I moved several villagers to gold and wood while I was scouting out the map. When I made tool at 17 minutes ( ouch!!!) I had 2350 wood, 1500 gold and 350 food. I started training more villagers and finished walling in. I had placed several barracks around as walls in the mean time. I have always wanted to try pop booming and feeding an ally so I started cranking out more villagers and building farms while I tributed 1500 wood and 1500 gold to my best ally. I continued to mine gold like crazy and tribute when I got 1000 or so.
I kept expecting him to iron since he had been bronze since about the 15 minute mark but nothing was happening. I tributed a total of 2500 wood and 4000 gold to him before he was dropped with the “problem communicating with” message. He never ironed. At about the 20 minute mark the blue enemy found my food gatherers right after they had killed one of his elephants. He killed that group of villagers with chariot archers and headed towards my town. I had a few layers of walls which slowed him down but I still wasn’t bronze since I had counted on feeding my allies to victory.
I chatted to everyone that I may as well resign since I had been feeding but the host asked me to play on. I guess he likes tearing up buildings. I finally bronzed at 28 minutes and started building some ranges and stables to put up some kind of fight with. Unfortunately, he broke through my walls before I could train any military.
Old blue started telling how good my ally that dropped was and mocking me a little. Being mocked by someone better than me makes me mad; being mocked by someone that I know I could beat most of the time is humiliating. Hehe. No doubt they left that game saying “That Jehu guy must be a raw newby. He bronzed at 28 minutes. Hmmmm? Why does he have the second highest score in the game?” Moral of the story is only feed allies with good connections and that know what to do with it when you give it to them.....I guess. Jehu