Hey guys spirit of the law here in this video. I want to talk about a hyper aggressive strategy unique to the Lithuanians
Thanks to having an extra hundred and fifty food in Dark Age for most civilizations
If you are gonna make some wish in Dark Age
It happens quite late with militia arriving at something like nine or ten minutes
The lithuanian's though can pull off a unique militia rush that has two militia
Arriving at the opponent around more like four minutes. In a normal dark age build that's likely the time
Your opponent is getting their first four or just starting on two berries often without loom
i'm gonna show you guys a
Recorded game of the strategy sent to me by Hera
One of the top age of empires two players in the world
The player he's up against is about a hundred and sixtieth on the definitive edition ladder and around seventeen to eighteen hundred on Voobly
So this is definitely something that works on a competitive level
During the build the first 10 or so villagers have to do the exact right thing to make this all work
So i'll walk you through that and then show you a game while chatting with Hera about the strategy
The first step is to pick lithuanians
The second step is once you start the game to have two villagers make a house
you need two doing that in order for it to be built fast enough that you don't stop villager production the third villager makes
a barracks
Yes as your second building normally something that you would never do not only does that use up all of your starting 200 wood
But that'll also occupy a builder for 50 seconds, which puts you back about fifteen food compared to normal
Luckily lithuanians have an extra hundred and fifty food
So there's some to spare. Now the scout has to be active while this is all going on
It needs to be looking for sheep as well as just importantly finding your two boar
After the house is done the two villagers then need to go to wood and not onto the sheep like you normally would
Normally food income is the big priority. But remember this time you only have one house in 50 seconds
You'll need to start making the next house, which is only possible with two Lumberjacks at this point
That means now at 25 seconds into the game
You're just starting your food income with the first villager created when the barracks is done
you can then immediately queue up two militia something that's only possible for the Lithuanians again because of their extra food
the Lumberjacks will drop off ten wood and then you'll have to force drop off when they have three to five each and that's when
You'll build the next house
If you force drop off the wood the house should come up just as you need it
The barracks villager will also have finished building that at this point and he can switch with one of the two Lumberjacks or join on
Sheep.
Either way the rule is you need to maintain two on wood and house duty
Meanwhile, the second militia should come out sometime just after a minute and a half. They cost a hundred and twenty food
Which is covered by your starting extra one hundred and fifty with a little extra to make up for having villagers on wood so early
At the end of this you should have sixty gold which is still enough for loom and if done near perfectly it won't actually result
In any town center idle time
Your economy goes on is if you have the normal starting food once you have six on sheep and then go up to four on
Wood using strike wood trees until you can save up enough for a lumber camp after that
You can lure your boar and then continue basically as usual and that's what makes this strategy so powerful
Is that aside from meeting a few more on wood to make up for the early barracks your economy should end up being pretty
Normal while having two militia distracting your opponent is going to make their dark age pretty messy
So now that you have an idea about how it all works together
I'll let the game play out on the screen
and bring on Hera to chat about some of the decisions he made in the game and any general advice he has on how to
Make it work. Let's check it out
Well, hey, man, welcome welcome
I'm hoping to get some insights from you about the Lithuanian super drush since I know you've tried it a few times and
It's something you're tinkering with
right away jumping in the build seems
Super tight getting the first two houses up in particular involves dropping off wood
And then you're also taking three early villagers off food
Where would you say is the easiest place to mess up the build? -The way I think of the build is that
The first five minutes are the most important and the hardest to get down as well
Like you said with all black the force drop and going on building houses and and the barracks, of course
probably the easiest ways to mess it up is when
You just got your militia out and you're trying to go across the map Scout your opponent and also keep your TC
Running and make sure you're not getting housed as well at home
the best thing to do is just to make sure you're like shift cueing the right villages and
Making sure just being as efficient as possible with your tasks
So you don't get overwhelmed with what you have to do at the same time. Yeah, I find for me
The boar lure is another really hard part because that's right as your militia are usually showing up
Yeah, you have the boar lure coming in
Then you have you're creating the militia and trying to send them out as fast as possible
And of course a force dropping your food because then if you don't do that you have idle TC
so there's a lot of things that can go wrong in the first five minutes and if all it takes like a few runs of
The build to make sure you're getting it all down perfectly
it also seems like scouting is really critical in making the whole thing work and there's this tough balance between
Finding your own sheep and boar first is scouting your opponent and having your Scout support the militia
It seems like you got a bit lucky in the game finding your two boar right away
And do you have any rules of thumb when finding the right balance there?
Especially if you don't find the boar in a pretty reasonable time? Yeah, that's really tricky
So the whole idea of the builds to go as fast as possible
so
of course that
implies that you have to scout your opponent and know where you want to hit him because if you spend the first five minutes running
Around with your militia, then of course, you're not accomplishing anything
I think my rule of thumb is that you need at least both your boars?
You can do without a couple sheep because then you could just send extra to the berries, make a couple farms
You have the time to do that
But if you don't have one or two boars right away when you need them
You're going to start falling behind on villager production and you're never gonna be able to get to feudal age in a good time.
Now let's say prioritize finding at least one boar. I would go for two before moving out
I happen to get lucky finding my two you right away
But there is also the added
Benefit that if you can go forward with your Scouts and your militia and take one of their boars, for example
Also, another thing that could be done with the build personally
I don't take my appointed stuff out of just x portion ship of the game
But if it's like an all-out game and you want to just take any advantage you can get that's definitely something to look for
so yeah rule of thumb find your boars at home then move out you can do it without a couple or even four
Sheep, it's fine
would you ever move out with the two militia and then send a scout later since it's a little faster and might be able to
Catch up or you'd wait for all of them before sending them out
Oh, yeah, definitely. Like if I needed one extra minute with my Scout at home, I think you're right
Send the militia first get the scouting with like you can just put them up get some scouting with them and then send your scout
afterwards and like you said you can easily catch up or go the other way if you went you guess wrong with the militia you
Can send your Scout the other way and hopefully find your opponent faster
So in case your take on the two militia
versus the usual three that people are more used to is there an argument for going with three ever and idle your town center a
Bit or is to just strictly better
That's actually a good question because generally we see three militia for the drush and we rarely see two with any other Civ
But for me, I think the build is designed
So the first two come out and you don't have any idle time
So it's strictly a good thing if you start to factor it out of time in exchange for third militia
You're kind of forced to damage or also you start to fall behind and that's for me in a build never a good thing
you don't want to force yourself to do damage because you have to assume your opponent will respond optimally but
There is a thing you can do to just add in the third militia later like one or one minute or one minute a half
After the initial two, however, I don't really like that because as you can see in the game
your opponent is likely to defend from the drush by advocating loom or quicklaw his resources in which case the third militia usually won't really
Accomplish a whole lot either so for me two militia is just the way to go with Lithuanians
So speaking of which what is the goal with the militia?
Because obviously you can't take out the town center and kill five or six villagers or anything like that
So what are you hoping to accomplish with them? Yeah, of course. It's just two militia. I think your main goal is to
Force the reaction from your opponent delay them and buy yourself some time. So killing a villager is actually not really the goal
It's of course ideal. It would be really good to kill it though
But what you're really hoping for it's just do like I said distract him and force response in this case
The response can be forced him to get early which we saw from your last video
Actually hurts you a little bit more than maybe someone would expect and also
You can force them to wall in all their resources which makes them a bit more efficient because it makes the village bump or maybe
You know blocks them and obviously each palisade costs a few wood
So forcing down, you know, however many palisades is also some form of damage
I think yeah, that's pretty much the best thing to do force reactions delay opponent
And if you're lucky you can get a villager as well
Okay
So in the game it seemed like he reacted by trying to go up as quickly as possible
in this case with an eighteen pop scout rush and I think having Indians and the cheaper villagers definitely helped with that do you think
In general a quick advance is the best way to react to the strategy
Um, I think it really depends on the situation first thing to factor in is the signature like you brought up
He was Indians
So it definitely made sense to go up fast and go for the scouts
If you see a who's a relative?
Like I don't know Byzantines who don't really get too much from going up fast besides maybe cheaper skirmishers
one could argue that they can add in a couple militia of their own and Dark Age just to kind of like
Even out the playing field take out your militia
Maybe counter-attack with some militia because they can add them three
And then play like two ranges in feudal or even just go for a fast castle
So the thing it depends on the sieve in general though
The best thing to do is to make sure you're safe at home
Before moving out with your army because it's just two militia
You can easily clear it and you don't want to be taking unnecessary damage while you're trying to attack your opponents
That's a good call. I'd like that you point out. It's only two militia at the end of the day
It's not really that scary. It's just mostly distraction. Yes. It's important to keep things in perspective
I see a lot of players overreact including myself and you know plenty others overreact to some aggression
Keep things in perspective - militia can easily be fought off by vills or just walled out
So maybe they get the feel they should get two Scouts out
you know clear them off and then just go for the counter-attack because usually the game transcends into a standard feudal age or even
Like a fast castle-ish build from both players because after the first five minutes it ends up being just a regular drush
So react to it as you would react you a normal drush I would say
So I noticed in the game you followed it up with
Archers and would you say that's the best way to follow it up as a Lithuanian player in general or again
Does it really depend?
I think once again I have to bring up the matchups in perspective here
I know my point it was going really fast up and that indicates Scouts to the Indians for most of the time and so
There's no point for me adding in a stable at the start of Feudal and going for Scouts myself because then I'll just be behind
In numbers doesn't really make much sense
So I figured I might as well go for archers
Because might force him to go over some skirmishers or I might you know
Catch him off guard and get some good damage in
I think it really depends on your map as well because another option could be just to wall up and like I said go for a
Fast castle you can even add a stable if your opponent is going say skirmishers or archers to clean up your militia
the beautiful part about a drush in my opinion
Is that it buys you time and it lets you adapt to what your opponent's doing
So you make the first move?
With the two militia your opponent reacts with whatever move he does and then you have the time then to react with another move make
It a calculated move and make it make sense in relation to what your opponent is actually doing
Yeah, that seemed like a very flexible opening
So did you initially come up with this or did you modify it somehow from what someone else was doing?
So I actually initially saw the idea for it on aoezone
I saw someone mentioned that with the 150 food at the start you can do a really like an instant drush they were calling it and
So I didn't have a build but I had the idea and for me, that's really what's important
So I went in single-player and I tried the I messed around with it. Basically I wanted to do it as fast as possible
while also
like I said earlier keeping perfect TC villager production because I don't want to sacrifice anything for the speed of the build and I
Came up with what you know what I did in the game. I'm not sure if even if it's optimized or not
I'm sure there's different variations. This is just the one I came up with but yeah, shout out to that guy on aoezone
I actually forgot who it is, but uh the guy that gave me the idea
Okay, let's see if I can find him
It's tough. It was a long time ago
So do you think there's any other?
Civilizations that have the potential to do something kind of similar or is this completely unique to the Lithuanians because of the extra?
150 food
I think there's some civs that can do
Somewhat of a fast drush but not nothing even close to what Lithuanians can achieve doing
The barracks as the first building is something that only they can get away with
There is Persians who get an extra 50 food and fifty wood they might be able to do something with it
But then again Persians also create those faster
so generally they are not going to have enough food to keep the town center going and the militia
So it's pretty much just let the waiting's I could do it. However other civs say Celts Japanese
Yeah, shout this feel a lot for that
and
Maybe Malians who can get up like a faster drush maybe even skipping the mill making the barracks first
And then getting the militia, but nothing close to what Lithuanians can do. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting bonus
I know you have another video of a gameplay featuring that strategy as well as a ton of other types of videos on your channel
Doing tutorials build orders all that stuff where else can people see more of your games. Yes, I stream
Pretty much like a few times a week on Twitch. I think it's Hera underscore AOC
You can check me out there for like high-level gameplay
I also upload my best games from stream on my YouTube and
I also sometimes include some guides and build order videos on my youtube as well
so I just I try to
Cater by my content to people who are trying to get better at the game at all levels beginner to intermediate
Even to advanced as well. So whoever you are if you're trying it better. There's probably something on there for you
Well, I really appreciate it man. Always nice to hear the insights from a pro player. Thanks for taking the time to do this
Awesome stuff bro I liked doing the video and it was a pleasure and I'll catch you later on
So that's the Lithuanian instant drush and thanks again to Hera for joining me to chat about it
Hopefully I've inspired you to try it for yourself next time you're Lithuanians or at least now
You know how to keep an eye out for it. That's all for this one though. Thanks for watching guys, and I'll see you next time