1.) Introduction:

1.1) About this article:
This is an article I wrote in my free time to help players who are already aware of and can already execute a basic galley rush. It is intended for more advanced players who seek to take the next step on their water play. I really hope some of you out there will read this and be more comfortable in playing games on water. Water play is very exciting and brings a whole new side to AoK: TC, compared to the everyday 1 vs. 1 - Feudal Rush on Arabia map. I guarantee you will find this game more fun if you try it. Lately, galley warfare is found on almost any map. On Highland, galleys can be valuable for protecting crossings, same goes for Rivers. The seas are more valuable than most people take it as on Continental and Coastal maps, not to mention the inevitable high sea wars on Baltic and Mediterranean. Control of water could very well decide the outcome of, or pretty much decides who the winner is on some maps, so it is important to have an effective galley rush.

1.2) Goals of a Galley Rush:
When opting for a galley rush, you are obviously wanting to take control of the seas for a particular reason or another.
-- Control of deep sea fishing: The power of the dock boom has be witnessed many times, controlling the fishing sea is controlling huge economic power in a game.
-- Destroying enemy buildings or units near the shorelines: You often start very near the shores on Rivers, Islands and Continental. An important force of galleys in feudal could harm enemy farming, sometimes even mining or wood cutting. Also, a galley rush opens the door for Cannon Galleons later on.
-- Control of crossings: Simple, if you win the river, your opponent will not be able to cross to attempt a land Feudal Rush using transports or through walking if you walled your crossing.
-- Migration: Migration can be cruel and an above 13-14 minute Feudal Time is very possible, which makes transporting until 15 hard to do in those cases. A galley rush could totally prevent your enemy FROM landing on the main isle, which will be his death.

So you see, HAVING a superior galley rush would allow you to win games in many of these cases. Let’s move on to choosing your civilization for an eventual galley rush.

1.3) Galley Rushing Civilisations:
-- Vikings: Cheap docks and cheap war ships need no further explanation. The Vikings are most probably hands down the best choice for any type of water warfare. The free wheelbarrow and hand-cart will be a huge advantage for the amount of time you will stay in feudal.
-- Chinese: Going for speed ? This is the way to go - save 1:10 minutes on your Feudal time, cheap techs allow you to grab Fletching and economic bonuses earlier. Time will help a lot, further explanation below.
-- Celts: Probably a good choice if you have a Viking ally – the wood bonus could help you raise more dock(s) by Feudal, but sadly it does not make up for the cheap ships that Vikings have.
-- Other notables (in no particular order): Saracens for faster shooting galleys and later on the trading bonus, Persians for the additional starting resources and slightly faster working docks, Japanese for cheaper dark age buildings and better LOS for galleys, Mongols for additional speed with hunting bonuses, and the always important scouting bonus and Teutons could be an interesting idea for a fast castle using cheap farms. The beginning LOS is always useful for finding sheep.

2.) Setting up the Rush:

2.1) Buildorders:
I am one that believes a strict build-up ORDER weakens players in giving predictability and in losing any capacity to adapt to new circumstances. So you should ask yourself some questions before following the suggested build ORDER here:
-- Should I change my build-up due to this which would affect my economy ?
-- Will my enemy attempt a strategy to counter my current build-up ?
The important thing is to think on your own. Don’t do something because I say it’s good or anyone else says it is.
Anyways, you will probably have a hard time getting this build up to work on any other map than Baltic, Medit, Islands or Coastal, it’s up to you to adjust it and find out what works best.

2.2) Advantages of a fast Feudal Time:
Just winning the first galley encounter is a huge advantage – it is very hard to overcome a more than a 50 second delay in feudal times. The second wave of enemy ships will be among yours before your can put together your first GROUP of ships. Enemy advantage will just get bigger and bigger.
Have in mind that land units are easier to manage and high ground will overcome bigger armies for a while. The sea is flat, and its hard to hide.
Garrisoning your ships can not hold back for too long because enemy warboats will destroy the dock, basically putting you out of it for a while (if the not out of the game).

2.1) The first few minutes:
Ok, you probably already know this, but to avoid any confusion later on, I will not skip any steps. Teuton, Mayan or Chinese starts could differ.
Build your two houses right on the shores of the explored section, as to maybe find your sheep and send out your scout. Put one villager off the house with two builders after it is more than 50% built and try to villager-scout your sheep if you have not found them. Unless you still have not found your sheep when your first villager is created, send your first few to sheeping. In the latter case, you will want to find them ASAP, keep your villager scouting up and keep your scout in a small circle so it takes him less time to go all around it.

2.2) Pop 7:
When you reach population 8, hopefully you will have found a good forest – wide, maybe on your backside to be safe and on an angle you can see well – and can immediately build your lumber camp.
After HAVING sent the next three villagers to chop wood, go get your first boar (yes, straight away) and build a house near it, loom after the boar lurer is created. A note on boars: they are hands down the quickest way to bring in food, so that is why you always want to get them early.
If you are viking, you should be able to get a dock up by villager 12 or 13, otherwise, as soon as you see your wood rise near 150 wood, send a forward villager to build a dock.

2.3) Placing your dock:
You would be foolish to think that you could get away with placing your dock anywhere on a shore and still find fish and be at good strategical position.
Immediately after HAVING found at least 6 sheep and one boar, scout your shores. Look for deep sea fish or at least 2-3 shore fish. Shore fish are much slower to gather for fishing ships than deep sea fish are, even at a great distance.
Be careful not to place your dock in a small bay or even a lake. Scout around your dock position to make sure there is wide are of sea ahead.
Usually, getting to your opponent through sea should not be a problem on any of the maps, but you will need to make sure on maps like Archipelago.
If you want to be aggressive, place your docks facing the enemy to save time.

2.4) After placing the dock:
People would think making boats in the dark age could slow you down and usually does. In fact, a well executed dark age boat start will save you time and save you villagers later on. If the enemy not built a dock in dark but opted for a mill, he will have to keep villagers on food gathering to maintain vilagerl production where as you should not.
After adding 4 or 5 more villagers to your wood cutting, commence putting all your villagers on fooding at your Town Center. Lure your second boar when appropriate.
You should have just enough wood cutters to keep up your fishing boat production, I usually have 5 or 6 by the time I’m ready to go Feudal, good enough to keep the food coming in during Feudal.
Don’t forget to house early. Creating ships means building your houses always 3 villagers early. Don’t sacrifice a house for a fishing ship.
A good time for hitting the Feudal button is around 9:00 minutes, HAVING around 29-30 pop. With Chinese even faster is possible.

2.5) A few exceptions and things to look out for:
Sometimes the standard food will not be enough if your fishing boats are not producing as they should, errors can occur and you could be missing some of your food.
You will have to build a mill. A mill will cost you the equivalent of almost one dock. Needless to say – it’s not recommended. But if you do have to mill, look at this way, you already have it for when your looking to pile up for you food to get to the Castle Age. Then, you might not have the wood to build a mill and produce your navy.
Scout enemy shores. Find his docks if he has any. If the enemy has no docks on a map where big galley rushing wars are expected (and you must be certain, maimin_matty built his docks on my side the other day – tricking me INTO believing he was going for an all land attack since I couldn’t seem to find his docks), then you must adjust your economy accordingly. Either go for a land Feudal Force, boat boom or defend until you can Castle.

2.6) While going Feudal:
Send 4 or 5 (bad gold spot) gold miners FROM your fooders and the rest of them go to wood cutting. Building a second lumber camp can help if your first one is getting crowded – sometimes an additional one will not make a big difference.
Your objective is to get at least 3 docks up, hopefully 4. How do you know if your going to build 3 docks or 4 ?
After building your third dock (you really should build no less), evaluate your stockpiles. Think, look how fast wood is coming in, know how much warships will cost you. Now as long as you can produce ships for 3 docks in feudal after HAVING built 4 docks, you’ve made the right choice. That’s what will happen most of the times, the fourth dock won’t come INTO play until later.

3.) The Galley Rush:

You’ve been waiting for it. Here comes the big moment, you’re pumped up and ready to kick ass. You know where the enemy docks are already and you’ve begun galley production. A bit on the art (literally) of galley warfare, some important things to remember, and getting yourself to the Castle Age.

3.1) The Art of the galley war:
If you think you can win an encounter with another army simply by HAVING a slightly bigger one, think again. Like all other units, galleys require heavy management. You will learn with time and experience many “tricks• to improve your galley warfare skills, but here are just a few.
Choosing the flank FROM which you attack. If you attack the enemy FROM a side he does not expect you to come from, you will most probably get an advantage.
Using boat formations, if the enemy is facing you when you attack has an army of equal size as yours, the outcome should be around equal. If you manage to attack an enemy formation FROM the sides, assuming the boats don’t form a square, your entire army will be shooting at only two or three boats, harming you less than if you were to attack the front row of the formation.
Always move around using the patrol stance. I can’t figure out why many good players are not using this technique. As soon as your boats get within firing range of enemy, they will fire. Using the aggressive stance, your boats will not shoot down anything that comes in your way. You will save a lot of boats using this, especially if your enemy hasn’t read this.
You can also lure enemy ships near a tower or bigger army. If you know where the enemy is hiding out, try sending one boat out and bring it back as soon as some ships start to go for it. If you sent it back at the right time, a few boats FROM the enemy formation will have followed it and will die easily to your bigger army.
Adjust your formation. Simply logic, put your ships with less hit points in the back and the ones with more in front. HAVING 15 boats with ¾ HP is much better than HAVING 10 with full HP. Repairing your boats is something I don’t see enough, people are just usually too lazy to do it (me included).
Movement during battles can help you also if you are quick enough. If there isn’t much lag and you are quick enough, draw back a ship that the enemy already started to attack (sometimes the enemy will even manually target a ship) and the enemy formation will follow it unless told otherwise.

3.2) Important things to remember while galley rushing:
House at least 5 pop early. Your TC will be creating units as well as your many other docks, make it an automatic reaction to build houses when you see your pop 5 under.
Tower if you have any doubt that you will lose ground. The tower can hold back a large number of ships until your ready to fight again.
Manage your boats. You can save countless amounts of ships if you just take care of them correctly. Always stay in formation, a lone boat will die in seconds if you don’t place it well or have one or two in front your navy.
Smart thinking will be important. As soon as you see an enemy navy will destroy yours, move away, don’t take chances, your enemy will just get stronger.
Building additional docks. Now is the time to throw up that fourth dock if you haven’t already. Building a fifth dock is possible, I’ve done it before and taken the seas, but it will make it just too hard for you to make farms and eventually make it to castle at the same time. Try it if both players are heavily committed to the sea only.

3.3) Upgrades:
There are many important economic and military upgrades to get in the Feudal Age. You obviously want to get wood cutting upgrade as soon as you can. Usually I can fit it in after creating my first three galleys and cueing up the second three, so I know I at least a few galleys to protect myself if I have to stop production because of the wood cost of the upgrade.
Wheelbarrow is a little more touchy, unless you’re vikings of course. Here is the thing: it takes a while to notice the wheelbarrow HAVING it’s effect, so getting it immediately in Feudal won’t help you straight away, but will cost you a lot right then. Villagers are probably better for you as for the amount of villagers you have, a few will make a big difference. There are often periods of calm during galley wars, were players aren’t sure who has the bigger army, try to get it during then. I wouldn’t doubt it’s utility, for the amount of time you will be in Feudal, every advantage you can get will help you a lot.
The fletching upgrade is also a must. Don’t think of it as costing you resources, think of it as saving resources; less ships dead. Don’t waste any time in getting your blacksmith up, fletching would definitely come before extra docks, in my opinion.
The gold mining upgrade is totally useless. Very rarely will you run out of gold, unless you had problems assigning your villagers or had a really bad gold spot.
Try to get horse collar before you build any farms.

3.4) If you won the galley war:
Start mining stone right away, even if you’re walled. Sneaky villagers could transport over and the enemy could being a land feudal war. With some stone handy, you are ready to defend.
Place your warships on enemy coasts as to prevent any dock building.
Achieve your goal, as listed in the introduction.

3.5) If you lost the galley war:
Ok, you’re doing bad, but not all is lost. Try to get towers up on the shore and start building ships again. If you’re lucky, the enemy will no longer be making any since he thinks he was won it.
Start a land attack if you can walk or transport over. You will most probably catch the opponent by surprise. If he is not ready for it, you could win it right then.
Try to get to castle to make your come back.

3.6) Getting yourself to Castle:
As soon as you have sufficient wood cutters and a wood surplus begins to amass, start getting farms up. Of course, you’re going to need a mill before that, send around 6 berry pickers to your mill. Getting Fishing boats is another possibility, but is rare that you will be able to do so.
Reaching the Castle Age is extremely important, War Galleys absolutely own Galleys, let’s not even get INTO Fireship ownage.
If you are losing, a quick castle time could win it back for you. You can now launch a land attack, boom or make more warships.

4.) Conclusion:
Galley rushing is fun and exciting. Go ahead and start playing some water maps and find out that AOK has more to it to simple land FLUSHes. Become a more complete player and prove the “one map wonder• myth wrong.
Of course, I do not take credit for “inventing• the galley rush. If you choose to flame me because you think I am doing this for fame and glory, so be it. This is merely an in-depth explanation of its execution.

I hope this article was worth the read. If you have any comments post them and I will be more than happy to post my rebuttal. Let’s move on to the actual Galley Rush.