Pyc_Hawk’s Teuton Tower Rush

Article written by HockeySam18
Published on 07-04-2016; updated on 03-16-2017
Tags: , , ,

I’m sure that many of you have heard by now of the dreaded Teuton tower rush. For those of you who haven’t, you may be wondering why the Teuton tower rush in particular is so dreaded. What makes it more effective than that of other civs?

The answer is simple: the Teuton civ bonus that gives their towers double the garrison capacity. Being able to garrison more villagers means more firepower. This in turn means more damage done to enemy units as well as a huge advantage when fighting a defensive tower that can only garrison 5 units instead of 10. As another boon in this situation, Teutons get cheap farms, which means that they will have more wood left over for their towers when executing this strategy, and will have an easier time getting to Castle Age while simultaneously pulling this rush off.

One player in particular is quite adept at using this tactic, and has been doing so for a long time. If I’m not mistaken, Pyc_Hawk invented his own Teuton tower rush build order back on the Zone in 2001, and still uses it (or perhaps a slightly modified version of it) in competitive multiplayer today. It’s a very odd build order, so beware, but also surprisingly effective! His build order/strategy is as follows:

– Villagers 1-3 (starting vills) : build two houses, then sheep
– Villager 4: chop straggler tree by the Town Center
– Villagers 5-6: sheep
– Villager 7: build house, then lure first boar
– Loom
– Villagers 8-9: sheep, then all vills on sheep gather from boar once it reaches the Town Center
– Villagers 10-12: boar/sheep
– Villager 13: lure second boar
– Villagers 14-15: boar/sheep
– Villager 16: build lumber camp (meanwhile villager 4 finishes the straggler tree by the TC and builds a mining camp by the nearest stone deposit)
– Villager 17: boar/sheep
– Villagers 18-19: stone
– Click up to Feudal. If you’ve done the build correctly, you can do this by the 7:30 mark (game time).

In the meanwhile, you’ll want to have scouted out the enemy base to find out what they’re building, where their resources are, what they’re gathering, etc. Once you’ve clicked the Feudal button, move one more villager to stone (for a total of 4) and three more to wood (for a total of 4). Send eight (!) villagers and your scout forward to the enemy base. The remaining three villagers should build a mill and gather berries. Palisade in your stone miners so they can’t be harassed by a drush or scouts.

When you reach the enemy base, you want to drop two towers simultaneously to deny some of their resources. It is very important that:

  1. they are within range of each other (so that they can each shoot enemy units attacking the base of the other)
  2. that both initial towers are outside the LoS (line of sight) of the enemy buildings/units (so they’ll be surprised and won’t have time to react to the foundations going up).

Keep adding towers within the range of at least one preexisting tower and try to deny the enemy resources and surround their Town Center. It can also be helpful to surround the base of your towers with palisades or houses so that they are less vulnerable to attack.

Back home, you want to have enough food income from berries/deer/farms for constant villagers. Build a Blacksmith when you have enough excess wood and research Fletching to boost the attack and range of your towers. Adding archers to a tower rush is an excellent idea, for which you’ll need some gold miners and an Archery Range. With a Blacksmith and an Archery Range you’ll also be able to click up to Castle Age once you stockpile the necessary food and gold.

Thanks to Resonance22, we have a casting of a Teuton tower rush performed by Pyc_Hawk available as a reference. It’s also displayed below. If you’re interested in this tactic, then watch it and, most importantly, practice! Hawk is quite good at this – he’s been doing it for almost 15 years, after all!

Best of luck on your conquests!
HockeySam18


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