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The Mayan Eagle Warrior Rush

Objective:

This strategy works best in 1 vs. 1 matches, and is designed to catch the opponent by surprise, while giving you a few options to change course depending on map conditions and your opponent's strategy. The primary plan is to reach a lightning-fast Castle Age, as early as 14:00 and hopefully before 14:30, with the ability to immediately create Eagle Warriors near the enemy base.

One of the reasons this can work is that, on seeing you reach Feudal around 10 minutes, the opponent is thinking "FLUSH", and may choose Archery Range units and/or an extended stay in Feudal Age to fight off the expected FLUSH.

Up to the 8:00 minute mark, you still have the option of doing a classic FLUSH, this Eagle Warrior Rush (EWR) - opening is essential identical up to the point of hitting the Feudal upgrade button. If your opponent begins a FLUSH you can, as late as 11:30 or 12:00, decide to go to a defensive EWR - strategy with no changes to the early build plan.

The Initial Build:

This section outlines the build process up to the point of hitting the Feudal upgrade button. This opening can be used for a Mayan FLUSH, for a EWR attack, or for a EWR defense.

In multiplayer, you can take advantage of command lag to save a few seconds on the opening. Because Mayans start with 4+1 pop, you're immediately housed, and must loom first. However, if you press HCCC (select TC, queue 3 villagers), then immediately hit loom, your loom research will start first, but the villagers will be queued automatically after the loom, without the multiplayer command lag. This saves a few seconds on your age times, so it's worth doing.



1.) Opening: HCCC and loom immediately. Have three villagers build one house while the fourth builds another. Start the Eagle Warrior on a sheep- scouting loop. If needed, task one of the three builders to help scout a bit of the perimeter, even before the house is completed. Finding the sheep ASAP is crucial.

2.) As the houses are completed, have the villagers momentarily chop wood near the TC until the first sheep arrive. As soon as a sheep reaches the TC, have all villagers drop off their wood and attack the sheep. (If you can't find the sheep quickly but you do see the berries, it's OK to build the mill immediately and use berries until you find the sheep.)

3.) Villagers 1-7 on sheep. They will become your boar hunters as appropriate.

4.) Villagers 8 and 9 on wood. These will be your only woodcutters until you're almost ready to go to Feudal.

5.) Lure the first and second boars as needed, to be harvested at the TC by the first villager group.

6.) Villagers 10-17 on food. Sheep as available, then berries.

7.) Remember to build a mill and one more house somewhere around villager 12.

8.) About the time you reach pop 17, you'll have enough wood to build a lumber camp, have one of your two woodcutters go build it, have the second move there when complete. Ideally, choose a hard-to-flush location behind your town, and near a gold site. I prefer to keep the wood and gold together to facilitate task shifting between wood and gold workers, but this configuration is more "brittle" if you are FLUSHed.

9.) Villagers 18 and 19 on wood, for a total of 4 woodcutters.

10.) Scouting: Locally until you've found your sheep, your two boars, and hopefully a local deer herd. Once you've found them, go find the enemy.

11.) Stop making villagers when your population hits 20 (19 villagers). The "housing" sound will be a useful reminder; with only 3 houses you won't be able to go over. Shortly after reaching pop 20, you'll have the 500 food needed to go up. You should hit the Feudal button before the 8:00 minute mark.

The First Decision:

To FLUSH or not to FLUSH? You're still in decent shape to do a flush, and you may want to do that if:-

-- Your scout has found the enemy base, and
-- The enemy has resources clumped in one location (say, 2 gold and stone within range of a few towers), and
-- You're in the mood for it. If these conditions exist, you should send at least three builders forward now and convert to a resource-gathering model to support a flush (heavy stone/wood gathering).

Going for the Eagle Warrior Rush:

12.) Assuming that this isn't an irresistible FLUSH opportunity, you need to prepare for a very fast jump to Castle Age. Keep your villager distribution as 4 on wood, 15 on food. Immediately on hitting the Feudal upgrade button, have two groups of four villagers hunt deer, without building a mill. Even if it's a 40-second walk, this can still be worth doing, and it's key to getting enough food without using more than four woodcutters. It's important to send them very early during the Feudal research, since an 80-second round trip walk plus more than a minute of gather time means that they'll be coming back after you've reached Feudal. Delay too long, and you'll be food-starved when you're trying to jump to Castle Age.

13.) When those villagers return, reassign them to local food sources (sheep or berries), they won't have time to complete a second trip before going up to Castle Age.

14.) On reaching Feudal Age, keep the same distribution (4 wood, 15 food). Begin making a market immediately, using two food gatherers or woodcutters, depending on the wood/food balance. If you have enough wood, put one more villager to work making a blacksmith shop. If you're short on wood, keep the lumberjacks busy, then have all four of them work together on the blacksmith shop as soon as 150 wood is available.

Do not add any more villagers ! You don't have housing for it, and you may be food-limited anyway.

15.) As soon as the market is complete, sell all your stone. No, really, do it. Seriously, it's OK.

16.) As soon as the blacksmith shop is complete, hit the Castle Age research button. You should be able to do this by 12:00, and possibly as early as 11:15 or better (Twice I've hit 11:11, for a 13:51 Castle, and I'm sure it's possible to go faster.).

The Castle Age Transition:

17.) Now that you're researching Castle Age, it's time to adjust your economy. To produce villagers and Eagle Warriors, you only need a bit of food, a lot of wood early, then mostly gold and enough wood to support your food production. Do the following: Have two healthy villagers start marching toward the enemy town. You may pull them back if needed as much as 30 seconds later.

18.) Leave 5-6 villagers on your choice of food sources. This may be a good time to have four of them get that third and/or fourth deer.

19.) Put everyone else on wood, until you have enough for a mining camp. At that point, put 5 or 6 on gold. (Five if they get an early start, 6 if it's a bit later.)

20.) Have the forward builders make a house en route.

The Second Decision:

You're now 30-60 seconds into your Castle Age research, and your forward builders are heading beyond your town. This is your last chance, at about 12:30, to pull back and play defense. If your opponent hasn't reached Feudal, press the attack. If your opponent is showing signs of trying a flush, you may choose to bring the forward builders back. This section will cover pressing ahead with the attack, see "Playing Defense" for the other tactic.

Pressing the Attack:

21a.) Select a forward location out of range of the enemy's line of sight. (Eagle Warriors are fast, you don't have to be right in his town.) Have your "scout" Eagle Warrior, on no-attack stance, start a loop patrol through all the gold/stone sites on this side of the map. Build a forward barracks; you should complete it just about the time you reach Castle Age.

22a.) Once in Castle Age (14:00- 14:30, or at least before 15), immediately queue a couple of Eagle Warriors, and queue new villagers at your TC. You'll need to keep most of your villagers on wood, to support building houses, a second barracks, a siege workshop, perhaps a monastery, and then farms as your other food runs out. The details are different every game, but you generally want to keep 5-6 on food, 5-6 on gold, and everyone else on wood until you start getting a wood surplus, at which point you can put more on food and/or start mining stone. I recommend food; it can be used to upgrade the Eagle Warriors at a crucial time.

23a.) As soon as the wood is available, build a second barracks. Leave your "scout" Eagle Warrior patrolling, and strike with your new Eagle Warriors when you have 3-4 available. Put them on defensive stance, and choose a location near the enemy wood, gold or stone locations. (Defensive stance will keep them from wandering into TC fire if you target them about 5-6 tiles beyond the TC's fire range.)

24a.) Continue to pump new EWs out of both barracks, adding houses as needed. Keep your attackers moving. At this point, depending on if or when your opponent hit the Castle button, you are behind by as much as six villagers; you must kill some of his or cripple his economy to come out ahead. Remember the strengths of your Eagle Warriors: they decimate villagers and archers, they withstand a fair amount of tower or TC fire, they die to infantry but are fast enough to run away, and they lose to knights.

Priorities

aa.) If/when the opponent reaches Castle Age, watch for new TCs, and aggressively attack the builders before they go up.

bb.) If you see single towers, have a few EWs attack each of them. As soon as they start to attack the tower, press "stop". They will resume attacking the tower, but will now automatically chase villagers that pop out.

cc.) If you see overlapping towers, harass villagers in that area, but retreat when they garrison. A handy tactic is to leave a few EWs on defensive stance outside of tower range, but within sight of where the villies work, causing them to automatically attack then retreat.

dd.) Keep making new Eagle Warriors. Keep them on defensive stance.

ee.) Keep scouting, try to deny gold and stone.

ff.) If you get a food surplus, start buying the first attack and armor upgrades, and get tracking and squires. At some point, you will want to build a siege workshop and a few mangonels, particularly if your opponent towers up well. Use the mangonels to attack the TCs (or critical towers), backing them off one at a time for repair as needed. Keep the EWs back, all in one group, to defend the mangonel, and to attack the villagers when the TC falls.

25a.) At some point, although I didn't do it in these recorded games, it would be a good idea to build a monastery and a monk or two, to heal the Eagle Warriors from all those tower/TC arrows they've been taking.

26a.) Similarly, there's another useful tactic that I didn't do in these recorded games, but I have added recently. When you attack a location (say, the lumber camp area), leave two of your Eagle Warriors behind on defensive stance. They'll stay in that area, permanently denying it to your opponent. If he attacks there in force, you'll get an attack notification, and can then withdraw, regroup, and come in with all your Eagle Warriors at once.

27a.) Finally, if you're not able to win the game with the mangonels, or if your opponent Castles and gets a reasonable number of knights or upgraded infantry in the game, it's time to try to boom and beat him in Imperial Age. Continue to harass him with your existing eagle warriors, but do not make more. At home, drop a 2nd and 3rd TC, crank out more villagers, and get to Imperial. (It may even make sense to do this without a stone mine, just buy 200 stone for the TCs, and you already have the two buildings (siege/monastery) to make you eligible for the Imperial jump. Add the stone mine after hitting the imp button. I recommend using halberdiers and archers on your Imperial attack, since your opponent has probably invested in infantry and/or cavalry to get rid of your Eagle Warriors. Remember, Mayan archers (plumed or arbalest) are cheap and deadly.

Playing Defense:

21b.) If your opponent launches a FLUSH against you, this strategy can be used as an effective counter. Build your one barracks locally, and then make Eagle Warriors as above. Retreat with your villagers to alternate wood/gold locations as the towers go up; you need to buy some time. Use your Eagle Warriors to harass the builders and ranged units. If your opponent makes the mistake of garrisoning in a lone tower, use the attack/stop tactic (above) to attack the tower and pursue the villagers when they emerge.

22b.) As soon as you can afford the wood, build a siege workshop and make Mangonels. Use the Mangonels, protected by Eagle Warriors, to start attacking the towers. If they garrison, you're in great shape, the Mangonels will shred the garrisoned troops when they pop out. Since towers outrange Mangonels, you will need to pull them back for repair frequently, but keeping one or two attacking while one is being repaired keeps the pressure on.

23b.) Through all of this, try to protect your villagers by retreating as soon as they come under fire, using Eagle Warriors to kill any ranged units that pursue them. With a bit of luck and skill, you'll be able to build a military, continue economic expansion, and totally negate your opponent's huge investment in the FLUSH.

24b.) As soon as you can afford it, send about six Eagle Warriors (on defensive stance) to your enemy's base, to try to take the initiative. Eventually, you'll want to take your Mangonels and other EWs there to win the game.

Summary:

This strategy gives you three choices off a single opening: FLUSH, EWR - attack, or EWR - defense. Take advantage of the Mayan longer- lasting food to get a very fast and light Feudal, then FLUSH, or immediately jump to Castle Age. The low food-cost of Eagle Warriors allows you to stream them out of two barracks while continuously adding villagers, with only a handful of villagers producing food (Your food supply will dwindle in the first minutes after Castle Age, by 17:00 you'll need to be ramping up your food production and buying upgrades).

Your opponent will naturally be expecting a FLUSH when he sees your 10- minute Feudal notice. If he builds single towers, attack them with the attack/stop tactic. If he builds skirmishers or archers, kill them with the faster and pierce- resistant Eagle Warriors. If he builds overlapping towers, or gets to Castle and drops multiple TCs, harass a bit with your Eagle Warriors, but put a higher emphasis on your siege workshop and Mangonel production. And if you can't win it in Castle, continue to harass his economy while building to a faster, stronger Imperial, and switch to Halberdiers and Archers for the final attack.