Best bet is prolly the boom, which she does nicely, but heres a strat which, although it pretty much wont work past 1650, will make you fall in love with the chubby little Goddess every time you succeed.

Gaia Tower Rush:

BO:

No econ guild for this one, it slows the advance down too much, in this strat every second counts. 3 first vills go to the fastest food source(s), while Oracles scout the enemy base. Try to find their tower placement and nearby gold mines, pref. Your 15/15 pop vill makes a manor, then cuts some wood, then goes food if foods nearby, otherwise keep chopping. You must advance early, at 21 pop. When your last vill starts her creation, move one citizen up towards the enemy base, build a temple on the way. The temple doesnt need to be all the way up the enemy´s butt, but keep it as close as you can. Click the advance button with Leto, usually before the enemy even starts the temple, and then quickly:

Shift vills around at home - 2 go to gold, one stays on fastest food source, rest chop wood, pref Gaias forest which you should have cast before.

Find the best place for a forward tower - jackpot is near the goldmine. You cant place it too closely though, and you will need to avoid the enemy LOS if you can, so pick out a spot some distance from their home.

Your forward vill should have moved up to their base. Chop some wood anywhere (no need for a dropsite..) to avoid idling, and when the advance bar reaches the ´O´ on Leto, (timing is v e r y important if you hadnt realised that ), Move up and build a MANOR.

Thats right. To avoid fighting vills, you will have to pull off a little trick. Build the manor, then as soon as youve advanced, build a tower right next to the manor and cast Gaia´s forest so that it protects your builder. Do this with the right timing and even if he notices you he wont get there in time with his vills. When youre done, you can pop in and out of the manor to get out of the enclosure. If you dont build the manor, your vill will be trapped inside the forest.

Cast spider lairs between your forward base and the tc, but not too close or they will get killed before burrowing.

At home, you should make more vills on auto-queue as soon as you can, but its not top priority now - just dont forget about it. One vill on food should provide all the chow you need. But first research watch towers.

Last thing to get the rush going good is to autoqueue automatons from the temple. They should immediately, esp the free one, get to work harassing vills or taking out an enemy tower.

Remember that norse and eggy have crappy heroes in archaic, so dont run as soon as you see a priest before hes advanced..

K so now the fun begins. Make another tower close to the first one, and just retreat into your manor if too many vills come at you. Let your tower fire protect you while you build the next tower, and then another one, etc, enclosing the enemy and denying him gold. Harass with automatons, and let them repair each other, but watch out for their annoying AI, which sometimes wont let them revive fallen brethren, and dont let them wander into hero fire, or even tc for too long.

Finish the rush off by either making more and more towers, making a counter-barracks and turma spam, or make barracks and go for the TC with murmillos/automatons.

On the surface it looks like a run of the mill tower rush like the ones in AoK, but its a lot different in reality, in that you will advance early, and have a relatively protected forward builder if you use a manor and Gaia´s forest. Automatons make a great early army also (and they are the only way you can counter myth), and even if you fail eventually you might have annoyed the enemy enough to have gained an eco advantage, or simply prevented them from doing what they really wanted to do.

Its not very powerful a strat though, but it makes a nice surprise for someone who thought you´d boom..

EDIT: I pulled of a practically perfect rush and have posted the rec here on HG as Gaia_Rush.. Download it to see how this strat can work in practice.

[This message has been edited by Johnny_Deppig (edited 05-23-2004 @ 10:08 AM).]