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Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors Tactics & Guides -> Random Map -> The Saracen Scout Rush

The Saracen Scout Rush

Now that you have the background (hopefully not too confusing), here's the build ORDER for a Saracen scout rush:

• Villagers 1-6 sheep
• Villagers 7-9 mill, berries
• Villagers 10-11 straggler trees
• Villager 12 lure boar #1
• Loom en route to boar
• Villagers 13-16 wood, build lumber camp when possible
• Lure boar #2
• Villagers 17-19 sheep
• Villagers 20-22 mining camp, gold
• Click Feudal

While in feudal transition, build a barracks and a 2nd lumber camp. You should have 10 food gatherers at the TC (7 boar, 3 sheep); 4 go to gold, 6 go to the 2nd lumber camp. You should have 7 gold miners, 3 berry pickers, and 12 lumberjacks. Arrive in feudal 10:45-11:15.

In feudal:

Build the market FIRST, then build a stable and start queuing scouts. Buy as much food as you can and buy double-bit axe. Keep making villagers and buy horse collar ASAP. Your first 2 villagers go to wood, then build farms with every subsequent villager. Note: if deer are close by you can send your berry pickers to hunt deer and put new villagers on berries instead of HAVING them farm, giving you a bit more wood. You should be able to have 4 scouts (including your original) before 14:00 and 8 scouts by 16:00. I haven't built more than 8 scouts because by then they'll have reacted with spears. I will usually build an archery range and blacksmith as wood allows. I have researched wheelbarrow around the 16:00 mark and gone castle immediately afterwards with around 37 villagers and a 20-21 minute castle time.

The advantages of this strat are fourfold: one, you get to use Saracens in a competitive situation against civs that are typically considered weaker late-game than the Saracens. Two, you aren't penalized by having a strong-late game civ; your economy will be keeping up with a Mongol or Mayan player. Three, the amount of deception can be very strong. Careful scouting pre-feudal can actually work to your opponent's disadvantage, since finding 7 gold miners in dark almost always means archers, and while skirmishers counter archers, they get beaten soundly by scouts. It can also be extremely surprising to an opponent to see only a few scattered farms, yet food-heavy scouts and a quick castle time. Four, you can achieve these goals without completely sacrificing your gold or stone supply. By only delaying farming until feudal instead of not farming at all until castle, you only need to spend 300-400 gold, which will not cripple you later on.

The disadvantages to this strat are relatively few. HAVING the market up immediately means that even a tower rush pushing you off of wood won't kill your econ, and if the enemy has spears waiting for your scouts, you can easily regroup and make archers, or go straight to castle and make x-bows. It is a fairly flexible build in that if you find the enemy is doing something unusual, you can always adjust your economy to compensate. Although the VS savings FROM marketeering can make up the VS advantage a Mongol has, there is the cost of gold spent that the Mongol doesn't have to deal with, so that's a disadvantage for the Saracen. However, the tradeoff is that the Saracen has a much more diversified imperial age army with a wider range of upgrades.

Note: One great advantage of going gold/wood heavy and using the market to generate food is that you can use this start for any kind of feudal attack (except a tower rush).

By HC_Shanks__