N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

If the Dutch manage to beat off your rush with their skirms/pike/MM and drop their first 2 banks then the game appears to get harder and harder.

I lost last night, mainly due to my poor eco as I put everything in constant raiding in age 2/3, but I do feel that even if I had boomed I would never have cracked his base. He sat around his 2 towers (with a fort in age 3 added) with the typical mass of skirms and a few pike followed by skirm, cannon, ruyters and a few halbs in age 3.

Apart from constant cav raiding to try and pick off his villagers (and he still has banks) is there any way to nail a mid/late game Dutch apart from a better early rush. A good Dutch player can still age up before a Iroquois and so drop an early barracks and those skirms make a tomahawks a bit of a waste. Would a FF for FP/mantlets/curr shipment be worthwhile?

I always feel that ruyters should be poor in anti-cav duties but they seem to do just enough to get in the way and keep their cannons alive - probably because they are only 1 pop and spammable and have a large base size. I am now thinking of an all cav attack, with some ranged cav for the halbs. Maybe I should try Sioux for this as iroquois don't seem built for it!

Any ideas ...

this one is a bit of a toughy. but i think all ruyters can fend off the cannons, especially if he is a decent player. he can run his cannons and hit and run you.

he will also sit his skirms behind to pick off the anti cav.

imo bes tfor iro would be light cannons + FPs or something, plus maybe a few musket riders.

there's a replay on Agesanctuary (+36 section i think) where iro beats dutch on mongolia even though the PR difference is huge.
maybe it can help a bit.
and Ruyters roxx

A good Dutch player can still age up before a Iroquois and so drop an early barracks and those skirms make a tomahawks a bit of a waste.

Dutch is so sweet! I love when I got dutch in qs. So you just do it like this - fast ageup with 15 vills, get tp if you can, if you can't it's ok too. Ship 4 kanyas asap, and fook up the eco! The 4 kanyas nearly live forever so you come in and you try to check where/when is gonna get a bank. As soon as you see that cool square with vills on it you go and attack it! While you're doing this cool lame thingy remember to keep vill production and to keep making tomas. When I say bank, you can do the same with the rax. If you have a decent army and he has nothing cause of this cool raiding, ship Town Destroyer and take down the tc, if not, ship more army and keep his vils on his tc, kill rax, keep pressure - GG

If this thread only concerns Dutch v. Iro, I apologize for mixing in some other ideas. A lot of the principles that apply to one civ's approach to Dutch can be transferred to another.

Dutch mid-game is fearsome if you leave them unbothered. It's not as bad as TAD 1.00, but it can still be really bad if he gets a 4-bank econ. As Germans, I do a solid xbow attack on him with some pikes thrown in to knock down his 3 hussar shipment. I try to shoot as many vils as possible. If he wants to stay in colonial, I can outmass him as long as I keep up the economic pressure. If he wants to sacrifice vil production and go Fort, I send 700 coin and match him, but with a better econ. Once in Age III, I try to beat him with veteran uhlans and skirms. I also will try to bring in some culverins for the inevitable cannon spam. But the idea is to keep his econ so weak--even if he does make it to Age III--that you can just overpower him. Easier said than done, of course, especially with lots of ruyters around. They are not as bad as dragoons (30% RR counters the counter), but they still make life hard on cav-heavy civs like the Germans.

Good luck on the matchup! If you can be absolutely certain that he is going fort from the get-go, bug him in colonial, then FI with TPs. That always packs a nasty surprise.

[quote=""Sporting_Lisbon""]

A good Dutch player can still age up before a Iroquois and so drop an early barracks and those skirms make a tomahawks a bit of a waste.

Dutch is so sweet! I love when I got dutch in qs. So you just do it like this - fast ageup with 15 vills, get tp if you can, if you can't it's ok too. Ship 4 kanyas asap, and fook up the eco! The 4 kanyas nearly live forever so you come in and you try to check where/when is gonna get a bank. As soon as you see that cool square with vills on it you go and attack it! While you're doing this cool lame thingy remember to keep vill production and to keep making tomas. When I say bank, you can do the same with the rax. If you have a decent army and he has nothing cause of this cool raiding, ship Town Destroyer and take down the tc, if not, ship more army and keep his vils on his tc, kill rax, keep pressure - GG[/quote]

I think I used a 16 vill age up - and fairly ragged at that as my hunt got a bit messy. If I go 15 and plan my hunt better maybe I can shave 20 seconds off. It does seem that you need to kill them in early age 2 or the advantage shifts.

On raiding with the kanya, he left his villagers out but sent pike to defend. As I could kill villagers I left kanya in there to kill 2/3 villagers while the pike killed my cav. On relfection I would have been better to retreat them and come back later with some aenna in tow. At what point is the stay/flee equation determined though?

Sporting - would you ship/build any tomahawks at all vs Dutch. Should I have a special anti-Dutch deck with only aenna/kanya ships in age 2?

dutch has 3 hussar shipment and sometimes they start with a stables instead of a rax, so leave the tomas in your deck, plus, they are useful to siege stuff too

I left kanya in there to kill 2/3 villagers while the pike killed my cav.

If you're getting many vills it's ok, if not go back and repeat the trick.

Sporting - would you ship/build any tomahawks at all vs Dutch. Should I have a special anti-Dutch deck with only aenna/kanya ships in age 2?

Yes you should just ship and make tomas and ship the aennas after the 6 tomas since your objective is to take down the rax. And if you just go mellee with tomas they'll kill the skirms with the help of the warchief.

Hey Sporting, do you have an Iro v. Dutch rec? I would like to see one with the Town Destroyer in action (and maybe some Buck the Tame wolf, too ).

I can check

edit: no unfortunately no but I'll post the next one I get

dutch sucks. you just gotta attack em' right otherwise it would seem that they are pwn =O

playing vs. dutch as sioux is pretty much the same as iro, except you might wanna make a rax / corral when you ageup, so after you ship 4 vills and +20% hunting you can spam cav / cetan like its nothing

I'm sure you guys are right.

Rum, I've just posted an Aztec vs. Dutch game in the recorded games section with comments - a game I've just played. I didn't rush him so it was an interesting eco vs. eco kind of game. Just for info, I win and he was 2 PR higher than me - not that it matters.