All-in Cumans ram, archer, and scout push

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I just tried a strategy as the Cumans that I’m not sure anyone has tried before. I’ve only done it against the Moderate AI, but if someone who is a lot better than me can take it and do well with it online, we may have a new Youpudding strat on our hands.

Here’s how it goes:

Go six on food like usual. Then send the next several villagers to wood, then a few on berries. Then send three or four to gold. Adjust food or wood economy as needed, but there should be at least 9 villagers on wood before you advance at around 25 pop.

Then, you use your wood villagers and place the second TC straddling both wood and gold. This should be easy on most maps. Continue to boom, prioritizing wood and food, as you should have an abundance of gold by now if you have at least 5 gold miners. Place down a Blacksmith, Archery Range, and Stable. The latter two are easier to place than any other civ, as they only cost 100 wood. This is useful, because wood is essential for both rams and their archer backup. Then, place one or two Siege Workshops, depending on your excess wood, and begin pumping out rams, archers, and scouts, continuing to boom to fund your growing army.

Once you have at least 10 archers, 5 scouts, and 5 rams (placing extra Archery Ranges can help expedite this process), attack the enemy. If you do it quickly enough, there is no counter, as archers counter enemy spears, scouts counter skirms, and rams can just generally distract ranged units and take out production buildings. Once you have taken out a sufficient number of production buildings, target the TC. Even if the opponent is an age up, there is little they can do it to stop it at this point, as even individual knights will die to the mass of archers and scouts you have trained.

Enjoy your opponent’s suffering!

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This is a mega investment that’s going to get wiped before you can do anything with it. Even just trying to advance at 25 pop on an open map you’ll usually die to 18/19 pop archers, scouts, M@A, Drush, whatever.

Cuman rams are extremely rare in Feudal age because SW/Rams are expensive on Feudal eco and pretty hard countered by scouts or M@A. Even if you survive to the point of getting out all those units you listed, you’ll be easily beaten by an equal or lesser investment in full scouts, among other mixed comps.

It also compares poorly to the Youpudding/WP strats because those use the market and idling to sell your soul for a quick uptime that takes advantage of unit powerspikes (CA Serjeants and Hussite Wagons) that are extremely hard to deal with via Feudal Age military and can even be hard to stop with low numbers of Castle Age units. You’re calling for a 2 TC investment (the complete opposite of an all-in) that will greatly delay your aggression due to the need to keep your TCs working, and the “powerspike” you’re counting on is…Feudal Age rams, which as we’ve discussed are poor vs. melee units.

Trying new strats on the ladder is always the way to go. If it doesn’t bump you up by at least a couple hundred (this wouldn’t), it’s not the next YouPudding.

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I feel like there are ways to speed it up and make it a lot more deadly and less resource-heavy. People will just have to play around with it and improve it.

I can’t try any new strat on the ladder, regardless of how good it is, because I get wrecked by absolutely every human player I come across.

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Sure, anything can be refined, but there’s very little gold to extract from this lump of ore you’ve got here. People have been experimenting with Cumans since the beginning of DE, and the consensus is that the 2nd TC is a far more powerful advantage than Feudal SW/Rams (and you don’t have time for both before a good opponent is well into Castle Age). Feel free to get a second opinion, but it’s really hard to theorycraft any kind of top strategy - or even be fully aware of what makes the existing meta tick - without actually trying, and succeeding with it against competent human opponents. You can only see so far from the Ivory Tower.

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I don’t deny that, but I think if you had even a fraction of the numbers I gave here, it would be a lot faster and just as effective. Even just three rams can be a big problem if the opponent is stuck in Feudal Age dealing with archers and scouts protecting them.

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With your build order, it is never going to work at mid or high level, probably > 900 Elo.

If you age up at 25 pop, you are 2 or 3 minutes behind your opponent and will be under pressure of rush while having no army. For this reason as well, fast castle strategies strugle ij mid Elo and never work at high Elo.

Then, having 2 TC isnt all in at all. 2 TCs + 5 farms for the TC + 2 SW + 5 rams is a huge amount of resources, like 2000w and 375g or something. You have to expect an equally skilled opponent will have spent these resources into something else.
If I remember well, a regular TC needs 7 or 8 minutes to pay back its investment cost (TC cost, farmers cost, builders & farmers working time). A cuman TC may need 10 minutes. For all this time, you are on the backfoot.

You make both scouts and archers, so either they are unupgraded (hence weak to everything) or they are very expensive (so the opponent army should be even bigger).

When theorycrafting a strategy, an important aspect is always to explain the thoughtprocess: what is the objective behind it ? You dont need to tell the exact number of villagers on each resources, players better than us will do better. Mor like:

  • Why 2 TCs ?
  • Why SW ?
  • Why scouts + archers + rams ?

From my feeling, 2 TCs is sacryfying the current eco to get a better eco later. So 2 TC must be either defensive (better cuman walls), or mixed with some minimal cost annoyance (either fast running scouts or tower rushing) to force the opponent to stay in Feudal (hence increasing villager lead). Thus is incompatible with Siege Workshop. And probably also with archers, who need a mass to be effective and can be easily killed in small raiding group (you lose more resources than the idle time at the opponent woodline)

From my feeling, scouts + archers is the best Feudal age army and a valid strategy by itself if you first mass and upgrade one and attack, then prepare the other while your opponent make counter units.

I guess your objective is to make use feudak rams ? Then you can think around it. You want to kill opponent buildings but not the TC (villagers otherwise kill your rams under TC and archers lack range to deny it), and have enough army to not be denied the ram pressure. Then first mass army, then max 1 SW and 1 or 2 rams. Army should have something dealing quickly with opponent melee units, so a few spears. Then idk, maybe archers or skirms ?
And only after starting to destroy building, making the 2nf TC may be an option. Unless it is better to use the momentum to destroy all buildings with more rams and more army ?

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