Fast-castle for Britons
by the DevilZ Clan

We get a lot of zonemessages about castle times and how to get a decent early castle rush. We had lots of success with this strategy and other people who also used it had positive results too. A lot of people are now copying this strategy we use, since it is posted on the recorded games section of this site .

The main goals:

1. Most important is to disrupt your opponents' economy by attacking either his gold or his wood before he has Town Centers near the resources. To achieve this you have to feudal rush or get to castle quicker then he does.

2. Second goal is after the initial rush, establish a strong economy then he has, including getting your opponent on the defense.

Why do we use Britons for this strat?

It's not that this strat is not possible for Mongols or Persia: they can do the same thing. Other civs can do something similar, but a little bit slower. China has a play style of its own...

Briton has the huge advantage of the cheap TCs and the hard-working shepherd. The cheap Town Centers allow you to protect your resources and expand your economy fast even when you castle with a small economy.

What does this strategy lead to?

A 15:30-15:40 castle (default zone setts, so lag included) with the resources to build 2 knights, 2 Town Centers and you have already 5 archers and woodcutting upgrade.

Detailed description or easiest way to execute it:

In this description, we assume you find all the usual resources (berries, 8 sheep, 2 boars, a forest and a Gold Mine and an opponent) in time. Further we build villagers non stop (when possible).

Villager - Task:

Dark Age

1-2 build a house
3 scouts

When you found your sheep all 3 vills go to eat the sheep.

4 sheep
5 builds mill near berries
6 berries
7 build house, then berries
8 berries
9 wood (stragglers)
10 wood (stragglers) on the same strag as vill 9
11 wood (stragglers) different straggler
12 build house, build lumbercamp, wood
13 wood (stragglers)

Move vill 9, 10, 11, 13 to the lumbercamp when it's finished

14 wood
15 berries
16 berries
17 build house, lure boar

This is the ideal moment to loom, of course if you are not able to build a vill or need boars earlier you should research loom at another time.

18 sheep/boar (if the boar already arrived)

Make sure one villager stays on the sheep, you don't want that food to be wasted

19 build a farm right next to the TC
20 build a farm right next to the TC
21 build a farm right next to the TC
22 build house, lure new boar
23 build a farm right next to the TC

The boar-lurer build a farm after he delivered the 340 food-creature to the hunters at your TC.

24 wood
25 wood

At this moment you should have at least the required food to feudal and you press the feudal button.

While feudalling:


Feudal Age (between 11:55 - 12:05)

4 of the 6 villagers near the Gold Mine (with some gold perhaps) build a market, the other 2 build a Mining camp as soon as you have 100 wood (after starting the market and the range).

The 2 forwards build an archery range.

You should have enough food to queue 2 villagers and still have the 800 for castle age. If you are low on food, build only 1 villager (you can be even faster).

When your market is finished trade 200 stone for gold (this will give trouble if too many people use this strat and the trade rate decreased, but it never happened to one of us).

The villagers you build should go to wood and perhaps one on gold (depends on the distance of the camp and the gold your market builders have collected yet). The 6 builders near the Gold Mine go to gold.

After your 2nd villager is done you press castle button (and reach it between 12:45 - 12:55).

The attack :

Now you should have 5 farmers, 6/7 gold-miners, 2 forward villagers and 13/14 woodcutters.

You have to produce 5 archers as soon as possible. When you reach 3 you can attack his gold. For attacking his wood, 4 or 5 seems better since the vills can easily start pounding back. Pay attention to your opponent actions, you don't want him to build a tower. If he has too much builders to stop the tower, get your archers right next to the tower (since the tower has no murder holes).

Meanwhile the forward builders build a house and a stable (make sure the house is in time). Also get the woodcutting upgrade when you have enough resources (food). You can switch 1 or 2 woodcutter to farming near the TC.



Castle Age (between 15:25 - 15:40)

You should have the resources to build at least 1 knight, queue a few vills, build a defensive TC near wood /gold (maybe both) and get a forward TC where you can protect your forward vills and archers until your knights can take over supported by the archers in case he builds spears. A forward TC close to his main Gold Mine is really nice.

Attack his other resources with your army (knights) and use your TC as a save haven.



Boom at your home base, you should build new farms with the first vills produced in castle age since you are not very high on food.

Don't forget to get a monastery, a blacksmith and a siege workshop.

Conclusion :

This strategy should lead to an economic advantage over your opponent. Further, you can quickly cover resources all over the map while keeping him/her busy defending. Don't make the mistake to go for the Imperial-boom, since a good castle attack can do much more damage then a race to imperial (rams are great to kill TCs, monks are great to defend them against knights, archers can kill the pikes/infantry that attacks your rams).

We have been using this attack for about a month now, there are lots of recordings (one of them is in the recorded games section here -->same as above. Of course every map is different so usually you won't follow the villager tasks exactly the way we described above.

Wishing you all the luck on the battlefieldˇK