Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

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Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

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Post by dansil92 »

Today I would like to share my latest build order with Iroquois! I call it the Fur Fortress: This strat is more or less exclusive to RE patch, as it does hinge on the early tradepost, but if you have a wood start on ep, with a 95 wood treasure in base, this will work just as well.

It all started from a little challenge I made myself to see the very fastest Fortress Age time I could possibly get. In this attempt I found that I actually had a halfway viable build order in general for Iroquois and really enjoyed the results of it. (For the record, France has my fastest fortress time on a non high crate map).

So lets get the basics down. This strategy requires a tradepost map, a lot of hunts in base, and a calculator. Yes a calculator :lol:

Essentially this strategy will get you to fortress age as Iroquois at 6:20-6:25, with a shipment ready, 70 population space available, a market, and enough spare wood to vet kanya horseman, or get a few market upgrades.

Another key to this strat is you will not get easily scouted that you are going ff. Your first shipment in colonial is 600 wood and no vills are on coin. Also, on RE everyone expects Iro to full on rush and usually plays very defensively, even shipping military first.

Lets get started.

To start, split vills to crates and gather wood asap, and run War Chief to tradepost immediately. build tp, transition vills to food. Your starting travois has a few options you need to be aware of- on a 300 wood start you can make a farm, chop 25 wood with vills and make a longhouse. This allows you to get the food upgrade later (similar to steel traps), gives a huge chunk of xp early, and generally nice to have in case of emergency (it also bumps your score up by 4 :uglylol: ). Otherwise just scout a bit and drop a longhouse on a coin or low crate start.

Age with 16 vills, no more no less. Wise Woman is your age up politician. You might have extra food and age with 900+ in bank. This is fine and beneficial. Your explorer should be hunting food, coin and xp treasures primarily, but wood wont hurt either.

When you have clicked the ageup and have approximately 200 food in bank, ship fur trade while still in discovery. Keep all 16 of your vills on food, if you found some livestock, eat it now. You need to get exactly the right amount of food in order to trade for coin when it arrives. This is calculated by:

(1000 coin) - (coin in bank) / 1.25

eg.
1000 coin - 130 coin in bank (treasure, coin start) / 1.25
= 696 food

to ensure you get the right amount or very close, cue a vill, 2 vills etc. at tc right before it arrives. you will have 100 coin from Wise Woman, so slightly undershooting for 900+ coin is fine. After it arrives you uncue the vills and continue to gather pure food to 1200 and age Fast with the messenger. Use your ageup travois to construct a War Hut, defensive or offensive according to what is most beneficial in your situation, map etc. Guarding a coin mine is always a good choice.

Meanwhile, upon aging to colonial, ship 600 wood. This, plus your 100 from age up is used to drop 3 longhouses and a market. This will provide the xp needed to get a shipment immediately when hitting fortress.

SO NOW

You need to quickly remacro your vills, lots to coin, a few to food, for Forest Prowler production, and Musket Rider production.

Immediately upon hitting fortress you should have a shipment ready, if not immediately, a few seconds later when your market and longhouses are built. The longest I've ever had to wait was 4 seconds (Farm start doesn't have this problem). First shipment is USUALLY 6 Kanya, but 5 muskets or 8 prowlers are equally good depending on exact matchup, etc. I prefer not to immediately send 5 musket riders, as the shipment is only worth 750 res, but sometimes its your best choice, and it is mostly coin so it isn't awful.

You also have an ageup travois- make a corral. Cue Veteran Kanya if you plan on using them (you really should) but if not, the 200 wood can be used for market upgrades, tier one farm upgrade, or vet tomahawks (not recommended but possibility), or another longhouse and placer mines

Cue a Forest Prowler or Musket Rider according to your scouting, matchup etc. Forest Prowlers are always a great option when it is before 7 minutes. If you are facing cav pressure you can stealth them immediately upon training to keep them safe.

Now, I can't tell you how to play exactly from here. But you can have a tp, 10 Forest Prowlers, 5 Musket Riders and 6 Vet Kanya before 8 minutes. Do with this as you will. Raiding a bit is a good start. From here, if you need more wood, you can ship 1200 res crates (an AMAZING shipment value), or Big Button on your longhouse after 10 minutes, for 500 wood for the cost of 250 food, 250 coin. Dancing for travois is a very efficient way to get plantations and farms, and Agrarian Ways can be a card to consider for a full eco boom vs someone who turtles up very hard, without having to chop any wood. You also have a 5 Cuirassier shipment available for 500 coin, and many strong infantry upgrade cards, 5 vills, etc.

So the idealized deck looks like this:

furfortressnoob.jpg




But for noobs with worse micro (like myself), and need some siege because that darn MS won't resign till his TC is down, I offer this deck as a good starter too:

furfortressideal.jpg



But replacing new ways, agrarian ways, with cards of your preference such as siege combat, 2 travois, 6 aenna... whatever makes you warm and fuzzy inside. :love:


A disappointing observation I made when developing this build was that my original intent was to send 5 vills instead of 600 wood, and use the longhouse big button for 500 wood, but apparently, the button reads "Delivers 0 Huge Crates of wood" until the 10 minute mark :sad: . This means your eco is a bit behind but you are always free to send 5 vills whenever you can , or add a second tp and stagecoach in order to eek out a little more eco.

Feel free to ask questions and I hope to get some recs up soon, but my gameplay is not exceptional as I am only PR20 and often misclick or just generally suck at micro.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by deleted_user »

I like this, very clever.

16 vills up to III is pretty rough though. I'd be interested in doing this into 1k/wood dock strat.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by Kazamkikaz »

LOool so funny i have a bo with france where i use this card but is for FI and is shit bo cause in slow speed i can click to age to industrial at 6min:50 to 7min not in normal speed vs human.
Can you share your fast france FF?
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don't take the fight"-Aizamk 2016
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by Outlaw0125 »

Aren't Kanya bad in fortress?
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by dansil92 »

deleted_user wrote:I like this, very clever.

16 vills up to III is pretty rough though. I'd be interested in doing this into 1k/wood dock strat.


16 vills in III is rough yeah, 5 vills as soon as you can get away with it is definitely my recommendation
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by deleted_user »

You don't want to send an age 2 shipment when in you're in 3 though.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by dansil92 »

deleted_user wrote:You don't want to send an age 2 shipment when in you're in 3 though.


I completely agree, but its sometimes needed. Like i said, i wanted to go five vills in transition but... ah well. 16 vills still keeps continuous forest prowlers so *shrugs*
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

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Post by pecelot »

I think you've gone a bit too fur
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by Kaiserklein »

I mean, in your example, you trade 696f for 870g. And 696f is worth approx 450g, if you have hunting dogs and no placer mines. So you get 870-450 = 420g out of fur trade. Why not just ship 600g instead?
Add to that the fact that it depletes your hunts faster, and that it's annoying to macro to have the right amount of food to trade...

I guess because you can ship fur trade in discovery it feels faster than waiting for 600g, but since you're aging up 16 and also still have to gather the wise woman crates, you're not gonna be faster to fortress in fact.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by jgals »

if you can get a second shipment somehow maybe I wonder if National unity would be a good thing to do. You ship that card, then for 250 coin you have access to 1TC and 10 vil (solves ur low vil count) , 10Forest +2 travois, 9 Kanye+healers 14 Tom +400 wood (OP)
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by Kaiserklein »

Iro's strength is in early game though, so shipping a card to get extra cards for cheap just makes you lose all your tempo
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LoOk_tOm wrote:I have something in particular against Kaisar (GERMANY NOOB mercenary LAMME FOREVER) And the other people (noobs) like suck kaiser ... just this ..
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by dansil92 »

Kaiserklein wrote:I mean, in your example, you trade 696f for 870g. And 696f is worth approx 450g, if you have hunting dogs and no placer mines. So you get 870-450 = 420g out of fur trade. Why not just ship 600g instead?
Add to that the fact that it depletes your hunts faster, and that it's annoying to macro to have the right amount of food to trade...

I guess because you can ship fur trade in discovery it feels faster than waiting for 600g, but since you're aging up 16 and also still have to gather the wise woman crates, you're not gonna be faster to fortress in fact.


It is quite a but quicker, and i swear iro has a penalty to mining in colonial. Either way, i know that 600 coin is more standard but i can never make that build work, this one feels very smooth, honestly try it out a couple times and see what i mean. If it doesnt work for you it doesnt work and thats fine, but ive found it to cone together really well
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by vividlyplain »

Remember it only takes about 90s for 16 vills to gather 1200 food. You'll have the 1200 food and 1000 coin before the coin crates could arrive and be gathered.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by Kaiserklein »

I mean it's just maths really. The build is inferior to shipping 600g.
I'll try both builds and post recs to compare.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by vividlyplain »

I look forward to it! All I'm arguing is speed. I'm merely a sergeant but using this it is possible to have 1000 coin before you're i colonial and then you can click up to fortress within 20s of hitting colonial compared to a 40s shipment and gather time. Also your 600w will arrive a minute sooner. Again, simply an argument of the speed of this build.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

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Post by Kaiserklein »

Here are the recs, with the same crates start on the same map (even got a better TP for the fur trade strat, aka earlier 3 vils), picking up no treasures. You age up at exactly the same time with both strats, so the speed argument doesn't work. Meanwhile, the drawbacks of the fur trade build are as follows:

- You use more hunts, which is never good for a civ like iro that needs lots of food.
- You totally commit to ffing, can't adapt into something else if needed.
- You do reveal your strat anyway, even if you don't have vils on gold, because you age up to colo super late (5 min) so it can't be the classic rush.
- You don't have a market and hunting dogs until quite late. Which is actually really sad when all your vils are on food for that long lol, it's lots of lost resources. Maybe there's a way to sneak the market in while doing the same build though, by shipping fur trade a bit later, idk.
- Like I said, even in the best case if you trade for 900g, fur trade is gonna be worth approx 450g at best (even less because I did the maths with hunting dogs), compared to a 600g shipment, so you're just throwing 150+ gold down the drain.
- You don't get 5 vils, though in fact you could ship them instead of 600w and it would be better. But even if you did, you'd have to chop more wood to get the market up, so you'd get weaker batches in early fortress as a result.
- You have to bother calculating at which point exactly you need to ship fur trade, which is just not realistic, and won't let you have a proper macro, while you can easily gather up until exactly 300g with the 600g build for an optimal age up. In my rec, I got exactly the 900g I needed, but no way you can do that every game. Plus if you find some coin treasure in the meantime, you just end up having too much coin because you can't remacro.


I hope this clarifies why the 600g build is better. If there are any drawbacks to that build compared to the fur trade one, feel free to point them out, but I doubt they match this list.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

Post by vividlyplain »

Thanks for sharing @Kaiserklein ! I'd love to see what you think of the French fur fortress (is it any better or worse). It is faster than the iro build because of the 500 food age up. I am new to France and (obviously) don't have the skills that you do so it was quite nice to not have to think about remacroing for the age up or shipping the 700c crates ASAP.

On a wood start and 14 villager age up I hit fortress between 5:45-6:00 but didn't have much to defend a falc shipment (I clicked up the moment the 500 food was finished gathering and the 700w shipment was about halfway in). I'm wondering if aging slower would be better and give me time to have a few batches of musks, 2 falcs, and 6 skirms by 7:30 with another military shipment on the way. This seems like a formidable army at this time (at least at my level). I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Re: Iroquois Fur Trade Fast Fortress

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Post by Kaiserklein »

It's probably the same story for france. You want to age 400w cause it's just superior to 500f. Or at the very least you'd go for tower + 200g for a spanish ff style. And you get 700g as france, which is better than the iro 600g. Fur trade is not gonna be worth 700g.
You don't really want to ff as france anyway, you usually semi ff, it's more flexible and it makes more sense because you want to ship 4 cdbs, and unlike iro you can't ship them after 700g, unless you have a TP start I guess. Iro can do naked ff because of that age 1 TP, the 2 free travois, and just being faster than france overall making the ff safer.
So yeah, you have better builds to age that early as france than shipping fur trade. But either way you don't really want to ff. And if you age slow and hit fortress at 7:30, you might as well just semi ff and be up at the same time with a safer, more flexible build, and more eco.
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