Trade Carts

A friend and I have been playing 2v2 (or 3v3s) vs Moderate AIs. But we have a disagreement on when to build markets for trade. To go from Dark to Feudal, I will build a mill/lumber camp/barracks/mining camp. To go from Feudal to Castle, I will build a market/blacksmith/Stable(or Archery Range depending on civ/troop compisition)

He tends to ignore building a market until Late Castle/Early Imperial, where as I tend to build (or want to build) Early feudal.

My rationale is that in Feudal age, you are limited to one TC, and while Trade is less effective than villagers are at gold/minute, having a market lets you train 1 trade cart for every 2 villagers. Meaning a decent boost to the growth of your eco well before you can reach your second TC. And first thing into castle age you can get 50% faster (33% more gold/minute I assume?) Additionally, it is really nice, imo, to share the map knowledge you gain by building a market. (This is probably in part because I am not great at scouting aggressively, and I usually just scout an increasing semi-circle outside my base. So knowing their map information will make my scouting more focused/effective. With time and skill, I am sure that I will get more effective at scouting and this will be less of a big deal). It also seems that a dock has a similar benefit to a market, but most maps we play vs AIs, we avoid the water because usually one AI will over commit to the water, and the fight goes from a challenge, to an absolute cake walk with the AI totally unwilling to change strategies to account for both of us on land.

His rationale is that the resources (175 wood for market, 100 wood/50 gold per Cart) is better spent elsewhere in early Feudal-late castle. (I tend to only value food/gold in feudal age, as I end up having enough wood for at least 3 stables/archery ranges. I am not sure if this is a fair assumption or just an indication of unbalance in my early game).

If he is right, can you give me better ideas for where I should be putting gold? I do train man at arms/archers/knights (depending on civ) in feudal and try to get raiding out, though usually to limited effect. Is he right that Market shouldn't be built until you are headed to imperial? Is there some math that exists on this topic?

Also, does this change if the team has a spanish player? If the player is indians? Both?

I recently started playing AoE2 and have been trying to improve. If anyone has general advice for that and how to begin learning, I am all ears.

I found similar posts on this subreddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/2g128v/when_should_you_start_trade_carts/

(Which doesn't address the question as well as I'd like)

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/a698uv/when_to_build_trade_carts/

(Which seems to address the question quite well, but it doesn't seem obvious to me why building multiple markets late in game is going to be so much better than a single market starting early and building more as needed)

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Thank you very much for taking the time to look at this and for getting this far