"The playerbase has improved so much, people at 1k elo know build orders and are actually really good"

According to many of you guys here on reddit, the playerbase of AoE2 de has improved immensely since the released of the game and everyone is absolutely great at build orders and has no idle TC which makes it insanely hard to even reach 1k elo.

I personally believe this take to be absolutely insane and a complete lie so I decided to look at randoms replays from players roughly between 1000 and 1150 elo that I found on aoe2.net. I made sure to take people who had hundreds of games played so that I wouldn't run into people who where getting destroyed during their placement matches. I looked at those replays only until the beginning of feudal age because I wanted to judge the players based purely on their ability to execute simple build orders without facing any aggression (there is obviously no drush at this elo so it gives a pretty good idea). Also the games are all on Arabia because it's by far the most popular map.

Here's a summary of the games I looked at :

1st game : Spanish vs Goths

Spanish open FC no army

FC time = 20 min

Goths open 1 militia into scouts

20 pop up -> 9 min 52 feudal

Idle time in DA : 1 min

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2nd game : Persians vs Franks

Persians open 20 pop scouts -> 9min 39

Double bit axe and horse collar on the way to castle age (around min 20)

24s of idle time

Franks open 22 pop scouts -> 10 min 46

Randomly got loom at pop 14

Double bit axe at min 14

41s of idle time

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3rd game : Mayans vs Turks

Mayans open 21 pop archers (no double bit axe) -> Feudal = 9 min 54

39s of idle time

Turks open 20 pop scouts (no double bit axe no horse collar)-> Feudal = 11 min 13

1 min 58 of idle time

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4th game : Mayans vs Celts

Mayans 22 pop up MAA -> feudal = 10 min 57

1 min 17s of idle time

Celts 28 pop up no army no loom (died instantly in feudal) -> uptime = 12 min 53

43s of idle time

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5th game : Franks vs Mongols

Franks 20 pop up scouts (no double bit axe) -> 9min 26 feudal

11 sec of idle time

Mongols 24 pop up (no double bit axe no horse collar)-> 11min feudal

5 sec of idle time

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So as you can see I looked at 5 different games and I found exactly one player who executed a build order at what I would call an acceptable level (the Franks player in the last game which he won instantly btw) and even then eco upgrade was missing so it was far from perfect.

I then queued myself for the first time in a year at 1250 elo and was faced with someone who went 20 pop MaA with Mongols with 57 sec of idle time in dark age and then proceeded to call me a smurf because he couldn't understand he could lose after such a glorious opening.

So basically if you're one of the people with the take mentionned at the beginning of the post, please stop lying. There is basically no one who executes build orders correctly at around 1k elo and if you do you should get a decisive advantage by roughly mid feudal.