Overview
Here’s a strategy that can’t decide whether it’s very evil or very lame. It’s the Dark Age Rush, or if you prefer, the D-O-U-C-H-E – since it literally cleans out your opponent.This rush is executed with Persians at 7min, using the increased TC HP of persians.L_Clan_Tormenta is a pro RTS player, 2k+ Zone Rating, 3600 Rank on AOE2HD and Starcraft 2 Master.
The D-O-U-C-H-E Dark Age Rush
Here’s a strategy that can’t decide whether it’s very evil or very lame. It’s the Dark Age Rush, or if you prefer, the D-O-U-C-H-E – since it literally cleans out your opponent.
I would love to see some feedback of this execution. Also let me know if you enjoyed seeing something a little bit different, then I’ll post some more.
Basic execution is like this:
Choose Persians. Their TCs have more hit points, which as you will see later, is an important element of this strategy. A couple other civilizations are potential candidates, and those would be Britons (cheap TCs) and the Teutons (of course).
Scout and make villagers as normal, but eat your sheep first – you’ll see why in a bit. Put only as many villagers on food as are needed to sustain flow – put the rest on wood. Build your houses in such a manner to protect your wood supply – this’ll come in handy later.
Scout out your enemy’s location.
Once you have found the enemy and at around 7:00 or so, send around 10 villagers over to the enemy town. You want to arrive at his town once you’ve made 25 villagers.
Delete your TC. (Yes, I said delete your TC).
Build a new TC next to your enemy’s TC. Exact distance from the enemy TC should be based on your civilization. Teutons can be farther, but all other civilizations should be about 6 tiles away (2 farm widths). While you are building, ignore your opponent’s cries of “You are so lame!” and “WTF are you doing ****?!” He is just jealous he didn’t think of it first. You should be able to start and complete the TC before the enemy can attack you.
Once it’s done garrison your TC and destroy his. You can now feel free to steal his farms and his sheep if any are left, as well as the enemy boars which might have been lured nearby.
Now, you can build a barracks and make militia to try and disrupt his wood supply – often you can catch an enemy without the 275 wood to make a new TC. Alternatively, you can now try and boom, safe in the knowledge he is probably suffering a bit right now.
While this tactic may seem to totally worthless, it does have shock value, especially in team games on smaller maps or if you know your opponent likes to lay a lot of farms. If you can catch them with a full spread of farms, they will probably be dead and you’ll have a lot of free food.
If they like to boom, you can even kill their TC before they are able to research the Feudal Age. This is guaranteed to set them back a bit. In a singles game, you can really get your enemy off his game, because now you have control over his town and he is on the run. If he’s smart, he’ll go to your town, but then you could delete and rebuild back in your town with your workers that were left behind. Meanwhile he now has no easy gold and stone.