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no, the only difference here is 1 bank and 1min of time. 6min ff w/ exiled prince, 2 banks, and 14 or so settlers if you ship the 700w and 700g immediately upon hitting age2. the real problem w/ this start is getting housed. you'll have that issue whether you try to rush or ff, and im working on a way around all that. ideally, i would like to be able to nader rush w/ the 8pike shipment, but what im running into is either a fast advance and no eco to support it, or a significantly slower attack. if you're rushing, you simply do not have time to get more than 1 bank down no matter what you do.

[This message has been edited by slackman42 (edited 05-04-2006 @ 01:14 AM).]

slackman

i tested a bit of your suggestion, indeed i got to age3 very fast, like 6~ish, but the problem is i have no banks with like 10 vils.

and since i have no banks i cant really send in mercs, i sent 4 towers to give me some map control + defence coverage, but after that it still takes too long to recover.

the only realy benefit of doing this is getting the 1k wood instead of 700, but you traded 400 wood for that, in return you only get 3 banks anyways.

i say this because dutch dont have enough good normal troop shipment to justify vff like spanish and germany does, and since we have no TP nor build XP, we dont even have shipments either.,

so did you work out a better way of doing it?

a pike rush on carolina with the dutch can be veryy fast. try it sometime. only keep making vills untill you hav e 800 food. then stop any vill in que, and go up. flank a barracks on them, put up a house. 400 wood will be what you need to make pikes from the barracks. send the 8 pikes. you'll have a good 13 pikemen very fast. then you can que another 5 pikes and have a nice group of 18 pikes. take down all their houses, or as many as they can. do not allow them to build more houses. try to get some skirmishers aswell.

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then i dont know what you're changing. i dont use a card in age1 and dont mine any gold. ship the 700w and 700g, build 2 banks and keep everyone on food the entire time. click age3 around 5:30, you might be able to get a couple more settlers out before you advance. the reason you'd want the 1k wood is to get the other 2 banks and a rax/stable and a house. or you could ship a fort/outposts or mercs if you moved your settlers to gold during the age up. you should have a shipment ready before you get there, from the 2 banks u built in age2.

EDIT: but i guess the whole point here is that you dont really gain much by going to fortress, unless you plan on getting to industrial very soon for the merc army and factories. i think it might just be a better idea to stay in colonial and build military and eco there. but no matter what you do, you really need to get a bank or two down very quickly, or not at all. also, on carolina, if you start with the extra crates, you can get a bank down as soon as you can collect them all. this is a tremendous boost as it allows you to keep all settlers on food and still get a few more out before you advance, but you dont always get the extra crates.

[This message has been edited by slackman42 (edited 05-04-2006 @ 08:21 AM).]

on carolina i create that bank after starting to age up. Otherwise you need to collect 1150 food before you can age.

I ran some tests and I can to a conclusion. The conclusion I came to was Ths strategy can be used for an Uber turtle to Fast Industrial. My goal was to keep my town small so my fort could guard almost all of it. Keep my vills close and have 4 banks so all my vills are on food so I can get to industrial fast with the Gold.

Getting the 2000 food was my problem until I started to ship the 1000 food. I was getting to Industrial fast and sending an age IV shipment that would counter my enemy sometimes cannons,sometimes mercs, sometimes factories. The strategy is kinda funny and has some potential. Im not sold on the fact the getting to Industrial has any real advatages aside from the uber shipments.

The best map for this is Patagonia or a level where you can fish. It allowed me to get my eco going quikly once I got to Industrial.

Shipments

Age 1: none
Age 2: 700 wood 600 wood 700 gold
Age 3: Fort, 1000 food
Age 4: Play it by Ear SCOUT!!!!

One of the guys I played got ready for a rush by me and it never came by the time he got to my Town it was to late as I had a Fort. My Industrial times varied from 10 - 14 minutes as sometimes I needed to make troops. Also, try and get a TP that will help your going to need shipments ready in Fortress and Industrial for this strat to work. Guard Skirms FTW!!!!!

[This message has been edited by Seancahn (edited 05-04-2006 @ 01:09 PM).]

sean it would be great if you can post some more details or rec. it is a bit hard to visualise with just the shipment order.

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I found that if i started with 400 gold and i build the 11th vil in age1, i am actually worse off!?

so i did a bit calculation.

to have the 11th vil, i have to cellect extra 2 crates (100 wood + 100 gold), that is 15 seconds each, which is 30+ for both. then i have to build a house, which takes another ~30 seconds. so over all i lose about 60+ VS by having that extra vil, that when that last vil come out i am normally very close to having 800 food anyway so he didnt really help me get into colonial any faster.

the slowest was 2:10+ with 11 vils. and the fastest was 1:50 with just 10 vils. the difference is a lot more than 60 VS because there is a lot more to manage, such as right house placement etc.

now if we get in to colonial 20 seconds slower, we will get our banks seconds slower too, a bank works like 2.7 gold/s so that is 50 gold that lost on each bank.

so over all seems like even if you have 400 starting gold, you should still leave it at 10 vils colonial.

==============

I added my own version of FI in the original post.

[This message has been edited by ultimitsu (edited 05-04-2006 @ 09:30 PM).]

This strat seems to be shaping up nicely. I like the flexibility =) I rushed a russian player with 13 pikes, took down his house so he can't ship army. Then I made 5 more pikes, went after his TC and started attacking in cover mode. He got to colonial when his TC was about 50% dead but had no house to ship units He quickly gathered resources for MM, but his TC went down before he could finish off my pikes. He started rebuilding two houses and a blockhouse but I killed those right away. He resigned at 6:40 =D

In the meantime I shipped 700g so that I can make skirms if I want and 700w to get those banks up slowly and aim for about 9 min fortress time =D

[This message has been edited by dejanh (edited 05-04-2006 @ 03:09 PM).]

i found that you are all witches or something because i dont know how you guys win. you should all loose every game.

^ lol, that was out of the blue =D

i'm pissed off cuz any people that i can actually do good against all play nr games or boot me. i mean wtf. i have to play actuall good people... what kind of world is this? why cant i just walk in and pwn some noobs. i mean come on.

Ultimitsu really its much like yours and you really need to play the game by scouting and playing off your opponent. Every time I did the FI it was different with different times. Mercantilism in Industrial is one thing I didnt try I was usually using that gold for the uber age 4 mercs. If I dont need the units that gold is better spent on 2 factories.

Ill keep messing with it beofre I post exaclty what I do. really its not much different then yours. Getting recs posted sux for me I know you guys always want them. Im not the best com[uter Guru and really dont know how or where to upload them. I will record some today If someone leaves a detailed way to post them I will.

Hardcore Dutch fans have been searching for the holy grail of Dutch turtling for some time, and I think this thread has brought us closer than ever before.

There are several choices to be made when considering the things we want for our base. We want:

* vils
* banks
* fort/4 towers
* military

We want all that and we want it ASAP.

My question right now is, does not mining gold in Discovery really get us those things faster? You have about 2 vils worth of idle TC time! Faster access to colonial shipments can't undo the fact that you lost the opportunity to have 2 more vils. It also can't undo the fact that you aged up with only 10 vils vs 16, losing 540vs (6vils * 90s). Of course, you gain some of that back by getting the banks up sooner.

See I'm thinking ultimitsu may be on to something big here, but I have to remain skeptical until I see some sort of timeline of when those banks get up, when the 4 vil shipment arrives, how fast you get that fort up, etc. Or maybe I should just try it.

Also another interesting choice is to send 4 vils instead of 3. You come out ahead eventually, but it takes a while because those 3 vils could have been out at 3:00 while the 4 vils don't arrive until much later. I'd say that usually you have enough time to recover from not getting 3 vils, but if you get rushed maybe you'll wish you had.

EDIT: How about instead of 4 vils, you send UC right after 700g. Then you turtle with fort/towers and get yourself to 6 banks sooner than you would have if you waited to send UC. Also, you won't get housed in II at 20 vils and can keep the TC busy. Net result after the 6th bank is up is +9 vils +280XP from the extra 2 banks, and +2 vils from busier TC.

[This message has been edited by jaafit (edited 05-04-2006 @ 09:50 PM).]

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uh, no, what i meant was, sometimes you start w/ 4+wood and 4+food crates, this lets you get a bank down immediately, and you can send all your settlers to hunt and still produce from the tc.

a friend of mine usually mines enough for 12 total settlers, then ships the 3, getting to age2 around 4min flat w/ 15 settlers. afaik, it works reasonably well.

oh, and i must have forgotten what i did for my 6min 2bank 14+settler ff, because i tried it a bit ago and i didnt get there in time. i think what i may have done is sent 4 to mine during the age2 advance so that i'd have a few coming out, then collect the wood and get banks up, then ship the 700g and be in fortress at 6min w/ 2 banks and 14 or so settlers. this puts you ahead in getting to fortress, and you'll have a better eco than most others when you get there. the hard part is tearing down your opponent at that time, because they too will soon be in fortress and have access to better shipments and more tcs to boom from. ive started using a mixed halb/ruyter with culvs, this does quite well at times.

on carolina you dont have to mine anyway. And now you have to collect 1150 food before you can age up

no, you only have to hunt for 800f, you're using your starting crates for the bank instead of aging. if you didnt build the bank, you would likely only have to hunt 400f and could age much quicker, yes, but you would hamper your settler production due to not having enough build time before you reached 800f. this means you get your bank cost "paid off" a few minutes earlier at the expense of aging up a little later.

in carolina it is definitely better to not put up a bank and age asap, same principle as in this strat, you will have even less TC idle time on carolina, if any,

you should put up a bank once you strated aging, use the aging wood for 2nd bank, then 3rd bank from 700 wood and a TP.

i dont think you will get into age3 significantly faster with this, but you will have more wood left over and a TP which you otherwise dont have.

jaafit, the basic timeline for banks are:

1st bank : 4:10~ish
2nd bank : 4:50~ish
3nd bank : 5:40~ish

it depends on how well you managing food and vil production etc.

here is a problem:

ideally we want to have banks asap and non-stop vil production, but truth is we cant have both. if we want seemless vil production, banks will take a little longer to build, because we have more vils on gold so less vils on food and gather wood crate and building banks.

now considering banks are so powerful and food is relatively fast and wood crate takes next to no time, it would seem that sacrifice vil production in pursuing faster banks will give us overall better result, but at the same time only vils can gather food so getting the required 1200 food ASAP after 3rd bank is critically dependent on vil count. so from this point of view if we really wanted fastest fortress time it appeared we should pay more attention on conctant vil production in sacrifice of bank time.

[This message has been edited by ultimitsu (edited 05-05-2006 @ 07:27 AM).]

Dutch rush can be unexpected. If i play dutch i almost never expect a rush .

and that is the only reason it works, because they dont expect it. But beside that dutch rush is just crappy

Why is the Dutch rush crappy? You can rush with pikes, back them up with skirms and hussar shipment. I don't think that is so bad...

Getting back to what I wanted to say...

I played an interesting game vs. a Spanish FFer. He did a standard Spanish FF, I did a dutch FF with a few defenses (10 skirms + 9 ryters and a fort). I managed to hold off against all of his attacks. The mistake I made is finally when I shipped my mercs instead of keeping them near my fort to deal with his merc/falc attack I went after his base which resulted in my fort getting killed and me loosing the game. One other choice I had after deflecting his inital attack was to go to industrial and ship merc army but I forgot to add the merc army to my deck so I didn't opt for that strat. If I had the card though it would have been enough to defeat him =D So yeah, at least against Spanish FF the strats that were mentioned in this thread can hold up =D

I dont have industrial mercs in deck. Maybe i add one. But factories is enough reason to go

imo, unless you planned on industrial in the start, otherwise there is no need for more than 1 merc card in age4, if any.

because you will always use the UC, on top of coffe trade, the uc gives you 2 very good army, costing a combined 3000 gold, then there is 3 good age3 mercs that you can use, thats another 3000, so after 6000 worth merc army(i count 30 muskts as merc), you either win the game, or you should be able to make good guard level army by now, with heavy cannon, culverin, guard hussar + guard ruyter and maybe guard skirms, there is very little need for any more mercs.

only age3 mercs i have are BR

This topic is quite entertaining to read imo. Dutch players looking for "the strat"

In this game Speed > Econ almost lots of times. Speed + Econ could be quite nice but imo Spain can also do this by sending 9 vils in age 2 (4+5) and still have a strong ff. But the discussion is about dutch.

Imo FI can be better than fighting in age3 mostly. During the age up to Indu, lots of fighting should be taking place but since you have the eco, you should be doing quite well (3 banks + 1 before ind can be nice, of course if youre making some vils as well). But a little mistake here and there can lose you the game with this strat. Imo, nice strat nonetheless because it can be a nice fake-rush strat which I love with all the civs

Gj and keep perfecting everything. Dutch players need some kind of encouragement lol ^_^

Who says boom has to be venurable to rush?

i did this on sonora, considerablely slower map as herdables are not very close to TC, got to age2 at 3:38, got 3 banks up by 5:30, then arrives ottoman rush with grenadiers and horses.

i allowed him to kill 2 of my houses, but thats ok cos i just sent over 600 wood, I quickyly built a barrack, and made some skirms and shipped 8 pikes, with 3 banks my skirs were just coming out non-stop, eventually killed all his crate-powered jans and abus guns.

the game only lasted about 15 minutes, and i made

Hussar 10
Skirmisher 72
Pikeman 18

while he made

Grenadier 18
Janissary 59
Abus Gun 10

i found 8 pikes are very good as rush defense, because they dont get bonused by the jans like hussars do, and 8 of them were able to melee just about every grenadier so they were forced into melee.

this ottoman rusher isnt that great, he is 19xx. but he knew what he was doing.