sweet, i just did exactly this and within 10 minutes had kicked a player out of a 3v3.
the first explorer i killed was cleverly (?) ransomed back to orange base from the heart of my base (i manically got all my villagers to garrison and thus shoot him down with a little help from a spanish hunting dog)
but the blue explorer wasn't as lucky and i got him with the outpost at my forward base. then of course my forward base got kitted out with some landsnechts and pikes waiting around for my 8 xbows card, went in and raped blues town centre. blue then realised the mess he was in and resigned.
then i gave up on military for a while and boomed with the german 3 early town centres advantage and went from having about 70 points at the end of my rush (compared to the enemies' 200-odd and my allies' 150ish) to 800 - the highest - points by the end of the game.
usefully, this strat also gives the victim's allies second thoughts about going for an early aggressive foreign policy, which is FOOLISH as germans in the period straight after a rush are weak.
so as far as i could see, the battle was won after the first 10 minutes of an hour long game.
of course, if we'd been playing at an expert level, things would've been different...
but for now, this strategy kicks ass.
why didnt i think of it first?! its so simple! goddamit!
[This message has been edited by I Let You Go (edited 11-17-2005 @ 02:47 PM).]