Hehe, thanks for the reminder Sumerian Leper. Probably I am a bit too critical of Wedsaz. He, like everyone else here, is just trying to have fun.
And Wedsaz, you are absolutely right about gunpowder. But once again, your love for the good argument . . . Ah, I should just leave this alone. It gets to be like picking at a scab or something. No good can come of it but I just can't seem to help myself.
You did not invent the Minoan fast boom strategy in AoE. You might have invented it in RoR. As Leper says, someone had to. It could just as well have been you. But a 16 villager, 24 fishing boat start in AoE was not viable. Not enough fish. Many maps, even huge coastal, don't have 24 fishing spots on the whole map, much less in front of your 2 docks. The super overabundance of fishing spots arrives with RoR and is followed shortly thereafter by the fishing boat boom strategies (maybe not invented by but certainly first extensively written about by Out4Blood). Sorry, Wedsaz, but your gunpowder is all wet if you think you invented a fishing boat boom strategy in AoE.
And I think this can be easily demonstrated. You see, AoE still exists and I and several other people here still play it. I played a coastal yesterday where I had about 8 fishing boats. That's the most I have had in a long time. I had a boat on every fishing spot I could find near my starting spot. Eventually some of those 8 moved to a second spot but some never found another fish. I invite anyone to try to find 24 fishing spots in the area that they control on any AoE map. I suspect that even a skilled fishing boat boomer like BlitzkreigComin would soon abandon that strategy in AoE. In AoE you have to get the majority of your food from the land.
Finally, and I think you know this but it must have slipped your mind in your rush to tell the story of how you invented the 40 villager start, but early AoE was exclusively 50 pop. A few people had discovered the secret but it is the first patch that allowed the mass of people to alter their pop limit. And then, even with the change, most people went to something like 75 or 100. It was the release of RoR which brought the change to a "default" population of 200 (and the 100 villager boom).
I suppose I could throw a couple more logs on this fire but I have picked this scab enough for now (another viciously mixed metaphor).
I await your reply.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!