Nice idea. The really crazy thing is that you can probably catch up economically in age 2 by sending the 4 villagers card.

Yeah man, technically you would only be able to have 4 vills more by the time you advance anyway, and you lose a bit of resources too...but if I can take out even 3 or 4 of their vills I always manage to catch back up and then put the hurt on them.

I just did this to an Otto player on Texas and won. I took down one of his outposts, his first barracks, and his trading post before he even got his 5 janny shipment, which I proceeded to own with rodaleros and xbows. By this time I started training xbows and just kept coming in and raiding his vills like crazy until finally I hit fort, trained a bunch of lancers and gg'ed about 21 minutes. This strategy is very easy to bounce back, plus if you can take down some houses while they are in Discovery still (which I haven't really thought of until just now) you can strangle them to where they can't build a military.

[This message has been edited by lordvasa (edited 11-24-2005 @ 01:02 AM).]

Really, it seems like a nerfed Otto rush.
In order to advance at 3:00, you need 400 extra food, including the starting food 200-300 usually. So your strat is very map dependant. If you cannot find food, you will advance at 3:45 or later, with an eco in ruin.

Better is to do a normal start and get the food shipment. You can hit advance at 2:20 if done right. You have to time it and send people on wood even before you age. Send a villie right away to build an outpost. It should start building the outpost at about 3:00. Notice it took the villie 40 seconds to get there.

You will age at 3:50 instead or 3:00, but your army will save 30-40 seconds of walking. If your explorer is exploring enough, you should have your 2 shipments in time.

You have a normal eco, so you should be able to build a forward barrack as well as whatever houses, and keep villie production going.

I don't think this strat is viable anyway, since 8 pikemen will get owned by the villies. They do not even really need to garrison, or call militia, at least for the 30 seconds where there is no Rodeleros.

Edit:

Thinking about it, you could forget the Barrack and just use the rush as a diversion, and boom to Fortress in the meanwhile. THey will likely build some defense and once you reach Fortress, they will be unprepared and with a lower eco.

[This message has been edited by Episthene (edited 11-24-2005 @ 01:29 AM).]

And what about the minutemen?

There is not a single map where you can't find food. Especially with a war dog and explorer, you can easily find your nearest huntables in the first 10 seconds. Another thing I forgot to mention is that eating the sheep or cows is a good idea for a quicker advance.

Villies won't own 8 pikes backed up by 6 rodeleros. The rodaleros will slaughter the villies if he is stupid enough to attack them and not garrison, and just taking out 3 or 4 puts you ahead economically. Especially if he hasn't even hit Colonial yet. Minutemen are easy, run away, wait 10 seconds until they have one hp, kill them. He just wasted 150 food and gold and you wasted no resources. You can do this and realistically hit Fortress at 12:00, while he is busy trying to make an army to defend against a second wave that never comes and you slip into Fortress and annihilate him.

But, add me on ESO and we will see exactly how viable it really is. I haven't tested it on any really good players.

GeneralVasa

I'm also not exactly sure how you get 250 wood and 800 food and enough food for villies to advance at 2:20, and build an outpost by 3:00.

edit: Is your name on ESO also Episthene? Because I'm really not going to listen to someone who has played 12 games and lost 5 telling me how viable my strat is, lol.

[This message has been edited by lordvasa (edited 11-24-2005 @ 03:12 AM).]

Yes, it is my ESO name, of course I am not the best online player, nor do I care. I play online to try stats, not to win. If I wanted to win, I would play French or Ottos and would play all the time. But I don't enjoy playing online too much. Does not mean I don't know the game.

I tried your start on Sandbox. Your start is impossible. 7 villies can only gather 400 food. You need to find 400 "free food" somewhere, to make it in time, and that is map dependant. I don't need to have 100% win to know that. So I tried an alternative more "normal" Spain rush strat, to see how it compares.

In order to get 800 food in a reasonnable time, you put everyone on food, like any Otto player does, especially the good players you admire so much and have a big win percentage because they have perfected that one strat to rush new players. You get a 300 food shipment as well. You don't need to be IamGrunt to understand that. And then you put most villies on wood, which is enough to get a trading post, and eventually a Barrack.

I mean, seriously, I would not have minded helping you with your strat, but with your kind of attitude, you can pretty much forget it. I won't go on ESO just for that.

Quote:

A friend of mine had a 17% win percentage due to the drops that he experienced on ESO. The score only counted for less than 20 games played when he really played about 40 to 50. For some reason, dropped games don't count, but sometimes he would get a loss. We never understood it, but anyway, the point is the 17% doesn't mean anything because he could hand you your ass anyday. I believe the win percentage is now around 70% with over 100 games played. (Not too good at math and I don't know the exact numbers, but it works out in his favor.)

[This message has been edited by Cy Marlayne (edited 11-24-2005 @ 10:54 AM).]

Marlayne I am 70% with 250+ games played. So I would more than likely pwn your friend. The 70% is due to a bunch of games I lost the first few days I had the game before I wisened up to some strategy, and because I was testing out different things online instead of vs. the comp like I should have. Since the first of November, I've lost 20 1v1 games and played 200, making me something like 90%.

Also Epist, noone asked you for your help in improving my strat. I'm sorry if my "attitude" offends you but I don't generally take unsolicited advice from people who don't have enough experience to back up their advice. And I would venture to say that you don't know the game as well as you think, sorry pal but online is a much different ballgame than playing vs the comp on moderate. I don't play Spain very often, and when I do I do this strat and win. People who are not experienced with online play have no business telling other people that their strats won't work, pure and simple. Less than 100 games online (generally speaking, I know there are some exceptions) and you have little-to no frame of reference for how games actually work, much less how to effectively win them. IamGrunt is good with every civ, and all of the "good players I admire so much" know that resource crates (especially 300 resource crates!) are total crap unless you are Dutch or Port. Plus, I have a homecity for each civ, and I can use them all. Many other Intermediate-Expert players also can use more than one civ and many different strats, which blows your (learned one strat to rush) theory out of the water. This is the 4th strat I have posted for 4 different civs.

You are right, it is map dependant. Any map where you can get 2 sheep and a food treasure or two (most of them, and treasures are uber easy to get with a war dog and explorer) you can do this strat by the time I said. Otherwise it is more like 2:00 that you will age up, still hitting Colonial at a respectable 3:30. Get a 4 vill card and a 3 vill card (spanish fast shipments making getting your economy back together a snap) and you caught back up. Kill 3 of his vills and you are ahead. Continue pwnage and you will win. Case Closed.

Once again, I invite you to play a game with me on ESO to prove me wrong. My ESO name is GeneralVasa. I hope to hear from you soon.

[This message has been edited by lordvasa (edited 11-24-2005 @ 03:14 PM).]

Lol, I had someone do this annoying strat on me as Ports. Initially I was like wtf 3min colonial!? My new Town center will get owned as soon as it comes out if I dodn't do something! I quickly mined some gold and so that I could call minutemen just in case. Low and behold as soon as I hit colonial at about 4:10, in march the rodeleros and pikemen to destroy my TC wagon

I call out minute men to chase him away and start building the TC quickly. Since i knew he would wait until the minute men drain to zero hp to kill them, I made wall box around my minute men and put them inside! He couldn't enter my base cuz his melee units couldn't reach my minute men and eventually my econ took off. I was damn lucky to escape that strategy, I would hardly call it dumb! It can totally destroy a port player who doesn't take care of his free TC wagon!

I know that because I always do it to port players when I have spanish! And you can almost always kill their free TC, especially if they noob.

[This message has been edited by Ceres629 (edited 11-24-2005 @ 03:13 PM).]

Yeah Ceres, and most players wouldn't have been quick thinking enough to throw up those walls. It totally owned me as Dutch because I wasn't expecting it.

I like dutch quite a lot actually, I've never even tried them, but age2 skirms really seem cool and villagers costing coin is an interesting twist. They might be the 3rd civ I try, but right now I just love Spanish and Portugal too much.

Hey vasa, are you generalvasa on ESO, I just saw your message and replied but I guess youre in a game now. I often just leave AoE3 running in the background all the time while I do other things (like post on forums, work, etc) so I often don't see the messages even if I am online. ES really needs to implement an away status or something like that to prevent people from thinking I'm ignoring them lol.

Replays of this strategy uploaded somewhere?

I'll record one for you Ascalon.

Can someone tell me where a good place to post replays is? I've recorded games for people but never really took the time to figure out where to post them.

This sounds lame beyond belief. It must be counterable.

And if you can't find their hunting?

Then obviously you would go for a normal spanish build. You have to use this, like any strat, where it will work. If you can't find the hunting don't use it.

You didn't understand me. I said what if you can't find THEIR hunting. And they just advance to colonial normally.

Also you can counter this by scouting correctly. If you find the spanish players vils and see only 7, and it's under 2:00 you can simply resign and not take the loss.

[This message has been edited by raaman (edited 11-24-2005 @ 04:50 PM).]

With the dutch or Germs, this should be stoppable.

Quote:

You work on your scouting skills?

Quote:

It's stoppable with any civ if you KNOW it's coming.

[This message has been edited by FriedPegasus (edited 11-24-2005 @ 05:06 PM).]

this is kind of a weird strat
I'll have to try it

Quote:

lol! Or you miss a free win against a noob!

How would you go about countering this, then?

It can be countered several ways.

A. A noob does it to you.
B. You boom and he fails to kill enough of your villies.
C. Resign like the other guy said.

If it is done perfectly I don't see any way to counter it, except with Ottos or France because a tower + coureurs can garrison/ungarrison shoot repeat + 8xbow shipment and much better French econ by now will = pwn. I don't see the Dutch countering it because the earliest you can hit colonial with Dutch and maintain constant vill is 4:30, and that's with some fancy vill work during discovery (If anyone can hit colonial FASTER than this with Dutch and maintain constant vill production please email me and tell me how . Germans might be able to counter if they can get enough xbows out in time (5 will just be raped by the Rodaleros) or if they use free Uhlans to raid your vills at home. Since most of your vills didn't come out until Colonial anyway, this will be harder to do since they will all still be right next to the TC on most maps.

By the way Scipio, it's called "The Dumbest Strategy Ever" because it is indeed lame beyond belief. It is, however, somewhat difficult to do it perfectly, and if the hunting vills are still near the TC you're kind of screwed unless he has some forward somewhere and you can scout them in time.

The downside is that it is VERY dependant on you screwing his econ, much more so than a normal rush because you are working with alot fewer vills. The plus side is that if you can kill a few vills and have any experience recovering from a bad rush you will more than likely win.

To save time, after you click to age up, you can put all vils on wood and send 1 forward to have an outpost up in time, to have those pikes and rodeleros on him that much faster.

I hadn't thought of that Stoph but it's probably a good idea.