Fast Feudal Strategies

Select from the choices below to see different ways of Flushing..............
  1. gutter_rat                ---- This is a basic Flush, in Fact it is the first (original) type of flush,, so some things have changed but you should be able to get a rough idea of how it works and change it to what you need (and I also think Mongals+Mayans have a very good flush).
  2. DaRq_GlowWorm ---- This a more up too date Flush done using the new MAYANS civ.

 

A Fast Feudal Rush

Introduction

This is a description of a fast Feudal rush that involves reaching the Feudal Age between 9:30 and 10:45, attacking with a main force of archers, and towering up your opponent while continuing to make villagers at home.

The main goal is to attack with an effective military force at the earliest possible moment. When done correctly, you can be on your opponent before they even reach the Feudal Age.

I find China to have the fastest Feudal Rush with their +3 villager start and the fact that their town centers save you a house. Persia has the next fastest Feudal Rush (about 30 seconds slower than China) because of their +50 food and +50 wood. With both versions, I usually use a 22 villager + 1 scout start. The following describes the Chinese version that I typically do. The main difference with Persia is that you will probably want to Loom after the last villager is completed rather than right after the first one.

Getting to the start of the Feudal Upgrade

Villagers 1-15 go to food. Villagers 16-22 go to wood. Start the Loom upgrade immediately after the first villager is built. Put the first 6 villagers on sheep and set the town center gathering point to the berries. Your first priority is to eliminate all villager build delays. You need to anticipate the creation of the next villager and be ready to command a new villager build as soon as you have the 50 food. Get multiple villagers queued up in the town center as soon as you can.

If you didn't see sheep right away, send five of your villagers to berries and then transfer them to sheep after they return to the town center. Use the 6th villager to help your scout find the sheep.

Have your villager that is not eating sheep to start a house. You need to start it once your second villager build begins. After he finishes, send him to berries.

For the first few villager builds, you will usually need to force your sheep eaters to dump their food just before a villager is finished being built. Early food dumping can save you 15 seconds or more on your Feudal time which is significant for such an early attack.

Your second priority is to find the two pigs lurking around your town. By the time you have about 5 villagers on berries, you should have just delivered a pig to them. Have them dump their berries at the mill and kill the pig. It is important to save as many berries as possible for Feudal when you will need low-maintenance food. You don't want to have to be trying to build farms or hunt during the early phases of your Feudal attack.

Deliver the second pig to the sheep eaters at the town center.

When luring pigs, don't start running your hunter away until the pig is just about to hit him. Watch the pig on the way back. If the pig stops, immediately shoot him again. If you are running to the town center, ALT-right click the runner on it so that he will garrison as soon as he arrives. Immediately ungarrison him so that he doesn't idle. If you are running to the mill, run circles around it as your other villagers shoot until the pig is dead.

Once your population reaches 16, change the town center gathering point to a straggler.

By 7:30, you should have achieved the following: reached a population of 21 (20 villagers + 1 scout), found 2 pigs, found gold, found stone, and found a deer herd. This will give you all the resources you need for a strong Feudal attack and economic expansion. If you don't reach a population of 21 around 7:45, a Feudal rush is still a viable option though a bit riskier as you will not get to the Feudal Age until around 10:45. If you have not accomplished all of these things by 7:45 against a good player, then you should probably go on to a fast Castle instead of Feud rushing. You still have that option as it is very doable to get a sub-17:00 Castle with a population of 30 using this China start. As soon as your scout has found the pigs, gold, stone, and deer, you should send it in search of the enemy.

Monitor your villagers cutting the straggler trees around your town center. Once you have made the required three houses and your cutters are carrying enough wood to reach 100, have them dump their wood at the town center and go build a lumberyard. Preferably, this will be at a nearby forest that is also close to gold and stone.

As the lumberyard is just about to complete, monitor your food gatherers. As soon as you estimate that they are carrying enough food to reach 500, have them all dump their food at the town center or mill.

If you've timed everything well, you should finish the lumberyard, reach 500 food, and finish your 22nd villager (giving you a population of 23), all at the same time.

Practice this start in Single Player Mode until you can begin the Feudal upgrade before 8:20 which will result in a 10:30 Feudal time. If you can't begin it before 8:20, restart the game and try again until you do. Once you get fairly good, you should be able to occasionally begin the upgrade by 7:30, resulting in a 9:40 Feudal time.

Preparations during the Feudal Upgrade

Send two villagers towards the enemy to act as forward builders. Give them a number so that it is easy to check on them.

Put two villagers on food.

Put all the other villagers on wood. I usually have 3 to 5 villagers cutting stragglers around the town center in order to reduce crowding at the lumberyard.

By the time you are 75% to Feudal, your forward builders should start building a barracks in a good spot near the enemy with easy access to their woodcutters and nearest gold mine. Your scout should have recently covered the area all around the build site to ensure you are far enough away from any enemy villagers and buildings that you will not be discovered.

As soon as you have 100 wood after starting the barracks, send a villager to make a mining camp at your gold mine. If there is a gold mine and stone mine near one another, put the camp right between them (this will save you 100 wood later).

From this point on, you should make sure that your scout is always moving and scanning the area around the enemy as well as all unexplored areas of the map so that you know the likely spots that the enemy might run to. Give your scout 15 or so waypoints at a time so that you don't have to constantly monitor him.

The Feudal Age

As soon as you reach the Feudal Age, start making an archery range with your forward builders.

Build a house.

Start a second archery range as soon as you have 175 wood. This should happen before the first one is done.

Start queuing up villager builds at the town center and set the gathering point to food (probably berries). Once you eventually have at least 7 on food, periodically change your gathering point to whatever other resource you are short on.

Send 8 of your woodcutters to gold so that you now have 9 miners total. You should send these guys as soon as you see that you will have no problem getting the wood to start your second archery range once the first one is started.

Send two more villagers to join your two current forward builders. These will probably come from your woodcutters although they might be miners if you have excess gold.

Immediately queue archers when your ranges are done. Also start a couple pikes at the barracks.

Start a stone mine. Transfer 4 gold miners and 4 woodcutters to stone. If you are short on wood, just set the TC gather point to stone instead of transferring the woodcutters.

Once you have 5 or 6 archers, a couple pikes, and 4 forward builders, go attack the enemy, giving priority to their wood operations and then stone and gold. If possible, put your force between the enemy gatherers and their town center before you start attacking. Just make sure you are not within range of the town center. Use the stand-ground hotkey "n" to prevent your units from following the villagers to their town center. Your units can still be moving when you apply the stand-ground hotkey to them and they will stand-ground once they get there.

While your military units attack, start making overlapping towers near them to disable the gathering spot. Try to position the towers so that they cover multiple resources. Split your builders evenly between the towers you are making as that is more efficient. For example, if you use two builders on one tower and two builders on another at the same time, you can complete both towers in 38 seconds. If instead, you use all four on the same tower before starting another, it will take you 50 seconds to finish both. 

Keep making archers non-stop at your ranges and spread them around to prevent resource gathering until you can tower or wall things up. If the enemy is in Castle and is getting gold, research fletching and archer armor and try to keep your archers in groups of at least 5 with a spearman or two.

If the enemy has put up a single tower, just locate your archers right up against it and put them on stand-ground so that the tower cannot hit them. The archers will stop the resource gathering and even kill the tower eventually. Just don't do this versus a Teuton when they are in Castle as they get automatic murder holes once they reach Castle Age.

If the enemy has more than one tower up, find an angle where you can build a tower that will hit their resource gatherers while still being out of ranges of their towers. This is almost always possible and is really just about as good as taking the towers down. If your towers have trouble reaching a spot, be sure to get Fletching.

Your scout should be running all around during this time, looking for relocated villagers. Do not let the scout stop unless it is for a very good reason. You should count on there being a new wood operation starting up right after you attack the first one. Look for it! As soon as you see it, attack immediately. Wood is usually the enemy's most important resource at this time as it is what they need to relocate and counter you.

Ring the enemy town center with stand-ground archers and/or towers to prevent farming and straggler cutting. If the enemy is Teuton, you need to use towers for this (preferably with Fletching). A Fletched tower has a range of 9 where as a Teuton town center has a range of 11 (**Editors Notes "Not in the AoC expansion"**). If you place the tower just out of range of the town center, the villagers will only have a 2-tile safety zone. Since farmers like to walk around a lot, they will still get hit even if the farms are right next to the town center. For non-Tuetons, there will be no safety zone all. Note that you can easily count out tiles with the pre-built tower by dragging it away from the edge of the town center as you are about to place it.

If you run into skirmishers, use your pikes, villagers, and towers to help beat them down. If you did your job in attacking his wood, you shouldn't see many skirmishers. If you do, retreat to your towers and make some Men-At-Arms.

Once your berries run out at home, go hunt those deer you found. After that, start farming. You should have enough woodcutters by then to lay several farms. You should have a better economy than the enemy does by this time and you should also be pretty close to starting the Castle upgrade. If the enemy is in Castle, be sure to have some spearmen at your town.

Once you have around 30 villagers, send three villagers out to start walling up all of the remaining gold and stone spots that the enemy might relocate to (you should have them all scouted by now). Don't lay the foundations until you get there as the enemy may have beaten you to it. If so, call in some military for backup and then tower the site up.

After the Feudal Age

You are unlikely to completely wipe your opponent out in the Feudal Age so you must plan on reaching Castle and expanding your economy from the very start. With your constant villager building in the Feudal Age, you should be in a very nice position at this point.

My goal in Castle is usually to use my economic advantage to put town centers all over the map and build up my population even more for a big Imperial. During all this, it is important to continue raids upon the enemy in order to keep their economy in check. It can also be very helpful to research murder holes, guard towers, and Bodkin Arrow, to make your towers more powerful. The enemy will often be busy trying to clear out your towers from gold and stone while you are building your economy. A small group of knights can be very useful in killing off any rams that might show up. The knights usually don't need much backup either since your upgraded towers will tend to keep away any knight counters.

Summary

I believe that part of the advantage to being able to strike forcefully with a Feudal attack is that your opponent doesn't know what to expect early in the game. This is especially true in AOK since there is no achievements screen to monitor. The threat of a Feudal Rush can be as good as the actual thing if it makes your opponent spend time and resources early on to defend against an attack that never comes.

I'm not sure whether to give this strat a name or not. Maybe "Flush" would be good as it is a FeudaL-rUSH and it is probably about the closest thing to a Brush that you can effectively do in AOK. Well, whatever it is, I know that several others and I have had great success and a lot of fun with it even against very good players. I hope you find it useful.

Good luck and have fun.

gutter_rat

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THE MAYAN FLUSH

By DaRq_GlowWorm

Chapter I: Mayan Bonuses

Letīs analyse the Mayan bonuses and see how they affect their Feudal Age, both on an economic and military scale.

Civilisation Bonuses:

1.) Start with 4 villagers but -50 food.

2.) Resources last 20% longer.

3.) Archers cost -10% Feudal, -20% Castle and -30% Imperial Age.

4.) Starts with Eagle Warrior.

Team Bonus:

5.) Walls cost half-price.

 1.) Start with 4 villagers but -50 food:

Many people believe this bonus to be ineffective, since starting out housed it means changing the normal start-up procedure of HCCCC to H (move mouse and click loom) CCC. However, getting a free 20 - 25 seconds (depending on how quick you can click that loom compared to somebody pressing HC) is definitely a big bonus when feudal attacking, allowing you either an extra villager before you reach feudal age, or a 20 - 25 second quicker feudal time.

2.) Resources last 20% longer:

Longer lasting resources benefit the Mayan in several ways, all of which contribute to a faster Feudal Age time. For example, combining the "free loom" time with the longer lasting sheep, it makes sense to lure your boar after only the first 4 sheep and store your spare sheep by your berry pickers (that way they are far enough from the TC not to cause any sleep walking butchers). Keeping in mind that resources last longer, you now get about 50 more FAST food out of every boar than other civilisations, meaning that IF you have to farm you can do so much later, or in this case, your dark age build-up is much less intensive compared to that of china since you don't have to lure 2 boars simultaneously.

3.) Archers cost -10% Feudal, -20% Castle and -30% Imperial Age:

In Feudal age, a Mayan flusher only pays 22 wood and 40 gold for every archer, compared to the 25 wood and 45 gold that "normal" civilisations pay. The real saving here is GOLD, because you now need 1 less villager on gold to keep up a steady production of archers. This almost means that Mayan's get 2 villagers free. J.

4.) Starts with Eagle Warrior:

You may wonder why I list the Eagle warrior as a "civilisation bonus", but that is because it most definitely is one, especially for feudal rushing. The Eagle Warrior's increased LOS makes scouting your home base for natural resources easier and quicker, leaving you enough time to scout the enemy base and surrounding area so you can strike at the most important resources first up.
 
5.) Walls cost half-price:

Why would anybody want, and more importantly, USE cheaper walls ? Well, in AoKTC, walling will soon be highly popular once more, mainly because of the new raiding units introduced to the game (Cavalry Archer, Eagle Warrior and Hussar). The best protection you can have is, and always will be, preventing the enemy access to your economy. Thus walling yourself in Dark and Feudal Age is a much higher priority than it was in AoK. This is also partly due to the new random map types that are becoming popular, like Yucatan, Mongolia, Ghost Lake and Scandinavia where walling is "mostly" easier than on Arabia.

Walls can also be quite effectively used to protect the base of an offensive (or defensive) tower. Providing defense from villagers, men at arms and later on in castle age from siege weapons. Usually the cost of a strong wall system made a Castle look like a much better defense option, but with the Mayan team bonus this has changed. Consider paying only 150 stone for total base defense, compared to paying 300 stone as you normally would or 650 stone for only a partial spot. Overall this team bonus has been overlooked and underused, and I hope this article changes that. J.

Chapter II: Principles of Feudal Rushing

Feudal Rushing, hated by many, implemented by even more, and mastered by but a few. Why is flushing so popular ? As explained earlier, the one who initiates conflict usually has an advantage over the victim. The flush counts on finding your enemy with his pants down, and then hitting him as hard as you can. An obvious requirement for a feudal rush would be getting to feudal age quickly, and effectively scouting the enemy surroundings, identifying key resources and choke points. Another requirement is an economy that is able to support your attack, and also an attack that effectively denies those scouted resources. These are in order of priority: stone, wood, gold and food.

When defending a flush your 2 most important assets would be stone, and the ability to build defensive towers. As a flusher you want to prevent your enemy making use of these abilities as early as possible. Thus your very first target would be to eliminate both his stone mines very quickly, ensuring your enemy only has access to one tower when he hits feudal age. Your secondary object will be to deny your enemy of wood, which he will use to build farms, a barracks, archery ranges, blacksmith and market, produce skirmishers to counter your archers, and also sell for gold to make men at arms or archers and stone so he can build more towers. As you can see wood is a very important resource, so you need to scout out all of the nearby forests for an enemy lumber camp. Sending groups of 4+ archers to guard all these forests is a good idea, but only feasible much later in your attack when you can afford that many units.

Usually your enemy will by now have advanced to feudal age, and proceeded to tower up his goldpit. You still need to deny him of gold, so scout all 3 of his gold patches aggressively, making sure you know exactly where he is mining and what defenses he has. Remember that even 2 defensive towers are not enough to completely protect any resource, so you should be able to find an angle where an offensive tower of your own will cover his gold patch. Always bring archers with your tower builders, because if your enemy has any experience he will do his utmost to prevent that tower going up, even storm it with villagers.

Once you covered all of his key resources (stone, then wood, then gold) you can tower his Town Center by building a tower (so that 2 farms can fit between the TC and your tower) 7 tiles away from his Town Center. This will cover at least 3 of his farms and also provide you with an idea of where he is sending new villagers. Create a perimeter wall around the enemy base with houses, archery ranges, towers and any other building you make, so that you will notice the vector of any escaping villagers. Follow these up immediately with a scout and some archers and prevent him from setting up a fortified outpost.

By cutting of your opponent's resources you prevent him from setting up a defence, and also, if/when he advances to castle age he will not have the wood to make siege weapons, or the gold to make knights/eagle warriors to mount a counter attack. So even if your opponent reaches castle age several minutes before you, he will still be unable to do anything about the siege on his town.

Feudal rushing is actually a strategy developed to counter fast castle rushes. It's actually quite a specialist strategy and only successful because so many people try to go to castle age without setting up any defense. Several flush counter strategies have been developed, and among the most effective are specially designed to counter a flush, and have no other real purpose. These strategies are rare however, mainly because they are weak when faced with a quick castle, which is still a common enough strategy today.

There are many civilisations in AoKTC that have bonuses making them excellent flush civilisations, but Mayans rise above with each and every one of their bonuses strengthening their feudal age attack. Britons, Chinese, Aztecs, Mongols, Huns, Koreans, Japanese, Vikings and even Celts can be effective flush civilisations depending on the specific flush you use. For fast flushes use Britons, Chinese, Mongols and Mayans, or for a stronger economy that equates into a stronger but slower attack, civilisations like Aztecs, Huns, Koreans, Japanese and Vikings do a better job. It is possible to launch a feudal offensive with any civilisation, but the easiest flushers would definitely be a pick among fast and simple economic civilisations such as Britons, Mongols and Mayans. Thus, the combination of Mayan's ease of use and powerful dark and feudal age bonuses makes them the king of the flush.

 

Chapter III:  So how do I flush with Mayans?

Here is my economic buildup for a Mayan flush. Keep in mind that there are other possibilities, but I've found this combination gives me the most villagers for the quickest feudal age time. I build a total of 20 villagers in dark age, that is 16 new villagers plus loom, which gives me (17 x 25s) + 130s [time to reach feudal age] = 555s = 09:15. Because Mayans require you to loom first up you lose about a total of 10 seconds due to game startup lag compared to 5 - 7 for other civilisations but this balances out later. When playing on fast (as I did for the example game) you will lose more time than usual. Once you regularly feudal between 09:35 and 09:50 your doing well.

1.) HCCC and click loom ASAP.

(WHAT? You can't do that your HOUSED ! Actually you can, because by the time your instructions fought through the lag and the TC is actually creating a villager, you've already clicked the loom button. Loom takes priority over any other current build instruction and suddenly starts right after you get the little "you need more houses" message. Take note that on low latency connections like DSL and higher this might not be such a good idea, as the villager creation might start before you can drag your mouse over to the loom button.)

2.) Assign 2 villagers to build a house, and explore in different directions with the remaining 2. Explore with the Eagle Warrior in a growing spiral around your TC. Never let your Eagle go idle, when flushing it needs to spend every breathing moment on scouting. Once you found sheep, send all exploring and idle villagers back to the TC and start on the sheep. When your house builders are done have them join the other butchers.

3.) So Villager 1 - 6 goes onto sheep, and now Villager 7 builds a house near berries. Villager 8 builds a mill next to the berries and the house builder joins him to complete the mill. Villagers 9 and 10 also go onto berries.

4.) By now you should have found your boars and you can also see if they are within one screen distance from your TC or whether they are further. With Mayans you must send out a villager to lure the boar a little later than you would with normal civilisations, so Villager 11 goes onto straggler trees. (Note that if the boar is very far from your TC it will be a better idea to send Villager 11 as the lurer and put Villager 12 on wood).

5.) Villager 12 lures your first boar. Since you already researched loom don't pause your villager creation here.

6.) Villager 13 - 15 also cut straggler trees around your TC. You should now have 7 hunters, 4 berry gatherers and 4 woodcutters totaling 15 villagers including loom.

7.) Villager 16 lures the 2nd boar. Once again experience will teach you exactly when to lure to get the perfect result.

8.) Villager 17 builds a house and Villager 18 builds a lumber camp (Send all your wood villagers to complete the lumber camp, since it is your 2nd Dark Age building required to upgrade to Feudal Age. Needless to say, it is imperative that you complete it before you complete your 20th villager, otherwise you will waste unnecessary time before you can click the Feudal upgrade).

9.) Villager 20 builds a mining camp by stone. (Even though you won't have enough wood for it now, you will by the time he arrives at your stone mine).

10.) Have your boar and berry villagers drop all their food at the TC and Mill and Click the Feudal Upgrade! Now some intensive micro management is required. Do the following from top to bottom:

 

a.) Take 5 hunters from your boar (make sure they are all on 100% health). Send 4 of them as forward builders towards enemy stone patch, and send the remaining one to join your other stone miner.

b.) Have all 4 berry gatherers join your woodcutting team. (Note that if your berries are closer to the enemy stone mines than your TC you should send your 4 berry villagers as forwards and have the boar villagers fill their place in the woodcutting team).

c.) Make sure you found BOTH enemy stone mines ! And if you already found them scout his lumber camp and all of his gold patches (usually 3).

d.) When your forward villagers arrive at the enemy stone mine, build a barracks next to it (you should just have enough wood to build one as you arrive).

 

11.) The moment you hit feudal age start building a tower covering your enemy's other stone patch. If your barracks is completed you can make a spearmen to help defend the builders. This is a critical moment, since you need to get this tower up no matter what. Use your eagle warrior to scout the surrounding area and defend your builders if necessary.

12.) Queue new villagers at your TC, and allocate them so that you end up with 4 on stone, 6 on gold and 8 on sheep/berries. The rest goes onto wood or new farms depending on what resources you have. Do not spend any wood until you have 2 towers and an archery range started.

13.) Once you've completed the first tower, start a 2nd one covering the stone patch, but if at all possible covering some other resource as well (preferably the 1st stone patch. Although a barracks will scare off 90% of players, some will be smart enough to palisade wall it, put a tower up and mine the stone anyway).

14.) As soon as you can afford it, build an archery range under the cover of your 2 towers. Once the archery is started, move 4 villagers from your lumber camp to a nearby gold mine and build a mining camp. Go up to 6 villagers on gold ASAP since you will be massing archers very soon. (Check that you have enough housing space left and make additional houses as you have the wood. The only reason you need to get 2 towers up so quickly is that they can cover each other's bases. This way you can garrison units inside them and probably kill about 5+ villagers before he can take a tower down, which is more than a fair trade for you).

15.) Your third tower should cover his current wood pit, and you will now be able to build towers in more daring locations since your backup archer force will be continually growing. Build a 2nd archery range as soon as you have the wood, and continue building archers non-stop. If he counters with skirmishers, move to skirmisher production yourself and save your archers by garrisoning them inside towers or retreating them slightly from the action.

16.) Keep on massing archers, and building new towers. Set up a perimeter of buildings around his base, consisting of houses, towers, archery ranges, smith, barracks and anything else you build. Keep scouting the surrounding area for a hidden stone/gold patch and make sure that he isn't using one of your own patches. Also keep a constant lookout for a new lumber camp.

17.) As soon as you have a steady supply of stone and gold coming in, get the farming upgrade and start farming. Your berries will run out very shortly and you will need extra wood to support a large farming economy.

18.) From here onwards you should play it as it comes, denying the enemy stone at all times, and eventually upgrading to Castle Age. Once you hit Castle Age, use 2 - 3 Mangonels to destroy the enemy Town Center, and use rams garrisoned with eagles or swordsmen to take out towers. Beware of knights if your enemy is anything but Mayans or Aztecs and post 3 spearmen by each of your towers when he hits Castle Age. 

The finer points of feudal attacking are explained in more general terms in the previous paragraph, and should be applied to the game wherever possible.

Chapter IV: Conclusion

Ok, so now you are ready to go out there and start some early combat ! Feudal rushing is a whole lot of fun and can be a nice change of pace in your game. Keep in mind though that practicing a build order is one thing, but pulling of a succesful frush is something totally different. Practice makes perfect, and even then you will have bad games. Remember, surprise is your greatest advantage, so don't lose it by forcing your opponent to play the Arabia map. Mongolia, Ghost Lake and other maps offer equally good frushing opportunities and this same build order will work for them.

Have fun, and remember, due to the highly specialised nature of this build order, losing a villager to a boar, not finding both boars, or a forest a long way from your TC will all have a severely negative impact on the result. This is basically how it "should" go, but we all know that there is always something wrong with a random map.

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