scout rush tips

Hey, thanks for the question!

Firstly, it is more common nowadays even on lower elo for players to wall. So because of this it is becoming more and more important to go low population scouts, like our pop 20 scout rush with franks which is still somewhat easy to pull of at your elo. Now important thing when you are going scouts is also to scout if your opponent is walling, so once you have found all of your resources go and scout the opponent and see if he is walling, you can sometimes spot loomless villagers (25 hp on villager, no armor) and get a free kill because the scout in dark age is much stronger than single villager without loom. So keep your scout at the enemy base looking to see if he is walling. Once you get to feudal age your scout gets much stronger and is able to kill a villager that has loom, so you can try to snipe those wallers to keep his base open, if you manage to do so you can also try to send spearman straight away from your barracks to try and help keep the walls open and then send your scouts straight away to the hole from your stable once its done.

However if you are not able to keep the walls open (also make sure to check if there is a hole by clicking your scout to the inside of the walls) like you said in your question you have some different options. I would generally say don't go for a lot of scouts to try and break the walls - it should be very easy for your opponent to just keep walling behind. So stop your scout production after 2-3 scouts made if it seems your opponent is walled. Now it is also important to try to see what your opponent is going for, if he is late to feudal age he is probably going to castle age, if he is fast to feudal he is most likely making some army.

Now if he is going to Fast castle here are few options you have

1. Stop scout production after 2-3 scouts, use the scouts to scout all of the map, wall your base, if you know he is going xbows you might stonewall aswell go to castle age, switch to knights or skirms or xbows. This should give you decently fast castle age time and the walls should give you enough time to react.

1. Practically; Make 11-13 farms, send next villagers to gold, send some berry villagers to gold at this point too if it seems you will have the food before gold to go up. Make sure you have blacksmith finished before you have the resources because you will need it to advanced. Use your stable builder(s) to wall and perhaps add 1 from berries to wall too if needed, but remember you are not in such a hurry to wall if you know your opponent is going to Fast Castle.

2. Keep making scouts, hit his walls and add a quick range for archers to try and deny walling and breaking through with the help of the archers.

2. Practically: 8-9 farms, add a range, send 3-5 to gold, continue farming to about 15, send berry villagers to gold once finished, add either 2nd range or blacksmith and fletching after 1st range.

3. Send villagers forward to build a tower near walls on a spot where it seems hard for the enemy to wall behind once there is a tower, or for example to denie his gold/woodline at the same time if its near wall. Keep making scouts.

3.Practically: New villagers keep farming, send your stable builders and maybe 1-2 more from under your town center to build the towers, once you have decent farm economy, atleast 8 send few villagers to stone if you want to continue towering.

These are just some options you have.

Option 1 is low risk, low reward. If you only palisade wall you might also need to add tower to your gold for example.

Options 2-3 are good especially if your opponent has bad resoucres (golds, stones near his walls, woodlines denieable by archers/tower)

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Jupe

If you are commiting heavy into scouts getting the armor, especially versus archers is good choice, the attack upgrade is nice for raiding (3 hits less for villager kill) and also vs spears and generally anything else. For small numbers tough (5-6 or less) getting the upgrades need to pay off situationally very well if you want to get them. Usually they just delay your castle age time alot in those situations.

Against men-at-arms archer you usually want to open with few skirms then go for a mix of skirm/archer and scouts, once you have few skirms and scouts with bloodlines you should be able to overrun that composition. Remember also that you don't always need to fight scouts vs. men at arms if you are safe at home, then you can go raid with the scouts and get a range and get some arhcer/skirm to drive them away.

If you are fighting scouts vs scouts then building spearman defensively is good idea, or you could try them aggressively too. If you have the aggression with spears and archer and see your opponents army at all times then you need to be less worried of a scout raid (allthough that would be disaster if you didn't have any defensive spearman)

Also to note we have Castle age re balance video coming for that exact build soon.