25+2 Vils Fast Castle into Unique Unit

The objective of this build is to reach Castle Age and drop a Castle right away. A Castle is one of the strongest buildings in the game, offering excellent defense along with the ability to produce your civilization's Unique Unit. The plan is to play safe early on, then attack once you've massed a few Unique Units, committing all of them since the Castle covers your defense. This works best with a civilization whose Unique Unit is strong even without a lot of upgrades, think Conquistador, Coustillier, Mangudai, Janissary, and several others. It's also an excellent choice on nomad maps, since you're usually going for a fast Castle there anyway thanks to stocking up resources early.

  1. [Dark] Send 6 villagers to sheep (pop 6)
  2. [Dark] Send 3 villagers to wood (pop 9)
  3. [Dark] Send 1 villager to boar (pop 10)
  4. [Dark] Send 1 vil to make house then mill on berries (pop 11)
  5. [Dark] [Highly Recommended] Lure deer to your tc if any are nearby
  6. [Dark] Add 3 more to hunt under TC and grab second boar (pop 14)
  7. [Dark] Send 4 more vils to berries (pop 18)
  8. [Dark] Seed 3 farms with hunt villagers so we dont eat our sheep too fast (pop 18)
  9. [Dark] Send 5 more villagers to wood (only 1 lumber camp) (pop 23)
  10. [Dark] Send 2 villagers to gold (pop 25)
  11. [Dark] Research Feudal Age (perfect landing time: 11:20) (pop 25)
  12. [Feudal] When sheep runs out, send 4 vils to stone to make a mining camp (pop 25)
  13. [Feudal] Send the other 3 vils to straggler trees and then make the feudal buildings (pop 25)
  14. [Feudal] Send 1 villager to make a blacksmith
  15. [Feudal] Send 2 villager to make a market (usually the ones on straggler trees)
  16. [Feudal] Send 2 villagers to stone (pop 27)
  17. [Feudal] Research Castle Age (perfect landing time: 14:50)
  18. [Castle] Research double bit axe
  19. [Castle] Research horse collar
  20. [Castle] Drop the castle with stone villagers and play from there
  21. [Castle] Research bow saw
  22. [Castle] When berry villagers go idle, send them to whatever resource you need

What next: Now that you have a Castle and you're in Castle Age, you have a few options: First option: make your Unique Unit, then slowly start adding Town Centers, sending 2-3 villagers back to stone while the rest go to farms and wood. Second option: keep mining stone with all 9 villagers, make your Unique Unit to establish map control, then 2-3 minutes later push forward and drop a second Castle right in your opponent's face to try to win early. Third option: drop stone entirely and go for a 1 Town Center all-in with your Unique Unit and Siege, once the villagers finish building the Castle, send them to wood, gold, or farms. Whichever path you take, make sure you get real value out of your Unique Unit, or that your defensive Castle is accomplishing something, otherwise you fall behind by delaying your Town Centers for an early Castle drop that isn't paying off.

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