Kaiserklein wrote:That's a pretty neat build, well done. I'll just throw in a few extra random remarks :
- Early on, SW on gold / vils on food is both good for resources balance (roughly what you need to constantly prod vils and uhlans) and a clever tasking of your vils : sw are bad at herding because they have a shite shooting animation, and everytime they walk it's twice the waste it would be with a normal vil. I'll add that you usually get raided more on food, and SW are more vulnerable to raids, so better keep them at the mine.
- Try to always build stuff with your SW, it's faster. Also, building houses with SW from the gold mine is nice because you can protect your gold mine with houses (you basically turtle).
- You actually should task all 3 SW to wood/coin when you have a 300f start. 2 reasons :
1) You won't lack food anyway, so better get your infrastructures up asap : having hunt dogs earlier means more food income earlier, having house earlier when you TP means you can ship 2 sw earlier. Also you want to build your stuff before you get your first shipment because you will get xp from them, which means 2 SW shipment even faster.
2) As I said, vils are better at herding, so if you can avoid herding with a SW and instead wait patiently for your vil to pop ouf tc, do it.
On 200f start though, I agree, you have to task 2 SW on food immediately.
- About 200f 200w start : this one is a bit weird. On maps where you get a good TP (like great plains) you will have your 2 SW shipment before your house is up (because you have to gather food for vils, so you get house later). DO NOT train vils until you reach 10/10 population. I know it sounds safer, but it's bad. The best way to do this is to send 2 SW asap and overpop at 13/10 population. With a good macro, you will get your house up in time or almost, which means you almost won't have any TC idle time BUT you will have 2 SW much earlier, which means you will age up earlier.
- If you have 100 gold start but you don't have any gold treasure, I advise you to sell 100 food for 75 gold instead of actually mining the gold. This is actually true for any other civ. Why ? Because with hunt dogs, 75 gold is worth 115 food. So basically, you pay 100f for something worth 115f, so you get 15f for free. I'll also add that it will be easier to macro since you get 75g instantly (the exact amount of gold you need !) and you also won't have to move vils between gold and food, which means even more resources saved.
Do it as late as possible though : try to scout the map for gold treasures, and only if you didn't find any of those when you're going to need a house, sell food - buy wood - build the house.
- I personally almost always do something on 100w 300f start. I consider you will almost always get a treasure to help you anyway. In some match ups you can go early TP on 300f 100w start, like vs japan, but it means 18 age up, so I usually go market on that start. For example, if you find 50 gold, you will have 700+ food after the 17th vil comes out, which is very decent. Without treasure you're most likely to age up with 18 vils, so in that case it's probs better to not make a market.
- You shouldn't build a house during transition. You usually chop 125w and keep them, then build a stable asap with 125w + 400w age up, then build 3 houses, and you have 25w left for when 700w comes. If you don't plan on sending 700w, then you can chop only 100w, but keep it to get the stable up faster.
- Which brings us to my other point : 3 sw 700w 700g semi-ff is almost always better than 3 sw 700g. It's just more versatile : you can get barracks up in colonial, which means you can get bows or dops out if you need to ; you get more houses, which means you can also prod more uhlans and/or ship 8 bows if you need to, for a good defense (with 3 sw 700g semi, you would be housed) ; you can even use 200w from those 700w to prod 5 bows ; and, finally, you will be able to get steel traps easily. You will age up around 8:30 instead of 7:40, but honestly it's worth it, especially since your semi is much safer that way.
- In case you still want to do a 3 sw 700g semi : don't send 700w after 700g ! It means you won't have a shipment ready when you hit fortress, which is very dangerous, especially as germany, a civ that relies so much on units shipments. it's also a bit sad because you would be able to ship 1000w not long after anyway. If you feel like it sucks to chop all that wood instead of having a neat 700w, well then, go 3 sw 700w 700g semi.
- You should probs have researched gang saw while aging to colonial. But it doesn't matter much anyway.
- Vet uhlans are not always a priority. You do need ot get them vet early enough, but in some match ups (those where you don't mass a lot of uhlans, for example against spain or france) I'd rather mass more skirms instead.
About what shipments you should send, I'd say 1000w first when your opponent also aged to 3 (unless it's a very aggressive age 3 civ like spain), then blackriders, because those 2 shipments are the best you have (blackriders are your best anti-cav). If your opponent is pressuring you when you age up, I often ship 3 WW, because he's likely to have a lot of cav (germany is weak against cav) and overall WW is super good against musk cav. 8 skirms are risky, especially if you already called mm, which is likely if your opponent has been pressuring you. If your opponent is staying colonial but isn't too aggressive (so he's probably booming), I guess 8 skirms is your best bet.
- I like the 3 cav semi with steel traps, it can indeed work against japan, brits and spain. Also consider 3 sw / 700w naked FF against those civs.
I'd advise more cav against China and ports though, you want to abuse their early weakness.
- 3 sw 700w 700g indeed. Actually can be used in almost all match ups. I'm usually not a fan of the 2nd TP though, you will build it just before you age up, which is when you're weakest, so you're likely to lose that TP really fast. But it's still an option against boomy civs, can even be a stagecoach on some maps.
But 3 sw 700g is still a very decent build, and you wrote it nicely anyway, I'm just nitpicking.
noissance wrote:Thank you, i was always doing naked ff as germany (2SW 3SW 700g) at 6:30, but a semi seems like it's worth it.
Against civs that you might not be able to raid, like spain brits japan, you might want to do naked ff. 3 sw 700g naked ff only works with an early TP though : without early TP, 700g will come too late and your age up will be delayed.
