I know that not everyone agrees with me but in 3v3's the focus of any tool age land attacking I do is practically 100% directed at killing, harrasing, and disrupting an enemy's villagers. Killing them is the number 1 priority.
Until the enemy has made it to bronze and built a GC and additional TC's he cannot replace more than 1 dead villager every 20 sec since he only has 1 TC. Assuming he is in the process of bronzing he can't replace any vils until he has completed bronzing.
THIS DISCUSSION SHOWS HOW PAINFUL EVEN A SMALL LOSS IN VILS CAN BE
Let's say I made 3 bowmen during my bronze transition near an opponents workers. I am a civ that will use archery units a lot so I will clearly need the 100 food I spend on archer armor anyhow..so I don't think I need to count that expenditure as a waste. 3 Bowmen (180 res) hit his workers but he saw me coming and 3 slingers soon arrive and kill my bowmen. However, 3 bowmen can kill 1 vil every 4.2 sec and by concentrating on the vils I killed 3 of them only before my bowmen died of rock inflicted wounds... OK I lost 180 resources and he lost 150 resources.. this doesn't sound like a fair trade but consider that if I killed his 3 workers 1 minute before he's completed bronzing it will be even longer before their replacements get back to work.
Let's analyse (assuming he had the wood chopping upgrade so his (non Phoe) woodies are effectively gathering 0.5 wood per sec. Also assume 5 sec to walk newborns to the wood.
Thus dead vil 1's replacement won't be chopping until 85 sec after dead vil 1's death.. similarily 2 and 3's replacements don't get working for 105 and 125 sec respectively after there counterpart's deaths.
OMG.. the loss of 3 villagers to my little tool age "resource equalisation" cost him 315 sec of villager production !! Thus he lost over 150 wood that he would have gathered had they not died. For an expenditure of 180 resources I have cost my victim over 300 resources since he also lost 150 food worth of vils.
There are other ways to look at this, too. We both bronze at the same time but I had 3 more vils alive for 60 sec each and thus once bronzed I am 90 wood ahead of him and will have 3 more workers for the ENTIRE game gathering (assuming we each now start pumping new vils from our bronzed TC) This results in a nice continuing economic advantage and MORE than justifies the lost gathering time of having my 2 dock builders build on the enemy. Future battles will be fought near his vils while mine will hopefully work safely at home.
I neglected to mention that he spent 150 res on slingers which are a not total waste now.. but will die quickly when a cav camel or chariot shows up with my archers later. I also neglected to mention that my bowmen may have wounded and disrupted a couple other woodies. Vils don't like to gather resources while taking arrows in their backs.
My opponent may panic from the small attack. He doesn't know if more bowmen will come or if I will send clubbers in. He might make a bunch of slingers or axers and find out that they all die 4 minutes later to strong bronze units.
I hope this preceeding little discussion is enough to convince you to go after a victim's vils when you tool attack him. Often you kill MANY more than just 3 of his vils.
I just LOVE it when the tool rusher let's me escape with 5 or 10 more vils than he could have killed because he is after my TC or houses. .. Assuming I have competent allies and he has launched the all out tool rush necessary to kill my TC.. I simply have stopped bronzing, saved my 800 food, and rebuilt a new TC somewhere. Now a bronzed ally comes in with 4 cav and slaughters 15 axers.. either before or after he trashed the tool rushers likely still tool age vils. Conversely, if you are 100% sure the victim has escaped and you can't get at him (he ran across shallows and is behind an allies walls) then you take his buildings down.
... kill vils... neilkaz...
[This message has been edited by neilkaz (edited 06-24-99).]