This is the Japanese monk rush I’ve worked for some time on, I hope you find it interesting. Any comments and questions are welcomed but if you only want to say how dumb monk rushes are please post it in another thread.
Introduction
This is a very specific strategy that is designed to:- Achieve a very fast castle time of approximately 13:45
- Attack with monks at approximately 15:50
- Not sell any of your stone for gold and use this advantage
- Use monks, a town center and possibly a castle to attack and disrupt your opponent
- Cause shock, fright and consequently unwise actions from your opponent
In order to achieve the extremely fast castle time without selling stone the build order must be followed. You must be able to micromanage you econ very well and be able to change strategies if it becomes necessary. For these reasons I do not suggest this for any one not at least an intermediate level player. There is some room for error but it is very limited. Should anything go wrong you should abandon thoughts of a monk rush as it will come too late and you will be in a very bad position. This strategy is developed with similar principles as the SMUSH. I would recommend reading MFO’s article about the SMUSH before attempting this monk rush.
This strategy was developed by mathematical and in game testing by LKS_Flammifer, enjoy. Special thanks to my fellow LKS clan members who helped me with this article.
The Build Order
Build orders are not the thing you want to rely on to heavily. If something unexpected happens then your build order is of no good to you. However if you want to do this you must follow the build order. It’s balanced to bring you where you want to go but anything can cause a problem. I will stress that if anything happens that is anything from losing a villager to a boar or losing a single sheep you will be unable to do this. If anything happens stop trying to do this strategy immediately and do something else. I also suggest practicing this in single player until you can do it without pausing the game. The build order runs as follows.
Have two of your villagers build one house and the other build one too.
Scout in circles around your base until you have found:
- 8 sheep
- 2 boar
- 1 clump of berry bushes
- 1 deer herd (2 is better)
- forest
After you finish the houses send those villagers to sheep.
Now assign villagers to tasks as follows:
- 1-6 sheep
- 7-9 berries
- 10 house by boar and then lure boar
- 11 sheep
- 12-14 wood
- 15 lure another boar
- 16 berries
- 17 wood
- 18-20 berries
- 21,22 gold
When your hunters finish the second boar:
- 6 go to sheep
- 2 go to berries
- 1 goes to hunt deer
When you reach feudal have two lumberjacks build a market and 2 build a blacksmith.
When the two buildings are finished you should have what you need to go castle.
Now it’s time to make a decision.
1: Take the easiest rout and have:- 2 forwards (use your scout to guard them because you don’t have loom)
- 8 gold miners
- 10-12 lumberjacks
- 1-2 gathering food
The idea is to be able to build a house with the forwards if you have time and to get a siege workshop up and make a mangonel ASAP.
2: Try to keep a better econ by having:- 2 forwards (use your scout to guard them because you don’t have loom)
- 7 gold miners
- 9 lumberjacks
- 4 gathering food
This is harder because 9 is the minimum number of lumberjacks you can have. The 4 villagers should build a mill by deer and hunt them. This will allow you to create more villagers when you get to castle. You must put you town center by gold and have the villagers mine it in order to keep up monk production.
3: Go all out and try to put up a castle you must have:- 2 forwards (use your scout to guard them because you don’t have loom)
- 6 gold miners
- 9 lumberjacks
- 5 stone miners
Every thing must be done right for this to work but it is incredible. Again you must put your town center by gold and mine it in order to keep up production of monks. Use the town center to provide defense for the castle and put the castle between 7-8 tiles from the enemy town center. You will not be able to create any more villagers until you have started the castle and then you should take 3 villagers off stone and have them farm. You may also chose to have lumberjacks go to farms too.
You should reach castle at about 13:45 if everything went right.
Have you two forwards build 1 monastery each (total=2). Once they are up, create monks from them. When the monks come out have them each convert a villager and use you now 4 villagers to start a town center. If your opponent starts a tower when your monks appear, place your town center so that the tower cannot hit your villagers on the far side but when the town center is completed that it can fire on the tower. Use monks who do not have enough faith to convert to heal your villagers. From here your strategy should follow the choices you made during the castle transition.
Other Comments
If your going to try this when your opponents team includes a Teuton or you are attacking a Turk then you should seriously reconsider weather or not to use this strategy. Also if the difficulty is set high (more wolves) you should think about doing something else. Surprise is what makes this so effective, consequentially you shouldn’t use this repeatedly against the same opponents. However if you use another strategy with a 10:05 feudal you may catch them off guard. Ethical or not you can use the monk bug to convert units faster especially those that are hard to convert. Watch out for stables, if light cav show up you’d better have some pikes ready. And a big, yes I know what happens if you’re flushed, for everyone who was going to say that.
