Ender.. can u thouroughly explain what a very skilled german or spanish player does to do a l33t FF, liek what gives you alot of problems, cuz i know u like Otto.
It's pretty simple really. They use anything they can (Outposts, minutemen, crossbow/rodelero shipments, Teutonic Town Center, walls, etc) to delay, delay and delay some more.
An attack that can realistically take down a TC and all towers (and thus either stop a Fortress or stop the shipment of Mercs/Fortress units) doesn't come until 6:00 at the earliest. The standard 15 Janissaries or 10 Janissaries and 5 Abus Guns will make all the villagers hide and kill all colonial unit opposition, but it won't be able to take down the TC and Outposts. It takes Grenadiers to do that, or a whole lot of Janissaries (20+).
The problem with the FF is that you cannot stop the following:
1. Gathering of 300 gold (100 with the Outpost + 200 gold politician) before you can hit them hard enough, soon enough.
2. Scattering of villagers. Most good German, Spanish and French FFers will keep 10 villagers in the TC and scatter the rest. You either forget about them, which means they continue to gather (usually the last few food for age up, or wood and build houses elsewhere on the map), or you use units to hunt for them and kill them, which takes away from the firepower needed to take down the TC and Outposts.
3. Collection of the 700 gold. Even if you're killing every villager that pops out of the TC to gather the shipment, you most likely cannot kill them fast enough to stop the gathering, and that prevents you from attacking the TC/Outposts. The FFer can afford to sacrifice some villagers as long as it gets him to Fortress.
However, most of the good FFers I've fought ship their 700 gold to the Outpost most remote to your troops/point of attack. They can usually collect the gold out of your line of sight even.
If you go for houses, you will ofcourse prevent him from sending units right a he hits Fortress, but that also buys him time, as you aren't attacking his TC/Outposts. Meanwhile his scattered villagers are gathering wood and rebuilding the houses you are destroying.
Now, on the Ottoman side, you have to use both a 5 Janissary card, 4 villagers, 700 food, 700 gold and 700 wood (houses) to support an attack in numbers sufficient enough to take down the TC and 2-4 (sometimes more!) Outposts. This is why most Ottomans build a Trade Post or two ASAP, to have as many shipments in Colonial as possible as soon as possible. You're only able to support a truly powerful force in colonial using these resource shipments. Once they are gone, you're out of breath, as your actual, real economy is crap (you'll have 15-20 villagers by 9 minutes).
If you failed to destroy your opponent's TC to stop a Fotress, or if you destroyed the TC after he entered Fortress but failed to take out all Outposts to stop shipments, then he catches you in that out of breath state. He now has some of the best units/shipments available to him, and an economy equal to yours or better (and which will get stronger every second from now, growing faster than yours), while you are down to nearly nothing.Remember, your attack that failed to stop a FF/unit shipments was not without large numbers of casualties ...
It'll be a while before you can age up to Fortress as well, but you're forced to make the decision between doing so and likely getting attacked before you get there, or spend every last resource available to you on colonial units (Abus/Jan/Grenadier/Hussar) in hopes of stopping an attack by Fortress units that's about to hit you.
If it's a German, out come Uhlans and Skirmishers, which will buy just enough time to gather the gold for Jaegers, Hackapells (later Black Riders) and finish you off.
If it's a Spanish, out will come Lancers, Skirmishers, Hussars and Falconets (later Highlanders and Stradiots), which too are death to a colonial Ottoman army.
If it's French, it'll be Skirmishers, Cuirassiers and Falconets (later Jaegers and Black Riders), which too will decimate your colonial army.
And that's it. Remember, you asked me to explain "thouroughly" .
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