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Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors Tactics & Guides -> Road to Expert -> Step 3 - Economy Upgrades -> Page 2

Step 3 - Economy Upgrades

Feudal Age -> Horse Plough in Mill:

This farm upgrade makes neither farms cheaper or farmers collecting faster. This affects the farm by adding 75 food to a newly placed one after the upgrade, going from 175f - 250f. It also affects it in another way explained below

It lengthens farms life or reduces the amount of wood we need to reseed them. To reseed a farm (60 wood) we need to have a villager chopping solely for each 3 farms we have to collect enough wood so that when each of these farms run out there is enough wood to replace it. With the farm upgrade 1 vill can collect the wood to reseed 4 farms instead of 3 because each farm has more food (or life) lasting longer allowing the vil to chop more wood. So for every 12 farms we have we will need 3 woodcutters instead of 4 meaning we have a free villager to use somewhere else.

Feudal Age -> Wheelbarrow in TC:

Wheelbarrow increases the amount of resources each villager can carry (he has to go drop them less often) and increases its walking speed (less time spent carrying them).

It is hard to evaluate the impact of this on a full economy. When we have a lot of villagers dropping resources on a single lumber camp or far away from it (for example when we use a single lumber camp or when we do a galley rush: multiple lumber camps) or when we do several rows of farms on a single drop point its effect on our economy is very big, in these cases it is best to purchase it as soon as possible.

When the distances villagers have to walk are short (farms in single row, few villagers per lumber camp, etc.) I estimated it improves the economy in around 10% (on wood and farmers, its effect in minery are almost null since the walking there is minimal unless you have loads of miners). Knowing this and taking its upgrade time of 1:15(exactly 3 villagers) into consideration it is my belief Wheelbarrow is good once you have 30 or more villagers (which comes to be around 14 minutes game time in Feudal Age - 16 if we rushed with 4/5 vills because they wont be working normally or if we are mining gold/stone with them once rushed, and 17 minutes in Castle Age if you went feudal with 28, made 2 villagers and clicked castle, wait till you reach castle age then click Wheelbarrow).

Feudal Age -> Gold/Stone Mining:

15% raw. It costs 100f and 75wood and as a reference it takes around 4 villagers per range/stable to keep a constant flow, so in Castle Age with 2 Stables making knights you need 8 miners, if you had 7 miners and the upgrade they would do the work of 8. It is an expensive upgrade and slow to pay for itself in general so it's usually better to wait till we have a decent amount of miners to upgrade it.

Castle and Imperial upgrades:

their logic is the same as Feudal upgrades but they are more complex to evaluate due to the role of the additional town centers. Hand Cart becomes good from 50-60 vills+. 2 Handed Saw (in Lumber Camp) is best if you reach castle and will need a lot of wood and have at least 16 villagers or more on wood (rough estimate). Heavy Plough (in Mill) its best you wait until you have 20+ farms made and are planning on dropping a lot more or your existing one's are starting to run out then research it.