Feudal Attacking

By former Mystic Yin

FEUDAL ATTACKING Although I use the term "Flush" quite a lot, I think it's fair now to say that attacks in Feudal are fairly common and don't follow gutter_rat's build order as religiously as they used to. So it's important that we think of the "Flush" as just one kind of attack in Feudal and accept that Feudal warfare is fairly standard.

O.K. Fine. So how should a person approach this issue? I think the easiest thing is just to ask yourself: "In Feudal, will I defend, attack or both?" Of course, you can still do a simple build to Castle, but just make sure you are safe to do so.

"I'll defend!"

This is a pretty good choice, actually. For despite all the worry that Feudal attacks are "easy" or "cheap," they are actually quite difficult and costly when defended against properly. Of course, 100% defense is still asking for problems, and I highly recommend attacking yourself at the right moment, but even if you don't: How do you make that damn Feudal attacker pay?

1. First, make sure this is the right decision, otherwise you might hurt your economy for no reason. I assume you've made this decision because: It's a good map for the attacker. He's using a fast civ (Chinese, Mongols and Mayans are favorites, but almost any civ can attack well in Feudal, actually). His scout is circling your camp like a vulture. He hits Feudal in under 12 minutes. You've scouted him and noticed that he's already on stone and/or gold...and the grand prize of scouting: You see his forward builders coming toward you. So scouting is crucial.

2. Scout like a mad-man. If you watch a lot of expert games, you'll note that scouts never stop. They even harass the enemy and support the army at important moments. Watch that "death alley" (direct line) between you and the enemy VERY carefully, 'cause most Feudal attackers will send their villies straight at you. Or if both your stone piles are facing the enemy, better bet your life he'll build near there. VERY few Feudal attackers actually build in a remote place, so use that to your advantage. Scout his base if you have time to see if he's heavy on stone or gold. 4+ villies on stone = lots of towers coming your way. 4+ on gold = lots of archers/even M@As. Just knowing this in advance can prepare you mentally and help adjust your villie assignments. You might want to mine stone early now yourself (always a good idea anyway) and consider that you'll need some gold, too, if you want some archers of your own. Or, if you know you'll go with skirms, make sure you are going strong on food, otherwise you might find yourself out-Castled later on.

3. Palisade, palisade, palisade. Let's face it. Most of use have gotten lazy and never developed this important skill. But nothing beats (or drastically delays) a Feudal attack like a palisaded crossing or pallisades put up in strategic places. While pallisades themselves are rather weak, by delaying the enemy they provide you a great deal more in return than you invest in wood and villie time. Make it a standardized part of your opening to palisade important spots. And if you're worried about the loss to production, imagine how much MORE production you lose by actually having that villie or two or three killed! Later you can put a tower near vital pallisades and REALLY make the attacker work.

4. "Radar" housing can really help. This means don't just build your early houses in a place convenient for YOU. Build them around the outskirts of your town. I especially like to build them toward the enemy a few tiles away from a mining operation once the mine is setup. But LOS sucks, you say? For now, yes, but the very FIRST thing you'll do in Feudal is research Town Watch, and you'd be surprised how much you can suddenly see.

5. At this point many people post some bad advice. They often tell you to try to get to Feudal ASAP. In fact, the most basic mistake you can make as this point is to try to advance to Feudal OR Castle too quickly. Why? The fact is that the attacker has likely stopped villie production between pops 19 and 24. If you simply try to out-Feudal him as part of your strategy, you have in essence negated the production advantage you could otherwise have over him. Sure, he has his forward builders "wasting" time, but you'll also have to "waste" time making towers and otherwise using villies on defense. So, even if you know he will Feudal in 9:30, DON'T try to beat his time. Relax and build to a pop of 25, which I find very solid. You'll still Feudal in under 12, which is more than enough time for the next phase. Same with Castle. If he is investing in lots of troops, you might feel tempted to simply hold on and try to reach Castle early and bring out knights and rams to kill him easily. That's a good plan in theory, but unless you use defensive towers all by themselves very will, his troops will eventually come in numbers enough to start picking off your villies...which this early in the game can cripple you. So take some time to make skirms/archers/militia of your own. Whatever you like best. But just be prepared to stay in Feudal for a while. As a general guide, look to press the Castle button between the 20-24 minute mark. I promise that a serious Feudal attacker won't beat you to Castle...and if he does, it will only be by a few moments. Far better for you to not lose any villies while eating up his attack. He is relying on killing your villies, after all, so don't let him.

6. Now, if your scouting was excellent and you caught his forward builders on their way, simply send that number + a few to kill them. If he sends 3 villies, send 5 of your own. This is also the time when your scout can lay on some hurt. If you kill his forwards, now he's REALLY screwed. True, he can send more villies (this time probably to a more secret location), but economically you're pounding him. Just keep scouting, baby. =)

7. Well, you didn't catch the villies right away, but you see them building (or standing next to) a shiny new barracks or archery range. So far, he has no military except maybe one or two archers/spearmen. You're still in luck! Just treat each military unit as an enemy villie. So if he has 3 forwards, 1 archer and 2 spearmen, you'd have to send at least 8+ villies of your own plus the scout. The difficulty here, of course, is that your villies are "dumb." Once they finish killing something, they'll just stand there like fools. Not only that, but more archers and spearmen are popping out, so you'd better be efficient. You MUST micro-manage this moment very carefully. Take out the archer/spearmen first, but also assign one villie each to kill the forward builders, as they will likely try to escape and rebuild if you show up in force like that. Bring in some more villies if you know it will turn the tide (I'm assuming you aren't in Feudal yourself just yet and can't send skirms or militia). Finally, once the area is rather safe, palisade in his barracks/archery! That REALLY pisses Feudal attackers off. By the way, you can also locate this kind of forward building with the house "scanning trick." Task a villager to build a house, but rather than building it, just wave the house around the area you suspect...if he has built there, the house will turn red in a place where you should otherwise be able to build. (Personally, I never do that...but it could be helpful).

8. Well, you found the enemy but he already has 4+ archers/spearmen and possibly even a defensive tower while he powers up. This is NOT the time for villie rage! Remember that from this moment on, your goal is not to lose even one villie if you can avoid it. And this is point where most people begin to feel that Feudal attacks are over-powered. Well, first thing is to realize just how long he has been operating in your frontyard without any response from you. Second, he still has a loooong way to go if you stay calm and react carefully. ==>Right around here you reached Feudal after reaching a 25 pop. CLICK ON TOWN WATCH FIRST!

9. Alright. Even if he has that growing army and a safe forward base, he's had to wait a while to build it. Even if he attacks super fast with one archer at like 10:30, just laugh and kill the archer with a villie. To do any real damage, he'll need to come in force (at this point, 4 archers could be called a "force"--lol). But to get that, he'll have to wait until the 12 or 13 minute mark. That gives you lots of time to build strategic towers and cue up some skirms or militia.

10. BUT HE IS TOWER PUSHING! Actually, you should be happy. No, I'm not crazy. Look at it this way...each tower is 125 stone he WON'T have to build a Castle later on. And if he's tower crazy, he'll put so many villies on stone that even getting to Castle in a respectable time is in doubt. However, allowing him to just place towers wherever and whenever he wants will eventually put you in trouble. So some important things to remember at this vital point in the game: Do NOT start losing villies because you are afraid to relocate. If he towers your wood before you put up and defense there, SIMPLY MOVE! I can't stress that enough. Sure, if he's building unprotected, just villie rage him like before, but I'm assuming he has archer backup at this point. JUST LEAVE! "But doesn't that mean I'm losing?" NO! In fact, the Feudal attacker depends on your suicidal determination to give him the chance to kill some of your villies. Don't give him the satisfaction. And for God's sake, don't simply make a new lumber camp a few tiles away. Go some place remote, the middle of the map, for example. There's a 99% chance he'll never look for your wood now and will focus on something else. This goes for ANY resource. If he goes for your gold or stone before you had a chance to put up any defense, go to your backup location (which should already have been marked in your mind). If you were unlucky and those resources were bunched together, consider mining from HIS secondary resource (which most Feudal attackers NEVER look at). And remember that there are always some "neutral" resources on the map...which again means you should have scouted well. But the point is this: Let him have this first victory if you didn't have time to defend yet. Let him feel confident. Just DON'T let him kill your villies. This is actually why I like to build my first mining and wood operations in rather obvious places!!! I invite the guy to waste towers on the easy spot and now have the more easily defendable spots to go to! Try it!

11. Of course, you'll have to stop the tower-push fairly soon or it can become a real headache. To be honest, one of the easiest ways is to send a force of your own archers over to HIS base and kill his stonies. Most likely his base is wide open...but since this is the 100% defense section, I'll assume you want another path.

12. One thing to keep in mind is he's expecting you to panic and send villies, but instead nothing happened. It's an eerie feeling for the attacker, trust me. This means the defender is either an idiot or damn good. Actually, most idiots simply die, so it's probably the latter.

13. However, unless he sucks, he WILL come looking for you. But at the moment of his first attack, you already planned to fall back to the more easily defended spot, right? So while he's building towers and not killing any villies on the other side of your base, you have started to tower/palisade your resources and making a safe place to work. Frankly, I never tower my wood unless I have lots of stone. I think it's simply easier and more effective to get that remote wood spot going instead of making it easy for the guy. Instead, I normally tower my stone...since you only need gold at this point for archers/militia, which you can do without if you have skirms and well-placed towers. It will normally take 3 towers placed in a triangle to completely protect a resource. Good palisading can make it less costly. But at this point you've also got some skirms, right? His archers will never survive them, and he'll have to become more desperate with his tower push or even invest in food-costly M@As to try to break through.

14. This is why getting the first range upgrade now will save you LOTs of pain later. If your towers outrange his, his already hurting. Even if the range is equal, your defensive towers will still do the job. It's only when he outranges you that you have a problem, so avoid it.

15. Needless to say, you MUST keep producing villies throughout this process. Knowing this, many Feudal attackers will try to tower your TC and stop farms. The easiest answer to that is to NOT farm heavily around your TC! See all those ignored deer? Lifesavers. See that remote spot on the map? A mill there would do the trick. But if you've already invested lots of wood in farms by the TC, put defensive towers there just like you would your fall-back spots. Just remember: This is not only a military battle. In fact, this is primarily a battle of econs! So even if he gains military ground on you, as long as you maintain villie flow you'll soon pull ahead. That's the risk the attacker is taking, after all. So don't get so wrapped up in the defense that you forget the econ. Another life-save here is to boat "boom" -- heck, just a few boats would make a huge difference -- if you have the right map and assuming you've got the wood coming in. Not only will most Feudal attackers ignore your fishing (if they even see it to begin with), it will be pretty costly for them on their lean econ to make a dock and try to kill the boats.

16. If you've done all these things, the enemy is struggling. He likely can't (or isn't trying to) find your wood anywhere near your base...and that worries him. He took over a resource spot but can't get passed your triangulated tower/palisade defense. That worries him more 'cause now you can match him tower for tower if you want. And when he went for your farms, they either weren't there or you towered those, too! Time is running out for him...and the skirms picking off his archers ain't helping him much.

17. The sky is clearing now. You see that you'll be able to click Castle soon and you have hardly lost anything. Sure, you've had to relocate a bit and burn some stone, but his econ was weaker to begin with in the hopes that he could kill your villies and deny you resources. With that not happening, he'll either try to go for Castle and be patient or press with his attack and lose.

18. Even if he's patient at this point, you're going Castle yourself. And even if you Castle at roughly the same times, his econ will be worse. Now, I'm assuming you didn't go CRAZY on the defense and make 10 skirms, 6 spearmen, and 7 militia! I'm also assuming you didn't lose too many villies. Remember: This is a battle of econ. If you see him with 4 spearmen, you too can make 4 spearmen and know that you're even. Same if you seem him with militia. Of course, the best situation is if you can use NO food at all to stop him (i.e. don't make spearmen, militia/M@As, or skirms), but the skirms are just SO effective against archers that you can make 4 skirms and still beat 8 of his archers, so it's a good investment. Just don't over do any of the defense, including the towers, since his Plan B is to get to Castle before you and forward build a castle on top of you. You want to put up a castle first, of course.

19. While he still might come at you or even discover some of your remote operations, by now you're pulling ahead of him and has caused him to spread out his attack and waste too much time. His window of opportunity (minutes 11-20) is now closing and his only hope is that you blew your econ and won't reach Castle for several minutes. But you DO ... and he loses. =)

"I will attack!"

I was gonna write a long piece here, but I think you could pretty much just reverse what the defender's goals are and try to exploit them. So, don't build in obvious places, don't waste towers, find his relocations actively, don't blow your Castle time, that sort of thing. You don't really want me to write MORE do you? =)

"I will do both!"

Obviously this is the best and most logical approach. Why give the attacker ALL the initiative? You'd be simply amazed what 5 archers in his backyard can do to kill his Feudal attack. DON'T just sit there and try to avoid the bullets--shoot some yourself! Now, everybody might have a differently style on defense or attack. Personally, on defense, I like "allowing" the enemy to use stone...but others might try to NEVER let him build. While a much harder goal, it's still possible if you scout really, really well and can micro your villies superbly. Also, on the attack, others may choose to attack faster with fewer troops and try for that knockout blow ASAP. Good idea, but in my experience defenders are getting better and the attackers need to adapt.

End of novel. (LOL)