Assyrian
Name of Strategy
Player Skill Req.
Assyrian Bowman Rush
Beginner
Preffered Settings
RATING/10
Inland/Highland, 1 Enemy
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A little about the strategy.
The legendary Assryian Bowman Rush is one of the first and real strategies of AOE. It developed by mistake when JakalBoy(zone) had tried to use fast firing horse archers to deal more damage. He realized "Why wait to the Iron age to kill an opponent when you can crush him early in the game." Although the invention of the rush wasn't exactly what AOE needed, it generally changed the way we play the game today. It is one of the fastest and if well played, the strongest. It uses hoards of bowman to destroy your opponent in under 20:00 game time. We gave this strategy a rating of 6/10 becuase of its extreme difficulty to stop, although possible, and it's speed. Overall, this is a beginner strategy and is mainly just for fun.
The strategy.
(resources pertain to default)
Start off by getting one villager to build two houses. Pump out another villager while he is doing this and send your other villagers to build a storage pit near a forest. By now your villager should be done with the houses and you should have 4. Pump out another(until you hit 15) As soon as the others are done building a storage pit send them to get wood. The other two should go off in search of food. Once found, command them to get food, but don't build a granary yet. Since you are using the Assyrian you should be ok becuase of their speed. Evenly distribute your villagers among wood and food. Watchout make sure your 7th villager builds another house! Once you have enough wood to build a granary, send a newly built villager to build it with a few other food gatherers. Once this is completed send them back to their original jobs. As soon as you have 15 villagers and 500 food go to the tool age. If your berry bushes are done, get your gatherers to get wood in the mean-time. Once your in the tool age you will notice your wood is much higher than your food. Now all your berry bushes should be done, so get all your gatherers(8) and make them build a mraket. Once your market is completed, pump out one more villager, and send off your gatherers to build thier own farms. Once your new villager is out, send him to build 2 more houses. Don't worry if you run out of wood in the middle of building farms, it's most likely. Just wait until you have enough wood and then tell them to build a farm. Upgrade archers armor at the storage pit, and upgrade woodcutting in the market. After your farms and houses are complete build an archery range. Start to pump out bowman, but watch out you need 2 or 3 archery ranges to succesfully do this trick. Now get that same villager to build another archery range. Now you can pump out 2 at once! Once you have 20 bowman or so, send them out to attack!. But make sure you watch your farms. Keep rebuilding them if they run out. And if your archery rush fails, don't worry you can still win! You should have a ton of resources left over so while attacking start to build up your civ. Keep pumping villagers and build up to the bronze age. Once that is accomplished, upgrade only the things that affect archery range units. The do the same thing with chariot archers. These guys require a wheel so make sure you get it for them. If this strategy is done correctly it will demolish you opponent quickly. But if it fails at the bowman rush, you can still win. Once your chariots fail, you have either been to slow building up, or your opponent is very good.
How to stop the strategy
Whenever you suspect a bowman rush from your opponent, switch your civ to Bablyonian. Notice their towers and walls have double HP. It is very hard to take out towers with bowman, especially ones with more HP. I have tested that two Bablyonian watch towers can take out over 20 bowmen. So the only way you can stay alive is to build two towers. You can obtain this by starting off the same way to do a bowman trick except instead of wasting time building up your archery ranges, pump out 4-5 more villagers to get stone. Make sure you research woodcutting and watch tower. Once you have all the things required to build two good watch towers, build them. But make sure you build them less than 5 squares apart and on the edge of your town. Once their bowmans start to raid one side of your town, send about 4 of your woodcutters around the other side and run near the enemy town. Go inside and build a tower in the middle of their city on a suicide mission. Don't pull any of them out until the tower is complete. Once this is done, your enemy will probably concede or try to move. Thus bying you enough time to rebuild your civ into a chariot demolishion squad. And if you really want to look good, try to set up three towers instead of two. Imgaine their faces when their bowmans get taken down like nothing.
