Tughlaq Dynasty

[Shneider177]

Realization about the governor of Bhakkar…

its efficiency at tier 3 is BETTER than Mali cow boom (food generated per min vs cost). Lets breakdown the numbers:

cows cost 90g, cattle ranches cost 100w. So for one full cattle ranch you’d spend 270g and 100w. So at base rates you’d generate 75food/min at a cost of 370 resources.

Meanwhile the Gov of Bhakkar complete setup would cost 400 stone to build the fort, 275 stone for the first upgrade and 300 stone & 100 gold for the 2nd upgrade to make the fort tier 3; a total of 1075 resources. Now if we consider surround the fort with houses exclusively that would amount to 12 houses at 50 a piece for 600 wood. That puts us at a grand total of 1675 resources for tier 3 fort which grants each houses 28 food/min.

Finally compare the efficiency upfront 75fpm /370res vs 336fpm/1675res and the cow boom slightly beats out the fort setup intially; HOWEVER if you get to the point where you need the 120 extra population, all the wood spent on the 12 houses gets negated since population is mandatory which increases the fort efficiency to 336fpm/1075res which is BETTER in efficiency than a cow ranch with all 3 food upgrades 97.5fpm/370res!

In the grant scheme of things, Mali’s setup is clearly the better options b/c how many total cows they can make and how their landmarks synergizes with the cow booming; AND how efficient Sofa’s are.

Yet this is still worth mentioning in my opinion!

Edit:

Although, once the 120 population is needed, the house cost get negated and the efficiency of food per min vs cost is better than Mali’s cow ranch full with all 3 food upgrades…. our fort DIMINISHES in efficiency with each upgrade?? HUH
BASE FORT

400 stone, 12 needed houses, generates 144food per min; so thats 144/400 = 0.36 eff

2nd tier, + 275 stone 240 food per min; 240/675= 0.35555 eff

3rd tier, + 300 stone +100 gold, 336 food per min; 336/1075= 0.3125 eff

final tier, +350 stone +100 gold; 336 food per min and grants stone at 20% of total food generation, 0.2x336; 403.2/1525 =0.2643 eff?? (still better than max cattle ranch but just barely).

[Shneider177]

Of all the Rush civs…

I’m convinced only Otto!!, Mongols, Delhi and maybe Jeanne?? Can beat Tughlaq on land. And really if I think about it some more and practice I might devise a way to kill Delhi and Mongols. Mongol Drush is devasting though b/c Tugh NEEDS GOLD neeeedddsssss stone. Once more ppl get that into their heads… we’ll be in trouble.

Here’s the build order:

6 on berries

2 on gold

build houses INSIDE TC protection but in a box that will outline your first fort on the gold mine.

continue until you have 8 on berries, the rest will go on sheep. Once you have enough for age up, only use 3 to build LANDMARK. I prefer TOV b/c long term it gives you soooo much more value DPS wise.

Leave 4 vils on sheep and send all rest of berry worker to stone and rally all new vils to stone; you want to vaccum up 975 stone (at min get the 675…)

Once you age up around 4:15s-4:20; use your gold villagers to place your fort inside the box you should have been forming. The fort SHOULD be sitting INSIDE your TC protection, so with decent attention to detail is immune to early raids. PLUS u want the enemy to think he can kill your builders b/c that takes his focus off your stone villagers still swallowing up that 975 total stone!!

Once the fort is up pick Gov of Bhakkar, send all stone workers to wood, get all the castle upgrades, surround the fort with houses immediately using a separate vil to build each house (parallel process!). Then finally get all your upgrades, woven basket, WB, forestry, etc.

At this point the enemy’s decision should dedicate yours!

If he FC, you need raiders! Stop relic and harrass exposed vils on food; meanwhile your food is safe as you should have plenty of untouched sheep, some berries left and can slowly start farming to suplement until its safe to move out!

if he is going all FEUDAL IN?! Well now you need to attempt to sneak to your 2ND stone mine and get enough stone for a 2nd fort (gov of amjer!) while also responding with whatever unit composition is needed to answer the call.

Your tier 3 food production is BETTER than Mali’s cow boom on 4 full cattle ranches

[Shneider177]

After going to conq3 and back to diamond🥴, the strats on land that achieved the highest success for me have been:

1. Upgradeless TOV rush into raider harassment followed by fort proxy drop with support units to raider elephants.
2. Either upgradeless and blindly or upgrades then scout for adjustment, into immediate farm gov fort but surround the fort with houses, then scout to either play the age or follow your opponent to castle.
3. Yolo fort drop into Ajmer …. risky

I did NOT have good success trying to play 2tc into forts ( this cost me all my elo), unless it was against a civ like malians that’s gonna sit back. BUT what I will admit, of all the strats THIS Literally has the highest reward and skill ceiling, so better players might flirt with this BO. Remember the Market is your friend … one of the BIGGEST drawback to double TC especially fast villager production double TC…. is FOOOOODDDD…. You run out soo fking fast!!! And elephants cost even more FOOOD–your advantage comes from having villagers, but to make them you need to use your advantage to secure food, but spreading your eco means more exposure and susceptiblilty to raids and idle time which forfeits your advantage….

This is why I suggest option 2 bc it gives you the equivalent of 8.4 standard villagers on food very early 8-9mins in then leverage this burst into making your opponent fallback, then switch into double TC!!! Or option 1 into option 2, to keep the momentum!

[Shneider177]

ppl weren’t use to this civ yet….

Now that they know what to expect DOF or TOV…. this civ has maybe 2 decent matchups max. Upgrades are too expensive, so even though u get them instantly they take so much longer to payoff.

There is no HOTKEY to select individual forts? You’ll be searching the whole map trying to remember which one was your TC fort??

Everyone else’s civ MACRO is intuitive, AND THIS ISNT A BAD THING that tughlaq isn’t straightforward; but all these options (so far) each amount to medicore returns meanwhile the intuitive builds from other are EZ gg’s.

Trample 1 second animation lock is just too long; enemy units are just running away with ez.

Let’s go at this a completely different direction:

FIX TRAMPLE….

(now let’s look at this from a completely different angle)

Buff the initial eco some more. Start us off at 10% bonus yield instead of 5%. The eco buff will increase tempo and alleviate the hefty research fees. Everything i’ve tried to do and failed vs conq2+ has been partly b/c my macro has been too slow, among other things…

[Shneider177]

ULTRA LATE GAME…

both sides have “infinite resources”

I think only delhi has premium units that can contend with peak Tughlaq premium units; especially if they fix the trample BUG on War Elephants where sometimes spearwall will CANCEL the splash dmg over time NOT just stun the elephant.

8 Ballista, 8 War Elephants, 3 Healer Elephants, a trillion spears and maa as fodder. Nobody is sniping 16 elephants efficiently before the combined splash from ballista and war RIPS THRU WTF EVER dares stand in their way.

Actually not even delhi can stop them IF Delhi lets Tuglhaq get all its techs? Then Delhi forfeit their tempo and at which point its Tughlaq premium plus buffs units vs zeal delhi??? LOL.

[Shneider177]

Fort creep might be a decent anti FC play. All of this is predicated on the Ajmer Governor. You’re gonna drop fort on the enemy but not immediately at their base. Instead put your first fort with 6+ vils about 12 tiles from the edge of the enemy base. Try to pick a location near food or wood. These vils are gonna spend a lot of time building so you don’t want their resources to paramount to hitting your timings.

The idea is first drop fort (Ajmer) then a 2nd fort even closer to enemy to give the ajmer warriors longer time to be max/near max HP, THEN 2nd TC at home. Then focus on securing stone and food with more forts.

Getting the TC speed buff is critical, however… I don’t prefer that one exposed bc you’re gonna want to upgrade that one. Getting the 50% turns your 2tc into 3 tc.

[Shneider177]

Forts are difficult to balance…

Current iteration of forts work exceptionally well for fort creep ajmer warriors into the enemy base. If you check tughlaq win rates over game length, they have a near 60% win rate inside 14min games…. Even at conq they well over 50% in that game time interval.

Whether it be design or an “Ops”, forts work very well for that specific play. However, forts are shyte mid to late game bc they take too long to establish vs bigger armies and less Garrison slots than a keep and no boiling oil and the curse buff is bugged vs some units. The funny thing is if you could get all the upgrades possible for the fort it’s the 3rd highest effective HP keep in the entire game after Elzbach and Spasskaya…. But there is only 1 of those specific keeps, meanwhile we could technically get up to 6 ultra Max HP forts.

I’m sticking by the idea that STARTING in castle age, all fort upgrades 30s and the curse upgrade takes 15s. Lastly once you research the 2nd upgrade (the 300 stone and 100 gold upgrade) your fort Garrison slot increases by 5 to match a standard keep garrison slot.

Alternatively, you can make the forts even cheaper, starting with LESS HP, but builds twice as fast and gain more HP then currently with each upgrade. This would be a buff and nerf. Buff bc you could afford them sooner and get them up faster; a nerf bc it would be easier for enemy to destroy it….. and this might be the better option to kinda nerf fort creep strat?

With the last idea forts will cost 280 stone and build in 70s! but only have 1400HP base…. First tier upgrade (275 stone upgrade )will grant 1700 additional HP (3100HP) and the 2nd tier upgrade (300 stone 100 gold upgrade) will grant 1900 additional HP (5000HP). This idea DOES not benefit establishing a fort from scratch on the Frontline mid game, but making it CHEAPER and faster to build WILL absolutely (if this cheap) get it build sooner and all over the map!

I think I’m falling in love with the cheaper fort, less starting HP but builds faster idea?? All your government perks become amazing at a base rate of 280 stone?? At the CHEAPER cost, this civ might actually be able to center their play around spamming forts?

For example: at 280 stone and the 15% research Governor, the base fort would be paid for by getting all your feudal upgrades!! Which might be a thing if you’re going all out prolonged feudal. Also you can now FC with tughlaq and hit a timing if you only need to prep a 280 stone “tower” on your gold as opposed to a 400 stone, 2min build “tower”??

faster cheaper less HP, sounds string on paper!

[Kolog]

Changes proposed by Corvinus1 to the devs:

1. Hisar Academy

• Add a baseline tickle even with zero Governors.

2. Palace of the Sultan

• This landmark should be a keep landmark instead of what it gives currently.
• Would help a lot to reach Imperial, and Governors are picked anyway.

3. House of Learning

• This landmark just needs 1 more upgrade, and that is all.

4. Compound

• It should reduce the cost on upgrades too.
• I played a couple of House of Learning Tughlaq and it is actually 2x stronger than Compound of the Defenders.

[Shneider177]

Tughlaqbad Fort Forward Base into constant harrasment following by

1. feudal all in
2. 2TC Fast castle WHILE dropping forts all over the map on pocket resources,

This is the EXCLUSIVE WAY to play this faction; most civs JUST CANNOT OUTRIGHT STOP IT!

This is not an immediate fort drop directly into the enemy base, a full villager pull from the enemy will snuff such nonsense. This is a 6-7vil pull for a quarter mid-map on the enemy side, for an immediate AJMER GOV fort drop followed by a 2nd fort 6 to 8 tile radius from your first fort, preferably near enemy food–b/c starving him out is gonna require he moves out EXPOSED elsewhere.

This strat will require a TON of stone which is your weakness, higher levels of competition are gonna be looking to be constantly raiding stone. Tughlaq sucks at running down raids since we have nothing with horseman speed. The good news is your first stone mine is 1200 stone (1260 including bonus) which is enough for 3 forts or 2 forts and 1 TC. If you can get away with it; pulling your stone villagers to the 2400 stone and getting a fort up is a HUGGEEE win.

last point; even if the enemy blindly prep units to kill your villagers, as long as YOU SCOUT BEFOREHAND, you can delay your first fort drop and put that stone gathered towards a TC, bolstering your eco for the latent fort drop!

[Shneider177]

Tughlaqabad Fort Build Order and reasoning

Most civs do not benefit from Dark Age rush so this strat works very well versus most of those non rushing civs. A stable first then fort spam version of this works very well vs English and HoL.

BO: 6 vils on berries, 2 on gold, rest on food (sheep preferably bc you’re gonna be doing a lot of walking and remacro your vils). Once you have feudal resources pull your 2 gold vils to stone, take 3 vils off berries to make landmark (I prefer TOV but do what you want🙄), take all vils and put them on stone minus the 3 vils on berries. In the 114s it takes to hit feudal you need to collect 400 stone. At this time your scout should have already have a complete layout of the enemy side of the map to best position your first fort. Also you’ll pull 6 to 7 vils off stone EARLY such that by the time you walk to your destination, you’ll have hit feudal and can drop the fort immediately. 6 vils take 56s to build the fort so you need to insure you’re far enough away from the enemy base that he can’t on reaction pull his own vils to burn your fort down in time; even if this means you need to drop the fort mid map, this strat will still work (just takes longer to execute). Please don’t lose the game being greedy trying to drop your first fort inside the enemy base…

Anyways all new vils should continue to go on stone minus 1 vil on wood to collect enough wood for a new worker elephant (3rd worker elephant). Having all new vils on stone will allow you to drop 2 forts back to back. Selecting Ajmer gov will give your builders at least 2 amir warriors for cover. Also you can build the 2nd fort 6 tiles away from your first so you get arrowslits cover and can garrison under duress .

Once you get 2 forts up, now it’s time to asses again:

1. Do I go full aggression?
2. Do I merely amir warrior harass and FC
3. Do I 2nd TC and macro (my favorite bc of versatility).

Depending on what you chose to do and what the enemy is doing to respond will influence how soon you can get back to stone mining outside your main. STONE is your friend!! Getting 3 more amir warriors for a meager 275 stone AND 1500hp on your fort is a steal!!! likewise further extending your fort creep while getting minor perks (research discount, TC production rate increase, cav HP, etc) will add to your momentum and keep the enemy honest. Also more stone means you can fortify your main as you’ll need to get exposed resources and counter enemy counter raids.

This faction has no speedy units, especially not in feudal, so it appears by design we fort creep across the map and amir warriors are clearly designed to utilize fort creeping and sense they are slow moving units, they aren’t catching raids so you might as well go straight and harass the enemy!

You will absolutely go Compound of Defender with this fort creeping bc we’re gonna leverage our 2 billion forts and continuous fort dropping!! Ideally you want to create a fort network over the entire map, especially when forts start only costing 320 stone; it will provide Outpost like LOS and 10 garrison slot and be a network for your amir warriors. Win-win!!

Forts are not keeps!! Maybe we need to think of them more like mongols towers. Last point, if you get to the point where you have more than 6 forts, still upgrade them even without a governor selected bc defensively you gain the efficiency of a keep if you get the first upgrade and the curse upgrade (675 stone 150g = 825 resources which nets you an effective 4550 HP vs most units) AND having more than 6 means you can quickly replace your Governors as Frontline forts get destroyed!!

[Shneider177]

Tughlaq bad fort rush vs cav landmark opening civs just means you need to go barracks first; make 5 spears MAX and pull 9-10 vils to drop the fort; yes this will delay the build, but if you get 2 forts, the creep is then simple.

1. gather the resources near your 2 forts and near your tc
2. make more spears to guard your stone gatherers if you dont have a new stone mine near your forts
3. next, go up one post and

@Shneider177

1. Do I go full aggression?
2. Do I merely amir warrior harass and FC
3. Do I 2nd TC and macro (my favorite bc of versatility).

P.s. I forgot to mention i started opening 2 scouts with this strat. Scout is already paramount but in this game where you need to find

1. the optimium spot for your fort creep to start
2. all the available stone mine locations, esp the big veins
3. know where the enemy is moving for unsafe resources
4. to get the drop on enemy vil pulls
5. and enemy sneaky counter plays.

[Shneider177]

8 minutes

That’s how long it takes to get this build order setup, if you’re not facing a dark age rusher. This will work vs feudal aggressive civs like french, Delhi, etc. The most aggressive civs might force adding 1 or 2 towers max by the time specified.

We’ve mostly went over this BO before but this time it is optimized and we’ll mention the ways to adapt given the type of pressure you’re facing. So the point is to place your houses and eventual farms in a box near your gold mine. On standard maps with 4k gold viens in base, having a protective fort on gold, isn’t the worse of ideas.

Here we go:

1. 6 vils in berries
2. 2 vil on gold
3. 2 vils on sheep THEN 1 more vil on gold

This will set you up for a 2min to 2min14s transition to feudal. (Force drop offs are your friend if you manage the APM and NOT idle your TC production). Next:

1. Pull 3 vils from berries to build the landmark
2. Pull all vils on sheep and all vils on gold to stone
3. Place 1 new vil on staggler tree (do not make a 3rd worker elephant yet).
4. Now all new vils will go to stone. The magic number is 975 stone. At minimum we want 675. We will without question get the 400 in the 114s it takes to transition to feudal.
5. Once in feudal, pull 3 off stone to build the fort inside the box you started creating. Make sure the builders are inside TC protection range.
6. Continue to rally all new villagers to stone

PAUSE!! Around the 5min mark is when absolutely you will start to deal with aggression from feudal aggressive civs. A knight, some ghazis, Macedonian horseman, etc etc. however by 5min you’ll only have collected near 675 of the optimal 975 we’re aiming for. So this is where you’ll have to choice:

1. Be a gamer and abuse villager formation shuffling and wall segment gimmicks…
2. Pull all stone workers to wood to collect for houses and farms and settle for a 675 tier 2 farm fort.
3. Or, pull stone workers to collect for a barracks and units then return back to stone with protection.
4. Or, pull workers to make an outpost on your stone mine (cheapest of 2 safer options and offers your villagers more garrison that will likely come in handy soon).

Assuming you successfully went option 1, 3, or 4, then you’re gonna need 100 gold for the 3rd tier governor. AND that works out bc now you have a fort!!! It’s also at this time when you can scout and decided if you have room to collect for all your eco upgrades.

So ideally by 8 minutes into the game, you should have a tier 3 fort on gold, completely surrounded by houses and farms, and the resources to get Wheelbarrow and Woven Basket eco upgrade; or divert the resources from those 2 upgrades into a semi fast castle timing.

For comparison, Mali around 8 minutes, if left to do it’s own thing. would have 2 full pitmines, 6 full cattle ranches and their 75g landmark which amounts to 741 passive resource per min on top of their 30 vils. Mind you 1 to 2 pitmines are exposed and they have no additional garrison spots so they need units to defend the exposed and their base. Meanwhile we’ll have 336 passive food per min, a Keep like fort, and if we researched WB and Woven Basket we’d have 1.2075 effective gathering rate on our 30 vils (6 extra vils worth).

So in the end that’s 4k gold secured, 336 passive food per min (+8 vils worth in food), eco upgrade and WB (+6vil worth @ 30 vils) and most likely endless safe wood to plop farms and military production until you can safely expand out and grab the next stone mine!

Note: The 1.2075 eco buff approximation is base on a nominal gathering rate of 0.6617 resources per sec for a standard villager walking an average of 2 tile round trip from resources to depot and back; then taking that nominal and recalculating it with the tughlaq base bonus and WB and Tughlaq eco buffs.

Edit (28th of Jan 2026)

7:36 is the fastest I’ve been able to drop a tier 3 fort and have it completely surrounded verse a stable landmark opening opponent. The only adjustment I made was to use only 2 builders on my landmark instead of 3 to reduce how long I spent exposed on stone. Next after slamming down the fort with several villagers I put 6 on gold, 2 building houses, 10+ on wood and 4 on food.

From this point 7:36, the choice is yours, play the age and get eco upgrades or bunker down and FC. A TIER 3 FORT fully surrounded is worth 8 tughlaq villagers on farms. 2TC could never get you this momentum this fast (albeit 2TC will eventually get you waaaay more vils).

Analysis: 2nd TC 750 res, 8 vils 400f, 8 farms* 600w and would take 160s, ignoring farm build time. That’s 1750 total resources and you’d have to have the 2nd TC UP at 5 mins??? Something no civ can do period??? The total mentioned above for the tier 3 fort fully surrounded with houses 1675 total resources and the houses slowly become mandatory so their cost effectively get negated over said time.

[Shneider177]

Tughlaq is the only civ where all it landmarks “perks” only kick end with SPENDING resources….

Malians cow landmark and farimba landmark both require you spend to benefit, but the cow boom already synergies with how the malian civ is supposed to be played, so it rewards you for doing the proper macro. Farimba (although …..) is still a free production building like many other production building landmarks.

Even Delhi some of Faith requires you spend to win, likewise with TOV…. But at least in the case of DOF, you’re supposed to be making scholars. Similarly Delhi’s later landmarks directly reward you for playing the macro correctly in making scholars the whole time!!!

Now take Tughlaq?? DOF is a production building so that’s decent, although Healer Elephant have been gutted…. Early scholars are decent for a FC build, so again decent landmark, not a lot of synergy but good enough. TOV?? Not a production building, mere spend to win. Both age 3 landmarks…..spend to win….. age 4 is the closest to getting bonuses for playing the tughlaq macro (but forts aren’t cheap🥴) and palace landmark does just give you a bonus (assuming you don’t already have 6 gov’s and is utterly useless if you have 6 gov’s and went compound which gives you the ability to hit tier 4 with all gov’s).

I propose TOV becomes an Elephant stable!! Allowing you to make all Elephant but lock Healer elephant and War elephants and Ballista elephant behind age 3!!! This would be a UNIQUE production building and TOV will continue to provide all Elephants additional attack speed!!

Make Compound of the Defender an actually level 3 fort with a FREE tier 4 governor upgrade!!! Having a castle landmark is huge and opens up all types of Fast castle options!!!

Lastly both House of Learning and Palace of the sultan need to be reworked.

I got it!! Palace of the Sultan will now freely produce Amir Warriors with max stats BUT these warriors do NOT lose stats when operating outside fort aura and they continue to cost NO population. And they will be named differently so you can still get your normal Amir Warriors!!! Put the cap at 13 which potentially gives you 26 warriors at no pop cost!!

Side note but related but Mahout needs to be removed from being gated by a landmark bc we have no standard light cav speed. Move it to stable.

Got it!! House of Learning:

The MAA charge buff will now be repurposed to all Elephants with a melee attack. Raiders, Healer and War Elephants. Granting Elephants a speed bonus while charging and cause bonus damage on said charge is significant!! Increase collateral damage to 40% on Elephant bonus damage to properly include War Elephant bonus. Spearman tech remains the same, but now add a new tech “Tughlaq Boot camp”, 15% HP on all infantry!! WAIT….. Trample needs a tech ……

Either +3 dmg added to Trample or Trample duration is extended by 3s. The 2nd idea is better!!!

Lets recap!!!

1. Having an age 3 fort landmark is huge for actually getting something in age 3 which now gives you a legit anchor in the FC meta!! Plus the compound of defender will continue to provide its original perks which now feel legit bc you immediately get something out of the landmark plus a spend to win option!!

2. Next House of Learning changes ARE REFRESHING!!! we want Elephants in game to go on stampedes (double the charge damage and double the charge duration). Trample already essential to elephant play so giving it a landmark perk is great synergy. Mahout is too essential to be locked behind a landmark choice. Also Tughlaq has zero infantry bonuses so infantry HP ISNT the worse of ideas…. I’m okay if we drop the spearman tech…… having spearman being even better at JUST killing cav when we have War elephants the cav killing specialist…..is a “whatever”…… collateral damage increased would benefit Ballista Elephants bringing their DPS per cost closer in line with standard springalds DPS per cost, it would ALSO improve Raiders and War elephants kill breakpoints in a few niche situations.

3. Can’t forget Elephant stable TOV. THIS gives us insane feudal momentum to do what Macedonian can do now with Hippodrome into Horn Tower!!! TOV into Compound of the Defender!!! Or TOV into House of Learning and emulator our inner French School of Cavalry into imperial institute!!

……Do we want Elephants regen this late into the game?¿?? Or would we rather a +2/+2 armor on all Elephants??? Chivalry is cool for French bc it’s in feudal and not locked behind a landmark. Elephants regen is meh? Ish… useful if you’re swarming with raiders around the map and can keep them alive will prowling?? Otherwise big fights typically leads to your expensive elephants being sniped sooooo can’t heal what’s dead??? And Healer Elephant are supposed to heal you to max out of company anyways…. I say get rid of the elephant chivalry and replace it with +2/+2 armor.

[Shneider177]

I haven’t login yet but NOICE!!!

on paper these changes appear meaningful. Assuming they secretly fixed the Ballista Elephant aiming glitch… the increase in DPS has made 1 TOV + Collateral Damage Ballista Elephant almost as potent as 2 standard Springalds vs Castle MAAs!! And that on paper is HUGE!!!

I’ll update this post once I have actual gameplay info.

(Later Edit)

Only got to play like 4 games and at least 3 of them were on Prairie (amazing Tughlaq map like broken broken Tughlaq map more on that in separate post).

There are some typos in the patch notes. Notes say Ballista Elephant base damage went from 16 to 18, but it actually went from 15 to 17. The good news is that typo doesn’t effect the kill strike breakpoints for the standard castle spearman, range infantry, nor MAA.

In other news the discount on the fort upgrades are absolutely meaningful. I’m talking about that immediate fort drop surrounded by house/farm build can theoretically be completed 30s faster if not soon still!!! From a 7min30s completion time down to 7mins??? ( ESPECIALLY on 8k in base Priarie GOLD??!)

[Shneider177]

Prairie needs to be renamed Tughlaq Auto Win-map. Having a 2400 stone in base and under TC means you can take your sweet time aging up vs any feudal slated aggression, and easily get a fort up in base with zero pressure!!

I surmise you can have a tier 3 fort completely upgraded and surrounded by 6min50s by optimizing your macro for the build. And the only feudal civs that can slow you down is French or Jean since they get a knight producing stable and only need the 1 knight to scare you off exposed resources. Any other unit can’t dive your TC protected resources and live.

A 6min 50s tier 3 fort completely surrounded is worth 8 tughlaq villagers!!! Assuming a base rate of 0.695 resources per second nominal tughlaq villager gathering rate. Which CANNOT be achieved in that short time by any other civ or macro with Maybe the exception of Mali-but Mali doesn’t have a keep on their eco???

So let’s recap. I prefer a double scout opening on prairie unless you’re really good at using additional worker elephants to scoop up spare sheep. Then do the fort on gold completely surrounded macro mentioned in previous post and now by 6min50, you’ll have very lil need for wood and can FC with infinite food under TC and 8k gold in base. Also THE MARKET IS YOUR 8K Gold’s FRIEND.

Plus bc wood is scant and sparse all over the map, raider elephants are gonna have a field day!!! And bc your military can build walls you can easily block early trade!!

AKA Prairie belongs to Tughlaq!!