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The Lumberjack Rush

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  • The Lumberjack Rush

    I always see people talking about chopping to speed up the production of wonders. Very rarely do I see people speeding up the production of units with chopping.

    It occurred to me that with a little worker help, you can generate a massive army early in the game.

    The Lumberjack Rush:
    ----------------------------
    Assumptions: Your initial city has at least 4 forests around it. You'll also need either copper or horses in
    your initial city ring (you could build a second city for it, but it'll slow this strategy way down). Also, the smaller the map, the easier this is going to be, like any rush.

    1) Select an aggressive leader. This is useful for the extra promotion, but the real advantage for this strategy is the half cost barracks.
    2) Turn 1 build queue: Worker, barracks.
    3) Research queue: Mining (if you don't have it already), then Bronzeworking.
    4) Scout for your nearest neighbor.
    4) At bronzeworking, switch to slavery.
    5) Once the worker is complete, chop once and that should complete your barracks (only 30 production for aggressive leaders...).
    5) Now pick an offensive unit. If you got quechas, you're ready to go. Otherwise, if you can get copper, go for axemen, if no copper, get husbandry and look for horses for chariots. Favor chariots for larger maps. Connect up the resource.
    6) Churn those units out by chopping... Cut all the trees down. You'll get a unit per chop on average.
    7) Finally, finish up with a population rush.

    If you've got 4 trees around your capital, you now have 4-5 offensive units (+10%, plus city raider or cover) ready to terrorize your neighbor. Even if you can't take their city (which you probably will be able to do, you should be able to pillage it to nothingness).

    Typical defense:
    - 2 archers
    = 50 hammers (rarely chopped... ~10 - 25 turns)

    This path:
    - Barracks
    - 3 axemen
    = 135 hammers (chopped in 4 turns)

  • #2
    Yeah, then what? You have a force large enough to, at best, take down one city. Would you have done any better or worse having just built a settler and built your own city. Now theoritically, you also captured a worker and that may be enough of a difference, but while you were doing this, what was your nearest AI neighbor doing? Did he have time to set up two additional cities in that time frame?

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    • #3
      Would you rather have your city or would you rather have theirs?

      You don't have to stop building units at the end of this... It won't take you much longer to generate a second attack force. Although it's probably wiser to finally spawn your second city as you capture the enemy's.

      Taking the neighboring city may (a) completely eliminate a competitor, (b) provide you with a new city and worker, (c) provide you a buffer space in which you can build more cities without encroachment.

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      • #4
        I gotta say that taking out your neighbor will give you an optimal second city. Capital locations are often the best locations for cities to be in.

        I personally love to build up a huge military asap and take out my nearest neighbor right away, I can usually accomplish this along with a CS sling. Especially nice if your neighbor has founded a religion.

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        • #5
          I tried this strategy out last night, to some pretty good results. A couple of notes:

          1) You can typically get a settler out while connecting a resource up to your main city. This gives you two cities plus whatever you can take while attacking.

          2) Units built this way are 1 xp from a THIRD promotion, which can usually be gotten from barbarians pretty easily. Axeman plus city raider plus cover plus +10% strength... Archers didn't stand a chance.

          3) In the game I played, I was able to easily take Boston from Roosevelet in the 1700BCs on Monarch/standard/continents/normal speed, which gave me a huge stretch of uncontested land and three cities total... When I got to their capital, they apparently had built 7 archers to defend it.... But I could pillage the countryside and let the archers come to me.

          (I had to stop the game there for the night, but it seemed to be going very well.)

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          • #6
            Its nice for a change of pace if yer strictly a builder like me. Im might give it a shot, youll end up gaining:

            a) a worker
            b) a settler (already settled)
            c) a military (duh)
            d) a serious ammount of promotions

            I have no idea which building remain after you take over a city, they changed that in cIV eh? anyone know?

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            • #7
              I often chop a Catapult army, to have a big pile of them in play while archers are still the defensive unit of choice. This is especially so when I go for very fast research with next to no hammers, I can sacrifice a forest to have an extremely potent catapult army.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Blake
                I often chop a Catapult army
                A Catapult Slingshot? :-)

                That's not a bad strategy at all...

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                • #9
                  I usually just pop rush the army instead since it isnt nearly as terrain dependent. You can do this much more frequently. A combination of the two is sometimes very effective if you have alot of forest.

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                  • #10
                    I would say an early taking of a neighbors capital is better than TWO cities.

                    Why? The net result of you and your early competition is (-1) for him and (+1) for you wich makes you have two more cities than him. While the (-1) is only for one of the AI's, it is the most important one (the closest). Also, it is (-1) capital location and (+1) capital location. Great spot for a later FP or V.
                    Got my new computer!!!!

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Brizey
                      I would say an early taking of a neighbors capital is better than TWO cities.

                      Why? The net result of you and your early competition is (-1) for him and (+1) for you wich makes you have two more cities than him. While the (-1) is only for one of the AI's, it is the most important one (the closest). Also, it is (-1) capital location and (+1) capital location. Great spot for a later FP or V.
                      If there were only two opponents in the game, I'd agree with you... But otherwise, you DO cause yourself some harm by following this strategy. For example, your tech research is probably starting to fall behind that of other (non-attacked) opponents...

                      Probably closer to 1.5 cities... :-)

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                      • #12
                        Simplicity, I didn't mean to imply your idea wasn't useful. I was just wondering if you had done the calcs on what exactly it is costing you to adopt this strategy vs a more traditional worker chop settler approach? I will probably do this over the weekend for myself.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Crossfire
                          Simplicity, I didn't mean to imply your idea wasn't useful. I was just wondering if you had done the calcs on what exactly it is costing you to adopt this strategy vs a more traditional worker chop settler approach? I will probably do this over the weekend for myself.
                          As I noted above, this approach doesn't actually interfere with the normal Settler chop approach much. You're still going to need time to connect up a resource in many cases (copper/horses). It doesn't hurt to chop out a Settler in that time. You're not going to speed yourself up in any other way.

                          If you're talking about a second Settler chop, that's a bit different...

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                          • #14
                            I would call this a pretty "standard" rush tactic, actually. All rushing involves getting early attackers out quick, and really, the only way to go about it is via bronze (pop-n-chop).

                            Four axemen (no barracks) can absolutely devastate a near-neighbor, and net you 1-2 extra cities and at least one worker for cheaper than you could have built them yourself. The ONLY drawback to this approach is that you don't get to pick where the cities are, but *shrug* I don't mind that so much.

                            -=Vel=-
                            The list of published books grows. If you're curious to see what sort of stories I weave out, head to Amazon.com and do an author search for "Christopher Hartpence." Help support Candle'Bre, a game created by gamers FOR gamers. All proceeds from my published works go directly to the project.

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