My Secret 5 Militias Drush Build Order To Escape Low ELO

Are you stuck in low ELO or in a losing streak? – 5 Militias Drush changes everything. You will win ranked games against strong opponents you’ve never won against! And here is the real kicker.. You will learn how to execute this aggressive build order and counter other strategies easily.

Video Demo

The video below depicts the build order in action. But not explained 100%. For complete build explanation and additional tips keep on reading..

Raw Build in a Step By Step

Secrets To Master 5 Militias Drush

Coupled with memorizing the Raw build (previously illustrated), Tips and the Military Timeline will make it easier for you to nail the 5 Militia Drush to perfection.

Starting with the Military Timeline depicting when exactly you should be building army. Make no mistake of dishonoring the timeline as everything is calculated in this build, you’ve got to queue army constantly except the times when you are planning to go up to the next age or save up for an upgrade.

I highly recommend you to the complete hotkeys guide for age of empires 2 to ensure dominance with this build.

Now it’s time to dive into some secret tips, shhhhh! I divided these priceless tips below into 4 Ages, rendering them easier to memorize. DO NOT disregard time at the beginning of every tip! Time is a dimensional necessity to master the build order.

Dark Age Tips

Feudal Age Tips

1. At Feudal Age Researched: Research economic upgrades Double-Bit Axe & Horse Collar. Upgrade to Men at Arms, Build: Archery Range + Blacksmith
2. While Military Structures are being built: Villagers queued from your Town Center become farmers and so the foragers after bushes are depleted. Your goal is to achieve at least 12 farms or preferable 14 farms at 14 mins
3. At Blacksmith built: Research Fletching
4. At 14:30 mins: Either build more farms OR another Archery Range or a Stable.
5. At 15:00 mins: Assign villagers queued from the Town Center to your gold mines.
6. At 16 mins: Research Wheelbarrow
7. At 17 mins: Stop queuing archers to save up gold for clicking up.
8. At 18 – 19 mins: Click up to Castle Age (Idle your town center if necessary to acquire 800 food)
9. At 50% Towards Castle Age: Research Gold mining upgrade & Add another Archery Range

Castle Age Tips

1. At 80% Towards Castle Age: Send 2 villagers forward near or behind the enemy crucial resources (preferably gold, alternatively wood) or military structures
2. At Castle Age Researched: Research Bodkin Arrow, Crossbowmen, Bow-Saw. Use those 2 villagers to build a Siege workshop. Build a new Town Center near your gold miners to protect them.
3. Before 24 mins: Build a second Town Center around 20 – 24 mins (building it later than that delays your economy)
4. At 27 mins: Build a University and research Balistics.
5. At 30 mins: You need at least 27 farmers but preferably 30 Farmers.
6. Around 31 – 32 mins: Click up to Imperial Age
7. At 10% to imperial Age: Research Heavy Plough
8. At 40% to Imperial Age: Send two or three forward villagers to build 2 siege workshops and queue rams inside them.

Imperial Age Tips

1. At Imperial Age Researched: Upgrade Bracer, Chemistry, Capped Ram, Two-Man-Saw

Transitions

Given the dark age economy of this build, any transition is viable. In this section, I will help you tweak your economy to smoothen your transition to any unit combo you desire.

Full Scouts

By default in our build we click up to feudal age with 5 or 6 farmers, but assuming you would like to transition into a full scouts build. You will need at least 9, 10 or 11 farmers before you reach Feudal Age meaning your lumberjacks should be only 8 (but no less than 8).

So if you wish to have 10 or 11 farmers simply remove 1 or 2 foragers and assign them as farmers.

1. At Feudal Age: Build 1 stable, upgrade wood and food. (Start queuing scouts non-stop)
2. At 175 wood: Build 2^nd stable. (Keep spamming scouts)
3. At 100 gold: Research Bloodlines
4. At 14 – 15 Farmers: Build a blacksmith

Keep focusing on queuing nonstop scouts & over farming. Spam Farms nonstop!

• At 17 – 19 mins: Research Wheelbarrow

You have the freedom to stay longer in feudal age and spam scouts all day long. Or try to go up to Castle age if you feel like you can’t do much damage.

Full Feudal

This build has great synergy with a full Feudal age transition. In fact the build remains intact until 13 mins..

1. At 13:30 mins: Build 1^st stable.
2. At 14:30 mins: Build 2^nd Archery Range.
3. At 16:00 mins: Build 2^nd Stable.
4. At 17 – 19 mins: ResearchWheelbarrow

The aim of Full feudal is to keep spamming: Archers, Skirmishers, Scouts, Spearmen. Then raid your opponent and take as many engages as possible, considering that your units have all or most of these upgrades:

Full feudal wars usually hit 28 – 30 mins before clicking up to Castle Age. So be prepared for a long war and spam military units non-stop. Don’t give up!

Tower Rush (Trush)

Hmm, hmm! When you spot your opponent walling like a maniac before 10 mins. Your reaction is to build a mine camp with 3 villagers near any accessible stone piles exactly by the time you click up to feudal age which is 10 mins. You will have only 9 Lumberjacks instead of 12.

1. At 40% Feudal Age: Pull 4 foragers and send them forward.
2. At Feudal Age Researched: Build one lonely stable at Home. Build a Tower with your forward villagers behind any crucial resource.
3. At 150 wood available: Build a blacksmith (Research Fletching to increase tower range and damage.)
4. At 150 Food 100 Gold available: Research Bloodlines in the stable.

The plan is pretty simple, spam towers, scouts and a few spears in an attempt to burst through the walls into his base. Just don’t give up!

How To Counter Other Strategies?

Counter a Scout Rush

Scout rushes are not all the same. Some like to click up with 20 pop around (7:20 mins), or 21 pop (7:36 mins), or 22 pop (8:03 mins) or even 23 pop (8:23 mins). I would only worry about 20 and 21 pop because these benchmarks let your opponent hit feudal at 9:30 mins.

Assuming your opponent went for a 20 or 21 pop. His stable will be built and ready to queue scouts at 10:05 mins. By 12:00 mins, he will have a total of 3 to 4 scouts. You should be fine if he decides to defend his base from your militias; but problematic if he heads to your base straight forward.

So the first question is…

Which Civilizations usually go for a 20 or 21 pop ?

• Mongols
• Persians
• Huns
• Franks
• Indians
• Khmer
• Slavs

Second question…

How to defend your base against 3-4 scouts at 12 mins?

The only con of this build is the fact that we hit Feudal age around 12 mins. Basically within the timespan of 12 to 13 mins, we are more or less vulnerable. To overcome this vulnerability we have two options:

Keep harassing your opponent with the 5 militias until 11:00 mins then retreat to defend at home. (queue 1 Spearman before upgrading to men at arms)

OR

Create (3 – 4) new militias and keep them garrisoned inside the barracks until 12 mins. Now use them to defend.

 

There is always a third options if you are comfortable with hotkeys:

Quick-Wall in your all exposed villagers around 11 – 12 mins.

Counter Drush & Men at Arms

5 Militias Drush is a counter-build to Drushes & Men at arms. You can easily proceed with the build as it is. However playing defensive instead of aggressive in feudal age is likely more rewarding, especially against archer sneaks. Feel free to research Town Watch to increase the line of sight around your base.

The kind of upgrades you never want to miss are:Fletching and Padded Archer Armor. The only situation when you can ignore the armor upgrade is when your opponent has barely any army.

But bear in mind that if you scout your opponent laying down huge walls left and right. It’s no brainer that he’s intending to go Castle Age asap. Logically, you can react with instant aggression of towers and a spam of scout. Or simply be the king of monkeys and do the same thing.

Counter Forward Rush

Forwards are extremely rare since the release of AoE2 DE. And it’s safe to say that our 5 Militias build is not only a hard counter, but also an instant gg to your opponent if you catch his villagers off guard half way; hence the reason for I recommended previously to use the Barrack’s rally point near any forward enemy resource.

The best way to deal with forwards is:

1. Spot the enemy villagers
2. Use both Militias and (4 or 5) of your own villagers to scare away or deny your opponent forward.

Skirmishers & men at arms are the best combo to deal with a forward in the early phase. Later on you can switch to archers or scouts depending on feels like the right call.

Counter Archers

Countering pure archer builds, such 22 or 23 pop double archery range, comes down to how good you did with your 5 militias starting from 09:00 mins onwards. Denying his gold miners should your priority number 1, wood lines come as a second priority then the foragers.

Often you want to take what you can get, be it foragers, gold miners, deer hunters or lumberjacks. And that is totally fine as long as you’ll switch your raiding focus later on to only harassing gold miners and lumberjacks.

At Feudal age, build 1 archery range and a blacksmith then fully commit to skirmishers. In fact as soon as you research fletching you can pull your gold miners from gold then assign them as farmers. You want to “farm hard and skirm hard”. Do not even bother with archers unless he goes for a stable or you wish to transition to Crossbows. Either way going for a stable yourself isn’t a bad idea at all.

Replay Downloads:

These recs are old so they won’t work on the latest version sadly :(

What’s better than actual replay evidence to observe the art of adaptation. Find below my last 4 ranked games I played last week

How Extract replays?

Manual Method

Press

Type in: %userprofile%\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE\

Then press ENTER.

Go inside a folder with random digits e.g. \76561198079200175\

Finally extract to \Save\ Folder

Automatic Method

Download DE Replays Manager (DERMSetup.exe)

Install DERMSetup.exe

Drag & Drop 5-Militias-Drush-Replays.zip into DE Replays Manager > Browse Replays

Conclusion

This build order synergizes better with 3 Civilizations: ✅Huns, ✅Persians, & ✅Britons. But keep in mind that ⛔Bulgarians & ⛔Spanish lack Crossbowman upgrade, so if you ever pick them – Think anything but archers. Apart from these two exceptions, it’s safe to say the build order works well with the rest of the civilizations.

Be a nice to your opponent and have fun ❤️