I’m currently Platinum 3 (I’ve reached Diamond before, but I also go back down to gold sometimes), and play mostly HRE, Abbasid and French.
I’ve tried many times to experiment with fast castle strategy, especially with HRE and Abbasid, but it just doesn’t seem to work for me. Even with HRE I find that going 2 tc and THEN castle age is sooo much better.
When I go fast castle, I usually manage to grab 3-4 relics, and then start feeling like I must play defensively because by that time the opponent army is so much stronger. So by that time I usually build more military production building, around 6-7. But and try to build an army, and keep. But after many battles I always end up loosing because I basically get surrounded and lose control of the map, run out of gold or wood… And the opponent Eco is much higher.
Same problem with Abbasyd, I usually just lose if I try a fast castle on 1 TC. I’ve also tried making a TC right after hitting castle, but my eco doesn’t seem to catch up the opponent when I do this.
Is fast castle just a bad strategy? Or am I playing this wrong? Any advice of what do to, not up to castle, but AFTER reaching castle and after taking the relics, would be appreciated. Because that’s where I start to struggle.
Even in HRE vs HRE matchup, I find that I win way more often by going 2 tc (even if the meta seems to show that fast castle is the strategy here), I’ve had a game where i had so much army (after going 2 tc and delaying my castle, while he went for fast castle) that even though the opponent took the 5 relics, i still went with cathedral and then ram through the opponent base and stole 2 relics from his outpost. And by that time i had so much more villager than him that i won the game. This is just one game example, but it seems to be a pattern in my games.
What do you think?