Casted on YouTube.

A demonstration of how to mask economy start, at first.

I didn't think I would have enough to defend the west. In retrospect, I should've made half as many ducks in the early game and used that to make clams instead(more greed, less defenders).

It's much easier to defend than it is to attack in early game, ducks are really easy to hold off, which is why most of ivand ducks died really easily when they tried to attack Fealthas com and then Fealthas didn't attack west with his own ducks, he knew they would just die.

What I was talking about was how in first 5 mins ivand had lost most of his units in awful trades and you were congratulating him because he "masked" his expansion by being aggressive. Really all he did was throw away his units. Building 2 clams is not a big investment, it barely deducts from your army, not that your early game army really matters, like I said it's very easy to defend in early game. There is no good reason not to do it. Having 1 or 2 extra ducks can't even be compared to the value of taking all your expansions.

This basically applies to all maps, which is why it doesn't make much sense to me to say "he masked his economy". Being really aggressive and distracting your opponent can often be good to mask a naked expand but regardless of how much porc they make while doing so, you can usually just assume that your opponent is aiming to capture his side of the map (unless they're idiots like Fealthas).