A strategy effective against all civs in nearly any 1v1 situation. It's called the Bank Rush because you use banks to fuel military shipments, which in turn allow time for those banks to pay off.
* A 21-vil eco at 4:30. The Build Order: You most likely have a better eco than him but if not, you are about to spam all kinds of stuff into his base. Skirms are probably going to be your base unit. Make sure to have plenty of wood on hand for extra pikes so you can press an advantage and destroy his town. Hussars help a ton as well for keeping him occupied and his vilagers scared. It's really just a matter of keeping up the pressure until he breaks. gl hf [This message has been edited by jaafit (edited 10-30-2006 @ 12:28 PM).]
* An 8-pikeman seige threat at 4:30 providing nearly-guaranteed destruction of something (war hut, rax, TP, 2nd TC).
* 3 hussars leaving him without a moment's rest in early-colonial.
All vils go to food
Eat sheep if you get any
Click age-up (400w) at 2:00-2:15
5 food, 3 wood, 2 gold
Build a house
Gather or plunder 50 w
Ship 300w
Build a bank
queue a vil
As soon as the 1st bank is done, you can ship 8 pike.
6 food, 2 wood, 2 gold
Build a 2nd bank
8 pike arrive and you go to town. Do whatever you can with those. Get the port's 2nd TC, kill the Otto's forward rax, get germany's TP down or if you're fast enough, kill iroq's foward war hut (tough to do!).
3rd shipment will be 3 hussars. This is where you have to really concentrate. You are actually pretty far behind most opponents militarily, but if you can keep those 3 hussars alive and causing him trouble, you will distract him long enough for those 2 banks to pay off. How you do this will vary from game to game and depend largely on how well those 8 pikes fared. Basically you HAVE to keep him in his base. Keep his vils scared, keep him more worried about you than you are of him.
At about 6:00-6:30 you will be able to afford a rax and some skirms. Where you build this rax will depend on what kind of army your enemy has and what he is doing with it. In most of my games it's hiding next to his TC in hopes of killing those hussars. Better players will probably be harrassing you at your base by now and you will want the rax close by.
agecommunity quote of the month Ok i have payed for this game for al my moneythat i get in a month so when i go online isee these 9 year old kids that beat me that have played for 2 weeks and i have played since release of vanilla so im pretty pissed of that es dosent want to do anything about the balance of the game.