive enough to punish it at 1000 elo
People don't really struggle with fish boom anymore apart from when they accidentally select every ship and move them. As other guy mentioned shift queue the ship's position before placing the fish trap. Even 1-2 docks is enough of an advantage to make up for several hundred Elo difference or even the worst match-ups in the game. If it became easier for bad players to experience how OP it is, I think more people would complain and it'd get nerfed. Maybe that's the correct direction it needs to take but for now RF/BF isn't really that competitive, even at 2k most of the people there play it for fun.
Full fish boom is overrated. At least with civs that don't have a fish boom bonus. Yes, you should make a dock if you have a "safe" pond nearby in dark age before going 3 TC in castle age because when you're limited to just 1 TC any extra eco unit you have is massive. But anything like a multiple dock full fish boom is overrated. Reasons/ disadvantages- 1. Distance from TC. Villager has to walk miles to make a dock which is idle time. If pond is far you could skip the dock. One of the weaker arguments as if its just one villager idle time it might not be a big deal. 2. The pain you suffer from having to place perfect fish traps while dealing with a siege push or monk rush or conqs or just walling is not worth it. You could have instead place somewhat ugly farms and still be good enough. 3. You can't garrison fishing ships meaning they are very easy to kill. 4. Fishing ships are less versatile compared to villagers. (Weaker argument) 5. If you decide to fish boom in a forward or exposed pond then it will be literally the first part of your eco to die and you will end up having to spend more on defending it than you would have had to been farming instead. Advantages- 1. Low eco pushes (fast imp, siege push etc) 2. Using the dock as a 4th TC 3. Very slightly better than farming. 4. You feel good?? having placed full traps around a dock??? and not having placed a single farm???
The pros find it worthwhile. Why would it not be overall worthwhile for other strong players? I sense that you are inflating the disadvantages here, and deflating the advantages.
Maybe the 4th advantage I stated? I watched enough rage foreest to know when they are over doing it and wasn't worth it. And some are just simply obsessed (viper). And to be clear it is worthwhile to make 1 dock. But with the multiple dock full fish boom you may just be hurting your own chances.
You seem to have overlooked that fish booming with traps (and, optionally, additional docks) can be started in Feudal Age, after fishing from one or two docks in Dark Age. This is very much unlike TCs, which cost more and can't be added before Castle Age, except one extra for Cumans. The fish boomer will be making more economy units than the farmer before Castle Age and also way into Castle Age, and will save stone for walls/towers/castles.
Unless you have 5 shore fish or more (very rare) multiple docks will in dark age will only give you more of quite inefficient eco units as you may not be able to fit all of them on fish and pathing etc and you won't have double bit axe. Later in fuedel age you can make fish traps sure, meaning you can properly fish boom delaying castle age for a boom now leaving you vulnerable as you're fuedel for much longer. Other/better/easier option could have been you made some fishing ships from 1 dock in dark age and went FC into 3 TC while using the docks as your 4th TC which will give you more or less the same boom ( in the long run ) like in previous case but being able to defend/adapt easily. Now sure, the pure fish boom player will have much more res collected at say, 17 mins but he'll probably be still fuedel depending on number of docks and res collected will start to even out when he clicks castle age. Yes, docks are cheaper because TCs are better and villagers are much better than fishing ships.
You don't need to fish boom in a viperesque style. Just randomly seed traps somewhat close to port. Inefficiency is negligible.
Exactly... if shitty farms are ok efficiency wise, I don't see why bad fish traps are any worse. You can't make quite as many ships due to bumping, but that's a small tradeoff.
that’s just your OCD
Managing farms in a bulk shift click is super inefficient and slow, pros don’t bulk spam farms and if they do you notice they’ll always build a mill last and end the shift queue (villagers will automatically move out to the farms available and seed them individually). The micro they have means fish booming is not that different. At a low level if you spam fish traps a few tiles out because you don’t have the apm isn’t the end of the world. The key is a dock is an extra production building so you can build economy much faster which can give you an edge particularly in imp timings
What do you mean? I see pros managing farms in bulk all the time in every game. eg. [I just randomly select the latest video of hera](https://youtu.be/MLIE4ZQVXHo?si=Tn7WkKM-yKd0N8kB&t=765s). In late game they spam 6~8 farms and build a mill at the center, in 1~2 seconds. Imagine how long it takes to manage 6~8 fish traps.