The Sheriff's Persian Dock-First Strategy: By Captn_Kidd.

Written By: Captn_Kidd

Introduction

The Sheriff introduced me to a fascinating quick-castle strategy shortly after coming to work at Ensemble Studios. It involves the unusual tactic of building a dock before a lumber camp, making a few fishing boats immediately, and delaying the construction of a mill until well into feudal age.

The Persians are the civ to use for this strategy. Their +50 starting food lets them get by with just four shepherds for the first few minutes, freeing the other villagers to cut wood. Their +50 starting wood lets them build two houses (60), a dock (150) and a fishing boat (75 for 285 total) after collecting just 35 wood - far faster than any other civ.

Like the KLEW, this strategy has more than one use. In this recorded game example, the Sheriff takes the fast-attack extreme, hitting castle age at 14:17 with just four fishing boats, and then attacking with five light cavalry. Another alternative is to put more villagers on wood, and create more fishing boats, for a mid-16's castle with a population of 45-50 villagers and fishing boats. Either can be deadly.

Note that this recorded game is not optimized - his dock is on a lake with only two deep-sea fish (and he only saw one before castle age), so he had to rely on the slower shore fish. Even so, hitting a food-rich castle age in the early 14's with a civilian pop of 26 is a very powerful opening.

The Strategy

Here's a quick summary:

1. First four villagers: build 2 houses, get sheep.

2. Next six: cut straggler trees. Use one to build dock and third house.

3. Make three fishing boats (stragglers permitting) before building a lumber camp.

4. Add a couple more on food, do not stop for loom.

5. Once the lumber camp is up, go with about six on wood, others on sheep/boars.

6. Add a boat or two as wood permits.

7. Put your last three villagers on gold. Get loom just before or after going feudal.

8. Go feudal with about 22 villagers and four boats. Still no mill.

9. In feudal transition, add barracks, then stable/blacksmith in feudal.
   

Go castle.

Build mill, prepare for attack.

If you're not planning a light cav rush, you may want to add the mill a bit sooner for more efficient berry gathering.

The Recorded Game

Download The Sheriff's Recorded Game Here. ----->Persain Boat Boom, file updated with correct record game

As noted above, he puts four villagers on sheep, then the next two on stragglers. Villager 7 builds a dock…pretty much anywhere - the trick is to do it quickly. (Note…when sending a villie to build a dock in the pre-loom period, I'll sometimes assign my scout to guard that villager as "wolf insurance".) Have him build the third house after the dock, and return to cutting wood. Have villagers 8, 9 and 10 cut wood, while the dock creates three fishing boats.

If you have been making new villagers non-stop, you'll be starting to run low on food at this point, so have villagers 11 and 12 help out on sheep, and lure boars when the sheep run out. By now, as you see in the picture below, your villagers are doing quite a bit of walking for wood, and there aren't many more trees near your TC. It's time to stop making boats, and save wood for the lumber camp.

The Sheriff "ad libs" a bit with villager assignments as needed. In general, try to keep about six villagers on wood once the lumber camp is up, and the rest on food. In this game, the Sheriff decided to stop with 22 villagers, and researched the loom before taking the feudal upgrade. As you can see below, his villager distribution at the time was 13 on food, 6 on wood, and 3 building the mining camp…with four fish boats.

Ckeck this out----> [JPEG, (52.52 KB)]

The next screen shot may surprise you a bit. The Sheriff is in his feudal-castle transition. He has six villagers gathering berries, and…what's this? No mill!?

I've learned over the last few months that when I think that The Sheriff is making a mistake, it usually means I didn't see the strategy. ;-) In this case, he's doing OK for food, but he's running tight on wood and wants to have his stable up as early as possible so that he can make scouts for his light cavalry raid. So, by skipping the mill, he's able to build a barracks / stable / blacksmith combo and hit the castle age upgrade quickly, at the cost of a few extra trips for his berry pickers.

In this final picture, you see that he starts researching castle age at 11:52. Add 2:40 for the research, and he should reach castle age at 14:32. But wait…another Persian bonus kicks in, and the faster-working Town Center allows him to reach castle age at a blistering 14:17, with a civilian population of 26.

Ckeck this out----> [JPEG, (55.75 KB)]

Unlike the KLEW, which reaches castle age at a similar time but sacrifices the strength of the economy, this strategy leaves you ready to rock! At 14:30, the Sheriff had already paid for an attack force of five scouts and the upgrade to light cavalry, and had the resources to drop a second and third town center for protection and aggressive expansion.

A Second Example

I developed a somewhat easier-to-execute variant of this strategy, it hits castle age in the low 16's, with about 25 villagers and 15 fishing boats. The build order is much simplified, but not as optimized:

Villagers 1-5 build two houses, go to sheep. (Using five makes it harder to run out of food)

Of the three remaining queued villagers, put two on cutting wood, send the last toward the nearest shoreline.
Loom after villager 8, this improves the odds of your builder surviving a wolf attack.

Have the builder make a dock, then a house. Keep putting new villagers on wood until you have 10 woodcutters.
Make a total of three fishing boats, then save wood for a lumber camp.

Once you have 10 woodcutters, make the lumber camp, and put all new villagers on food.
Resume boat production ASAP. Make a mill if needed.

Watch your food stockpile, when it hits 500, go feudal. Shift some of your food villagers to wood.

Send a villager or two to a better fishing spot, add a second dock.

Saving enough wood for a market and blacksmith, make as many fishing boats as you can while researching feudal.

When you hit feudal, queue another villager or two, have small groups build the market and blacksmith, then resume boat production. Go castle.

The Recorded Game

Download Captn_Kidd's Recorded Game Here ---->Captn_Kidd's Recorded Game

This recorded game isn't a thing of beauty, but it shows what a reasonably good player can do with this strategy.

Note that I totally forgot about the sheep I found north of my TC, so I ran short of food and had to use my scout to do an emergency boar lure. No, that's not part of the strategy, but when you make mistakes, you do what you have to. ;-)

As I was castling, my CP ally decided to play a feeder role, and tributed 1100 food and 100 stone to me. I didn't use it, and reached castle at 16:09. At 16:27, I had 26 villagers, 15 fishing boats, and (discounting the tribute) 315 wood, 615 food, 170 gold and 200 stone.

Summary

Although the Persians aren't generally considered to be a fast civ, you'll have to admit that a pop-31 castle age in the low 14's is awfully fast. The boost from just four fishing boats, made early in the game, turns into a huge economic and military advantage if you can quickly attack before your opponents can create a castle-age army. If you prefer a later, stronger attack, try the easier, less-optimized boom from the second recording.