The Fast Castle strategy is certainly not foolproof, and it's not going to work in every game. If you're rushed by the enemy, for example, you'll likely have to modify your plan to defend your base. Still, if the strategy can be pulled off, it sets you up for a strong mid and late game against any opponent.
There are multiple versions of the Fast Castle strategy out there, and you can certainly take these steps and mold them to your liking, especially if you're playing a civilization that comes with certain economic benefits. However, these are the basics to help you get to Castle Age in less than 17 minutes. Most civilizations start with three villagers and a scout, which is what we'll focus on here.
The Fast Castle strategy works best on land maps where you don't have to worry about a naval military, and it works best if you're left to your own devices. Keep in mind you won't be able to Fast Castle in every game, and you'll likely be interrupted at some point by aggression from the enemy.
Such a strategy does not work most of the time. You know what sometimes works? An all in men-at-arms rush. I will rush you, long before you could make so many units/fancy looking town on a very open map.
Like any strategy, being flexible in changing your approach and knowing when to switch compositions is key. A player who is skilled at rushing would pull it off much better than I can.
My elo currently fluctuates between 1000-1080, currently it works at the average player level.
There is much room for me to personally improve as well as for the strategy itself to improve; the timing for everything can be changed up to provide certain advantages, and other strategies can be mingled into it.
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the Age of Empires series. The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which conscript the player to specialized and story-backed conditions, as well as three additional single-player game modes; multiplayer is also supported.
The original Age of Empires was criticized for its artificial intelligence (AI), which did not "cheat" by attributing itself extra resources or using other techniques the human player could not, making it easier to defeat than in many other real-time strategy games.[37] For The Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios attempted to develop a more powerful AI system that still did not compromise by cheating. Industry veteran Mario Grimani led Ensemble Studios in the creation of the new system. The Age of Kings saw the introduction of a triggers system for its scenario editor. The triggers allow messages to be displayed, or actions to take place, based on pre-set criteria or "events".[38] The scenario editor was also improved by the new AI system. The AI and trigger systems interacted regularly in the single-player campaigns.[39]
The Age of Kings won GameSpot's Strategy Game of the Year in 1999,[69] and was a nominee for Game of the Year.[70] GamePower also named it Strategy Game of the Year, while PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World gave it Editor's Choice awards.[45] The editors of PC Gamer US named it their 1999 "Best Real-Time Strategy Game", and wrote that it "takes everything we know about the real-time strategy genre and polishes it, and polishes it, and then polishes it some more."[71] The Age of Kings won Strategy Game of the Year and Computer Game of the Year at the 2000 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards. It was also nominated for Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering.[72] IGN ranked The Age of Kings the 53rd best game of all time in 2005,[73] and the 10th best PC game of all time in 2007.[74] GameFAQs users placed it 56th in a poll of the best games ever.[75]
We will focus on putting your economy on a solid foundation, starting in the Dark Age. Then, after mastering this, you can adapt it to your personal preference or to a specific strategy. Mastering the Economy in AoEIn the AoE Dark Age, your priority is to first build villagers and get enough food and wood to create even more villagers. So right out of the gate, you need to build 2 houses to increase your population cap (unless playing as the Huns, of course, who do not need to build houses).While these houses are being constructed, you need to send your scout to find sheep. Then, once the houses are built, task all of your villagers to work on butchering these sheep. You will want to assign up to 6 villagers to do this.
At game start, the one separate villager builds a dock and gathers shorefish, the two other villagers build the Town Center. The aim is to keep creating both Fishing Ships (4-6) and villagers until you are ready to click up. Most civilizations want to play a fast Feudal Age water approach on Nomad, to deny the opponent's fish and secure your own. From Feudal Age onward, your follow-up strategy will depend on your civilization and the proximity of the opponent. A civilization with a good unique unit can go for a castle drop, if the opponent is close you can choose for prolonged Feudal Age archer play.
This mission gives you ten minutes to start your attack. How you want to deal with the enemy is up to you, but I focused on getting military buildings and houses up, getting a monk to grab the relic near Damascus, and then castle rushing Damascus itself. This strategy is only going to be successful if you convert elephants as soon as you can and then target the enemy trebuchets, but I found that since you had enough for two castles, getting them up and running in their base and then aggressively defending it with converted elephants was enough for victory. Hollowing out Damascus, you then want to cut across the Saracens and besiege Jerusalem. The main annoyance here are siege weapons and monks converting your troops, so I recommend knocking out at least those structures on your way to the Dome of the Rock. Once you've cleared out the immediate area, withdraw your siege units (so they don't attack the dome) and bring your pickled Emperor home to win this scenario and finish the campaign.
The best way I found to deal with the castles was not to approach it like a normal mission where you can just advance from south to north. Purple is going to be enough of a pain in the butt by himself, so you really don't want to add blue's troops to the mix (especially since they can quickly overwhelm you.) What will kill your chances of finishing this mission more than anything is having your forces get wiped out and being forced to rebuild. Thus, your strategy is to be hitting multiple castles at once with at least two groups of units supporting trebuchets, which can snipe the castles you need to kill from a safe distance without angering blue.
A lot of the guides for this achievement focus on attacking blue to start, but I found a better strategy for me was to damage or cripple the Alans before turning full attention on the Romans. The key to this mission is don't let the enemies build lots of castles. Rome especially basically always build their initial buildings in a few set places, but crucially if you kill or attack the villager building most structures, they will often cancel the structure entirely in the process, which you can use to your advantage to prevent them from ever actually getting castles up. Below is their central base once established (note the two castle sites in the center, and the two town centers:)
Patavium will be the first to build a wonder. Generally, you want to get the move on to the enemy base at least by the time they're halfway finished; if you wait longer you might have to do stuff like rush the villagers building it, and that will cost you a lot of units and slow your momentum later on. So take the time you have to pump out another trebuchet or two, upgrade your cavalry attack and defense, and train a few more cavalry units. You want to make sure you've upgraded to the Elite Tarkans before you start your assault; I worked on the archer and cavalry upgrades as I went. For each base, draw out and kill all the enemy units, then make your way in, destroying exterior towers, gates, production buildings, town centers, and castles on your way to the wonder if at all possible. Patavium I found expands outside their base a lot and when I steamrolled through them they didn't surrender, but that's fine. Once you've crippled their ability to wage war, turn to Aquileia. Repeat the same strategy (red will build a lot of siege units) but generally red and green will just surrender once their town centers, wonders, and castles are finished so you don't need to target their production capabilities. I used Padua and the southern area outside its gates as a forward base to continue eradicating the remainder of the town and build for facing Verona. The Frankish city has a lot of throwing axemen.
d0d94e66b7