Flush Defense
OK - this is the situation - you get flushed at around the 13-14 minute mark and your enemy has towered your woodies and/or goldies. What's the best plan of action here: * take a group of villagers and tear down the tower, cost in villager deaths * move your wood/gold production elsewhere - cost 1-200 wood, loss of gold site * other... Reply: Wufei The tower wouldn't have murder holes yet, because it is so early in the game. Just take a couple m@a and level it. BUT, the best way to prevent such action is to have your scout on a patrol around your wood and gold to notice those villagers storm in. Then you can eat them up with cheap non gold costing skirmishers or m@a. Reply: Hawk_Speed Ah the flush, the tactic we all love to hate. Basically, if the opponent is chinese i know that i may get flushed, which means he will feudal around 10:30 or so, maybe a bit faster. If i see him feudal that fast, i will usually put up my own tower in the spot where i think he will come, and then send my scout around that area looking for the villes building the archery range. If u spot em, send 3 of your villes and your scout to kill them, then your fine, goto castle and kick his ass cause his econ isn't as good as yours. If he does get up the ranges, make sure u put up that tower before he does, and build an archery range near your wood as your castle building. Now you can make a couple skirmishers (skirmishers absolutely LEVEL regular archers). If he's going heavy on the attack, build a few skirmies, maybe 6 or so, and put them where he is going. Most importantly! Do not delay going to castle! Get to castle and put up a TC right next to his archery ranges and put the skirmies inside the TC, then build a seige with one ram and take out his forward base. After this, you should have a BIG advantage assuming he didn't kill more than a couple villagers, which he CANT if u have skirmies running around. Just remember to build the archery range as your castle building instead of whatever you were planning on, this is the key to the flush defense. And dont let that forward base stand after you've castled! Beat it down, then boom outward and set up a TC in between your bases, then boom. You will have the advantage in econ, and eventually come out on top since he will castle around 20, and many times later than that. Reply: Farmer Barleymow The problem there wufei is that if he's putting up towers, he's going to be bringing archers with him. No good sending in m@a against them if they are all based around the bottom of the tower. Thanks for those tips, Hawk, but what I really wanted to know was what is the best course of action once the worst has happened and you didn't spot the flush and he's there in the base killing your villies. Resign? Reply: shortguy speed what would we do w/o u? hehehe i agree with everything that he said but one part, don't build the tower until unless u think he is going for your gold villies, bring your scout back to the base and scout around to see where the ar's or whatever foward build he has going is, if it is near your goldies screw the local and use the market to castle if he is going for your woodies then just build the tower when u know that is going to happen, he SHOULD only send a max of 4 vills to put the tower up so your 8 or so woodies (assuming your using the brit fast castle) will get the tower up faster then he will if u catch him early enough! Reply: Wacky_Taffy Archer flushes are weak. Some people back them with spearmen (which can stop vill hordes when backed by archers nicely), which are cheap and engage your opponent's vills in hand to hand. Towers don't do that much. They can just put units at the base. To stop a flush you have to spread and get to castle. TC's butcher feudal units, so they are what you are going for (not to mention more economic growth). Reply: Virile I really wouldn't advise sending 3 villagers out there to try to kill the vills building the archery range. Most players will wall in their builders with palisades so you can't reach them. You'll just end up losing your vills once the archers start coming out. Your best bet when you see those archers coming is to put up a tower as fast as possible and garrison 5 vills in it. Then just beat the archers to death with your other vills and send them back to work. Just make sure to ungarrison the vills in the tower and send them back to work too. Once you've beat back that first attack just build some skirms out of the archery range you should have constructed as your castle building and send them out beside his archery range. If he's dumb enough to build anymore archers and not garrison them, they'll get massacred rather quickly by your skirms. Amidst all this you want to get to castle as quick as possible and build the normal castle attack force of knights, monks and rams. Also make sure to TC your resources. The Feudal rusher should be at an extreme disadvantage unless he killed at least 5 or so vills and you ought to be able to take him out rather easily. Reply: blue_myriddn A well executed flush is lethal, the best bet is to hope your opponent screws up somewhere. Otherwise odds are he will have the advantage. Don't bother with your gold because what a real Flusher will be after is your wood supply. Dependant on how much dark age farming you have done wood will be critically short at around 13 minutes. Scenario 1: tower your gold and move your wood pit. While getting a second wood pit up is usually no problem (100W), after building the barracks you are usually hurting to get the wood fast enough to build an archery. Don't forget the whole time you are moving your woodies they are not cutting wood. Also once you get the archery up, skirms cost wood and so does that second building that you will need to get to the castle age. So here you are with your food protected (farms) and your gold protected (towered). What should you build MaA? They get blown down by archers and towers. No way you are screwed. A wood shortage will hurt you in a big way, especially since the smart flusher is going to keep scouting and find your new wood operation. He has been mining stone at home so another tower is bound to pop up on your new wood supply further slowing you down. All in all you can see this is a pretty bad way to handle a flush, but it is still what many people do.
Scenario 2: tower your wood. IMO this is the way to go. The only problem is tower placement. If you place it in the center than the FLUSHER can put a tower on the edge of your forest and still screw you up. Put it on one of the edges and he can put it on a different one. The BEST way is to get the tower up without him noticing and then have him try to build his tower in the radius of your tower. This takes away his window of opportunity and you have the wood you need. The big problem here is that you need to complete your tower before he starts his. Possible since you have ALOT more vils building it, but difficult cause he is gonna hit feudal before you. Ok, so you tower you wood and he puts a tower on your gold. Big deal, move the 3 vils mining gold (prolly garrison them in the TC and try to lure an archer to his doom) and move on. Drop a market as one of your feudal buildings, sell some food (odds are you will have an abundance) and get your but to castle. Go find a remote gold mine, grab enough to make a couple knights and you will prolly ride out the storm.
Scenario 3: Get butt-a$$ lucky and find his vils while they are building the archery. Odds are they will be weakened by wolves so you can knock them down. However he will prolly have spears so watch your scout.
Either way, a FLUSH is nothing to be taken lightly.
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