Heh, that actually sounds pretty cool. Gonna have to try it out. Any recs yet?

Wow, that sounds like it takes courage. From the sound of it, you've busted this out against real rushes. Would you do something like this against an Ottoman or a Russian? It's hard for me to imagine, but imagination only takes you so far.

I really love this unorthodox stuff. Great idea, and good luck with your further experimenting.

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I have recs at home but they're not that exciting. In the spanish one for example, I had an army of halbs/falcs that took out his forward fort and I could have easily pushed that out and won, but noooo I had to go to IV and get upgrades. Of course that took forever and there's about 8 min of zero action. The game ends with me still in my base having just killed his entire army with 10 falcs/5 culvs behind walls. Fun to play, but boring to watch.

Then there's one of me beating a 2.1k otto player (stats), but that's even more boring because he doesn't attack until Industrial! 4 culverins, 44 minutemen and 3 TCs stopped his Jan/Sphai/Bombard combo. It was near-constant battling from then on, which was cool. But then my mortars killed his forward factories and he resigned. LOL

When I get a recording where I win with my army *outside* my base, I'll post it.

if east india is an age1 card (which i am not sure about), then it may be a good card to send too.

It's Age2 unfortunately - or should I say typically - for the Dutch.

Argh, jaafit, you always have to beat me, eh?

I had been developing an age 1 bank build for the dutch.

Anyways, I would like to see your take on it in action.

I was thinking, that this has potential, because the earlier you get your Banks up, the sooner they'll begin to turn profit. And with the typical FF play, fast age up to Colonial isn't as important as it used to be (when not playing Ottoman/Russian that is).

However, I think that 26 villagers and 3 Banks with an 8 minute Colonial is going abit overboard. If these were toned down to a 6:30 minute Colonial with say 15-17 villagers and 3 Banks, you could stil go to Fortress immidiately after reaching Colonial (btw, what Politician do you use?), only you can do it with Exiled Prince! You'd then be in Fortress by 7:00 with an equivalent of 28-30 villagers.

Thoughts?

i do banks in discovery only my shipments are like 300w 1 bank 300w 1 bank 300w 1 bank guess what 300w 1 bank until i have 4 then +1 bank card and another +1 bank card it works pretty good but you i have to build a wall and turtle realy early

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nah not ballsy enough I want my opponent to wonder wtf is going on and not really know what to do. I think I'm getting this reaction because no 2 opponents have responded the same way.

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I haven't formalized this as a strat and I doubt if I ever will. If it were a strat it would look like this:

Age I
*Build banks/vils
*Ship Stadhouder/3vils/improved buildings/CM

Age II/III
Counter your opponent.

I really don't have a solid plan yet for how to use this setup to win every time. I just know I have to make good use of those 2 turtle cards I sent (3 if you count 200w TCs).

EDIT (a challenge): If anyone has the huevos to try this in a rated game (I didn't at first) I'd like to hear how it went for you. Post a warstory or something.

[This message has been edited by jaafit (edited 06-29-2006 @ 11:13 PM).]

just tried this out. improved buildings and colonial militia card can handle a lot.

it is scary the first time you try it. Me likey.

I didn't bother to send the explorer card though. I was on texas= no treasures. just sent 3 vills, colonial militia and then improved buildings.

I am thinking of trying it with market upgrades. all that wood takes a long time to chop.

I also had a shipment waiting for ages since i didn't send stadhouder. Eventually I sent 4 vills card as soon as I hit colonial. zero idle TC time straight from colonial to fortress.

my opponent was noobish
here is the game stats
http://www.agecommunity.com/stats/GameStats.aspx?loc=en-US&GameID=409f6833-4313-d443-b475-d184c8ea49d2&md=ZS_Supremacy

[This message has been edited by Sundalo50 (edited 06-29-2006 @ 11:28 PM).]

lol. weird to read this as i was the spanish player he was talking about.

In that game i looked at your deck and thought WTF. Funny game to play. My early fortress attack of pikes and falcs failed, my later fortress attack with mercs and natives failed so i drop some TC's, get my market upgrades on and go to industrial. That fails too. He had many many cannons...

Im a big fan of this strat. He must have called over 100 minutemen or something. With col militia and TC's only costing him 200 wood, he could just keep deleting them and calling them again.

Good work Jaffit

tried it again. failed this time to a 5:30ish native rush on bayou. I think it still would of been tenable with a market though. I was short on the food that I needed to call out the second militia with and my freakin explorer got owned by spanish dogs before I could send out the explorer card.

Good thing this one wasn't rated

My explorer pwns all other explorers . Me likey native rush. You made me chase you until 18:45 though. You ALWAYS make me chase you for an extra 10 mins dont you lol.

This strat looks like it has potential. Hmm, 25 vill econ fortress at 7:30. I wonder what other strat may have yeilded those results. Hmmm, I wonder. OH YEAH.

Considering this does quite well even vs. a rush is quite appealing. Maybe its time to level up the dusty old (well, brand new actually) dutch HC.

Good job jaafit.

tried it yet again. results were good vs a brigadier otto on hispanola.

I still lost, but thats because I suck on hispanola. and again I didn't send the explorer card first, sent it after the colonial militia, improved building, and 3 vill cards due to lack of treasures.

http://www.agecommunity.com/stats/GameStats.aspx?loc=en-US&GameID=bfa8609c-713f-8649-9f0b-0c0f11fa1f3c&md=ZS_Supremacy

I find that once you have a second TC up it forces the enemy to get to industrial for mortars. Picking the right mercs seems to be key as well. never ran into gold problems with early banks

[This message has been edited by Sundalo50 (edited 06-30-2006 @ 01:46 AM).]

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I'm considering getting advanced market in my deck so i can buy wood. Then I'd just have mills and banks! That might not be such a good idea though.

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lol oh yeah, that's the other cool thing you can do with this. I typically delete my TC about 3 times so I can get more minutemen. That idea was inspired by this thread.

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Oh man, I'm gonna be responsible for a drop in Dutch win% lol. How did you lose the hispainola game though? I lost to a jan rush on that map. Was it close at least?

^^Err, the stats say that you won, Sundalo... Congrats?

posted wrong link to stats.. fixed.

so against the otto brigadier.

He did the usuall Fast fortress w/ spahi raiding.

he was able to slow down my fortress time due to lack of food and for some reason my berries were a little walk. the militia TC fire killed a spahi and he let off. I was able to get to fortress around 11min with 3 banks and 34 vills.

So he is killing me in score big time. I sent blackriders as my first age3 shipment, killed 2 spahi and did some raiding. he had a decent sized army of about 4 falcs 20 jans and 15 abus. I had butt loads of gold but no army yet, I made another TC and an artillry foundry. while my riders were raiding he attacked. I was able to hold him off without losing any buildings using just minute men and 2 culverns that I had made. Had like 100 hp left on one TC

He realized what he was in for after that loss and just boomed all to hell. got boats took total map control etc.

mean time I sent 1000 wood, fort, 1000 gold, church card and landshtenkt. made farms, maxed banks, shipped a fort, made skirms, ruyters and about 6 falcs and 2 culverns.

As I am massing my army he gets to industrial and starts getting bombards. I won the first engagement convincingly. had all sorts of advantages.

after I started whooping him on land he had boats that started bombarding my base and then his land replacements showed up.

I was just surprised I lasted that long in the first place

so on another map the outcome might have been different.

I tried it, but I decided one thing -- a 3-bank discovery was just not crazy enough. So I did a 4-bank discovery, with a super-speedy colonial time of 10:17 (followed by a 10:49 fortress.) Hey, if you're going to miss a fast colonial, why miss it by inches? (Warning: I took an incredible risk by doing this 4-bank variation -- don't try this at home!)

I performed this vs. Portuguese of all civs. Quite bad timing on my part, but I was eager to give it a try. Since the other player was content to sit back and boom, we wound up in one whale of a slugfest in late fortress and beyond. Note: I of course realize that Ports are better handled more aggressively. I picked perhaps the worst time to use this strat, but it still led to a nice economy.

I won, but 1000 of my soldiers were crushed in the avalanche. (BTW, the game was an unrated custom game.)

Good fun, good fun! One adjustment I felt that I had to make was sending 3 vills first. Getting that first bank going while constantly cranking vills is an extremely slow process. With 350 wood to be gathered per bank, I feel like that 3-vill card should be occupying the first shipment slot. Don't you feel like you're stuck in molasses without those 3 vills coming out first?

Sundalo, nice war story. It sounds a lot like my game vs otto on new england. If my opponent had gotten control of the water -- or even just made 2 monitors -- I would have been dead.

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That's Awesome!

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Well it depends really. If my explorer can find some food/wood treasures, I think those are going get banks faster than 3 vils. The other reason I send stadhouder first is that my explorer has more time to creep. Once I'm in fortress, his only job is to build (and rebuild) TCs. I can't have him on the other side of the map.

As promised, I am sharing the first win where I actually leave my base. It was a quicksearch game vs a 1800 Dutch, so it's pretty boring. But yeah, 6 banks in discovery!

dutch mirror replay

But since that was even MORE boring than the Otto game, I'll post that one too:

otto replay

[This message has been edited by jaafit (edited 06-30-2006 @ 02:53 AM).]

Nice idea! That's thinking outside the box for you!

The thing with slow colonials is that your opponent always assumes that you'll probably hit colonial soon so preparing to attack would be pointless. I played a brit a while back that was in discovery for the first 9 mins or so while I FF'd. It's quite scary to watch them stay there for so long since you wonder what they're up to. You know that they've out-boomed you so you have to do something quick but sometimes it's too late by the time you make the decision.

Okay what about sending exotic hardwoods card in discovery?
A 15% boost in base wood gather rate is nothing to laugh at, espeically if you consider that it stacks with market upgrades iirc, meaning each upgrade is now 15% better. Right now I'm just trying to up my cuetech so I don't have time to try this, but jaafit you should give it a shot and see how it works. I'm thinking it's best to send 3 vils and then hardwoods on a map that doesn't have too many good tresures.

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Well I guess the obvious comparison would be against 300 wood. Is 15% chopping rate better than 300 wood?

Only after chopping 2000 wood, does exotic hardwood actually beat 300 wood. Of course it would pay off in the long run but it wouldn't be more effective until you've already got all your banks up.

Heh you beat me in posting this on the strat section

I've been playing a very similar Dutch FF strategy, using my turtle start but sending colonial militia as second card, and then using skirms instead of improved buildings. I use it against Ottos and Russians, and some aggressive Spanish players.

I've said this numerous times, but I'll say it again. When I try beating back a rush, I lure. I use some skirms to lure the opponent behind the TC and make him think he's going to be able to kill me. Then, I call out minutemen and kill his units from behind and from in front. Works well against Ottos, because you catch his Abus with your Minutemen and your Skirms kill his janissaries.

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Ever had a Spanish player attack with 16 pikes and 2 falcs at 7:30?

Several Spanish players have done this to me, since kingsteve first did it to me, and I was wondering whether you had ever faced that.

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Nope, that's never happened to me. I'm confident that CM+IB would stop that initial assault. However, a smart opponent would add more falcs before attacking and I dont' know if I'd get culvs out on time. It would be tough.

I'm feeling a little more confident in this strat's early turtle aspect since those two cards (CM and IB) just beat a 45 pikeman rush! I really didn't think it was possible to win when i saw the first wave coming but the TC held up.

Here's the rec

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As a Spanish player (currently), I can gaurantee you that Colonial Militia + Improved Buildings will indeed not just stop, but annihilate 16 Pikes and 2 Falconets.

The way I would fight this, and something for you to watch out for, would be to set up an Artillery Foundary, put most villagers on gold and wood, and start cranking out Falconets and Muskets.

Pikes are already enough to stop Mamelukes from coming in to murder the Falconets. Muskets are there for Dragoons. Falconets work on taking out Skirmishers and Town Centers.

The trouble is, you can likely rebuild TCs with alot less effort than it would take me to kill them.
And If I kill the Explorer, you can ransom him back easily.

It's definitely a really hard shell to crack.