The Sling

The Sling

Aka How to Make Newbs useful.

This strat is used by pro players, so don’t dismiss it just because you think you are “above” it.

The sling makes lower level players much more useful for the team than they would have been otherwise, as long as there is at least one good player on the team. The idea is quite easy:

Step 1: Make it to feudal fast.
Step 2: Wall up, fully (hardest part).
Step 3: Donate resources to your ally/allies.
???
Profit!

Step 1 Breakdown:

I copied the BO from here. This BO is for Huns, but you can change it for most civs by just building houses. Civs that have different starts (Maya, Chinese, etc) change accordingly too.

3 Vils: Either help your Scout look for Sheep, or chop a straggler (tree by your TC).

TC: H-C-C-C-C. Queue up 4 Vils with the 200 food you get. Don’t use H-Shift-C; the game might not recognize the Shift and only may queue up 1 Vil.

Scout: Start looking for Sheep in circles, and be sure to not overlap areas where you have already Scouted, as that wastes time. Number your Scout to Ctrl + 1. You will then hit 1 to select your Scout, or hit 1 twice to select it and centre your view on it. Number your TC to Ctrl + 2. You will now hit 2 to select your TC and queue up Vils. Why not use H? H selects your TC, but also centres your view on your TC. You want to be able to queue up Vils while watching your Scout. If you need to view your TC to change where your Vils will go when trained, to force drop some food, or watch over things, just hit 2 twice.

4 Sheep: Once you have found them, send two Sheep to the TC, and send the other two Sheep scouting, helping the Scout (you are not going to lose your sheep, trust me) in opposite directions (for example, if your Scout has gone north-east, send one Sheep around north-west, and the other south-west). The other two Sheep are to be placed directly onto your TC; one Sheep will be processed by your three Vils (get them to dump off their wood first if they had chopped a straggler), and the other will stand by waiting.

Vils 4-6: Sheep. Whenever a Sheep is done, move another Sheep nearby it. Keep only six Vils to one Sheep, make sure that you do not kill an extra Sheep. Always only keep two Sheep on the TC; one being harvested, and the other, alive, standing by. All the others can either be scouting or standing by close to your TC, but not close enough so that your Vils on Sheep might decide to eat two Sheep at once, but also not far enough to have your Sheep stolen by your opponent.

Vil 7: Lumber Camp. A Flusher needs wood. If you have not scouted out a suitable forest yet, put this Vil on a straggler instead so that no time is wasted.

Vils 8-10: If you do not have an LC yet, get Vil 8 building it. If you do, send all of these 3 Vils to the forest at your LC.

Vil 11: After he has been trained, hit Loom, and get the Vil to wait by a Boar. When the Loom is 80% done, lure the Boar.

Vil 12: Mill your Berries (you will need that Mill for Farms). Vils 13-14 Go to Berries along with Vil 12 after the Mill is done, and keep them on the Berries closest to your Mill.

Boar: When the Boar is chasing your Vil back to your TC, garrison your lurer, and get all the Vils on Sheep to drop off their food, and then shoot the crap out of that Boar. That bastard needs to die. Plus, for being barbaric, you get good, fast food. If you have a Sheep left over rotting away, it might be a good idea to put one Vil on that Sheep until it is done, and then send him back to Boar.

Vils 15-19: Boar. Once your first Boar hits 175 food, lure your second Boar with a full health Hunter on your first Boar (drop off his food at your TC first, in case he dies).

Farms: At this point you should consider Farming. Pull the wounded Vils off your first Boar, and make Farms by the right-hand side of your TC. Tests have shown that Farms put on the right-hand side of your TC actually gather food faster. Slowly pull off the wounded Vils off the second Boar as well (so you should have four wounded Vils in total from both Boar) and put them on Farms as well.

Boar: Once you have finished your Boar, split up your Hunters onto Sheep.

Vil 20: Build a second LC by another forest if your first forest is small, or on the same forest is large (but place the LC farther away so that both LCs are not touching each other).

Vils 21-23: Wood right by the second LC.

Step 2 Breakdown:

On the way to feudal, you have to make a calculation:
How much stone do I need?
Will you manage to wall up all your base with stone walls with only the 200 starting stone. 200 stone make 40 pieces off wall, 66 with Mayan ally. If you get almost all of your base, make around 3 layers of palisade wall, some houses and your market at the point where you couldn’t wall. If you think you can’t make it, build a mining camp and mine stone.

Some Do and Don’ts when walling:
Don’t use 1-2 vills to wall, use 8-10 vills.
Don’t have all your walling vills on one place, this slows down your walling because vills build faster when alone on the building and less bumping.
Do wall so that you wont cut through your wood and open up that way.
Do place your lumber camp so that they are hard to tower.

Step 3 Breakdown:

Once in feudal, continue to build vills. Get wood and food upgrade and build a market. In the market, get the tech that reduces the fee for donating resources. Continue to build vills. When the 3 techs are gotten, keep enough resources to continue to build vills and donate the rest to your selected ally. When you have ~40 pop, get wheelbarrow. As a slinger, never stockpile donate as soon as you have 50 of any resource.

When donating, you can make it the hard way (good way) or the easy way.
Easy way: Only donate food to your ally, and make farms for all the wood you get. Never have more than 60 wood stockpiled, make farms as soon as you have 60 wood. Don’t mine stone or gold.
Hard way: To make the best sling, you have to talk to your ally (ingame chat is good enough), and he have to talk to you. He got to tell you what resources he need all the time. Most likely, he want a food/gold combination for knights and vills. You have to adept to what he demands.

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Profit!

Other important notes:
Prepare your ally. 1-2 mins into the game, say “I’m going to sling you [insert name], OK?”. Make sure he saw you message. If he doesn’t respond, send another message. This is very important.
This start can be done both from pocket and flank position. If flank vs a good player, watch out for MAA rushes and drushes, because they are fast. Early palisade walls and then stonewalls behind the palisade walls is a good option.