posted 06-17-06 10:16 PM EDT (US)
Update, this strat was originally dveloped in vanilla 1.06 era when port was OP. now port is no longer OP but can act as a hard shell to crack for russian, when they fo CM TC and turtle. this strat is still effective for russian vs port, and it works the same for either latest vanilla, or latest TAD and TWC
3 vils on hunt, 2 vils on food crates, then hunt as well. explorer hunt for food, make no vils, go fast colonial, go with 400 wood, hit colonial around 2:30, no later than 2:50, 600 food + 200 wood start is ideal.
make 1 house during aging, queue 3 vils, once hit age2 send 5 cossack and gather wood, 1 forward vil to build a forward BH with the wood.
3 cossack raiding, 2 cossack explorer the map + treasure hunt with explorer.
keep on making vils non-stop back home, spare some vils on wood.
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between 4:00 to 4:50, Port has advanced to age2, and his TC wagon has arrived. attack! he will either let it die or build it right where it is. obviously they will just build it.
second shipment is 13 strelets, send them to forward BH, have them keep raiding.
at this point, the port player has a shipment ready, and he is thinking....
send muskts? get owned by strelets.
send xbow? may get owned by cossacks. (this is actually one of the better options)
send gold and go FF? you hope he does his, because he will never FF, he will also take fire just to collect them and end up with 700 gold to the end of the game.
send + 40% building HP? useless, because we are not seiging.
send colonial militia? good choice, this doubles TC's effeciencty in killing strelets, without it, 2 shots per strelets, with it, 1 shot. But this also means a completely idling economy.
send 2 towers? not only risking them getting killed instantly, he will also have to build them right next to his TC. again, he will not have access to hunting and mining out.
on top of the shipment dilemma, he has a food dilemma. he either makes vils or he saves food and waits for FF.
will there be a fortress? what to send after hitting fortress anyway? no gold no mamulukes, Port fortress offers no free strelets killing shipments.
and yet there are more problems ...what should he do with his vils?
have them take fire and gather anyway? strelets do very little damage to vils, but it is damage nevertheless.
or should he risk it and let them go far out from TC through the back and mine/chop/hunt somewhere else? there are cossacks running all around.
or should he keep them garrisoned and just keep shooting and hope strelets will eventually give up? well, we are not going to give up.
you will have your 3rd shipment ready. it depends on your hunting and chopping situation, send 700 wood or 700 food, depends on which is more needed at the time.
your vil count should overtaken his now, strelets are coming out all the time. you shipments should be accelerated by the vil + strelets build XP.
somewhere in between you may even send 7 cows for the kicks, build a pen and fatten them. 7 fat cows = about 100 strelets
I will leave that choice to you.
I didnt get to do 2:30 colonial in either game due to treasure problem and starting crate numbers, but seems like it still worked against unsuspecting opponents.
Strategy by Ultimitsu
Guns and Biers
British Anti-FF explosion
For TWC only Ottoman FF on non-water non-TP maps
For Vanilla only Dutch Fast Colonial Uber Bank
[This message has been edited by ultimitsu (edited 04-01-2009 @ 07:27 PM).]
? After all, we have nearly the same requisite troops, we have a similar early age up, we can more easily snipe villagers with Skirmishers (20 vs 14 range), though they are more expensive (but we don't need as many). My own anti-port strat of taking out the second TC with 8 Pikes at 4:10-4:25 only goes so far. I need help brainstorming on what to do next. Perhaps it's possible to employ the same "pincers" strategy with Dutch as well.
