Pasture (Age of Empires II)

This article is about the building in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - The Three Kingdoms. For the building in Age of Empires IV, see Pasture (Age of Empires IV).

Pasture
Building information
Introduced in	Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - The Three Kingdoms
Type	Economic
Civilization	Khitans
Age	Dark Age
Use	Provide food
Construction
Wood	100
Build time	18 seconds
Statistics
Size	4×4 tiles
Hit points	560
Melee armor	0
Pierce armor	0
Armor classes	Building Standard building
Line of Sight	1
Building evolution
See also	Farm
Notes
When a Pasture is completely harvested, it is replaced by a Dead Pasture which can be right-clicked by a Villager to build a new Pasture

“	Khitan unique renewable food source. Provides a limited amount of food before it must be rebuilt. Only two Villagers may work a Pasture at a time.	”
—In-game description

The Pasture is a unique economic building of the Khitans in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - The Three Kingdoms. It is a Farm replacement which can be worked on by two Villagers (called "Herders") simultaneously. Unlike Farms, building a Mill is not required to unlock Pastures.

The Pasture is 4x4 building which is made up of four components: a central yurt, boundary fences, neutral land, and animals. The animals spawn randomly on the neutral land. The central yurt is a unique drop-off site for Herders. Like Farms, all units can move over Pastures except over the small area occupied by the central yurt. The boundary fences have no gameplay impact.

Each animal on the Pasture contains 105 food, which does not decay. They are not controllable or targetable by normal means, and remain within the Pasture.

Tactics and placement

Pastures can be placed anywhere they can fit without much concerns on alignment and grouping because they do not need separate drop sites. Their placement is similar to Khmer Farms, except for the need to accommodate the larger size. Eight Pastures can be placed in the eight directions around the Town Center up to one layer perfectly. While aesthetically pleasing, similar to Folwark Farms, gameplay-wise, this provides a healthy number (sixteen) of food gatherers, all of which are at most 5.6 tiles away from the Town Center. Hence, not only can most of them be quickly garrisoned in the Town Center, they are also within range of the Town Center's arrows.

They can similarly be placed around Castles, which can accommodate two layers of Pastures, all of which lie well within the Castle's maximum range. It is not recommended to do this at the front lines.

The player need not place Pastures near defensive structures, but it is nonetheless recommended in the early game. In the later stages of the game, when players are walled off to protect raids from unsuspected angles and have towers and Castles in their base to slow down raids, Pastures can be placed anywhere: a 4x4 gap left after placing Houses, near a woodline which has been significantly deforested, the land occupied by an exhausted Gold or Stone Mine, the land occupied by a soon-to-be deleted University, etc.

An unorthodox method of utilizing Pastures is to use two Villagers to hunt Deer at the latter's spawn location. After gathering to their maximum capacity, they can construct Pastures at the spot. No other civilization can utilize this tactic better than the Khitans. However, this must not be done in unprotected areas.

Working on Pastures

Herders have significantly reduced carry capacity, with a base value of 3. This does not harm the collection, as the Villagers do not need a separate drop-off point, since they drop off the meat right at the central yurt, though they can still drop off food at the dedicated drop sites. Villagers collecting food from other sources do not drop off food at Pastures, but they can be tasked to Pastures with less than two Herders, and they will deposit their carried food to the stockpile after they start working on the Pasture. The carry capacity of Herders is reminiscent of Farmers which gather 25% of their maximum carry capacity from a single spot and then move on to a new spot.

Building comparison

	Pasture	Farm
Cost (wood)	100 50 per Villager	60
Time	18 13.5 for 2 Villagers	15
Conversion ratio (food produced per wood)	3.15 4.2 6.3 9.45	2.92 4.17 6.25 9.17
Hit points	560	480
Drop-off site	Pasture's yurt (primary) Mill Town Center	Mill Town Center
Size	4x4 (16 sq. tiles) (8 sq. tiles per Villager)	3x3 (9 sq. tiles)
Requirements	None	Mill

Design

Technology level	Animals	Food	Appearance
None	3	315
Domestication	4	420
Pastoralism	6	630
Transhumance	9	945

Further statistics

Food amount	Domestication (+105) Pastoralism (+210) Transhumance (+315)
Construction speed	Treadmill Crane (+20%)

Civilization bonuses

Since Pastures can be stolen by other civilizations, and that they can also utilize it, the Khitan bonus is mentioned below separately and not included in the infobox stats.

• Khitans: Villagers drop off +10% food.
  • This means that they generate +10% food, while Herders work and carry +10% resources as well.
• Tatars: Pasture animals last 50% longer (thus the Pasture provides +50% food). Herders work 50% faster.

Team bonuses

• Chinese: Pastures provide +10% food.
• Portuguese: Mill technologies and Treadmill Crane are researched 25% faster.

Trivia

• Two types of animals spawn in Pastures. One is the Ibex, the other is the Argali, a mountain sheep native in Central Asia, Tibet, and the Himalayas. While Argali are often hunted for food and for their horns for traditional Chinese medicine, they are wild animals and not livestock. Both can also be encountered on random maps as wild huntables.
• When a non-Khitan civilization gains access to a Pasture and exhausts its food, it cannot reseed it and instead replaces it with a Farm.
• When someone else takes over a Pasture, the food on the Pasture is not reset. This is unlike a Farm, which resets the food to the maximum available based on the new owner's technologies.
• A Yurt variant visually identical to the yurt of the Pasture is available in the Scenario Editor. Like other Yurts, it provides population space and does not act as a drop-off point.
• The Pasture animals cannot be selected in-game, but can be selected when using CaptureAge.
• The Pastures are notorious in the online community for being much stronger than the Farms, while in reality the generic Pastures are evenly matched and it is the Khitan bonus doing the heavy-lifting.
• It is often suggested within the community to make the Pasture available to other steppe nomad civilizations, such as the Mongols, Huns, Tatars, and Cumans, due to their being known for their pastoralism, and the Farm thus being less historically appropriate.
  • Of these, the Tatars would benefit the most from receiving Pastures, since their bonus on herdables also applies to the Pasture's animals.

Gallery

Two Villagers working on one Pasture simultaneously

Icon depicting the Pasture yurt, used for a Yurt variant found in the Scenario Editor

Promotional image

A non-Khitan civilization reseeding a fully harvested captured Pasture to a 4×4 Farm (3×3 in size centered at the corner of a tile, so occupying the partial tiles as well)