The Hun Drush

Article written by frozen_swe
Published on 09-30-2010; updated on 10-01-2010
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First of all, who am I?

I am frozen, I have around 1650 rating on voobly right now and have played for about 2 years. Most of that time I have not played online at all, but only watched a few record games on the weekends. So, I would say that I know a lot about the game, but that my micro and macro are not top notch. Therefore, I think a lot of players who are around 1400-1700 will benefit from this guide even if I as a writer is quite lowish in skill. Worse player will ofc also benefit, but might be unable to copy the guide without very much practise (and thus making them 1400!)..

Setting:
Random map.
Any land map, like arabia.
Low/standard starting resources.

When I do this strat, I make it up on the go most of the time, making minor changes depending on map and such. I should tell you that this is the most lame strat around right now, together with Hun wall+FC. But the lamest is Hun drush+wall+FC. With lame I mean easy to preform, hard to counter.

Important things to notice:
You should have 5-15 sec TC idle time (aim for 0) before hitting castle age. However, because of the OPness of hun CA you can have idle TC time in the castle age and it’s OK.

Build order:

In the Dark Age:

– 6 vills on sheep.
– 4 vills on wood, first make a LC.
– 1 vill lure boar, if you think you can lure it without loom by all means go ahead and do it! Waiting with loom saves you resources. After shooting boar you will have either 3 or 4 sheep alive. If you have 3 sheep, you most likely have 1 dead sheep with a lot of food left, put one vill on that sheep if that is the case. Make sure that vill doesn’t kill another sheep when he is done.
– 2 vills go berry, first vill make a mill. Drop off food from boar-vills so that you never have idle TC time.
– Now somewhere you have the wood for a barrack. Make a barrack with one vill. While making the barrack, send one vill to gather gold (don’t make a mining camp). He should only make one trip. When barrack is done, make 3 militia. Remember to have no TC idle time and not to house yourself.
– ~4 vills go boar, remember to lure a second one.
– Whenever you get 60 wood, make a farm with a wounded boar vill. You want ~6 dark age farms.
– Now improvise the rest of the vills, get 2-4 more on berry, maybe send some vills to hunt deer (if close deer, no mill. If far away deer, mill if there is 4 deer, screw them if there is 3 deer). Get some vills on wood too. I usually don’t place any vills on gold before I hit the feudal age bottom but you could if you want to. Have at least 4 vills on sheep until they are done.
– If you haven’t gotten Loom yet, get it before pressing feudal up. I once didn’t, and lost 2 vills because of it. I thought the other guy was to FC, but he scout rushed.
– Age up to the feudal age when you have 27-30 vills, that is 27-34 pop depending on how your army is doing.
– If you haven’t put any vills on gold in the dark age, put 6 vills on gold now. Make a mining camp.

In the Feudal Age:

– In feudal, cue 2 vills and make a Archer Range with 2 vills (not the cued ones, duh) and a blacksmith with 1 vill.
– Age up ASAP.
– On the way to castle age, get wood up if you think you can afford it. Get Fletching, this tech is very important. Don’t get any other tech. When farms and berry run out, don’t get too many new farms, 4-7 is enough. All other vills go wood/gold. No farming techs because you have so few farms. Build 2-3 more Archer Ranges (so that you have 3-4 in total).

In the Castle Age:

When you hit castle age, get bodkin arrow (second archer attack), pump CAs from all ranges and build vills as food allows. New vills go wood/gold and later maybe some food too. All resources except stone should be under 50 all the time.

Techs to be gotten in the Castle Age:

  1. Double Bit Axe
  2. Gold Mining
  3. First Archer armor
  4. Thumb Ring (this is cost effective when you have 14+ CAs, but is a large investment that cost a lot of food so I usually get it this late)
  5. Second wood upgrade.
  6. Bloodlines (build a stable)
  7. First farming tech

Tech order is modified depending on what happens, example: He is building a lot of scims? Maybe it’s a good time to boom (get farm tech earlier and build extra TCs) or get a stable with bloodlines+knights.

How to use your drush army:

Don’t fight if he got a lot of vills. If you have 3 milita and he got 3 vills, run away. He will run after for a while, but running after costs him resources! So, when he turns back you return and hit him again. He will run after you, run away again. Rise and repeat. On deer/berry you can find vills that you might get to kill, but doing hit and run attacks on his wood is good if you can’t hit berry or he don’t hunt deer. Gold is also a good resource to hit if he get it. You can place palisade walls around his gold to get LOS (don’t build ’em).

Try to use your scout for scouting, but if he for example has 3 vills on berry you can use the scout for extra hitting power, forcing HIM to run away instead of you. Because your scout run first, he will die quickly if you use him for normal hit and runs.

Use defensive mode for your militia, so that they don’t run under TC fire. Always avoid TC fire, one shot can kill a militia.

If he has palisade walled around his resources, keep hitting the palisade walls so that he must repair them.

When he hit feudal age, scout to see what he is doing. It might be a good idea to walk home your militia to defend from feudal armies. If he got a stable up, get some spears in feudal (not delaying your castle time, but maybe reducing the number of ranges). If he got archers, it MIGHT be worth it to build scims on the way to castle age. Don’t overdo it. If he got scim army, it might be worth it to get some extra farms, delay brodkin arrow, build a stable instead of a archer range and get some knights (+CA), get bloodlines because it boosts both CA+knights.

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