The Asian Dynasties

I. Introduction


Heya, you german players may sometimes come to a point where fast forting kinda appears as a very dangerous solution against most civilizations. You know, while at lower levels your opponent won't really scout you, better players will always try to see what you're up to. This means they'll analize your deck carefully, wander around your towncenter while you age up in order to see if you're gathering gold, etc.

But in the mean time, colonial warfare can look like a tough thing to do, especially with germany, because you don't have any real military advantage there.
Here is the objective for this guide : help you understand how colonial warfare works, give you a few viable build orders, suggest some very good decks, and maybe help you raise your cuetech
I hope you enjoy this, and don't hesitate if you have any suggestions, critics, go there.

Kaia

This post has been edited by Kaia: Mar 18 2007, 22:01 PM

II. Your colonial army

Here is a comprehensive summary of the troops you're most likely to use in a colonial conflict.
I've on purpose skipped the doppel, the uhlan and the landsknescht, because they're being made redundant because they're either slow/weak/too expensive


1. The crossbowman








Crossbowman (Barracks)
Cost 40 Food 40 Wood
Age Available Colonial
Hit points 100
Pop. Use 1
Resists -20% vs. Ranged
Speed 4
LOS 20
Range Damage 18
Range Damage vs. Light Cavalry / Eagle Knight 27
Range 2 to 16
Melee Damage 7
Melee Damage vs. Light Cavalry / Eagle Knight 10
Siege Damage 8
Siege Range 6

very spammable
easy to micro ( you can hit & run to increase your combat efficiency, which is great )
decent dmg output to pretty much everything

weak
poor range, makes hit&running difficult sometimes
dmg output to H.I is kinda low, which makes a straight musket spam quite difficult to push back.


2 The Pikeman









Role HandInfantry, Pikeman, Infantry, HeavyInfantry
Cost 40 Food 40 Wood
Age Available Colonial Age
Hit points 120
Pop. Use 1
Resists -10% vs. Hand
Speed 5
LOS 12
Melee Damage 8
Melee Damage (Cover) 4
Melee Damage vs. Cavalry 40
Melee Damage vs. Abstract Infantry 28
Siege Damage 32
Siege Damage (Cover) 16
Siege Range 6


like the Xbow, it's cheap, and very spammable
very good at what its designed for ; tearing cavalry apart that is.
decent 5 speed, makes it shine in early game as a mobile meatshield, while your xbows unleash hell

crap against anything else. I mean, a villie in melee mode > pikeman

3. The Renegado







Cost 90 Gold
Age Available Colonial
Hit points 110
Pop. Use 6
Resists -30% Ranged Damage
Speed 4
LOS 22
Range Damage 40
Range Damage vs. Heavy Infantry / Light Cavalry / Eagle Knight 60
Range 0 to 18
Melee Damage 12
Melee Damage vs. Heavy Infantry / Light Cavalry / Eagle Knight 18
Siege Damage 24
Siege Range 6


cost efficient
good range & damage

very pop heavy
hard to micro
slow to train
not on every map ( go there to check the maplist )

Conclusion :

Even though your most common unit choice will be a crossbowman / pikeman spam, you will sometimes try to go for renegados in order to harass, repell harasses, and go for a delayed ff.
Whatever you choose, keep in mind this one thing : the german units you get in age2 aren't great. What's great is the fact that they're backed up by a solid economy. Add a decent micro, and you can do some sweet games...

This post has been edited by Kaia: Mar 18 2007, 20:28 PM

III. The decks


As i said, you need a good economy to get a xbow / pike spam going. Here are multiple example of decks in order to get that. You'll find the following decks to be quite flexible, and even the heavy colonial deck can turn into a decent ff deck in case you see an opportunity for you to do it, or if you gotta do it to keep up with your opponent. That's just because i like flexibility a lot, feel free to adapt your decks and stress out colonial warfare more if you want to

You'll also notice i chose melee infantry upgrade cards over cavalry cards. Once again, this is up to you. But from my personal experience, most civs can stop upgraded czapka uhlans, whereas its a LOT harder to stop 4.95 speed doppels when they got 3 combat cards + arsenal upgrades This is just a late-game preference

Finally, if you wonder what is the TWC deck all about, it is designed to take advantage of the fact that native civilizations don't have a hard counter for mercs like euro civs do ( spies, agents, assassins.)

And if you get lucky, FEAR the 1700~ HP mamlukes ;-)


Heavy Colonial



Heavy colonial sea



delayed ff


delayed ff sea




twc ( vs native civilization )


twc sea ( vs native civilization )



This post has been edited by Kaia: Mar 18 2007, 21:37 PM

IV. Build Orders

You'll notice 2 categories in this chapter :
. the 17 ageup builds
. the 18 ageup builds

Know best what civilization you face, and choose yours wisely. I strongly recommend you an early 17 ageup vs civilizations like Sioux or Ottos 18 ageup are slightly slower, but are also very viable against most civs.
Keep in mind that a delayed age up is still risky, but can prove efficient if your opponent sit back and tried to get map control or mass troops. Hence why i volontarily did not mention 20pop ageups, because they're way too risky and can be stopped very easely in my opinion.


A. Regular early 1 barracks - xbow defense

Discovery :
. All settlers on food and Go for a regular 17 Pop age up.

Cards shipped : 2 Settlers Wagon

. As soon as you hit the age up button ( you will chose the Quartermaster politician ), switch all 5 Settlers Wagons and 2 settlers to wood
. Build a houseand a Trading post while aging up. When you're done building the trading post, get those 2 regular wood settlers to food.
. If you have a spare 50 gold, build a market and research tier one food / wood upgrades
. If not, build another house anyways.
. By now you should be aging up so collect the 400 wood crates as soon as possible.
. Your first shipment doesnt have to always be the same. If you feel that you aged up quite early compared to your foe, maybe you want to go for the 3 SW card. If you're spotting trouble ahead ( which means in most cases ), i suggest you go for the 9crossbows card first.
. Get a barracks up and start queuing crossbows


B. Variation of 'A'.

if you start with 2 wood crates, collect the food crates, get enough food to queue 2-3 settlers, then get the 3SW to wood in order to get 250wood and build a Trading post.
Then get another 100 wood and get a house up.
Get back those 3SW to food asap and age up with 18 settlers.

By doing this, you'll gain a lot more xp, which is great since you're Germany, and as you know, you get everyshipment 14% slower than the average.


C.Renegado harass.


Discovery :
. All settlers on food and Go for a regular 17 Pop age up.

Cards shipped : 2 Settlers Wagon

. As soon as you hit the age up button ( you will chose the Quartermaster politician ), switch 5SW to wood.
. Collect enough 350 wood, build a house, and switch back those SW to gold.
. Send 1 SW to build a forward saloon.
. Hit colonial, build your saloon.
. Your next 5 produced settlers will chop wood.
. Collect the 400 wood crates asap, and build 3 houses and a market
. Your first shipment should be the palantine settlements no matter what.
. Start Queuing up Renegados. Abd get ready to raid your ennemy's vils. Renegados do great for that.
. The next card can either be 8xbows, 700 wood if you wanna stay in colonial and get pikes to protect the renegados, or 700gold if you wanna go fortress.

This build order has quite a few advantages : You can get a faster fortress time, Renegados also have a good Siege, which means that if at some point you feel like you're getting the upper hand, you can push forward and kill his barracks.

Side note : instead of getting a saloon up as you ageup, you can get a TP too. Both works, but since renegados train slow, i usually sacrifice the valuable extra xp to get an earlier harassment.

D.Dual Rax xbow spam.

Discovery : All settlers on food and go for a 18 Pop age up.

Cards shipped : 2 Settlers Wagon

. As soon as you hit the age up button (with the quartermaster politician), switch 5SW to wood.
. Gather 250 wood for a house and a market ( with tier1 hunting dogs upgrade ). Make sure you get the tier1 wood upgrade too !
. Switch back 4SWs to food, and keep 1 on wood.
. Hit colonial and send [700wood] right away.
. Collect the 400wood crates, build a barracks and start queuing Xbows.
. Meanwhile, switch back 5SW to wood.
. When the [700wood arrives], collect them, get a second rax and spam xbows from there too.
. From now on you'll set your villie rally point to wood for a little while.
. Your next card usually will be 9xbows to make a push, or 3SW if you just feel like toying with your opponent while you get a better economy.

The point of this BO is to gather a lot of food while aging up, so that you can benefit from the high wood input from your politician+shipment and therefore spam from 2 raxes at the same time.
This is a very decent build order in my opinion, but once you've passed the guidelines, the rest is up to you and how you do at macromanagement. That's why you prolly don't wanna use it if you're new to the game, because it is very likely that you'll have a tough time balancing your economy. And this is not good, because you have to keep focused on your micro there too.


This post has been edited by Kaia: Mar 18 2007, 21:43 PM

V. Replays

( to come )