Russian Suvorov Fast Fortress^{TAD 1.01}

By Valckrie

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Foreword
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I first had this idea when reading about the Suvorov reforms card, which basically transforms all your strelets into musketeers. So if your opponent was to make cavalry to kill your strelets, your instant musketeers will be a direct counter to their army! Also, the fact that strelets train in batches of 10 and are so cheap, you can get so many musketeers by the time you have aged! So in theory we could get a big bunch of veteran musketeers backed by the 2 cannon shipment before 10 minutes – Behold, the Suvorov FF!

*Although it is a unique strat, it is not in essence effective at all. With a few tests and more thinking, I have realized that this will not work vs most of the civs you encounter. However, it will work vs some civs, and maybe fun to carry out when possible.

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Deck
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General Card Order:



Discovery card is skipped, since you don’t need that much wood anyway. Instead you get a fast second shipment in fortress age (2 cannons).

Deck:



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Main Units
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Strelet

Cost: 375f, 100w – for a batch of 10
Train time: 30 seconds
Build EXP: 6
Population: 2
HP: 90
Ranged Attack: 10 (2x HI, LC, 3.0 ROF)
Hand Attack: 5 (2x HI, LC, 1.5 ROF)
Siege Attack: 9 (3.0 ROF)
Resist: 30% RANGE
Speed: 4.5
LOS: 16

Russia’s unique skirmisher type light infantry. They have very low health, but resist 30% ranged as LI, and can be easily amassed: effective versus heavy infantry. [you are converting strelets to muskets]

Veteran Musketeer

Cost: 75f, 25g
Train time: 30 seconds
Build EXP: 10
Poulation: 1
HP: 150
Ranged Attack: 23 (12 range, 3.0 ROF)
Hand Attack: 13 (3x against Heavy Cavalry, 2.25x against Light Infantry, 1.5 ROF)
Siege Attack: 20 (3.0 ROF)
Resist: 20% hand
Speed: 4
LOS: 16

The most basic heavy infantry in the game which most European civilizations have. They are good all-rounders with decent range, melee and siege damage. However, Russian musketeers are less effective, their veteran upgrade brings them to the same stats as other civs have in colonial.

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Build Order
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Discovery Age:

2 settlers go to nearest huntable. If on non-asian maps e.g. Great Plains you must herd your starting herd.

Assign each other settler to separate food crates. After two food crates deplete move those two settlers to huntables. Remaining settler on wood crate, then build a house asap.

Queue a batch of settlers ASAP

Explorer does the usual, scout around base for obvious herds and mines, then get some treasures. Wood are best, then food then gold.

Upon finding second herd task a settler to herd it if it is near, if it is too far don’t bother yet, instead use the time to age up 2 or 3 seconds quicker

Skip discovery shipment

Age with 14 settlers, 400 wood politician.

Transition:

Re-arrange your settler allocation to 4/5 gold depending on starting gold – aim to get 300 gold by the time 700 gold arrives; rest on food.

Place some wall segments strategically if needed. Refer to notes after BO as to why you need these.

Explorer tries to scout for opponent FB and hunts.

Queue a batch of settlers from TC

Colonial Age:

Gather 400 coin from age up with two settlers. Build a blockhouse with 2 food settlers, not too front since you don’t have early military to defend, but in a decent position such as by a gold mine or some hunts. You don’t want it too close to TC either, it will look suspicious.

Ship 700 gold.

Build market and research hunting dogs.

Once you have 300 gold (after hunt dog research) collect gold crates with 3/4 settlers. Don’t queue any more batches of settlers.

Ship 700 wood.

Age with 17 strelet politician. Time is roughly 6:10.

Transition:

Collect 700 wood with 2 or 3 settlers after clicking ageup button. Chop 100 wood if you started with 100 wood. If you started with 200, no need to chop any wood.

Task all settlers to gather food. This should not be a problem if you herded properly.

Build 5 houses (500 wood), train 30 strelets when you get enough food to do so (300 wood). There, you used your 700 wood efficiently – no wood chopping (except if you started with 100 wood, in which case you chop 100)!

Queue a batch of settlers from your TC.

Immediately after you have queued your batch of settlers, re-arrange settler allocation: 8 wood, 7 gold, 2 food.

Fortress Age:

Your last batch of strelets will come shortly after you age, totaling 47 strelets. Immediately ship Suvorov Reforms.

As soon as you reach 200 wood and 200 gold, research Veteran Musketeers.

At roughly 8:50 you have now 47 musketeers.

Your population is 47(strelets) + 20(settlers-3 in queue) = 67, out of your total 75 population.

Send 2 cannons.

After researching Veteran Musketeers, research gang saw at market (wood upgrade), and maybe placer mines (gold upgrade).

Settler Allocation: 8 wood, 4 gold, rest food.

Build 2 houses, giving you 95 population.

Your cannons should have arrived, now attack. You need to use judgment here, refer below BO for notes.

Settler Allocation: 6 wood, 4 gold, rest food.

This is where your build order ends. There are several possibilities from here on, you can either go aggressive, or more defensive against other FF’s maybe.

5th card: 1000 wood. With this wood make a TC (600 wood), a stable (200 wood), and another blockhouse (250wood). This gives you map control and stable needed for cavalry obviously. The second TC lets you double your settler production, 6 settlers every 50 seconds, which is quite good.

5th card: 11 musketeers. Basically another 10 musketeers, useful for further pushing.

5th card: 1000 gold. Gather this, so your next shipment will be Manchu’s. Alternatively put most of your settlers on gold to gather the 1000 gold for your next ship, if your 5th ship still needs some XP.

Further Notes

You must sacrifice idle TC time for a good ageup time

Make good judgement of battles, if you know you can’t handle it with your army, don’t attack – if you wait for them to come you have Blockhouse and maybe TC to help you fend off.

If opponent has cannons, one way of killing them is waiting for them to come to you, and if your falconets are already in bombard mode, they will automatically fire at the first enemy unit in range – hopefully the offensive falconet. However both of your falconets hit a lone hussar, the enemy falconet can easily move a few paces forward and destroy one of your falconets (only takes 1 shot with 2 falconets to kill a falconet). Use a hussar to waste the enemy falconets first shot also, if you are offensive.

Target settlers first, then military, then military buildings, then houses. Refer to the list of shots / strikes below for how many times it takes to kill a unit. Remember roughly how many muskets you need, so you can be efficient and not “overkill” (e.g. 20 muskets shoot at a strelet, but strelet only takes 6 shots to die, so 14 muskets have wasted a shot when they could have taken out 2 more strelets). Surround your cannons with muskets, you can use the defensive formation but it only provides one wall; I find normal mode good enough as the muskets are clumped together so the Hussar has to kill a few muskets before finding path to the falconet.

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Strengths and Weaknesses
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Effective civilizations to use against:

British: they will never rush a Russian opponent, and having 47 veteran muskets at 9:00 minutes is more than a pure musket British spammer. Plus you have the extra cannons to take down Muskets while your Muskets take down hussars.

Spain: A Spanish FF expects you to lose to their lancers and mass infantry. If you wait at your base with your army, and ship the manchu’s, you should be able to beat their army, and produce more cost effective units.

China: has slow ageup time, doesn’t normally rush vs Russians so you may have some good success here, your cannons beating all their age 2 infantry.

Viable civilizations to use against:

French: When t he French does a semi-FF with 5 hussars, and harasses you a lot, you will find it very hard to gather food, and strelets cannot attempt to scare the hussars away. Their age 3 also beats yours, with cuirassiers probably killing most of your army.

Dutch: Likely to FF, to get ruyter and skirm. You should get to fortress earlier than him, so you aren’t in a bad position to fight him. If they stay colonial, all the better, just avoid the few hussars.

Germany: they will expect a rush, and ship 5 Uhlans and 9 xbows first probably. The key here is to hide your strelets so any wandering Uhlans don’t pick them off. After Suvorov and cannons, you are easily able to kill their army. Muskets easily beat Uhlans because of their low HP.

Otto: If they FF, wait at your base with your musket meatshield and cannons. In fortress age you can also ship Manchu’s and train cavalry archers, so you will not be totally killed by Spahi and Mamelukes.

Portuguese: with your 50 muskets and 2 cannons, the Portuguese army should be no problem. Falconets beat Organs, and cassadores are easily killed by cannons too. Just make more cannons and musket meatshields.

Difficult civilizations to use against:

Russia: will likely to attack you and harass if they don’t see any early army. The raiding Cossacks can make it hard for you to gather enough food, and any strelets that are trained may be instantly killed.

Aztec: will rush you, unlikely to wait for you to age. Even if you do reach fortress age, your army of strelets waiting to be transformed will likely to be annihilated.

India: strong rush, you can’t defend with no army, and their sowars will rip your strelets apart.

Japan: op civ, in the end you lose.

I have limited knowledge of TWC civs, and I am clueless as to what Sioux or Iroquois makes if they FF.

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Recorded Games
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Lol this is the part where you change your opinion – I have no recs! Which therefore kind of means that I haven’t been very confident with this and therefore haven’t used it as much. Feel free to upload recs and I will add them to this post.

Like all strategies there may be flaws and it will not be 100% effective; it is your own decision whether to use this strategy and your own judgment will affect the chances of you winning. This is merely a guide, notice the word “guide”.

Have fun

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SC2: Valckrie.Incarnate {Add me!}
Fear is only a four-letter word. Why be afraid?

Guides:
BMS | British Guide | BHM | RSFF | Rec Games

[This message has been edited by Valckrie1 (edited 02-26-2009 @ 12:33 PM).]