That early, 50 mana might not seem like much of an investment, but that's 50 mana that could have been put toward another spear or into hustle or passives. Not only that, but to make it effective you'd need to sink 300+ more gold than you'd ever want to sink into swords. Again, that might not "seem" like much, but that could be more eco (i.e a better late game) or another archer (i.e instantly more assured DPS). If you don't put it toward one of those two things your opponent will have one of two things that you absolutely don't want your opponent to have in an OvO: A higher archer count, or a spearton that you cannot match. Granted, you can focus down a spear relatively quickly with 4-5 swords, but if those swords are not killing archers or miners it defeats the entire purpose of investing into rage. Archers in comparison just do more damage more quickly, safely, and effectively. You can always count on archers to do some damage. Rage, in comparison, you cannot.

In the other two matchups it's different since you have Trees and Deads that can't run away and less of a need for speartons. There, it's feasible to invest into rage, but even there you don't actually need rage, it's just something to supplement your archer dps. If G kiting didn't exist (lol rip order), I think rage would be a lot more useful, and indeed even viable. This is not the case though, so all you see is Archers.

We can basically call Stick Empire as Archer Empire/Dead Empire
All you need is spam 3 in the whole game

You get crawler upgrade ? I drop a wall and mass archer
You get sword rage ? I still mass archer ;p

Quote from AsePlayer

Would it become viable if the research time was decreased? Or are you saying just in general no matter what unless the current meta changes it won't be viable ever?

As rain said, 50 mana that early - especially for Order - is actually quite a lot. If you 'happen' to have lots of swords (can occur sometimes if both players are unwilling to take engagements in early game until spears come out), then yes, rage would be very good if it was about 30 seconds. But chances are this wouldn't happen anyway.

@Mystery thats true if you knew it was coming. As we discussed, the entire point of rage/crawler upgrades is for a 1-time surprise attack to give a very favourable trade and perhaps close the game early on a greedy opponent. But yeah, sometimes you can see it coming if they're predictable af and you spot early prayers, in which case gg.

Quote from Mystery

We can basically call Stick Empire as Archer Empire/Dead Empire
All you need is spam 3 in the whole game

You get crawler upgrade ? I drop a wall and mass archer
You get sword rage ? I still mass archer ;p

This. Game is so one-dimensional.

Quote from alternate

This. Game is so one-dimensional.

This game is dying. So many players have retired.

tl;dr swords r bad at fighting and can only tank damage for archers

Yeah, my biggest problem with Stick Empires is the archer centered meta. I am not sure if they should be nerfed or changed some other way. Maybe they could be made less maneuverable? Increase cost to 350? Those are just ideas.

Quote from nutsophast

Yeah, my biggest problem with Stick Empires is the archer centered meta. I am not sure if they should be nerfed or changed some other way. Maybe they could be made less maneuverable? Increase cost to 350? Those are just ideas.

Yeah once that happens chaos can straight up be better than order because their one solution to have map control was made less viable.

Well other units can be changed too.