yeah joe I want to speak to your on ESO soon got a proposition for you.

hm I managed to hit fort at 7:50 today but with a 200 wood start, if I can do that why aren't I hitting early enough with 300 wood starts even when I have 300 food argh. I need to get my time right for this tournament otherwise my rating and hopes for a brit win award will be gone.

another minor problem, when you send your forward outpost wagon to build near his base and he sees it and kills it with his explorer team. the aggresive strat is pretty much screwed. without the outpost, it adds 30 sec to your attack time. i tried to build another, but i needed the 250 wood for church. so i think i should just send my explorer first and have the wagon behind him. i lost two times when he killed my tower.

Hey guys, how about using the first outpost for defense, and possibly sending the 2 outpost shipments as a forward base, the 2 outpost cover each other and hey are harder to take down. Also you could surround him, cutting him off from resources.

[This message has been edited by King_Ali_Skahir (edited 04-15-2006 @ 01:26 PM).]

I'm having some trouble downloading from savefile.com. In Firefox, when I click the big orange download button, it links to a page where it has a link "Download this file now". Clicking this link causes the site to go back to the page with the big orange button. On I.E i get a page cannot be displayed message.

In short, I can't download the recorded games from that site.

Try this one :
It's the Texas example vs a French
http://www.savefile.com/files3.php?fid=3417790

Edit: oops, nevermind the same thing happens.

[This message has been edited by King_Ali_Skahir (edited 04-15-2006 @ 02:07 PM).]

I got the rec fine in the end. and joe how come your never on eso I checked your last online date its last year xD

Thanks King_Ali_Skahir that rec downloaded right. I guess it must be the other link thats the problem, for me at least. I don't know why. I have a feeling this was done in the previous patch so it might go out of sync at some point?

EDIT: Nevermind it must have been the site... the other link works now.

[This message has been edited by James Lock (edited 04-15-2006 @ 03:33 PM).]

Thanks a lot Yid, I appreciate it! Glad that you are having some great successes out there.

Destiny, interesting idea about explorer card. I've pretty much never paid attention to that card since it's colonial, isn't it? Oh and LOL, I've definitely been on ESO this year. Played a couple today and hope to get some more in if I can. Hopefully I will catch you on there. Glad to hear your times are going well!

lrd_dmsdy666, you haven't been annoying in the least, quite the opposite... the feedback's very helpful to me! It gives me some idea of what people are doing with the strategy and what they want to do with it. I hope aggressive suits your style, but if it does not, you can stick that tower at home and keep your troops right at your own front door.

steve09, glad you brought up outpost placement. First of all, always scout ahead for your placement spot. Prefer to skirt the edges of the map or take a route your opponent is unlikely to use. You should be hitting colonial times that are below 5 minutes, and if you are you're unlikely to face a lot of troops. The civ to worry about is the Germans. Their Uhlans can be out very quickly, but if you keep to odd spots of the map you are far less likely to be discovered. Never travel along the route directly between your town and his -- Uhlans will almost certainly be cruising around in this area. Make a clean, roundabout trip there and then lay the tower fast.

King Ali, I can't think of a way to get the 2-tower shipment out without delaying the Black Watch + falconet shipments. Is there a way to accomplish this? If so it would provide some great cover.

Hello, Beatnik!

Let me make some contributions about this strategy, Its definitely an interesting one, great choice for the british lovers out there that want to compete at their own skill. It has to be noted that this strategy is not OP in any way and it will not garantee you an easy win like a Ottoman Rush in 1.03 or a Spanish FF in 1.05 but it will put you in a place where you can play british withouth being handicapped, but that is, my opinion.

1st Thing: Politians
I've found that the archaic infantry is pretty useless, maybe if it were 8 longbows, but its not honestly worth it, it gives a nice boost to your atack but the thing is that this option will give you a problem since its 7 pop you cant afford. The mantlets and scouts are also useless, Why?, Well simply because you dont need siege in the first wave and what the mantlets provide is seriously minimal.

Now I really like the 400 wood, because it will let you get another trade post which will be helpful to have a constant supply of shipments during the whole game, and give you enough for a house which you need since you got 30 cap to get. Plus the caravel is good enough to fight in some maps and transport(remember traveling by sea is much MUCH faster than traveling by land, but then again you got a fwd outpost.

2nd Thing: The strategy itself
I think what confuses people is the fact they beleive that what you do with this strategy is going straight for the town center and win, well its not. 2 falconets and 8 highlanders have not enough siege to take down a TC, however 8 highlanders and 2 falconets so early will really be able to hit your oponent bad.

The good thing is that we are using the British and since we have 2 trade posts we are gonna rely in our shipments to fight the enemy while we are booming. We have around 20 villagers, right? well putting 5 on food and 15 in wood will let us boom faster than any other civilization, if we do manage to get here, we can either go for a full manor boom until the enemy can stand up then we switch acordingly or get map control by spamming town center in critical positions in the map, which is nice since that means your oponent must use the resources he has at his base and wont be able to expand since we have done that alredy, anyways, make up your mind acordingly, you can even make fwd barracks and suport your army with muskets or longbows withouth booming, its up to you.

Now, people think that this is gonna be a Spanish FF where your so fast that your enemy wont be able to prepare for it, but unfortunateley, its not. Unless your playing a complete noob your oponent will be ready to repel your atack, is that bad? not nesesairly, the thing about this strategy is that its ultra fast, trust me, having mercenaries and artillery before 7.45 its something noone can ignore, but by that time your oponent will have a shipment and his age up troops, but no mercenaries, which is good. Ok so what if he has light infantry you slaughter it with your falconets, and with 64 damage to everything, highlanders do good against them too, if he has cavalry then you smash it with your heavy infantry and if he has artillery so early then its probable that he wont be able to defend it well and if you can hit him before he hits you with your falconets then you should be fine. Now if you hit him so early with that you will kill his atack to you, giving you the liberty to fully boom, but can you finish him off? probably not, what you can do is slow him and his atack down while your shiping your next military shipment and then finish him, after you have defeated all his military then take down villagers, make him garrison, when he does, take down any building other than the town center and retreat, keep your explorer around to spy on him. Meanwhile your shiping muskets if you feel there are black rider coming, ur falcs can deal with jaegers or highlanders. Or you can go for 5 granadiers, now that, plus falconets, plus highlanders are enough siege to take down buildings quickly. This is all gonna be happening so quickly and if you cant maintain the pressure and do everything right withouth making mistakes then its most certain that you will lose. You should have another shipment coming very soon, you can get more granaders but granaders suck against anything thats not a building anyways, 10 longbows are as good as 10 skirmishers, I like them, use them. If your good enough, then you will destroy your enemy fortress atack, slow him down by killing villagers, building etc and if you did everything good then you can take down the TC and finish him off right there. But I think Im making it sound too easy, it may be posible and probable that if your enemy is any good then he will survive this but again, you can ship some nice military and fight him and trust me, it will be assured your economy is sky high right now. GG.

Also, I saw you were using 9 Highlanders as your 5th shipment, well I really dont recomend that since the thing about this strat is that its fast and mercenaries are way to slow, powerful, yes, fast, no, well only black watch .

Also remember, its all about adapting your shipments, economy, etc acordingly to how things are going.

3rd Thing: The Rush
Of course there is people who will stay in colonial and try to take you down before you get those nice fortress shipments which represent a problem as to any FF strategy, If you locate a rush then I like colonial militia, its really nice since you can one hit most colonial units except janisaries and 16 minutemen will destroy any rush, but remember those 16 minutemen cost around 800 resources so dont waste them, if your enemy is rushing its most likely he will be spending more than 800 resources in that rush but remember minuteman can be outrunned, set your tc waypoint to the same direction the enemy can escape and divide your MM in 2 groups and kill off as many units as you can then quickly get those 800 resources back and get to fortress, if you have spoted a rush after you clicked fortress(which is when most rushers will launch a strong atack then you must get 400 gold asap, even though you are slowed down, it also means that if you killed his rush he has a economy similar to your but he is in colonial and we are in fortress ready to get 8 highlanders and 2 falconets to own him.

Today on ESO I met with someone that had heard of this strat before, the funny thing is that he knew i was gonna do it, and he tried to rush me to stop it, but I survived through it with a shipment of musketeers and minutemen. I got the highlanders out just in time, soon followed seconds later by my 2 falcs. I still won, lol. Altough I must admit he did manage to slow down my time, I was later than i was supposed to be.

Maybe I've been playing ottomans too much lately, or maybe I just suck. I've tried this strat ~10 times in the past 24 hours. My take? It's GREAT against players of significantly less skill than myself. It's VERY weak against superior players using germany/dutch. The Love_ Dutch strat has 8 halberdiers + 10 musketeers + falconet spam by 8:30, just when this strat is staring to move. That's bad for this strat. Plus, it's pretty hard to outboom the dutch once they get to fortress, too.

So many german players are doing the winged hussar semi-FI now, they can defend themselves pretty well against this with free hussars. If the falconets fall, then the free skirms from going to fortress can defeat the highlanders. In any case, the highlanders can't keep the german from going to industrial.

So far, I've beaten some ~25 spanish players, some decent russians, and bad players with any civ. I just can't make it competitive with any good player/good civ combo. I even lost to TWO 1st lieuts using spain/germany. That hurt my feelings, pretty badly.

Zhadow, some good stuff! I'd definitely recommend that anyone take a look at the above post. Lots of useful tidbits there. I decided on the caravel for the same reasons that you did. I like your idea of a 2nd trading post, though I've never done this -- always the houses for me. Do you have any recorded games of this 2nd trading post approach?

The thing that I'm struggling with now is somehow choosing between sending conventional shipments and my newer approach of throwing in that 2nd pack of highlanders. So far, that 2nd shipment of highlanders has just made for a devastating knock-out punch. But the original post (calling for a manor boom to a big flood of fast conventional shipments) is still very effective. By slow, do you mean the +20 seconds required to ship the next set of highlanders? That's true, but I guess I just love the power that they offer. 17 highlanders is so hard to stop.

Ali, that's pretty funny... good job holding off the rush even though your mind had been read in advance. I guess the word is getting out to the non-British players!

Techno, that's interesting because I have not yet found Dutch to be any kind problem. I faced off with a couple of decent Dutch players (one at least Lieutenant Colonel, I believe) today and there just didn't seem to be anything he could put together to really stop this combo. I killed everything and only lost 3 units throughout the entire combat, so it's hard for me to imagine Dutch being a threat. If you execute fast, the Highlanders can draw blood by 7:30-7:45, and the falconets are usually 15-25 seconds behind. This should push the Dutchman off of his gold mine. His best cards (i.e. 10 Ruyters) are just erased by Highlanders, though you must protect the falconets from them. I've also found that killing a bank is a fantastic source of XP... +280! This drives rapid shipments.

What's the strat from Love that you mentioned? I'm confused, since Dutch don't have musketeers as far as I know... ? As for Germany, things have been fine for me so far, but I haven't faced the semi-FI yet. I've found that it's important to put the black watch in defense mode right on top of the falconets. I'd suggest pushing him off his gold, knock out houses, then get that next batch of highlanders or jaegers, along with some longbows. Still, I do see Germany as a threat, but not Dutch so far.

Used the old kick in the crotch in a team game with clan mates yesterday.

Basically, 2 of us would combine our forces, comprising in total 16 Hi landers, 10 LBows, 4 pikes and 4 falcs and hit the nearest enemy base.

Pretty devastasting. While it didn't totally defeat the enemies, we hurt one real bad and forced the others to abandon any other plans in order to defend their ally.

This allowed our 2 other teammates to boom like crazy (we did a fair bit ourselves with manors etc.).

Once the initial attack ran into the ground, the enemy was cornered by us dropping forts and bldg fwd rax, gaining map control.

We are by no means experts or anything, but against opponents of ~equal skill, this works.

I'll get a game rec next time we try this.

Is this strategy any good against Ottoman rush? It seems that by the time you get to fortress the ottoman player has a huge load of units, this is assuming you make it there!

I also seem to have trouble against germans, who always fast fortress aswell. They always seem to get there before me and their mercenaries are tough...

1. one thing I dont understand is how people can use colonial militia or a musk shipment and still get to fortress fast enough with falcs.

2.Dutch are actually the worst booming civ its been proved with alot of math xD the banks just dont add up to the settlers they're missing especially with the expense of cards. I beta a major duthc player with this the other day, whilst I'm only a captain

3. Love_ Took a leaf out of our book and used the church tech.

Thanks beatnik, could you please give me your average timing and villagers by:
1.- Colonial age
2.- Fortress age
3.- Falcs and HL at enemy base

Sorry, jsut got around to reading this.

Me myself am normally a 2.1k+ player, but after patch I switched to brits rushing in colonial, and now am barely maintaning 2050. I have been harrassing in colonial with a gl0rious strat somewhat, but this looks good.

My thing is, why get 17 highs? Thats unnecesary, you dont need that much. If he ships jags your screwed, IMO your best optino is to go with like 8 highs and 2 falcs early on with agressive, taking out his houses (dont go for tc, obviously). Then I think it would be wise to put up a rax or two (ship in 1k wood) and pump vet lbows and also ship in 9 more muskets.

Sounds good though, I'll ahve to give it a try.

Quote:

LOL

and yet you think i am 1550 for i said long time ago : brit do quite badly in colonial rush, and that was back in 1.04 where french and ottoman were way stronger, and dutch didnt completely suck.

Yid, congratulations on your wins! Great job! I'd definitely love to see a 2v2 recording... that's something I've not tried.

James, an Otto rush can indeed be quite powerful (due to their fast colonial time.) Definitely keep an eye out for it and keep 2 of the 3 following cards always in your deck: 6 muskets, 6 longbows, and colonial militia. You never know when you might need them. If the rush is coming, get the gold you will need for minutemen and get ready to play one of those cards. This can slow you down just a bit, but so long as you can make it hurt your opponent more than you, you can be okay. Defending a rush can be tough, though... you never want to underestimate it.

Zhadow, it's highly map-dependent, but if I don't get rushed, my times are usually 7:05-7:25 to fortress, Highlanders at 7:25-7:45, cannons at 7:50-8:05. If I'm rushed, it can be radically different, since I may find myself needing to play an anti-rush card.

Stophon, thanks, you and Zhadow have both suggested that I'm perhaps too in love with that 2nd shipment Highlanders. I think that you guys are almost certainly right. I think conventional shipments and a semi-boom with more longbows is probably a much better "closer." I should consider shipping the 2nd highlanders later. Also -- hats off to you for risking a very good Cuetech rating on one of the more... er, "challenging" civs, to say the least. I'd be interested to hear what "closer" works best for you.

[This message has been edited by Beatnik Joe (edited 04-16-2006 @ 05:21 PM).]

What I do is go for the tc with falcs and get villies and houses with the black watch seems to work well for me, and I dont lose falcs as nadiers arrive just in time and if the nemey persists I get priests.

Alright few pointers:

Timing
You cant click age 2 after 3.00 exactly, if you do, you will get to age 2 at 4.30, getting 700 gold at 5.10, clicking age up at 5.20, getting to age 3 at 6.55, getting falconets and highlanders at enemy base at 7.45, so watch this timing, its critical

Now whats so great about this? If your enemy is as optimal as you are, then it means that he is only gonna have age up troops and a shipment by the time u come in, or maybe even less, that means he will have 7 skirms or cassadors and a shipment which can be cannons, infantry, merc, whatever, well if your micro is good u can take 1 skirm with ur hl and 2 with your cannons before he can shoot at you, leaving him with 4 skirms which cant to anything, and his other shipment will be dust too unless its ryuters or goons which they die fast to hl but if u arent fast enuf they will eat ur cannons, but if ur playing port or dutch then that means u will prolly age up faster than them after his troops are dead u gotta asume he is shiping merc or troops that can own you so you better slow him down, take down houses, snipe villagers, kill every building he has except market(dont think he will have one anyways) and town center, the second he starts to garrison, change your artillery to horse position(forgot its name) and move out while ur BW are killing villagers, the rest is up to you.

You can do it as stophon said and spam l bows, or if you feel confident bring granadiers and take down his tc and GG, its up to you but it gives you a nice agresive start.

but its not so easy as I said cuz to get here you need to watch out for some things in order for the timing to go right:
You cant have your HC idle after you got to age 3, you need a shipment, otherwise your timing is gonna be bad, when you click age up to colonial put a sick amount of villagers in wood and get that TP up ASAP(sometimes i even put 9 villagers there in order to get it quickly), you need to do whatever you can to get XP, Personally i never like to have your crackshot idle, use it, even if its not practical(unless ur in yukon or in yucatan) because that means an extra 40-50 xp by the time your in fortress, build those 2 vils in colonial(20 exp is nice), etc, etc, etc. DONT HAVE YOUR HC IDLE WHEN YOU GO TO FORTRESS OR U WILL GIVE YOUR ENEMY TOO MUCH BREATHING SPACE. Ok, another thing to keep in mind is that the BW take like 15 seconds so its not so important to have your church up before u hit fortress as you can quickly build it but remember the exp is nice.

One important thing i keep forgeting is that the minute you get enough food for BW then switch like all your vils to wood only leave 2 at food and the caravel fishing, why? because u dont need food and because u need to house, ur gonna need to follow up the atack quickly and houses give 30 exp, you need to put 4 houses asap!

Also, treasures are a great deal for this strat, try to get as many as posible, anything to speed you up!

i also ran into another brit player that knew the strat. i beat him pretty easily, but he slowed me down with 4 hussars. he said he tried it and it doesnt work. i am now 13 and 3 with the bwkic. i think this is getting too polular. lol

I still think your a bad player ultimitsu.

why dont you find out

I don't know... I seem to have too much trouble against the german fast fortress. In my last game they had pure uhlans and i had musketeers and black watch but his uhlans still got the falcs even though the bw were very close to them (surrounding them)

The problem i have is they always get to fortress before me.