tbh I'd rather just Rag+FW, this all seems like too much work for such a small reward.

EDIT: I thought you ment thor dwarf start not villager rush thing i would just go thor raid, rag+fw (_LAME_) or other crud

[This message has been edited by WNxMythos (edited 02-12-2007 @ 06:11 PM).]

Hm.... what rate level did you test this on? It will certainly be unexpected, but I think it is not devastating enough for your opponent to allow you to go to classical at 12:00 and live.

Well, I tried it vs. a not-too-great player, but I still think it has potential to work vs. atty.

vil rush without taking down tc = useless. your opponent will stay in tc fire range and age up (even if its a bit late it wont matter).

The strat is horrible. You send over 6 dwarves, so what? Your dwarves are on the march for an eternity, during which he is gathering with 7 more vills than you do! (7 vills b/c vills train faster than dwarves) 7 more vills in archaic age! Do you have an idea what that means?

And then you get there and fight with your paltry dwarf force against his vills. His vills slay your dwarves. Cool. Okay, some of his vills may also die, but this is kind of a tradeoff. You say your dwarves have more hp per man? Yes, but in return they train slower, so he has the higher numbers on his side. My impression is that you totally forgot about this detail. There is zero advantage in doing this with dwarves. Any god could do it with his vills, and any god would fail just as miserably.

Quoted from Titans_n00b:

That is the greatest micro mistake that you can do. Every enemy vill being attacked by only one dwarf means that the time until such a vill dies is maximized. Sure you have less walking, but with multiple vills attacking one opponent, that opponent will die much faster. And that is the difference: When you have all his vills down to 30% hp, they still dish out the full damage against your men. However, when you focus your attacks on a few of them so that these die quickly, then after the same amount of time most of his vills will still be at 100%, but 2 of them will be dead. And dead vills dish out no more damage! Your goal must be to reduce the firepower of his army as quickly as possible. The less damage his units can do, the more time yours have to deal damage.

I cannot imagine this strat working even in theory - unless the opponent is extremely noob and panics, doing lots of pointless stuff at the sight of your attack, rather than keeping calm and simply continuing his archaic buildup.

Against Atty, well, they sure have less firepower per citizen, but in return, they do not need any drop sites. He can just retreat any attacked citizen into TC range (or a manor) and meanwhile disperse his other citizens to gather resources all over the map. You will not even be able to find them! This may delay him, but your own econ has pretty much come to a total halt, and he will still be able to advance to classical at a time when you can be happy if you already got your temple up.

Yeah, now that I look at it and have tried this 3+ times, this doesn't work very well...

Although it is fun to do to someone below your skill level who won't expect it...

It >can't< work at 1700+.

It can't work at 1601+.

Agreed...

Perhaps you might be interested in knowing that against Atlantean (especially Kronos), an all-out vill rush stands a chance when well executed below 1700 level. You basically build up gathering only food and a little gold. While you are gathering the food for the classical advance, you sneakily build the temple somewhere on the map. The closer to the enemy base the better, but top priority is that he does not spot it before you hit classical age.

As soon as you have hit the advance button (using Freyja) take all your vills and dwarves and attack the enemy TC. (Attacking earlier makes no sense because you need a decent amount of vills for the onslaught, so you can use them in the meantime for the advance.) You should have enough food left to train 2 hersirs, which you do, and 60 gold to train another dwarf (aq to gold), so that your home econ can (very slowly) get back into operation while you are attacking.

Atl usually advances early, so he will hit classical while you are attacking. This is why you have the 2 hersirs and the valk: you want to kill his free MU so that it cannot defend his TC. Atl have -25% TC hp, so I think 8 vills are sufficient to destroy it. You still need to bring more than that, because there may be some citizen repair (that's what your valk is for, and you can also use surplus vills to prevent those repairs). Once the TC is down, see that you get your remaining vills back to work quickly. Use your valk to harass his citizens and keep them off work. Chasing his citizens with your vills is normally not worth it. He may still have managed to get a counter-barracks up, so you need military of your own asap, or a few quickly-trained turmas may still turn the tide into his favor.

Again, this tactics is repulsable and will not take you beyond 1700, but below that mark, it can be used and will be good for a great surprise if carried out properly.