The Fast Castle

HUNTING DEER METHOD - METHOD A

BUILDING FARMS METHOD - METHOD B

[www.cysion.be]

3 gold miners



7 farmers



6 foragers



11 lumberjacks (6 + 5 on first/second Lumbercamps)

Follow these steps, and you'll be well on your way to perfecting the ideal Fast Castle strategy.1. Build 2 Houses, one House with 2 villagers and the other House with the remaining villager. Exceptions to this are Huns and Chinese. Huns do not require Houses and Chinese only need to build 1 House at the start to satisfy the population requirement.2. Queue as many villagers as you can using the Town Center hotkey (H) + create villager hotkey (C); H+CCCC. Mayans and Chinese should Loom now since they won't be able to create villagers due to max population and the lack of food respectively. Set the gather point on the straggler trees that you have around your Town Center.3. Transfer all your available villagers to one Sheep. Force drop your woodcutters if you have any by selecting them and right click the Town Center or garrisoning. Set your gather point on that Sheep and unload any garrisoned villagers by using the Unload hotkey "L" until you have 6 shepherds (7/15 pop). It should look like this:4. The 7th villager should go to your nearest forest and build a Lumbercamp. Choose a suitable location, and build your Lumbercamp right against the trees for maximum efficiency.5. Add your next 3 villagers onto wood, for a total of 4 lumberjacks. Research Loom after this if you're not comfortable luring without Loom. (11/15 pop).6. The 11th villager should build a House, preferably next to your Wild Boar because it's going to lure it right after the house finishes building.7. Lure the Boar back to your Town Center. Try to kill the boar right underneath the Town Center. If you've had good micro up to this point, your villagers should be finished or close to finishing your 5th Sheep so they will be free to hunt the boar when it comes near your Town Center. If they are not finished, simply force drop before hunting by dragging them and right clicking your Town Center. If you've done a good lure, it will look something along the line of this. It does not have to be perfectly in the center but make sure it is under your Town Center If your sheep still has 20+ food, simply use one villager to finish the job.Note: You should have 2-3 Sheep remaining, keep them for later.8. Your 12th villager should be sent to your Forage Bushes (I'll refer to them as Berries) andbuilds a mill. Your next 3 villagers should also be sent to your Berries (16/20 population).9. Your 16th villager should go lure your second Boar and repeat step 7. You don't need to force drop Boat meat since they're the same resource so feel free to simply drag and right click (17/25 pop). Keep 2 villagers on the first Boar if it's not finished. Move them onto the second Boar once they are done. Try to lure when you have ~175 food left on your first boar. That usually gives you ample time to make sure your boars don't rot too much and ensure you can "link" them so that you'll always have some Boar meat to eat.10. You should now have 8 villagers on Boar meat. Find your two injured villagers and build a Farm with one of them, then a House immediately after you drop the Farm. After the House is finished, you'll find out that he'll go finish seeding that farm. Cool trick! Add your 17th villager to Boar. (18/25 pop)11.Your 18th villager goes to chop wood for 5 total on your first Lumbercamp. (19/25 pop)12. You now have a few options on how to proceed. One relies on hunting Deer, while the second relies on building farms. Most people choose to build farms to advance, but I prefer using Deer to abuse the bonuses of a few civs (Mongols, Goths, Aztecs etc). Using farms is more reliable and safer, therefore you see many pros opt for farms in Arabia team games etc. However, hunting deer is very fast, so likewise, many players in Arena/Black Forest opt for hunting because it's relatively safe on closed maps. I'll give both routes and you can choose what you prefer.13 a. Add another villager to your Boar for 8 total (20/25 pop). When your boar reaches ~120 food left, grab 4 villagers and tell them to hunt Deer. Build a Mill around the Deer so you have a faster drop off point. When your boar finishes, start eating those 3 sheep you saved with the remaining 4 villagers.13 b. For your 20th villager, build a second Lumbercamp, preferably not right next to your first Lumbercamp. (20/30 pop). Next 2 villagers also goes to wood. (23/30) pop.13 c. Send your next two villagers to mine gold. Remember at 23/30 pop, always remember #23.13 d. The 25th villager should build a Farm for 3 total. The next 2 villagers should go onto wood, for a total of 10 Lumberjacks, five on each camp. Click advance to Feudal Age with 28/30 pop.14 a. Send your next villager to chop wood for total of 6 on the first Lumbercamp. (20/25 pop).14 b. Start building Farms, and then a House with villagers that are currently under your Town Center. Transfer the remaining villagers onto sheep (try to use 5-6), and then set your Town Center gather point onto the nearby stragglers as you will need to build additional farms. As soon as you have 60 food, build a farm according to Cysion's farm economics (explained later). As seen here (thanks Cysion!) 14 c. Your next 3 villagers should go to building farms. (23/30 pop). Instead of mining gold here, build a second Lumbercamp and send the next villager there as well. (24/30 pop)15 d. Build a Mining Camp, and use the last 3 villagers on gold to click advance with 27/30 pop.15 e. When your shepherds are finished, send 2 to your Berries and the rest on your 2nd Lumbercamp. A typical villager distribution looks like this:14 f. You need 7-9 farms to reach Castle Age. This comes with experience and you might need to build additional farms to reach the necessary 800 food to advance to Castle. With come civs, you can build more farms such as Celts having more wood to spend, Teutons having 33% cheaper farms and so on.15. These strategies are meant to transition from a Fast Castle straight into booming. If you wanted to use these strategies to perform a Knight rush, then simply build a Barracks in Dark Age at around 50% up, and build a Blacksmith + a Stable instead of a Market + Blacksmith. The same principles apply.16. Upon reaching Feudal Age, queue an additional 2 villagers from your Town Center. Take 2 villagers from wood or finished shepherds and build a Market. Likewise, take another villager from wood and build a Blacksmith. (30/30 pop). Put the 2 new villagers on wood for now.17. As soon as your buildings are complete, and your 2 villagers are finished creating, you should be able to click advance to Castle Age at around 13:45-14:10 depending on how good your micro was. Nonetheless, if you're short by 50 food or so, try force dropping some Deer hunters or farms. If you've had 800 food or more and was able to click up immediately, congrats, you're well on your way to becoming a pro at Black Forest.18. Don't forget your Lumbercamp and Mill upgrades. When your Deer hunters are finished, make them build farms. Likewise with your Shepherds. If you chose to build farms using method B, then gauge how much wood you have, and how you can use your resources to the fullest.The rest is up to you.