I tried an insane strat last night 3 times. It is for Medit Map, No Reveal, Gig, 3v3.
I have been using Shang, and have been wondering if I could pull off a 65-70 villa Stone boom.
I do a granary start, make 33 reals and fbs until I reach pop of 70, even if I am Tooling because I figure with 31 woodies (2 explorers), I can boom scout ships from 4 docks once in tool. In Tool I make another 3 villas, and they go on gold.
I was thinking too that if I get rushed on the land - big deal - it will take a Tool army all day to get 30+ villas, and I had partners that I play with every night and can rely on to save my butt if things go south.
In Bronze I immediately throw down a Gov Center, and make 3 TC's asap. I make 10 villas out of my original TC, and 10 out of each of the other 3. Last night I was having food over 3000 when I was around the 20:00 mark. I also make 2 more docks and make 3 fishing ships out of all of them for a ttl of 18 more fishing ships.
Last night I always had enemy CA's harrassing me while I was doing all of this. I had 2 initial archery ranges, and would send 4-6 CA's at a time to slow down my villa death rate, and my Minoan partner had compies starting to flood my land bailing me out. It was funny though because I had little villas everywhere, and the enemy only had 8-10 CA's and he was content killing small running groups, or villas just popping out of one of the TC's.
I had some builders throw down 8 more archery ranges by my docks (we had won the sea), giving me 10 ranges. I started booming from all 10 archery ranges nonstop. I sent several groups of 20 into the opponents homeland, until my CA's finally overwhelmed them. My opponent was Hittite and had lots of CA's and ST's defending. My kill ratio was very low, but I had outeconomied him by double at least.
It was just kinda funny to see me get away with such a huge boom, and do it 3 games in a row. My primary thought was it would take a substantial early tool army on land from my opponent to stop my econ, and I just don't see that a lot anymore. My Shang econ is a balanced one of close to 50% land econ/50% sea econ.
I dunno - I just think it is a funny strat.