He mentioned that he is playing C&C3, so I asked if it is any good, he said yeah, much faster paced than aoe3, i said why, he said fighting starts much sooner, can be within 1 minute of game start, etc...
I thought about it, this sounds very much like aoe3 that starts at colonial age.
then I thought, why do we have discovery age at all?
I used to argue that inclusion of age1 was good, it allows different BOs and players can get creative, but as i graduately got better at the game I realised that in current form of aoe3, being creative dont win games.
look at dutch for example, the civ you can be the most creative with in age1, you can do explorer, atp, schooner fishing, 3 vil, food trickle, fast colonial with 10 vils, slow colonial with multiple banks, etc...
but after extensive testings of all possible strats, inventing a bunch of dutch strats, and checking out many expert games, I realised the best way to play dutch is this may sound a bit sad but it is true. especially in TWC when several these other options were nerfed(ATP, explorer, FCUK). then I looked at other civs, french should ALWAYS do 14 cdb, spanish should ALWAYS do 15~16 vil, ottoman never even have to make a decision, most natives should always do 15, etc... yes there are small variations, give or take 1 vil some where, but difference are so small. suddenly I felt discovery age is such a waste of time, my latest 50 games would have wasted 225 minutes , that is about 4 hours of my precious game playing time! I think if all games start with what currently all civs has at the point of clicking age up, the game would not be very different at all, except it will be more interesting, more action packed, and save us a lot of time.
Strategy by Ultimitsu
Guns and Biers
British Anti-FF explosion
For TWC only Ottoman FF on non-water non-TP maps
For Vanilla only Dutch Fast Colonial Uber Bank