I like it, anyone have any objections? that sounds like its around 11 minutes tho....that could be a scary defense for a bunch of sterlets haha

How do you handle rushes?

Er... if you go 15 pop in Discovery, why do you then wait till you have 30 in Colonial? Why not have like 20 in Discovery and add maybe 1 or 2 (or none since you can do this in AoE3) in Colonial and go up faster? If you have 15 vils in Discovery and then make 15 more in Colonial you've just wasted lots of vil secs.

The only reason to go up sooner with less vils seems to me to be to get the Colonial econ ups, but those are rather expensive and you don't seem to be getting even the Discovery ones (which you should be since they pay for themselves fairly quickly).

Or maybe it's to trick your opponent into thinking you're fighting in Colonial, but some scouting clears that up. And if he thinks you're fighting perhaps he'll fight too and you'll be without an army.

Otherwise you only have 15 vils working for the time while you age up to Colonial, then make more later. If you consider you could be adding like 4 more vils in Discovery then multiply 4 times however long it takes to age up to Colonial. That's how many seconds you're wasting.

I can't think how to explain it better at the moment, but if you know a AoC basic FC you know you go like 27+2 or 28+2, not 24+8...

[This message has been edited by Gordon (edited 10-23-2005 @ 03:10 PM).]

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Two garrisoned TCs end early rushes quickly. Add onto that a two outposts shipment or musketeers shipment for a mobile defense force that can kite newbs into range of your TCs.

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This is a good point, but you have to balance that against the quick arrival of a second TC where you can train more settlers. It could be done your way, too, but even with the furrier card, the Portuguese can lag in arriving at Colonial. At least with aging up and going for the early second TC, you keep pace with your opponent, symbolically if nothing else, thus keeping them on their toes.

Edit: I'm saying the Portuguese can't afford to spend the time in Discovery to train the extra villies with 90% of the people out there rushing. Two TCs and second age shipments will end the rushes and give you double-base for training settlers at the sacrifice of a true boom. Anyone who goes up to Colonial and notices that several minutes later you're still in Discovery, is going to rush almost for certain. If you go up to Colonial before or right after them, they'll have to think twice since you have military access now, too.

[This message has been edited by BoloBouncer (edited 10-23-2005 @ 03:27 PM).]

Ah, yes. That makes sense.

Forgot about the Port 2nd TC thingy. That's pretty darn useful...

Did you make this? Or did Malice?

I made it.

Go Texas

I think its a good strategy for the most part but how do you stop the strelet rush? They will usually hit around 5 minutes if done correctly and if you garrison your villagers it will painfully cripple your speed in hitting fortress, if you dont they all will die. Even with garrisoning them the strelets would not have much problem against 2 unguarded TCs and when the first one falls all the vils in it get slaughtered.

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The strelet rush can't take down a garrisoned TC, especially with 2 shooting at them. You can also ship over some infantry to clear them off. You do lose time when rushed, but waiting it out while their men die does two things.

(1) It gives you time to breathe after and essentially seals your survival. Games are won and lost in the first rush.

(2) This is the point where the rush and boom separate. When he comes back, you're going to have infantry or two outposts. If he waits a little longer to come back (which he may have to after committing the resources to an early attacking, stumping his growth), you'll have the three TCs and the fort.

Sweet, I'll have to try this out sometime. I love the Portuguese.

Sounds nice. I've been looking for something like this to help my lvl. 5 Portugal HC.

Thanks!

Cool, too bad I can't manage more than one town center

This seems rather neat. Also, since you have two TCs, if a rush looks like it's going to take a long time to disperse, if you have the ressources, you can call in two colonial militias.

Portugese have some really good cards to go with this strategy. Just pulled it off under 8 mins with mistakes (first try). All depends on whether you can camp and hold out long enough, I mean where do you go from here that is worth sacrifycing map control for, even if you aren't that vunerable to raids or a quick rush? It's intersting I will mess about with it. Not played with the Portugese yet, was my first go.

Organ Guns own.... Sorry I had to say it.

6.33 damn that is fast and easy too. Plus with several cards you can make a very strong attack once reaching fortress. Some cassadors/organ guns. What is really ideal about this strat is that cassadors are 25 food 90 gold. With a bit of micro you can mass these quickly from rax or fortress, send some crossbows/organs and your sorted!

I have a lvl 13 portuguese HC (should be like 16 but stupid xp loss) and I am going to tell you right now this will work against a small percentage of online people. if you have to garrison villagers you loose a LOT of time. if they rush you before you get your fort card sent you have absolutely no defense. it really isn't hard to seige 2 garissoned TCs. they will send pikemen and god forbid if they have horses. while you are losing all this time their villagers are still gathering resources. even if you do manage to kill them off you have lost enough time that they already have a second army. they send that and you go fortress age. now your fortress age and they are colonial... however they are again attacking you and you have to garrison your units.... AGAIN! you have a choice, send fort card or send archers card... if you send fort card they attack it and kill it you have no fort the whole game... so you send archers card. yeah to garrisoned TCs and 8 archers will probably kill off these units but it's left you with no resources, no barracks, no market, no upgrades, and no map control.

BTW, if you move to colonial age with any more villagers than 13 as portuguese you are going to be way behind in economy.

I'm one of the top potuguese players so I know what I'm talking about here.

You can get ~7min fortress times as Portugese. Can have a fort and three TCs by 8:30ish. And if you don't ship the fort you can ship a few Organ guns by that time instead. Don't see why you'd wait for 30 vills when you could do it that way instead.

That's never happened to me, Tster. I've been rushed in almost every game, and two TCs have been enough to rout their rushing group in 30-40 seconds. Nobody's ever destroyed my fort wagon, but I haven't gone totally defenseless. I always send some musketeers or outpost wagons. This strategy has risk like all others, and it's not a turtle.

Because it is a boom, there's always going to be higher risk in the early game. But I am in no way advocating no military.

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I fail to see how you can stream villagers out of 3 TC's and create an army after booming to Fortress so fast.

so... give it an extra 20 or 30 seconds and collect the 150 gold and food.. or 300 gold and food.. and you can call minutemen when the rush comes.

Im gonna play around with this strat.

After experimenting, trying this strategy against a competent opponent risks far too much in terms of military and map control. In turn your economy will suffer because you have to try and hunt and mine near your TCs, but once those resources have depleted you have to go looking further on. Leading you head on with the enemies units with no army of your own.

However I can see it being a powerful pocket tactic in a team game. Portugese have some really awesome support units.

[This message has been edited by RarecuT (edited 10-23-2005 @ 06:37 PM).]

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It's easy... the 500 food crate for getting to colonial supplies the food for the early vills until the vills gather enough. Use all other shipments on good 3rd age units until you can build a rax/stable and you should be able to pump whatever you want. You won't be booming from 3 TCs as that's just stupid unless it's some team game on a water map. (BTW, the fastest I've been able to get to vill max is 18:28 as Portugese using this same build. It's just a theoretical time like being able to get to 200 vills in AoC in 27mins as my personal best).

It's not like it's as big a deal having too many TCs because Portugese TCs are free. There's no eco penalty (idle resources) for having idle from a free TC, unless it's your first one. Doesn't matter if you can pump from them or not; just use them for defense.

Any decent player will stop this boom dead in the tracks tbh. Portugese are a booming civ and everyone will expect them to do that and prepare accordingly (competent players at least will). Sure you boom quickly into fortress age, but just where is that fort gonna go? With no units to accompany it, only a noob will let you solo that fortress into a nice cozy position to gain map control.

Against noobz this strat will work well, but with no army and no defenses to speak off until over 8mins of game play really isn't that good. Especially since as spanish I can boom to age 3 in under 8mins as well but the difference is at least I can get a free shipment of 10 pikemen.

At the end of the day a good old spanish native rush will own that strategy VERY fast. Sub 4min Colonial with 2 native settlements built and the free natives card = GG, you won't even reach fortress age, when you have like 20+ uber natives coming at you in just over 5 mins.

[This message has been edited by Ceres629 (edited 10-23-2005 @ 09:00 PM).]

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Technically you are. Your asking us to put our asses on the line in hope getting up an age. Who do expect to protect us when they rush our ass. What, are we going to have a villiger singlehandly stop a rush.

[This message has been edited by silenthill4 (edited 10-23-2005 @ 09:22 PM).]