Actually when im greek in a 3v3 game I usually go for damage sponge and tribber.

This is the way I work it. Lets say I draw outside position. I boom, with the risk of being rushed, and hit a mediocrely late bronze with bowmen guarding my woodies. I make navy, to protect my fishing fleet...but I dont care to engage in boat wars just yet.

The guy in the middle comes and covers my flank a little, but he boomed hard too so he wont be massing units for a while. Now I will trib resources to the other outer guy who probably took a smaller boom or rushed, and I trib him a lot. Middle guy and me combine forces on my territory and push off the guy nearest me. Now I just spend all wood on TCs and villagers and boom like a madman. One time with greek (in a 3v3 game, all with players that were very good) I boomed to 70 vills in 20 mins on a cont map. I had woodies all over the place, and I was tribbing literal thousands of wood to my partners who just made the biggest CA masses youve ever seen. I mined a little gold...but not much. Instead I had my partners trib me gold, while I tribbed food and wood. I had so much wood, I just laid down a few seige shops and built some stoners to accompany my partners stuff. I never made a strong greek offensive, instead I sat back, tribbed, and just complimented their army with stuff. I went hard navy with all the wood I had, and owned over half the enemy water easily, with another 1/4th being fought over with me winning. I kept tribbing, and never ironed.

Ironing isnt necessary sometimes. I mean, granted, greeks have a nice iron. But instead of ironing and slowing down my resource intake and trib output, I didnt iron and tribbed almost everything I had. I kept the bare essentials of food for me...enough for new villagers and upgrades. At 30 mins the game was over, easily. I never ironed, never wanted to. I never made stable or academy units. Just stoners and bowmen.

The way I see it, stoners and bowmen really arent so bad at base defense. My greek stoners took out all enemy archers, while my greek bowmen took out any enemy melee units. It worked out ok...although I never really destroyed anything (although my ships did, and my stoners that followed my allies armies around helped some), without me in there they would have lost. I think thats a great way to play greek. Forget offense, cause you just cant do it until iron. Iron jumping is useless in most every game I play.

I say sit back, enjoy your economy, trib to your allies whenever they ask for something. Wood is the key though. By me tribbing over 3500 wood in less than 25 mins, my allies had enough wood to mass huge CA armies and then some. My enemies, who underestimated me and my greek, never really attacked me, because they never really saw my military...and when they did, they just didnt want to bother with me cause I only had bowmen and stoners (which are not a good offensive army).

If the game lasted another 5 minutes, I would have had plenty of food to iron. With 60 some villagers and 30 fishing boats, I would have had a powerful iron.

Sting's 3v3 game post sounds like a very well played game to me. The idea of ST and bowmen is very valid IMO for attack or defence even. Let me ask a question. Do any of you like it in mid/late bronze when 5 (normal) ST show up escorted by 15 (normal comps) ? I suspect you don't like it very much. You try to charge the ST and get hit with a bunch of arrows not to mention a rock or two. ... ahh.. so you wouldn't mind playing Greece if they had comps ? Well they don't even get imps.. however they get bowmen !! Yes, bowmen and you save 500 res by being unable to research comps. With that 500 res you can make 5 hoppers. Now you can to equal another civs 5 ST/15 comps, have 5 ST/ 5 fast hoppers and 15 bowmen in a nice group. They bowmen shoot anything that gets by the hoppers in front of your ST which just fire away until they die. Your 15 bowmen provided defence for you in early bronze too. They will clearly gun down a couple of stray cav or mels. Your hoppers can easily slice up cav/mels and the bowmen provide much needed defence for when enemy cav/mels get past your hoppers. Surely, you'd rather have compies but you can't so try making bowmen/hoppers instead so you can do something with your Greek bronze age other than hope you and allies can survive your jump to iron.

I am not saying this is the only way to play Greek but if we don't try new things we will never learn anything new.

I week ago I stopped and took out a fine Mino player who went all compies with a combo of Carth Impies/Cav/ST's/slingers. I thought he'd overwhelm me but my combined arms stopped him and then I had impies/ST near his ranges and killed what ever popped out while taking them down with ST.

I urge all to play more random civ games as it is a great way to be force to use "new" units and unit combos... neilkaz...

[This message has been edited by neilkaz (edited 06-24-99).]

Ok, for the sake of flexibility I'll say what I try to do when I get Greek. Most probably Neilkaz and Sting ideas are better than mine, but the more strategies you learn the better you get.

When I get Greek, my first thought is to hit first. Tool is the only age you have all units and people just hate being tool rushed. The major problem is to find your enemy soon enough to build at least 2 barracks near him. I know I can consistely reach Tool with 24 vills, 4 boats and 4-6 clubbers around 10 mins. I immediately research armor and attack and queue some slingers. I'll probably at least relocate him, giving me time to build more docks/boats and bronzing. Walling, of course, plays a major role. Now you are playing a 3v2 to your teams' advantage, what could be just the other way around.

Passing Tool isn't really bad, if you can manage a cav rush just like the old AoE days, followed by a forward built dock to get his boats. If you can do it succesfully you're no doubt winning this match, as you'll build an academy in his town and get whatever he has. Just use the cavs to get his vills while destroying all buildings or stray vills you find with your hop. Stable is a priority target to prevent him of building camels.

Taking control of your enemy's town will put you in advantage and you can concentrating in booming and going iron now. Once there, phalanxes and siege will be a major trouble for the enemy team.

Walling is a must for Greeks. And if you play Narrows it's a bit easier...

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May your weapons be sharp and your ping be green

nice...
but IMO i would recomend a strong tool age rush :] :} ;}
[ u dont use IMHO cause i anitz no hoe
A
IM^HO, get it ? and my oppinion is never humble]

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SINGH23.com

da only sikh tru to da game, AOE fo life

yea, an u know dis

Jaheed knows I'm an underdog civ freak so he'll understand why I can't resist posting here .

The way the 4 of you use Greek is totally different but I think all those strategies can work. Toolrushing indeed is a fine option since Greek has all tool units. Walling and tribbing or walling combined with scout ships (which I bothe used before too) can work well. About the usefullness of bowmen I'm not so sure but I can't really add something about it because I never tried it. But if neil says it works, then it prob works . I'll tell you how I usually tend to use Greek:

Economy: A plain booming strategy with a 40+ vill pop in Bronze (at 15-16 minutes) is what I usually go for.

Military: During the tool transition I build lots of slingers. Once I'm bronze I add mostly hoppers with them and a few cavs. 1 or 2 scout horses are needed for their LOS.

Upgrades: Fully upgrade your slingers! Give them stone mining and bronze shield ASAP. Other upgrades I get quickly are the hand-to-hand attacks and cav armor.

Formation: The hoppers deal with melee units and buildings. The slingers deal with archers and cavs chase stoners. Depending on which units the opponent uses you might want to unbalance the hopper/slinger propertion. Hotkey them in 4 groups: one for slingers, one for the hoppers and another one for the cavs. The last group goes to the scout.

Defense: You guys have said it already but I'll repeat it: wall ASAP and tower up. Greek have full access to the tower line and range upgrades. But I wouldn't recommend stoners for defense like Sting said. In the open field they are OK but when you have enemy CA's amoung your farmers, the last thing you want to do it throw rocks at them. Usually the hopper/slinger/cav units are good for defense too.

Iron: LOL, what do you think? Greek Iron rocks! Fully siege, awesome academy, fast triremes, ball towers, excellent priests and hcavs. But beware that Greek is VERY gold dependant so get those mines depleted ASAP.

I really like Greek and I never whine when the random civ God gives them to me. I look at it as another challenge or possibility to make the best out of them .

Sidenote: have you all noticed the increase of strategy articles in here too the last couple of days? It looks (just a little bit ) that the RoR forum is going back to it's roots: damn hard ass-kick strategy talk, love it!

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Breydel
e-mail : ivan.daems@village.uunet.be
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"Of all Gaul, the Belgae are the bravest" - Julius Caesar, 58 B.C.

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I don't know about Greek but I had a 7 tool and a 13 bronze and a 17 iron with egypt and i converted their ca butts off

Borgboy...I dont think I understand you.

now i wonder why? is it cause i am ununderstandable? or cause your dumb? no j/k

a nice pro-greek post!! to the top with it

whoa.. is this an.. old post? with no inactive people in it? this is possible? cool!