nice, i'll have to give these a go. i like it how you haven't decided what your going to do before the game starts. thank you.

early colonial mercantillism!...(I knew your "wildcard" involves many shipments,so I guess it is atp related)

Interesting idea,depend on what the shipment is,you have a virtual villager population of 40-60 for 4-5 mins into colonial.Only regret is you have to build a church and give out 1000 gold first(can pay back in 2-3 mins),so that fast attack is not very fast.Besides of that,I'm a little worried about furthur shipment speed,especially when after a relatively fast fortress,have you tried it out,Dice?(or lemuri?)

[This message has been edited by Plebus (edited 01-24-2006 @ 11:13 AM).]

Thanks dice, this looks like fun!

Dice,have you tried a grenadier/pike/skirm/hussar all-out rush build?it looks possible,though I guess will not be very fast,but very powerful.

"Burning" my shipments was one of my biggest concerns. It turned out to be unfounded. By not wasting the first shipment on a small Discovery shipment, like 300 Gold, the effect is lessened. The exponential growth of your economy, combined with your above average unit production, puts you on track to make XP faster, making late game Shipments arrive at an average rate, no faster or slower than if you had done a normal shipment total opening. By the time the Shipments really slow down, I don't have much left to ship and don't need it anyway.

Grenadier rushing isn't as effective, not because of the Stratagey, because of Grenadier stats. Pikes are more appealing to me because they cost the right resources. By shipping 700 Wood first, and keeping 5 Vils on Food, you can both drop houses, and que Pikes. For Grenadiers, you'd need large ammounts of Food and Gold, plus wood for housing them. Typically you'll be able to afford the Troops but not the Housing, since Grens are 2 pop.

Pikes just work better early game. They're as fast as Skirms, anti-Calvary, and do respectable seige damage. They also cost Wood, meaning you make more effecient use of your shipments.

I'd spam Natives before Grenadiers. Taking ATP & 700 Wood as your #1 & #2 or #2 & #3, then Treatities and/or 700F/W as your next cards, you can see how you could spam a hell of a lot of natives fast.

You'll notice that there are three main production centers, the TC, the Barracks, and the HC. Done right, 2 out of 3 should be in constant production with any of these stratagies. If you look at Post-games, you'll also notice that the traditional sag in Dutch Resource Gathering that happens for a few minutes on either side of the Colonial, is eliminated.

It's a great idea indeed, Dice

Ive only tried the 'counter FF' vers so far. I'm interested to see how others solve the wood problem getting out those pikes quick (and putting them to use) and still staying on track to get mercantilism, which is where I got hung up this past weekend. Those pikes get more ineffective (at attacking) as time wears on.

The turtle-boom vers sounds like fun to try, so does the hussar/priest

the problem seems to be it will take over 8 mins to get all 6 cards delivered.

in fast attack by the time you have mercantilism 200 gold for the preiest then got the 700 wood delivered and collected then the 2 houses built its no longer a fast attack.

having said that i liek it alot so iam off to try it against real people now

Hmm, I wonder if there's any benefit to building an early market. If you get the 200 starting wood, and build a market after the first house, maybe it can help speed things up a little, or just make your eco a little stronger. Your basically only going to be able to get one upgrade that matters, and that is either going to be hunting dogs or the mining upgrade. I think the mining upgrade is more feasible.

Here are my thoughts:

When all your vils are hunting gather 875 food instead of just 800, it should take maybe 5-10 extra seconds I would guess. Then all your vils get 75 wood before you go all to the mine. This allows you to research the mining tech just as you start mining to get the best benefit from it. This will be just a little bit slower than the normal mercantilism time because 75f + 75w will take longer to gather than the 10% reduction in time to mine 1000 coin, but that 10% will come in handy when you start training skirms.

The hunting dogs path would be faster. After gathering the crates, you should send your vils to gather 50w and 50g, which should take like 20s maybe. Then you research dogs just as you start hunting to get the maximum benefit.

The reason I like the mining upgrade over dogs is that it takes much longer to mine 1000g than to hunt 800f. Hunting is fast to begin with, so you should save more with the mining upgrade. Again, this all depends on getting 200-300 starting wood, which I think the dutch get sometimes. In fact if you get 300 starting wood, you should be good to go with only gathering 875 food and no wood.

I really like these strats. They are very flexible. This may be the breakout of the dutch civ.

dice

i like this strat a lot, not played 1v1 for ages but did two games online last night all i had time for

boy was i rusty i forget how slow multiplayer games are!

anyway first game i forgot to build my deck , had built one offline and completly forgot about it dooh.

anyway i lost as i couldnt back up my inital attack enough,

i used the fast attack strat and its good

then played port didnt play so well but won with your counter ff strat.

I am thinkign putting all vills on gold till you get 100 for another vill first seems to work well,

thanks for the strat you gave me reason to go back to 1v1s!

At what point would you regularly start building villagers?

i'm thinking mostly about the Counter strat... since your constantly building skirms after a point...

do you just try to sneak one in every now and then, or what? Do you just stick with what you have?

Justiw:

I almost always try to build a market, but wood is tight so wood for both the market and upgrade is somethign I ususally wait for Fortress for.

I've run scenarios with 200 wood, where I build a market and grab just enough resources for an upgrade; food, gold, wood, all of them. Wood is reasonable, because its the cheapest. Gold/Food are too expensive. Even with all Vils on wood, it takes upwards of over half a minute with travel time to get the wood, and build the market. Its just not worth sacrificing that early minute for a marginal boost. Even when you do it, just as the Hunting Dogs clicks through, I've already got my 800 food and am aging.

Stormbreaker:

A lot of the time, I actually have the Vils pull 50 Gold off the mine, then go for food. Often, my Explorer can pick up 50 gold in treasure quickly, so that's my extra Vil right there.

The Fast Attack is the Hussars. I only advise it for people who let their villagers wander far, which is easy to see through dead animals in the fog of war, or if you pay close attention, you can see trees fall in the forest through the fog of war too. If the guy has his vils on a close mine, close tree and berries, then don't bother.

The priest doesn't have to come out till a full minute after the hussars. He's really useful, because you can raid with the same 3 Hussars continously, but since your enemy sees them run off hurt, he assumes you must be pumping them out.

Jaberwock:

Villager creation restarts at a very particular time in each of these builds, but you can adapt them if you want, that's the point of the Strat, adaptability.

Counter FF/ Counter Native - doesn't build any Vils till 9th-10th minute, after army is out.

Fast Attack - Vil production restarts at about 7-8 Minutes.

Turtle/Boom - Vil production is constant from Colonial on.

i found with the fast attack the hussars by the time they need healing you ahve the preiest and back up of pikemen so it did work wonders till my lack of cards ( as i forgot to build the deck) hit.

i like to test strats without tresures but your right its easy to get 100 wood or 100 gold from treasures so this isnt an issue, i forgot about that.

Nice ideas... I will play around with it. Giving you more resources than your paying for. Would be good against a boomer or FFer, but I'm doubting it's worth it against rushing. All depends how fast your economy switches back to unit production.

Mercantilism that early? Has this ever worked for you or is it just a theory? Because that 1200 resources could be spent on something that might actually have a chance at countering the typical jaeger/black rider rush that every newb and his brother do now.

Gives you 4-5 shipments early. I think this definitely has some potential. If they are not rushing seems as the 1000 gold spent and 250 for a church is well worth it.

I think the main thing that I found with my early Spain Merchantalism boom, was that when I had shipments queued up, the enemy had already spent that 1k res (merchant gold) just as I had, except it was in the form of units that were on me, while I was still queueing up my first of (usually 4 shipments)

But with the dutch here, you use the gold early on to not make your villager production suffer as much from idle TC time, and you colonial earlier, so you can get the merchant tech, and have your stuff coming out sooner, to meet his rushing army, which would have killed you with typical merchantalism strat.

I like it, will have to try it online.

Quote:

Yes it has worked well. I haven't won every game with it, but I've never been crushed in mid-Colonial like I used to. All the games I lost were obviously do to my lack of micro skill, and lack of Fortress age experience.

I have defeated my Lan friends Merc Rushes, easily actually, even when I do nothing but wait for the Mercs to arrive at my base.

18 Pikes will 1 shot a Blackrider. The key is to use your TC as backup firepower, and play a game of attrition with the Mercs. At the end of the battle, you'll be in a better place, because he spent 1200/1000 just to get to Fortress, where you invested all that into your economy. A few minutes down the line, if you survive, that will make a huge difference.

The reason no Colonial army can ever put up a good fight against a Merc group is because no other strategy allows this kind of Troop production, this fast. It may take upwards of 8 minutes to get the 4th card and beyond, but it takes the FF just as long to produce troops.

You can't play the FF game when other Civs do it better, if you don't lose sooner, you'll lose later. Dutch need to harness the power of Mercantilism, they just have to do it differently. Where the other Civs use Mercantilism to enhance their strongest time/stratagey/attack, the Dutch should use it to prop-up their weakest time/strategy/defense.

[This message has been edited by Diceclock (edited 01-25-2006 @ 04:43 PM).]

Dice,I'll not comment your strategy as a whole here,have to try then evaluate...The thing is your discovery build.

I know it is difficult to build 5 villagers then age at 3:45,it need perfect micro AND good luck on map/treasures,but on almost all maps except Sonora,you can always hit colonial before 4:15(means 30 seconds of idle tc)..to convince your fellow dutchies,let's do some simple calculation:12 villager*30 seconds*0.83(gather rate)= 299 food,means you only need 500 food in stock at 2:15 the time last of the 5 villager out(this does not count in the 3 villagers who will arrive at 2:10-2:30,you can even this "bonus" with the possible efficiency loss due to the distance from tc to huntables...).This can be easily achieved even you have 200 starting gold/no starting food,huntables are not close to TC,and no treasure collected during the 1st 2 mins.

3 villagers' difference cannot be ignored,that's 25% to your 12 villagers,if you build only 2 villagers and age at 4:15,means you have over 1:35-1:45 idle TC(1:05-1:15 if age at 3:45) which usually means "bad eco management" according to the "common wisdom" of RTS games,and on top of that your strategy require another 250w/1000g spent on mercantillism,another big cut on the currency/"money" players have...though it is promised with 5 age 2 shipment in 4 minutes,you really need some concret evidence to convince people accepting your idea/"theory"...hope you can understand that.

Edit:I know your scheme is aiming for a sub 4 colonial,this is vital for mercantillism to bring out benifits reasonably quick...4:15 actually is too late.

I also understand why you want only 9 villagers in discovery:save a house for building church/barrack,but 3 more villagers,even counting from the transition 90 seconds,can collect that many wood for you(135 wood to be exact...).

[This message has been edited by Plebus (edited 01-25-2006 @ 05:07 PM).]

Plebus I'm a little confused as to what you're telling me. What I think you're saying is the following....

1. Que 2-3 Vils based off starting gold crates

2. Que 2-3 more vils from Gold that I send all my starting vils to mine

3. Vils to mine, before I move to food

4. Recieve 3 more vils from a Shipment

5. Age up is delayed by 30 seconds more or less based on Treasure hunting?

I think that's certainly got possibilities. I'll run it tonight and see how it goes. Please let me know if that's not what you meant Plebus.

Yes,age at 3:45-4:15 with 12+3 villagers in discovery,Dice.The assignment of villagers varies according to the starting resources...The detailed BO for that I've already described in the pikerush thread(the same before kiching age button,BO for transition period later ofcourse different,which won't affect age time ).As lemuri want to see the pikerush build,I'll upload the 3 offline demo I made(or someone show me the way to share file on some webspace and place the link in a post,I'm super n00b on that currently the uploading system on this cite needs days to be updated),you can take them as a reference if you like.

Actually age with 13+3 villagers sub 4:15 is also possible,but that require very good micro and average luck on map/starting resources.On of my offline demo showed that build.

[This message has been edited by Plebus (edited 01-25-2006 @ 06:04 PM).]

I actually do a very similar strat with Russia.

First I set all vills to food, yada yada, then as I age up with 14-17 vills (at around 4:30) I set half of them to gold. Plop down a church in colonial, and a blockhouse soon after. (both of these are supplied by the 500 wood politician) get mercentillism when I get the gold too, and then I have 5-6 shipments to do whatever I want with.

Alot of people really underestimate mercentillism, partly because most people dont build a church until age 3 or 4, if at all. By this time Mercentillism has lost its value, since xp is raked in so much quicker.

I have used or tried to use mercantilism in almost every game, the amount of cards you can send in military alone well exceed 1000 resources

Call me a noob for not just seeing why... But why the Dutch?

Because its very easy for the dutch to focus on gold and get enough for mercantilism and still have a decent economy. I bet the french and ottos do it better though lol.

[This message has been edited by Doggiedoodle (edited 01-25-2006 @ 07:26 PM).]

wyveric, I think Dice mentioned a bit earlier that the main reason this is for the Dutch is because they *need* something like this to give them an edge early game, and help them beat FF's and the like.