Age of Empires Strategy:Crush or Fast Castle

This is one of the most popular strategy used these days in Age of Empires and is based upon the Knight Rush.

1.Civs favorable for fast castle strategy:-The cavalry civilizations are favorable with huns being hot fav.Particularly those civs which have an advantage of research are better.Examples are franks;their knights are 20% stronger and they have free farm research.Huns save wood as they dont make houses,vikings have free wheelbarrow ,so faster vils,persians have faster work rate etc.

2.Timing:-The ideal castle age timing is around 16 mins.I have seen ppl doing castle age as early as 13 mins but its not of any use.


3.The Fast Castle Strategy:-

HCCCCbuild 2 houses(1 house with 1 vil and the other with 2 vils)

Scout:-Explore with scout in circles.As soon as you find 4 sheep,bring 1 to TC for eating,keep others for exploring.

>>Keep clicking vils unless you have 6 on sheep and 3 on wood.

Click Loom:-While loom is being done build a lumber camp with the 3 vils on wood.

10th vil on boar,build a house near boar and then lure it.Make sure that the 6 vils having sheep finish it before they hunt the boar.

Click vils on bush and build a mill near it.

16th vil:-Goes to lure the second boar and builds a house.

17th vil goes for wood

vils upto 20 go for sheep

21st,22nd,23rd are farmers.

24th and 25th go to mine gold.

Click Feud:-While going feud you can either go for hunting with 4 vils or go for farming according to your civ.Make sure you have 300 wood as soon as you reach feud.

Feudal Age:-Once in feudal age click 5 vils on gold.

With 2 vils build a smithy and a market.
As soon as you have 30/30 you will be in a position to click castle.

While advancing do the lumber camp research and build one barrack and 2 stables.

Take care that you have enough food and gold so that you can take out atleast 4 knights(2 from each stable).

Castle age:-Once in castle click on 4 knights and build a TC near your main gold mine or your lumber camp.

Knights:-They are very costly,so take care with their attack,use them to raid the enemy's base,dont go near to his TC and keep
away from spearmans.

4.Precautions to be taken:-As your are going fast castle you are vulnerable to flush(Feudal Rush) and trush(Tower rush).Use the house bug to detect them and build walls wherever necessary.

5.Effective use:-Dont let your knights idle around.If you are successful in confining your opponent near his TC,then make siege and destroy his TC with onager or ram.

6.Aztecs and Mayans:-These 2 civs dont have knights.Explore the option of Eagle warrior.They are much cheaper so can be made more in number.Although they are weaker than knights they are very effective in raiding.For these two civs lay more emphasis on gold than food.And the important research is the first smithy research.For more info read The Eagle Warrior.

Age of Empires Units:The Eagle Warrior

Hit points:100(Mayans),60(Aztecs)
Attack:9+4(Mayans),9+8(Aztecs)
High armor but low pierce armor

A unit which is available exclusively to only two civilizations, namely Aztecs and Mayans which is very powerful in raiding and destroying buildings.

Where to be used:- Acts as a counter against all types of cavalry(except Cataphract).Very very effective in raiding.So its acts as a counter to those civs with cavalry(like Huns and Spanish etc.).

When to be used:-In dark age itself these two civs have an advantage because of its increased line of sight.Most people exploit the fact that this unit is extremely cheap.It can be very effective if you are pursuing a fast castle strategy so that you can make more no. of eagle warriors than knights.So my advice would be;hit fast castle age and start pumping eagle warriors from 2-3 barracks.Combination of an onager and 10 eagles can win the game for you in 23-25 mins.

In a long game:-Important researches to be done include the smithy ones,the elite research and either el dorado(Mayans) or Garland Wars(Aztecs) whichever is applicable.Use eagle warriors with the combination of arbalests and monks for an effective army.

Additional strategies in Age of Empires:-If you have aztecs then you should go for a drush strategy with 4 militia + 1 eagle(scout) in the dark age.Reach feudal age in around 17 mins then castle age in 21-22 mins.Then raiding with eagle warriors will surely win the game for you.

Precautionary measures:-As you are doing a fast castle you are vulnerable for flush or trush. So make sure you either wall your resource points,make towers or go for a drush strateggy(Attack is the best defence remember).

Counters for eagle warriors:-The best counter is champions.Other counters are special units like huskarls,samurai,berserk,teutonic knight etc.The only cavalry unit which can help is Cataphract.Ranged units like arbalest and skirmishers also help.


Comments and improvements are invited