NOTE:
This is not just a fake of your strat poita, I really dont wanna steal anything.
I got some ideas there but for the main part it are my own ones.
This strat's goal is to take full advantage of the russian block training vills => You want to take map control by BHs (block houses) to cut ur opponent of resources and to be able to gather all the res urself+ getting many TPs. I found that a russian FF can be good like the RIFF but that it isnt needed in my opinion. Because in the time you would collect res for fortress and not being able to make any vills u could make vills instead which gives you a better economy. You could also make vills in the time a FFer is aging to fortress. So I toyed around and because russians have a strong boom I found that a Russian colonial boom with delayed fortress time works better for me than a russian FF. This is the BO so far: ____________________________________________ age1: ___________________________________________________ age2: _____________________________________________________ age3: ____________________________________________________ Deck: This are the cards that are really needed: age1: 300 wood age2: 700 gold/wood, 13 strelets, 5 cossacks age3: 1000 wood This are cards I find really important but that arent really needed: age1: schooners age2: Boyars (sp?), 4 cossacks, 700 food, church card, (maybe faster inf training card) age3: 17 strelets, orpis, fort, manchu, (maybe a frigate), 1000 food age4: factory, 2 HC, 2 HC, (maybe ?27? strelets) _______________________________________________ Now you might ask: Why is that strat good? What are it's advantages? Well, I can tell you: Now some advice: Getting thw market upgrades can be very helpful since it makes your economy even more superior to your opponent's (if he is FFing) This strat is mainly anti-FF and is probably not that good vs the Dutch since they can turtle pretty well and dont really need map control. This was just 1 example of my strat working pretty well though I unluckily have no rec. I dont know if this was posted b4, but in my opinion its very different from the russian FF and the russian turtle since its a mapcontrol boom. If I have any typos in here I will change it if you tell me and I'm sorry if it isnt understandable. I hope people will try my strat because I like it very much since its different from the all day FFing I'm really bored of. Thanks. [This message has been edited by Killa4life (edited 07-01-2006 @ 12:41 PM).]
send all villagers but one to the food crates.
gather food till you have 270 and queue your first batch of vills.
The vill who didnt collect food shoots the animals in direction of your TC, and the other vills come to hunt after they collected 270 food.
(besides 1 who builds a house)
Queue more villagers and dont build more houses at the moment.
First shipment: 300 wood.
When the shipment arrives send 1 vill to forward build a BH as near to your enemy as possible. Ty to secure some hunt/mines with it too.
Age to age2 when u have 17 vills with the 400 wood politican.
While aging send some vills to wood, queue another batch of vills, build some houses and send your forward builder to another place near your enemy to surround him with BHs.
collect the wood ASAP, build another BH, queue 10 strelets and send another 13.
When they arrive go into ur enmey's base to scare him, but if he has towers/other defenses RUN.
Otherwise you can simply use the usual strelet rush from there on.
Queue more vills and send 5 cossacks after that.
Send many vills to wood and build 1-2 more BHs to completely surround him to take map control.
If he has fishing boats build a BH near the sea.
Make some more strelets till u have like 33 (if none died)+ make some musks (~15).
send many vills to wood, many to food and few on gold.
Make settlers consantly.
(If its a water map you can send schooners( maybe earlier) and build a dock)
Next shipment is 700 wood.
Get all TPs u can get and have now like 4 BHs around his base.
When you have 33 strelets and ~20 musks make no more first.
Now send most vills on food, some on gold and no on wood.
(never forget to build houses)
Ship 700 gold after that and go fortress ASAP.( best would be 17 srelets poli)
(I forgot to say that you should send your cossacks raiding if possible)
You should hit age3 @ about 10-12:00 mins in the game with a good army and many vills.If your enemy attacks earlier, spam musks/ strelets and MICRO with them.
In fortress you can ship kalmuks if u sent the church card and have enough wood, and you should upgrade your muskets/strelets to veteran ASAP.
Most important in fortress is to send 1000 wood for a second TC to boom like crazy+ to get a WAY better eco than your FFing opponent.
Getting a foundry (you should have lots of wood since you have most vills on food/wood and only few on gold) and making culvs should help a lot.
Keep map control and raid with opris aswell.
From there on its up to you, you can boom to industrial age or make falcs to kill your opponent in fortress.
You have map control very early so you can gather all the res all over the map while ur opponent cant.
You get a better eco early which allows you to outmass your opponent.
You can get many/most TPs cos you have map control aswell.
NOTE:
I alrdy tried this strat vs some german on my skill level and it worked pretty well.
I reached fortress @ ~11-12 mins while he did a standard german FF.
He got hackapells cos of my strelets+ some skirms vs my musks+ 2 falcs+ many uhlans.
I first lost the main part of my army, but since I got a way better economy I could spam more units while he couldnt.
I had total map control first but later he could destroy some of my BHs and push me back.
I also water boomed(without schooners tho) +I had 2 TCs spamming vills.
He built a 2nd TC later and reached indu maybe 18 mins in the game.
I reached indu like 4 mins later and soon after that he attacked me with massed WWs (oh surpise)+ HC+ winged hussars (ftw)+ lots of uhlans.
But I could defend myself cos I had a better economy with massed guard musketiers+ culvernis vs his HC/falcs.
Then he had to go but my score was higher and I had a booming eco+ 5 BHs spamming guard musks+ 3 foundrys spamming culvs so I guess I would have won.
The villager count at the end ( @ 28 mins) was him 64 vills vs me 112 vills.
I apologize for my bad english and my mistakes and I apologize if anyone thinks that I stole his trat.