Potential Boom Strategy with Fertility Festival?

[Sanguivorant]

I was experimenting around in the game recently, and I tried to come up with some form of booming strategy, that involves the fertility festival tech that is researchable in a house.

The fertility festival allows you to train female villagers out of any house. I think this is available to every civ, but civs with cheap houses can really use it to their advantage. So the Celtic civs, as well as the Iberians and the Mauryans can pull this off quite nicely.

The trick is to get to the town phase as quick as possible, and then researching fertility festival. Then, the goal is to sustain female villager production from at least 10 houses, which takes around four farms. Once you have that, your economy can start flying off the charts.

I have reached the population limit of 300 doing this, by quickly training 150 female villagers and then make 150 soldiers. I managed to do this in about 20 minutes, and reach the city phase at the same time. Though, this would probably be impossible to pull off against an aggressive opponent.

What do you guys think?

[agentx]

Indeed, fertility festival is my first tech after advancing to town phase to gather the resource needed the most. Also, after a devastating attack with only a few units left it is a great feature to get back. But you're right dozens of females is an invitation for enemies, however, there is a deadly button to solve that. It is only a festival after all.

[Sanguivorant]

I could see a boom working if there was an easy wall, or if a player was in a pocket position in a team game.

Iberians could probably perform this kind of boom the best, since they can keep their whole food production inside walls. All they would need is to make the occasional military unit in the booming phase and placing some towers in strategic locations.

[thamlett]

Lol, I do this too . With Ptolemies, it's even better because they have free houses

[iNcog]

just make 2 towers and about 10 archers / skirmishers and you can hold off anything ^^

[Sanguivorant]

Yeah, so that's what I do and it gets rid of most threats, except for maybe a good cavalry raid.

Anyhow, this sort of boom is not a dominant strategy, because:

-You severely restrict your military for a bit, so in the short run, you have a weak military.

-You give your opponent room to expand around the map, and place civic centers where they please.

But if you can pull it off, you will ultimately be in a better position.

I feel that there should be a thread or forum dedicated to strategy discussion.

[Alekusu]

Hey Sanguivorant, this is indeed a good way to boom but I have a few questions about your strategy:
- You said at 20min you reach the 300 population limit and go to phase III but what upgrades do you have at 20min (economic upgrades, armory upgrades etc)
- What's your situation at 10min and 15min (female villagers and Soldiers) ?
- At what time do you go to phase II ?

- Do you make a CC in phase II ?

I agree wih you about a thread/forum dedicated to strategy discussion, I have some detailed Build Orders I tried to optimized with Gauls and I'd like to share to get some feedback.

[Sanguivorant]

So I went and retried a boom strategy again, and I don't really have anything set in stone, but here is what I usually do. I attempt this strategy with the Iberians because of their fortifications at the beginning of the game.

I want to get to Town phase as quick as possible to get that fertility tech, so in order to do that, it requires me to neglect my economy a little bit in the short run. So I end up creating female villagers and several skirmishers until around 30-35 population, then I wait until I can tech up. Normally, it is difficult to continue unit production and at the same time advance until you have a very huge economy (50+ population), so this is necessary in order to research town phase in 4:00. At this point, the only thing I have upgraded is the first woodcutting upgrade. I did not build a barracks, just a storage pit and a farming building, and several farms.

While going to the town phase, I reorganize my economy so that I have an extra 100 iron before the town phase. This allows me to simultaneously research the first farming upgrade and the fertility tech once the town phase is complete. As soon as the town phase is complete, I use my citizen soldiers to build a tower in a very important part of my economy, usually the woodline which is outside of my defences.

As the fertility tech is being researched, I am still training female villagers at the CC, and I'm trying to have at least 6 farms being worked before the tech is complete. At this point, the boom begins with about 9-15 houses.

For the first set of female villagers coming out of the houses, I make 5 build an extra farm, and the rest go gather wood. This allows me to train the occasional skirmisher from my CC.

The second and third set of female villagers, I divide them between stone and metal. If the opponent is being aggressive, I might gather stone first so that I could build another carefully placed tower. I always make sure to build houses so that I don't get population blocked, this is important.

I keep building female villagers out of the houses and skirmishers from the CC until I have ~150 population, then I stop building female villagers. At around 15 minutes, I start building a barracks, another CC and a blacksmith, and then I just keep piling my stone and metal resources from there, making sure to keep training skirmishers and spearmen, since they do not cost metal.

As soon as I research city phase at around 16:00-17:00, I build a second barracks, and start training swordsmen. Before I get to the city phase, I make sure that I get the wheelbarrow (Or is it basket?) tech and stone mining tech. This will allow me to drop fortresses in the city phase once I advance.

I was fighting against a hard AI, and they started to attack at 19:00. So actually I did not max out my population, but I did get 250 population at 19:00 before the AI began to attack me.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Sanguivorant

[Peregriino]

Can are you make some video about? I think will be cool see it.

I use something near in the first 10min of the game. Make more womans, 25 and use them for colecting Wood. After make 25 womans I make soldiers, ranged infantary and colect more Wood. When the fruits get over I make farms.

And wait for Phase II at 8min. After this I make more farms, but in this part I make only soldiers. The soldiers are more efecienty to colect the resources and I can use them to fight.

[Sanguivorant]

I could make a video, sure. Though the quality might not be so good, because my computer is not the best.

There are pros and cons to having an economy that's supported by citizen soldiers:

-Your economy gets to be protected; soldiers are harder to kill than female villagers.

- You can use the soldiers to build towers and defensive positions quickly when needed.

-Soldiers get a bonus in wood/stone/iron gathering, which tend to be outside the protection of the civic center.

However, the only problem is that in order to use your citizen soldiers for fighting, you have to take them away from your economy, whereas female villagers are only used for gathering resources.

[Peregriino]

Yes, when I begin play 0ad that was a great problem. I play Stronghold and the system have differences between economy and soldiers.

You just use the womans for economy and let your soldiers stoped some where?

My solution for this is make some "bubbles" of economy. For exemple I make several "bubbles" with 10 infantary in several spots of Wood, in the stone and metal I use more soldiers, but is the same system. I just use this soldiers in last case, when the things are pretty hard. In the front I make a lot of soldiers in the same spot, if a need stop my produccion in case of attack my produccion don't stoped because I have several "bubbles" behind my defensive lines. For this I a need get Phase II as fast I can and make a CC making distance between my "bubbles" and my enemy and using my mass of soldiers to counter any attack.

[Panando]

- You can use the soldiers to build towers and defensive positions quickly when needed.

This is not truly an advantage, as you can shift-queue a new construction from a citizen soldier (shift queue, so he continues his current job), and then order female or even elephant workers to actually do the construction. The citizen soldier is only required for designation, which he can even do from clear across the map, and thereafter need not participate in the construction at all. I suppose this might be considered an exploit though (for instance one of the advantages of the spartan woman is that she can build defenses, and that advantage evaporates if you exploit remote designation, and the worker elephant tooltip says it can 'help' construction, implying it shouldn't be able to do it by itself).

Edited December 15, 2014 by Panando

[Peregriino]

Build for soldiers have any speed bonus? I don't know.

[bouke]

No, I always use a group of 5 females to build my barracks, towers etc. It's just as fast as using soldiers. Using elephants is even twice as fast as using soldiers/females.

[Sanguivorant]

You would need to micro, like, have a soldier put down the foundation, and then task females to build it.

[bouke]

Exactly, that is what I do, I don't see the problem in this.

[Sanguivorant]

No, that is not a problem at all. That is what I do as well.