Iroquois water boom

[bwinner]

Hi everyone !

Yesterday I have played a game vs @giveuanxiety for his challenges https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=15887.

In this game I was playing a build that I have discovered a few days ago. I am not sure if this build is good or not, but I was quite succesful with it during my tests, even if I don't think it fits with my playstyle. @Lukas_L99 asked me if I can right some explanations about it, so here it is :



The idea :
This build exploits 2 special iro designs : the age 1 travois will build a dock (200w value instead of 125 for a house) and your house grant you 25 pop.


The deck :
You can do this with a standard 1v1 deck, but preferably you want some water options in case you need to defend it and a bit more upgrades than usual because you will probably end playing late game with a big eco.
Here is the deck I use :







The build :

Age 1 :
Gather your crates, then put all vils on until you need more to produce more vils. Send your travois to build a dock, possibly in a sneaky position so that the opponent doesn't scout too easy.
Build 5 or 6 fishing boats and then stop chopping wood (all vils to )


Age 2

From here, you have 2 options : Play colonial or play forteress


Use the fast age up, you can be up arround the time you would be with a standard iro play and a slow age up (a bit more than 4:30), without the crates, but with a much stronger economy.
I think it's good to add even more economy, so build a market in transition, ship 5v, build a TP and a WH with your age up travoi. Then you probably want build a stable and ship crates/units to time your attack.
I am not very sure how exactly you should play it, so I hope you will help me to find the correct way to do it


You could start like for the colonial play and then age up at some point, but what I like to do is using the crates age up (your age 2 will be very late, but your age 3 will be faster).
Build a TP and some more fishing boat+up them during transition. Once in age 2, ship 5v, build a market, build a WH with the travoi. Switch as many fishing boats as possible to
Then ship 400f/200g/200w and go up to age 3 with the fast age up.
You should be up arround 8min with 40 villagers (a better player can probably to better bc I suck at macroing)




Reccording :
Vs IA

[EP5 SP] bwinner[IR] vs Reine Élisabeth[BR] - ESOC Hudson Bay.age3yrec

(955.51 KiB) Downloaded 61 times

ESOC Hudson Bay

Rules: Supremacy (1v1)

Version: ESOC Patch 5.0

Length: 12 minutes

Reine Élisabeth

(stln) bwinner (PR 30)

Some comments :

-This build is in progress, it would be nice if some top players could try it and give me a feedback about how to improve it.
-Don't use the age 3 version vs civ that could be aggressiv in age 2, because you will be too slow.
-Try to hide your dock and don't make it obvious that you are doing it (the later the opponent figures out, the better)

[Hazza54321]

Lol

[giveuanxiety]

prob one of those strats that is cheese and can work first time when opponent not expect it. but after someone sees it once it becomes a lot easier to beat. opponent could just rush then would force iro to wall kynesie style or just lose to rush.

[Kaiserklein]

I think this build can actually work in some match ups, provided that you don't reach colonial later than 5:30 (and even that might be too late against some civs). Thank you for the write-up @bwinner

I'll add some comments here.
- Don't go for this build if you don't have a wood start, it's just too slow and painful. It delays your fishing boats, so you lose quite a bit of food on top of the extra 100w you need to chop, and you age up super late.
- How do you deal with 2 caravels, if your opponent scouted you? I doubt it's possible to spam enough canoes in time to answer 2 caras just popping in your face. I guess you can try to dance for fertility and quickly produce canoes inside of your dock, but still I don't believe in it. Maybe on some maps if you see your opponent has caras in deck it's worth building the wh next to your dock (unless you laced you dock in a corner)?
- If you're playing colonial, you're gonna need 2 buildings early on indeed, to spend all these res. I'd probably timing push with the 3rd colonial shipment or something (like 5v 600w 4 kanyas), because timing earlier is inefficient (you'd probably have a better timing by just doing a normal build and using the age up crates anyway) and timing later sounds really passive, though it depends on the match up. But you need to scout a lot because you might get pushed yourself if opponent realizes you've been water booming.
- If you're playing fortress, having all fishing boats on food and sending 600g sounds better. Maybe you can even ship 5v after 600g (you probably have the 1200f in time with good macro), and still have a shipment ready in fortress because you aged so late to colo. Or you might skip 5v if you're under pressure. The TP should be the first thing you do in transition to colo.

[deleted_user0]

the best build for this shit is probably 3v-3 fish boats-5v and slow age. Aim for 24/25 and overpop ur fish boats so u r 27/25. Then gather for fish upgrade and TP (going for more boats not so good cause u would need a house first. I think crates are kinda pointless when ur gathering is already so good.

this is with 100w start. without its hopeless.

[Kaiserklein]

3 fishing boats sounds like a shit shipment when you have a dock and can pay 210w to prod them instead. I think it's better to keep the shipment for colonial

[Garja]

You dont need to do crazy stuff for an Iro fish boom.
Just use trwvois for dock while chopping 25w for the house. Then chop more wood for 2nd dock etc. Using 600w for boats. You aim for just a little fish boom while doing some FF. It is just an alternative to stagecoach semi so it works better on no TP maps.

[Gendarme]

Reine Élisabeth

[deleted_user0]

3 fishing boats sounds like a shit shipment when you have a dock and can pay 210w to prod them instead. I think it's better to keep the shipment for colonial

I highly disagree. The cost sounds like a not really good argument, with same logic 3 vills is only 300f shipment. And because of the population limit it takes much more to first chop wood for a house and then train them. Versus popping them straight to gathering. Instead, you can gather for TP and fish upgrade. You should have a colonial shipment anyway when you age up so those boats are going to gather for a looong time. And they are better than vills on mine pretty soon.

[Mitoe]

3 fishing boats sounds like a shit shipment when you have a dock and can pay 210w to prod them instead. I think it's better to keep the shipment for colonial

I highly disagree. The cost sounds like a not really good argument, with same logic 3 vills is only 300f shipment. And because of the population limit it takes much more to first chop wood for a house and then train them. Versus popping them straight to gathering. Instead, you can gather for TP and fish upgrade. You should have a colonial shipment anyway when you age up so those boats are going to gather for a looong time. And they are better than vills on mine pretty soon.

Doesn't it have more to do with the fact that you will most likely be age 2 in a minute or less from the time you send them? It seems better to save the shipment for 5v or 600w, I think. You don't even need to send an eco card; any colonial shipment will still be worth hundreds more than 3 boats, and 3 boats would take 4 - 6 minutes to pay off compared to a Colonial shipment.

[deleted_user0]

Case 1: Send 3 boats at around 3:30. Have a shipment in colonial anyway (cause of TP)
Case 2: Skip 3 boats and replace it with the 2nd colonial card at 6:00

That is a 150 second difference. Which equals to 225 gold. And 3 boats + 225 gold is not a bad deal right? Compared to i.e 600g.

[Mitoe]

Case 1: Send 3 boats at around 3:30. Have a shipment in colonial anyway (cause of TP)
Case 2: Skip 3 boats and replace it with the 2nd colonial card at 6:00

That is a 150 second difference. Which equals to 225 gold. And 3 boats + 225 gold is not a bad deal right? Compared to i.e 600g.

I'm not sure you actually have a shipment ready. Maybe. That TP is going to be up very very late. Plus you kind of sacrifice the versatility of your build like this, and it ends up being very all in.

If you're going for this build you will likely already be ahead on eco and growing, and you can just drop that shipment on a different eco shipment anyway if you don't end up needing to use the card on units or something.

[princeofkabul]

Same principle with 4v shipment as brits, sounds good theory, but in practise it sucks.

Like mitoe said, it's just takes away the versatility of your build.

[bwinner]

Needs to be tested, but I think mitoe is right : your TP will be late and you don't have any XP boost (not like when you shrine boom or VC) so I think it will be late.

[Kaiserklein]

3 fishing boats sounds like a shit shipment when you have a dock and can pay 210w to prod them instead. I think it's better to keep the shipment for colonial

I highly disagree. The cost sounds like a not really good argument, with same logic 3 vills is only 300f shipment. And because of the population limit it takes much more to first chop wood for a house and then train them for 210w. Versus popping them straight to gathering. Instead, you can gather for TP and fish upgrade. You should have a colonial shipment anyway when you age up so those boats are going to gather for a looong time. And they are better than vills on mine pretty soon.

That's true only if you don't idle your dock. But you said you would stop making boats in transition to go for a TP instead, and ship the 3 boats. That's why I'm saying, you could just train them. Imo it's as bad as idling your tc for 3 vils and shipping 3 vils, in which case yes it's basically a 300f card, plus the bit of extra gathering you get because they pop earlier. And yes having to chop for the house sucks, but you'll anyway have to chop for it in colo.
If you didn't stop training boats, then it would be 3 extra boats (like the 3 extra vils), which is better. Though it's still probably better to just keep the shipment for colonial either way.

[Garja]

Saving wood for TP and using the resulting xp for the boats is just a less efficient way than directly using the wood for boats and saving the shipment for extra xp. The extra resources gathered by the 3 boats (do they actually arrive before 3 boats are produced?) certainly doesn't compensate the loss in resources from sending an extra age1 shipment compared to a colonial one.
In fact, adding a TP in a fish boom build feels weird in general. Unless you get some good treasures you have to wait for the wood shipment most of times (with any civ) to drop a TP. That is if you want to maximize the boom with 2 docks.
If 1 dock 1 TP then ye, it is possible but one can question the utility of such fish boom as it will be clearly weaker.
Even in this last case I would just save the shipment and use the spared resources/xp to make the build a bit more flexible/safer.

[pecelot]

Reine Élisabeth is PR15 at best, test it with some better players before posting

[deleted_user0]

The idea is to gather the TP after starting to age up, being 27/25. From there you want to probably take +15% up (trains slow) and meanwhile make a TP and house. I can't see why would you need a 2nd dock, optimal fish boat count being around 20 on a 4-whale map. Maybe 2nd dock if you think your opponent will contest the water.

Alternatively, you could ship the +25% fish upgrade. The idea is that since you will be aging super slow I think it's not efficient stacking cards.

[tabben]

nice write-up bfisher

[Garja]

I was assuming normal age up time (wouldn't use travois for dock unless it's 100w start).
In any case as much as the fish up is an efficient use of time (tho you're housing yourself on purpose to make it look efficient) it is still very unefficient res wise, since it's inferior to just make an additional boat before 7 boats.
Anyway, going with the same logic 300w is probably a better shipment than 3 fishing boats.

[Kaiserklein]

Btw when you're aging up so slowly and could get pressured, you might be happy to have an extra unit shipment to defend. Committing to 3 fishing boats is like, really, really greedy.

[CaRp]

I would make it a little more aggressive
Military shipping can be exchanged for cavalry, depending on the enemy civ.
 
If you go economy, it is better to weaken the rival economy. killing their villagers or their population house. In other words, distract him as much as you can while you up eco. I would not go for your tc because if you fail you will have wasted a lot for nothing (If you think you can (with 100% security), do it)
 

https://youtu.be/FD-y8iVVy2A

[bwinner]

I have just tested @Kaiserklein 's version of this build : it sounds insane, I was in age 3 with 37v, a TP and market up in 7:05
In the end, it simply speeds up the build of 1min. I think you can have an insane early age 3 with this.

[EP5 SP] bwinner[IR] vs Reine Isabelle[SP] - ESOC Hudson Bay.age3yrec

(942.14 KiB) Downloaded 40 times

ESOC Hudson Bay

Rules: Supremacy (1v1)

Version: ESOC Patch 5.0

Length: 8 minutes

(stln) bwinner (PR 30)

Reine Isabelle

Btw a couple of other though about it :
-I agree that you can't do that on a gold start, though it mayb be ok with food start
-You can use the house big button after 7min to trade 250f+250g vs 500w (btw why don't everybody do that in any iro game ?)
-I will edit my initial post once I have some more definitiv versions of it
-stuff @CaRp and @Garja talk about maybe good Idk, but that's entirely different strategy so it's a bit off topic to me. I think you missunderstood my topic (title was probably missleading). I am not explaining how to water boom as iro in general, just showing this specific opening that is very different from usual builds.

[Kaiserklein]

What's my version?

[bwinner]

The version with 600g 1st age 2 shipment