Multi Player Strategies

Archers

By apocalypse77

The best civ you could possibly use for archers I would say would be Assyrian. The increased fire rate is very useful, and they have all the range upgrades. They are, by far, the best tool rushers, except perhaps Yamato, I take them any time I want to tool rush. The Assyrian bowman rush is a decent rush, considering the bowman only does three damage though, but when combined with the axeman, this is the most effective tool rush I have ever seen. In AOE, finding shore fish can speed up the process tremendosly. In RoR, the speed at which shore fish is gathered is significantly decreased, so either find a lot of berries, or build a dock and fish.
For and Assyrian axe/bow rush, you should use about 16-20 villagers. Send four or so out in two or three groups. When you see their base, build two barracks and two archery ranges near their base. If you want to, you can have your villagers build a Granary or a Storage Pit and take some of their resources. You should build whatever unit the situation demands. If they have a lot of towers, concentrate more on axemen. Also be sure to try and get the upgrades at the Storage Pit for your armor and attack power. The first job of this rush, like most rushes, is to kill their villagers. Don't fight towers if you don't have to. In fact, stay out of range of the towers. Just run past them. Once you kill their villagers, or most of them, go back and destroy their town. Then try to hunt down the remaining villagers. The last thing you do is attack the towers. While you are rushing, be sure to keep your villagers doing something, and try to build up defenses with walls and towers. If you can bronze too, go ahead. This is in case your rush fails, or his partner (if he has one) won't kill you.
When you have archers, at least in relation to AOE or RoR, you probably think of composites(compies) or of Horse Archers(HA). But probably the most important unit of the archer variety, in my opinion, is the ballista and the helepolis. Now they aren't archers in the strictest sense, they don't get archer armor upgrades, for example. However, they do have the advantage of not hurting your own men, being very accurate after getting the ballistics upgrade, and causing forty plus damage a shot.
Ballistas (which includes helepoli) are even more effective when teamed with archers. The archers can do a better job of hitting enemy units, and the ballistas will completely destroy any building than comes in their way. Horse Archers, Heavy Horse Archers, and Chariot Archers are the best for escorting ballistas, for reasons I will mention later. Of course, it is very important to get all the range upgrades at the market, and ballistics and engineering at the Government Center.
Finally, the reason it is best to use CA, HA, or HHA to escort ballistas is you can use hit and dodge tactics on catapults. This is my own strategy, where one or two CA, HA, or HHA run in and shoot a few arrows at the catapult, then dodge the return fire, fire again, dodge the return fire, until the catapult is destroyed. It is also very important to be sure you avoid other units coming at your archers. Killing the other units with their own catapult fire can prompt some rather rude comments from uncouth opponents.

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