posted 05-07-07 01:10 AM EDT (US)
Now I know most strategies are made for 1v1 and some/a lot can be applied to team games but this is purely for a 2v2, possibly even a 3v3 team to have some fun with.
Introduction:
First of all, where this strategy came from.
KingsRansom and I had been having a bad string of games, 7 losses I think it was. I had been tossing the idea of just pike rushing people around before the loss streak, and we figured we might as well try it since we were probably going to lose. The team we first used this against was players we just played and had lost to, so we tried it and brought our 7 game losing streak to an end with the silliest idea ever in a 2v2.
A Pure Pike Rush
Any team-players here will probably agree that both players making the same unit is in itself stupid but for both of them to be pikes is just insane.
Francisco Franco was the revolutionary war general in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and facist leader of Spain (1939-1975) and Franco also just means French. So combined we have the Spanish French Hidden Pike rush or -
The Francisco Franco Surprise
I cannot stress this enough:
The entire purpose of everything you do is to throw the game into confusion. Make the enemy second guess themselves and second guess their next move
Make the enemy go WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED
Make them cry that they lost to a pike rush.
Why this strategy actually works:
1. Spain's Archaic training coupled with Frances eco capability is devistating.
2. What you kill with your pikes. (TC's, Houses, TP's)
3. Your opponents have a judgement call. They can push their rush onto your base and only kill one of your TC's and half of the base or they can lose both theirs and their vills.
4. Deception. Everything about this strategy is about deception.
Things to know:
Run your villagers around the perimiter of the map or close to it, they cannot be found otherwise they'll know you're rushing and not trying to FF.
Make it appear that you're FF'ing. If spain isn't high enough lvl for 500 food age up, put the tower in a defensive position, they'll scout your base, see the villagers gathering crates, the tower in defensive spot, and how your deck is set up (FF, 5 Lancers, 2 falc, etc.) will expect you to hit fort instead of rushing.
Once you've got 15-20 pikes, they're usually moving their units to attack you, once you see their units hit LoS send your pikes in, by the time they reach your TC, you'll have set upon theirs with a fiery rage of 30-40 pikes all with a 15% siege boost.
Strenghts
Element of Surprise
Conversion of Pike and Crossbows to Rodeleros and Skirmishers
High Siege damage means their TC's drop in less than 30 seconds each, can get both even under minutemen fire.
Weaknessess
Leave yourself open to attack.
1(hopefully) of you willPOSSIBLY lose your TC.
Maps:
Any map will work, although some work alot better than others. Saguenay is great because you can sneak in behind the top-back guy and rush downward. GreatLakes works nicely too since no one expects a rax to be on the other side of the Trade Route.
If you play a map like Painted Desert where their TC's are very far apart, the game has been handed to you on a silver platter. You can get behind and between both TC's, and theres a large distance for their units to catch up to your pikes once the TC has been dropped.
Spain's Build Order
Written by: LordKivlov
Required Cards:
Three (3) Villagers
TEAM Archaic Infantry Training
Seven-Hundred (700) Wood
TEAM Hand Infantry Attack
Seven-Hundred (700) Coin
Two (2) Falconents
Five (5) Lancers
Recommended Cards:
Tercio Tactic's
Five (5) Villagers
Colonial Estancias
Caballaros
Discovery Age
1. 2 Villagers unpack crates, rest to food, all subsequent villagers to food.
2. Build a house with starting wood, or two if you start with 200.
First Card:3 Vills
3. Once at 15 villagers, gather till 800 food and age up with either tower/200 coin or 500 food.
Transition: Discovery Age -> Colonial Age
4. 5 Villagers remain on food, 8 move onto wood and 2 begin to walk around the edge of the map.
5. At 300 wood, build a house and then shift 3-5 vills back onto food depending on who you aged with.
Second Card:TEAM Archaic Infantry Training
Colonial Age
Third Card:700 Wood
6. Build a rax and shift the vills onto wood, begin producing pikes untill you have 20-25 or go with how many you have when they attack. (Never go with less than 15 each)
7. Keep vill production as constant as you can.
Fourth Card:TEAM Hand Infantry Attack
8. Attack!
If all goes right, only your TC should be dead if at all, both of theirs should be dead. Once you kill the first ones TC, immediatly get to the next guys and drop his TC, then you can clean up and take TP's and houses down.If and only if you feel confident you can take the other guys TC without trouble, kill villagers with your pikes when the 1st TC drops.
If they proceed to your teammates base they will be met by crossbows and wardogs, get your TC back up ASAP, ship 700 coin and get to fort and bring out the falcs while still producing pikes.
The great part of this is if you keep your pikes alive, you run em back to your base for later harassment and then once you get around 50-70 convert them to rods.
French Build Order:
Written By: KingsRansom
Required Cards:
3 Coureur de Bois
700 Wood
700 Coin
2 Falconets
Recommended Cards:
Tiralleurs
Wilderness Warefare
Long-Ranged Infantry Hitpoints
TEAM Ranged Infantry Attack
8 Crossbows
Colonial Militia
3 Hussars
4 Coureur de Bois
700 Food
Dicovery Age
Standard French DA.
3 Vills unpack crates, rest to food.
Build 1-2 Houses pending starting wood
First Card: 3 Coureur de Bois
Age with 14 CdB.
Transition: Discovery Age -> Colonial Age
5 CdB shift to wood, 2 begin to sneak around to the designated hidden rax spot Rest stay on food.
Build a market and research hunting dogs and lumber.
Colonial Age
Second Card:700 Wood
Put a rax up beside your teammates rax and begin to pump out pikes. Don't house yourself.
Put a rax up locally and once you reach 15-20 pikes begin to make crossbows for defense. Send your pikes in with your teammates and take TC's out first.
Keep CdB production constant.
Third Card: Wild Card -700 Food, 4 CdB, 8 Crossbow, 3 Hussar, Long-Range Infantry Hitpoints Your job is to defend against their attack, if the crossbows you're making can do the job ship 4 CdB and continue to boom, otherwise get the 8 crossbow or 3 hussars or 700 food to spam xbows.
Once you've successfully defended their attack, your teammate should be heading to fort and you should be right behind him. Spam out crossbows for conversion, your teammates pikes will be rods and your xbows will be skirms giving you a very very strong army (50-70 Rods and 50-70 skirms)
-----------
This rush works vs everyone, any civ combo will fall to this although France and Britain combo will put up a fight since CdB can rape your pikes and Brit's have plenty of wood to put their TC back up immediatly.
I find it works the best vs Otto since you take their TP's with them and then they're screwed.
If enough people, or anyone really I can post where I hide my rax and good places to hide them as a SS of the minimap.
Records:
Kiv+King vs 2 Captains on Andes
Kiv+Satchmo. Britain can do it too!
If you've downloaded one of the recs before you see this message, add .age3xrec to the end otherwise you can't watch it
Proud Citizen of Sovietcanuckistan
First of all, where this strategy came from.
KingsRansom and I had been having a bad string of games, 7 losses I think it was. I had been tossing the idea of just pike rushing people around before the loss streak, and we figured we might as well try it since we were probably going to lose. The team we first used this against was players we just played and had lost to, so we tried it and brought our 7 game losing streak to an end with the silliest idea ever in a 2v2.
Any team-players here will probably agree that both players making the same unit is in itself stupid but for both of them to be pikes is just insane.
Francisco Franco was the revolutionary war general in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and facist leader of Spain (1939-1975) and Franco also just means French. So combined we have the Spanish French Hidden Pike rush or -
The entire purpose of everything you do is to throw the game into confusion. Make the enemy second guess themselves and second guess their next move
Make the enemy go WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED
Make them cry that they lost to a pike rush.
1. Spain's Archaic training coupled with Frances eco capability is devistating.
2. What you kill with your pikes. (TC's, Houses, TP's)
3. Your opponents have a judgement call. They can push their rush onto your base and only kill one of your TC's and half of the base or they can lose both theirs and their vills.
4. Deception. Everything about this strategy is about deception.
Run your villagers around the perimiter of the map or close to it, they cannot be found otherwise they'll know you're rushing and not trying to FF.
Make it appear that you're FF'ing. If spain isn't high enough lvl for 500 food age up, put the tower in a defensive position, they'll scout your base, see the villagers gathering crates, the tower in defensive spot, and how your deck is set up (FF, 5 Lancers, 2 falc, etc.) will expect you to hit fort instead of rushing.
Once you've got 15-20 pikes, they're usually moving their units to attack you, once you see their units hit LoS send your pikes in, by the time they reach your TC, you'll have set upon theirs with a fiery rage of 30-40 pikes all with a 15% siege boost.
Element of Surprise
Conversion of Pike and Crossbows to Rodeleros and Skirmishers
High Siege damage means their TC's drop in less than 30 seconds each, can get both even under minutemen fire.
Leave yourself open to attack.
1(hopefully) of you will
Any map will work, although some work alot better than others. Saguenay is great because you can sneak in behind the top-back guy and rush downward. GreatLakes works nicely too since no one expects a rax to be on the other side of the Trade Route.
If you play a map like Painted Desert where their TC's are very far apart, the game has been handed to you on a silver platter. You can get behind and between both TC's, and theres a large distance for their units to catch up to your pikes once the TC has been dropped.
Written by: LordKivlov
Three (3) Villagers
TEAM Archaic Infantry Training
Seven-Hundred (700) Wood
TEAM Hand Infantry Attack
Seven-Hundred (700) Coin
Two (2) Falconents
Five (5) Lancers
Tercio Tactic's
Five (5) Villagers
Colonial Estancias
Caballaros
1. 2 Villagers unpack crates, rest to food, all subsequent villagers to food.
2. Build a house with starting wood, or two if you start with 200.
First Card:
3. Once at 15 villagers, gather till 800 food and age up with either tower/200 coin or 500 food.
4. 5 Villagers remain on food, 8 move onto wood and 2 begin to walk around the edge of the map.
5. At 300 wood, build a house and then shift 3-5 vills back onto food depending on who you aged with.
Second Card:
Third Card:
6. Build a rax and shift the vills onto wood, begin producing pikes untill you have 20-25 or go with how many you have when they attack. (Never go with less than 15 each)
7. Keep vill production as constant as you can.
Fourth Card:
8. Attack!
If all goes right, only your TC should be dead if at all, both of theirs should be dead. Once you kill the first ones TC, immediatly get to the next guys and drop his TC, then you can clean up and take TP's and houses down.
If they proceed to your teammates base they will be met by crossbows and wardogs, get your TC back up ASAP, ship 700 coin and get to fort and bring out the falcs while still producing pikes.
The great part of this is if you keep your pikes alive, you run em back to your base for later harassment and then once you get around 50-70 convert them to rods.
Written By: KingsRansom
3 Coureur de Bois
700 Wood
700 Coin
2 Falconets
Tiralleurs
Wilderness Warefare
Long-Ranged Infantry Hitpoints
TEAM Ranged Infantry Attack
8 Crossbows
Colonial Militia
3 Hussars
4 Coureur de Bois
700 Food
Standard French DA.
3 Vills unpack crates, rest to food.
Build 1-2 Houses pending starting wood
First Card:
Age with 14 CdB.
5 CdB shift to wood, 2 begin to sneak around to the designated hidden rax spot Rest stay on food.
Build a market and research hunting dogs and lumber.
Second Card:
Put a rax up beside your teammates rax and begin to pump out pikes. Don't house yourself.
Put a rax up locally and once you reach 15-20 pikes begin to make crossbows for defense. Send your pikes in with your teammates and take TC's out first.
Keep CdB production constant.
Third Card: Wild Card -
Once you've successfully defended their attack, your teammate should be heading to fort and you should be right behind him. Spam out crossbows for conversion, your teammates pikes will be rods and your xbows will be skirms giving you a very very strong army (50-70 Rods and 50-70 skirms)
-----------
This rush works vs everyone, any civ combo will fall to this although France and Britain combo will put up a fight since CdB can rape your pikes and Brit's have plenty of wood to put their TC back up immediatly.
I find it works the best vs Otto since you take their TP's with them and then they're screwed.
Proud Citizen of Sovietcanuckistan
[This message has been edited by LordKivlov (edited 05-17-2007 @ 06:37 PM).]
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