lol, blast his houses. that could really add up for him, 100w per house plus how anoyin it would be, usually in the early game ur workin close to ur pop limit so this could really set him back.

though, he will eventually get a ville out in the middle of no where to build houses so this wont stop him for long.

this strat could work if u keep sending in more guys, but 8 pikes wont last long on their own.

In no way shape or form is spanish the weakest. I think people have realised that now.

But anyway this strategy is pretty funny and can work if your opponent tries to boom. (Works wonders against british who like to spam house all over the place early and age up at 5+ mins. Knock them all down and

I have pike rushed a few people when I had a low level spanish HC. However It will still take at least 4:30 before the pikemen arrive in the base, at which time most decent players start aging up and they will simple send a shipment of units to kill of your pikemen.

Also shipments take 40secs i think, certainly not 15

Well the point is to set him back a bit, so you can either arrive fast to age 3, or get more units than he can in t2. Also you cannot send a shipment without pop room, this should hit around 4:15-4:30, so therefore he woulduv aready sent and almost gotten shipment number 2.

The surprising thing is if he waits for shipment number 3 to send units (most do)he wont be getting military out to destroy pikes til late 5:xx, giving you plenty of time to outnumber him, or be on your way to t3.

The best part about this strat is also, its free!

Alot of people just turtle straight to t3, this is just a way to set your opponent back, while still getting a age 3 time very close to his (if he went straight to it)or setting him back so his rush doesn't hit you too early, and prevent you from getting resources to mass lancers.

[This message has been edited by Stophon4 (edited 11-14-2005 @ 09:02 AM).]

minutemen will clear this job, and leave u with poor economy

besides, most players build houses near their tc

i used to pikerush a lot, you own noobs within 8 mins, but vs decent people this strat mostly gets countered

When I take an Ottoman rush against a rook/inter that has prepared him/herself with towers and whatnot, I can sometimes turn the tide quickly if he/she has mistakenly built houses out far enough that I can torch them with my jannisaires while only taking fire from one of the towers or TC.

The loss of population room combined with continued harassment of enemy villies to keep them from gathering/building generally puts an opponent on their back foot until grenadiers arrive to tear down the towers and TC. Since you can't even ship troops if you exceed the pop cap, a player is faced with the Hobbsian choice of protecting his/her villies in the TC/Towers and trying to wait me out, or sacraficing the villies to open up population room to ship troops.

I love smashing houses! Even in late-game on a long team game it makes a huge difference if you can find them and tear them down. I won a 2v1 last night as the Dutch (my poor ally being knocked out relatively early) by crashing through large groups of houses clustered together in order to offset the 2v1 population advantage. My opponents were regularly using up wood to build cannon, and so couldn't finance new housing without giving up on cannon (at least temporarily)- and without cannon, they couldn't counter a combined arms force of massed skirms, rueters, and bombards.

[This message has been edited by Blue_Devil (edited 11-14-2005 @ 11:09 AM).]

The spanish have the best house strategy, one of their cards make their Town Centers support 200 pop without any houses.

Ok guys, fyi it takes 30 seconds for a shipment, so if you ship it at 3:30 (perfect time) you will get it at 4:00, takign the first house down at like 4:15, then getting the second one down by 4:30, by the time the 2nd one is down they usually call out minutmen, but your 3rd shipment is coming up soon, so while your pikes go harrass hunting, the minute-men health will go low enough so that your rodeleros can come in and 1 hit swipe em.

But ya, after using this a few times (I play inter-expert) I found that though it did set them back, it never really put me ahead, nor behind.

Also keep in mind that your eco is fine due to always 100% vil production.

Its just a way to use spanish, maybe it wont put you ahead alot, but it wont put you behind either. Lancers while your opponent is in t2 will put you ahead alot though.

Instead of building the forward outpost I like to build a barracks there and use the Outpost Wagon (came with the gold) to give the barracks some protection. Then you can build some crossbows to give cover to your pikemen (or double up on pikes, of course).

I'll have to try this!

I usually ship the rodeleros (and build crossbows) first to target villagers, with pikemen as the next shipment and muskets as the next build (I'm usually low on wood at that point but I have the gold). However, I think my attack is slower than yours because I don't hold the second shipment.

OK, tried it (once). Yes, my normal attack is slower, but has fewer casualties. I went house-hunting against the Ottomans, and unfortunately all their houses were between the TC and an Outpost, so the crossfire was tough. Took down 2 houses, backed out, circled, and came back and destroyed the outpost...by which point I lost 10 of 11 pikemen. The next thrust was with combined arms (rodeleros, muskets, and crossbows) and found a clump of villagers grouped around another Outpost. Drove them back into the TC and withdrew. Sidled right, came back in against another group of villagers, this time killing a bunch of them. The Ottomans can't spare the villagers. Pumped out a bunch of pikes to reinforce, with clumps of muskets or crossbows depending on resources (and occasional villager sweeps). At one point I had 17 pikes and 1 musket...so I sent them after the TC. Ottomans countered with Hussars. Mistake. Brought in muskets, crossbows, and more pikes to back them up. Down came the TC, down came the mosque, down came the last four houses, down fell many more villagers, and the Ottomans resigned.

Killed 45 units, lost 47. Ottomans killed 44, lost 48. Curiously we both lost more units than we killed.

So it worked, and it's a change of pace, just as you said.

OK, long story short, long time reader of these forums and a fan of the Age series, but I'm a first time poster. I am looking for people here to expand a bit on Spanish strategies, but didn't want to start a new post.

I am very busy at work so playing time is limited for me. I play mostly LAN with friends or solo. I have had the game 5 days. I beat comp on "moderate" too easily right now, but have trouble with "hard."

I have a Spanish Level 9 HC and have saved 4 card options because I wasn't sure in which direction to take my deck. Naval battles are rare for me, unless it's an island map or lots of rivers. My friends are too wussy to rush early and the AI lacks a good early rush that I can't counter I don't have to generally worry rushes. My friends, while good strategists, lack micro skills. Heck they don't even use hotkeys, having deemed them "too much trouble!" So because I have a tiny bit of skill and I micro semi-decent, I'm usually the "1" in our 2v1's.

Like I said, my time is limited for actual gaming so don't hesitate to be very specific. In AoE2 I copied down a good castle crush strat from the forums, typed it into a hotkey (Step 1- T, Shift-V...) cheat sheet and taped it up on my monitor until I could pull it off in my sleep. Cheesy I know, but once I got confident that I could get to castle quick and really kick ass, I began to loosen up and develop other strats and styles of play. I'm a big advocate for build orders to a degree for noobs because it gets them up and running quickly with the game.

I am looking for a good all around Spanish strat that will defend against a late II rush, allow some raiding early but most of all, give me a strong econ to crank units. I guess I am a bit of a boomer and I always have trouble determining when to stop cranking vils and start throwing up rax. Any suggestions on order of buildings? Market, rax or post first? Thanks guys.

[This message has been edited by BinDerSmokDat (edited 11-16-2005 @ 02:56 PM).]

I've been playing Spain more than any other civ...mostly because once I started I wanted to keep driving up my HC level. So now I'm Level 13 with 3 open card slots. [Apparently I'm afraid of commitment. ]

Several interesting Spanish strat threads around if you search for them (though the search function here isn't very good). If your buddies *really* don't rush you might consider the Spanish Crossbow Boom and confront them with 150 crossbows. This is especially useful if you can see their faces when the horde appears. It's not a practical strategy unless they'll leave you alone for a long while. [Not bloody likely!] My variant was based on raiding and harassing them hard enough that they couldn't interfere with my mostly-boom. I ended up with 60 villies and enough raiders (mostly horses) that I "only" had room for 115 crossbows. That was sufficient.

There's a thread over at agecommunity that got me started with the Spanish. The subject is "NEW ENGLAND strats against expert Spanish" but there is good Spanish strat info in there...good enough that "hard" will be too easy.

[This message has been edited by HermannTLombard (edited 11-16-2005 @ 05:42 PM).]

It is meant for competitive online play, the build order might be a little difficult to pull off if your not too good, also becaz if you do it right, your shipment iwll come in seconds after your outpost is up.

For a late t2 attack...Get to t3 fast lol

IF they hit you 8 min + you can have lancers out by that time

Any recommendations for Spanish Level 11 HC cards? I have 4 slots left and took furriers already. What card/cards should I be looking at. Also should I be putting cards into the tech line that gives you "immigrants" (TC support population, no need to build houses) or does that come too late in the game to be of any help? I'm at work right now, so I am not sure what age that card can be played but a civ without having to build houses (like in AoK) would have a great advantage. It would be hard to cramp someones pop limit by killing houses once that card was played.

I would strongly recommend you get the 2 falconets in age 3 card and 600 gold.

Pressure the enemy early, if you seem him turtling too much or not enough military, play the 600 gold card get to age 3 send the falconets and pwn.

Ceres, I will get the 600 gold card, I already took the 2 falconets. I noticed in your sig you don't like the Rodelero's? I find them to be a very useful and fairly quick HI unit. A bit pricey but I don't think they suck, can you give me some reasons as to why you dislike them?

His arguments about rodeleros, along with some pro-rodeleros arguments, can be found here: http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,25585,,all

[This message has been edited by FriedPegasus (edited 11-18-2005 @ 07:39 PM).]

I'm at level 24 HC right now. Any suggestions for level 25 card choices?

I've been using furriers and building market early to get vil upgrades and then booming like mad. I delay aging up at every age in favor of a few more vils and use the two market upgardes (vils more HP and vils better attack) plus the HC card to upgrade my vils resistance to attack. I find that this works well if you build native outposts and then use a mix of natives and minute men to defend early rushes.

3 villie card instead of furrier

and get some mercaneries, native cards and lancer pwnage cards. (most of them are already available for you)

my deck is:

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/6711/hcdeck0gg.jpg

not yet perfect, but i almost have the cheaper trading post card and then ill make a new deck

Hmm was trying this this afternoon, dosent work for me.
The times you say are wrong imo, i take longer to pass to age2 and by the time the pikemen ship and run to his base hes had time to put up rax and will have military shipment on the way most of the time.

What, even if you have bad attempt it wont hit late than 4:30...

Quoted from HermannTLombard:

Did any of your people get killed by treasure guardians?

Quoted from userBinDerSmokDat:

Welcome to the forums.

Quoted from HermannTLombard:

I had a level 25 Ottoman home city with 8 open card slots. I had been saving up for weeks.

It is the "Noob stigma that hurts the Soanish it is the first civ you play with if you play the single player game and you just don't get the full effect of them in single player, but lancers are great and the shipments come so much faster.

Oy, you just dug up a 15 month old thread!!!!

lol!!!!

wow, when I started reading it I was like "WTF, is Stophon high or sth?", then I saw Ceres' reply, and the date!
What's this guy's intention bringing in this old stuff anyway?!

[This message has been edited by jbarguil (edited 02-24-2007 @ 11:06 AM).]

Quote:

lol