Why I love this game (a match I just played)

I'm mid-1700s. Just played a game against another random player. Map: Megarandom. We spawned with skirms instead of scouts, but other than that everything was pretty standard. Open map with a ring of forest surrounding it.

Then he lames my boar with his skirm. FUUUUUU. Had only one boar, improvised by getting deer. What does he do? Lames my deer with his skirm, killing two of them.

Naturally, I was enraged and frustrated, but hey - laming is part of the game. The rules allow for it. Just gotta adapt.

So I went for farms early, somehow managed to feudal almost at the same time as he did. Then it got crazy. He went all-out scout rush, massively disrupting my eco. Meanwhile, I go and tower near his major gold and stone mines, and deny fields of farms he has constructed. I barely keep my struggling eco alive under his constant scout attacks, but I also manage to disrupt him a little with my towers.

Then, by some kind of miracle, I manage to get to castle at around the same time he does. I drop a stable and go for knights, and build a new TC in the area protected by my towers. Then I detect a siege workshop near my base and know what he's trying to do. I go there with two knights, killing one of his mangonels, but he has lots of cav archers and kills my knights with them.

Things were looking terrible for my since my eco was all fucked from his constant raiding. And yet, I didn't give up. His pressure on my original TC got too big and he was about to destory it with mangonels, so I pull all my vils back to the vicinity of his base... and destroy his original TC with mangonels.

By now, I had enough stone to build a castle near where his base used to be, then I built a TC where his used to be and got more than a dozen farms for free, paid by his wood long ago!

After much fierce fighting, I manage to go IMP and build two trebs. That's when he calls gg.

Holy shit this entire game was just completely intense. My economy was in tatters, he was being denied his farms into which he had pumped so much wood, we essentially both relocated our bases to each others' original locations, and it was constant mayhem and madness.

I love this game.