[Anonymous Player]

Greetings everyone!

I’m hoping to use this thread to create a guide for the Castle Age Monk + Siege push strategy.

I’m looking for advice from anyone who has tried this strategy or defended against it.

Those of us with a lower ELO can also ask questions here.

Here are some topics that can be discussed:

– What is the purpose of this strategy?

– What are the differences between using it in Arabia or Arena?

– What are the most effective civs to use when executing this strat?

What civs is it usually effective against?

– What are the best counters to this strategy and when should you avoid using it?

– What is the standard build order?

Is Cicero’s still applicable?

– What are the best support units?

Pikes?

Eagles?

– What should be the next steps based on the results?

Should you stay in Castle Age and go all-in?

Boom before Imperial Age?

Or move quickly to Imperial?

Let’s see if we can provide some insight into this “lesser-known” strategy!

Have a great Sunday!

[total_score2]

The point is to destroy opponent TCs I guess.

On arabia feudal units wreck you, scouts demolish this, archers can be a problem in getting the vills forward to place the buildings.

On arena there aren’t many feudal units, and typically for this you go up way faster on an FC than your opponent, so they won’t stop the forward buildings.

Best civs?

Dunno, Saracens used to be a famous one.

Maybe Khmer?

Portugese?

Burmese aren’t the worst either.

Aztecs, Lithuanians are all probably good too.

Dunno but you should be up QUICK.

Like 21+2 or 22+2 or something.

Full market abuse with like 4 farms.

There are no support units, it literally is a monk + siege push, assuming you mean the arena version of it.

Ofc you can go xbows + monks + siege but that isn’t really the same thing I’d argue.

Follow up depends I think.

Another tip is each monk should be in its own control group, its really critical that the first few monks don’t just die.

There are ways to make the monastery and siegeshop so there is a little gap between them, you wall that off and you can put the monks and vills in there so you don’t lose them.

Heaps of little tricks.

[BigTastyBaconAOE]

I regularly go for an arena smush with the bengalis.

I try to make it not tooooo all in.

Generally i go for a normal fc (23+2), contesting the relics with spearmen, then focus eco a bit (add 2 tc’s) whilst establishing mappresence with buildongs and units and poking at the enemy wie siege eles, trying to bait my opponent into cav, since i am massing some pikemen too.

Then i start to push with monks, ramephants and pikes.

My eco is at that point strong enough to support lc or skirm switches or going up to imp.

[MtG-Crash]

I think the actual goal and overlining intention is to force reactions, and reaction is hard in this game.

You see 1500’s perfectly executing scouts into knights with great macro, but thats only an extremely narrow part of AoE2 decision tree, or even of the 1v1 Arabia decision tree.

And every player has a heterogeneous skill profile, meaning they can do certain stuff pretty well (the common BOs, plus the common smaller deviations and what usually might happen during these), but they still completely lack huge other chunks of the decision tree.

And siege pushes forces the game into these, the same way tower rushes do that.

It is always a way to shift the game into situations far away from the skills where the opponent has their experience in, and towards something else.

It almost is as if you’re trying to play a different game and try to beat them there.

And siege pushes do exactly that.

There are tons of deviations, tons of different things the siege pusher can do, and the defender has to react to all of these differently.

And in order to defend that, you need to make many decisions right .

Thats true for the pusher as well, but the pusher usually has some kind of plan or experience advantage in these sorts of engagements, maybe even have mods particularly for that, like a Mangonel range mod that the “meta” player maybe didnt care for so far.

There are tons of little things.

In some way, siege pushing (and similar things) is the answer to people on the ladder who only know “meta” or the standard BOs and hope that executions brings them far.

But siege pushes forces them out of their execution, right into decision making, and thats where many people are completely naked.

So the more people learn standard BOs and focus on executing them, the more success other people will have on the ladder with siege pushes imo.

[niyupower]

Monk siege both need only wood and gold.

Should we commit hoang style and have no farms?

Or 5-6 farms to send new vills to gold?

Slav or Portugese, which is better? (Haven’t purchased Bengali yet.)

I have heard that the Lithuanian smush is very strong on arena.

Why is that?

[Adavi306]

To start with, I will make some precursory statements:
1 – I am only 1200 elo, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
2 – I will be focusing on Arabia/open maps as I never uae the strat on arena (I’m a castle drop clown)

The best civ to do it with is very debatable and depends on tje situation.

After a standard feudal age?

Aztecs are king imo, but bohemians and celts are good.

For a drush-fc – Celts eat tc, but the afformentioned civs are fine.

There arebother civs that are food at the push, but I won’t list them all.

I will continue to only address the drush fc situation as that is what I have experience with.

Most civs are pretty good to do it against, I think cumans are peobs weakest to the strat.

The only civ that I see and NEVER go for ut against are the Poles.

Maybe since they nerfed the stone mining bonus this is less true but I still never go for it.

The strat is also noticably weaker against Aztecs and Lithuanians.

Tips for the strat – The opponents villagers don’t matter, destroy their tc and production buildings and kill their army.

The vils don’t do anything.
– dont waste monk juice.

Only use your conversions on things that matter.
– Dont be afraid to add spearmen.

Light cav can be a real issue against your comp.

Even if u don’t uograde to pikeman, you can add spears.

Finally, if you have done tons of damage but no longer feel u can do more, stop.

Add tc’s, buy stone if you have to.

Keep the pressure on but you don’t always need to go all in.

[throwawaytothetenth]

Depends on the nature of your push.

I’m not saying this a *good* strategy, but I like sending a shit load of vils to stone with saracens, selling enough to get to castle + buy food for click up and some vils, and castle drop+ monks and mangos on black forest with saracens (selling stone is more gold with saracens for a little bit.) If they add scouts I add 2 or 3 mamelukes, they kill scouts so fast and are mobile enough to defend spread out monks.

[crazyyoco]

Bengalis are fun civ to try this with, since scouts can’t really kill monks if you get sanctity.

Double monastery and 2-3 armoured elephants and rush for redemption and sanctity, and you can do a lot of damage.

Behind it, you can add tc -s or go for forward castle and imp.

I usually try this in TG since I don’t play that many 1v1s.

[acid_zaddy]

This is a great strategy to use if you’ve traded feudal armies and/or won feudal wars and have map control, BUT your opponent civ has some significant advantage in castle age (e.g.

if you’re Franks vs Hindustanis) that makes you not want to go for your typical unit line.

I think on open maps, you typically want pikes as part of this.

I usually add a second barracks on the way to castle, ideally forward if I’m confident in my map control.

If your opponent is on archers, make the workshop first; if they’re on cav, make the monastery first.

Then kill production buildings, TC if you can.

This usually leaves your opponent super exposed so it’s good to combine it with a castle drop at some point.

Be sure to make outposts on the sides so your enemy doesn’t flee and make a new base elsewhere.

In general, this is a strategy I use as a knight civ vs.

a camel civ.

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