Guide to TC dropping (Persian douching)

Age of Empires to me is a game where any strategy, no matter how ridiculous, can find it's use. The Persian Douche, I feel, simply hasn't been given the attention it deserves to make itself strategically viable. No strategy works every game, but here I try to refine the strategy to work as best as it can.

Basic concepts

The TC drop involves deleting your TC (you're only allowed to have 1 until the Castle Age), allowing you to rebuild it in another location. You start with 200 stone, more than the 100 required to build a TC.

As the TC's offensive capability is firing arrows, it's considered a form of 'tower rushing'.

Tower rushing is a well established strategy that finds use even in high level gameplay. It :

• Zones resources
  
• Harasses the enemy

However, its fatal flaw, or aptly named Achilles heel is that towers cannot fire at its base until Murder Holes is researched. It also cannot be accessed until the Feudal Age unless you start with a tower (e.g. Fortress maps).

Compare the town center. It has more HP, it can fire at its base, it can make villagers and it is a universal resource dropoff point. It's essentially invincible until the Castle Age. Apart from the fact it has less range and costs a bit of extra wood, it is superior in so many aspects that it should not be used the same way as a simple tower rush.

Apart from low skill games where the shock of the TC drop is often enough to break the opponent's resolve, to offset the extremely high cost of this maneuver, all of its features must be utilized to its fullest potential.

Basic execution of strategy

Can the map be douched?
Make sure the map type is open, meaning you can reach your enemy by walking (unless you want to pull off the infamous-for-instalose-strat Overseas Persian Pizza Delivery).

Are you the pocket or flank?
Reconsider if you can pull it off if you're pocket.

Important notes
Take both your boar early as you'll be relocating soon. You don't want the boar to be dead underneath the TC once you've deleted it.
Don't build farms around your original TC, either don't build them at all until you relocate or place them around your mill.
Move any extra sheep to your mill if you're about to delete your TC.
In order of importance to deny with TC- Berries>Stone>Wood=Gold

Build order
6 sheep
4 wood (build a lumber camp)
Rest of villagers to sheep/berries/boar (build a mill). Don't build any farms.
When you have ~150 wood (less if further away, every TC vision radius away is ~30 wood), send 5~10 food villagers to perform the Douche. You should leave before 20 population.
Research Loom (or anytime after 10 pop if lagging when luring boars)
When you've found a good location, delete your TC and rebuild.
Choose one of the below options and being gathering the appropriate resources whilst upgrading to Feudal.

Once you've rebuilt your TC, either the enemy will begin firing on your TC, or they will ignore it. If they're firing on your TC, have excess woodcutters to keep repairs going and Tower Rush. Otherwise, feel free to go military.
Don't destroy their TC with your TC (it's extremely inefficient, see rest of guide for details)

ALTERNATIVELY
Let the enemy destroy your TC and immediately rebuild. Bonus if you have enough stone to build protective towers. This method is far more efficient than repairing, but poses it's own risks, especially if you found a nice spot.

Option 1: Tower rush (recommended)
After sheep are consumed, keep 5 on berries for constant villager production. 4 on stone for tower production, rest on wood for repairs or barracks into military (either archery range or stable).

Option 2: Archers
5 berries, 4 gold, rest wood for repairs. Build barracks, await Feudal upgrade.

Option 3: Scouts
6 berries, rest wood for repairs. Build barracks and ~3 farms, keeping enough to build a stable immediately once Feudal.

TL:DR for the rest of this guide
Don't attack enemy TC with your TC, but if you do, garrison maximum 10 villagers
Best place to build TC is next to wood+berries
Ideally place your TC such that enemy resources are behind your TC, denying them even if they're not in range of your TC
Wall in gold/stone mines, wall escape routes
Use TC as a focal point to build towers from/ funnel with walls.

Which civilization?

Conventionally, Persians are used for TC dropping as their TC will always win a straight up TC fight with their doubled HP on their TC (hence the pseudonym Persian Douche). However, in my other guide I discuss why TC fights are greatly in favor of the side who ignores it, assuming no other major mistakes.

This gives us room to use other civ bonuses to greater effect.

Best TC dropping civs

Persians
Despite what I said earlier, Persians are still a solid choice, but the enemy is more likely to be aware of your strategy.
With faster TC working time in Feudal and beyond to offset idle time, higher HP TC for cheaper repairs and higher starting initial resources for more consistent games.

Spanish
Faster building time means less chance of having your TC denied. Also great for follow-up tower rushes where timing is critical.

Other civs with related bonuses
Much less likely for the enemy to catch on to your strategy

Koreans
Great towers and extra villager LOS to spot escapees/ resources to wall in.

Celts
With faster woodcutting, you can repair your TC easier whilst the enemy idles their villagers in their TC.

Aztecs
Overall strong economy to offset the cost of TC dropping. If playing the original dataset, free loom helps immensely.

Mayans
Get more out of your stolen resources. Especially useful when stealing berries as Mayan farms are slower than any other civilization. Also having cheaper walls making laming easier than ever!

Berbers
Faster villager speed means long travel times are reduced.

Location, location, location

First and foremost, your TC is a rather expensive Dark Age area denial tool. Only secondly it is a portable artillery.

Things that you can deny:

• Farmland
  
• Resources
  
• Buildings

Each dropoff building is 100 points.
Each farm is 60 points.
Each resource type your TC is next to is 100 points.
See how high you can score!

Note that your TC does not have to actually be in range of a resource to deny it. If your TC is between the resource and the enemy TC it becomes extremely difficult for your enemy to access it.

What is the most valuable resource?

For a resource to be valuable, you must need it and there must be very little, or it must be a slow gathering resource.

Wood is everywhere, so woodcutters can up and move if they get towered. Stone and gold are not as valuable until the later stages of the game when it's needed for castles/ TCs and expensive units. Also there are typically 2-3 mines of each type around the starting location, so miners can simply move.

Food fits this criteria perfectly. After the Dark Age, all deer, boar and sheep will be depleted. All that's left are farms and berries. However, these are the slowest gathering resources in the game for villagers. Farms also take a lot of space and cost resources to make, making them vulnerable to harass. Berries only come in a single batch; if you lose this, you lose a lot of free food.
A typical berry patch will have 840 food, with about half of it depleted by the time you reach them; the equivalent of 3 farms or 180 wood worth. You will also deny the area around the enemy's mill and TC, meaning they must build another mill to even have the space to create farms to compensate for the loss of their berries.

By denying this resource, it will greatly slow advancement due to how slow it gathers and the lack of space to create farms.


I deny 587 food from this TC drop alone in this game, equivalent to 201 wood in farms, not to mention everything else that's denied.

The quick wall

With the expansion data set, the Palisade Gate makes for an extremely easy wall off for your builders as you build the TC.

Place 2 wall pieces on the corners of the TC where your villagers are.
Bring up the Palisade Gate and with a sliding motion, move your cursor over the wall pieces parallel to the side your villagers are on. The gate will align itself in the direction you moved the cursor. Place gate and happy douching!

The price you pay

Critics to the Persian douche are quick to point out the huge expenditure in deleting a TC. It creates TC idle time, villager idle time and a large resource cost. These cannot be removed entirely, however they can be minimized so that any damage done to the enemy outweighs the cost. Math to the rescue!

TC idle time
It takes ~40 seconds to build a TC with 10 villagers as any civilization besides the Spanish. If you wait until your villagers are in position before deleting your TC, this will be the only idle time you get on your TC.
As Persians, you get a 10% faster TC working time in the Feudal Age, meaning the idle time is mitigated after making 16 villagers or 10 villagers and advancing to Castle Age.

Villager idle time
How many villagers should you send to build the TC?
It's hard to pinpoint an exact number, but in terms of idle time, the less the better. To fully garrison your TC to be a real threat to wandering villagers, 10 are needed for 10 arrows. Any more don't add extra arrows. If you can wall in your villagers really quickly, even as little as 5 villagers can pull it off. Remember the enemy will rush you if you send too few villagers.
Since the majority of the idle time is walking to the enemy, make sure you scout the enemy base well and know where you want to drop your TC. In team games, the flanks are usually closer than a 1v1 game.
Once you begin building (and walling in your villagers), you'll inevitably cause villager idle time for the enemy.

Resource cost
One of the main advantages to using a TC instead of a tower is that you can gather resources as well. The original TC position is never near enough to any resources, the Persian Douche changes that.

Consider resource gathering buildings cost 100 wood each. If you can place your TC near 2 resources, the majority of the cost is covered as stone isn't nearly as valuable in the early game. However, not only are you saving on dropoff buildings, but you are zoning and taking your enemy's resources.

After the drop

dudududududu
Drop dat Town Bell.



Assuming your TC is now safely snug inside the enemy's base, what comes next is key to your survival.

What the conventional strategy says to do
Garrison TC and shoot the enemy TC.

I'll tell you now this is NOT what you should be doing. Lets consider the math involved.

213 seconds to take down the enemy TC with 10 villagers in your TC, 1 repairer will mitigate the DPS. It costs them 2.85 wood/s and 0.26 stone/s, which amounts to 8 woodcutters and 1 stone miner. It will only ever be an even trade if the enemy does this. Even worse is if the enemy ignores your TC and simply rebuilds elsewhere. You accumulate 2130 seconds idle time and the enemy moves their TC into a more defendable position.

Garrisoning villagers and firing arrows also makes villagers take down buildings slower than they would with their melee attack, making it less than ideal. Instead, there are many other things you can achieve while douching.

Wall in resources/ dropoff buildings/ military buildings
Douching basics 101. Remember you can also try walling in the enemy TC if they're not firing at you.
Especially important is stone. Stop them making towers and suddenly your life is made a whole lot easier.

Intimidating the enemy to attack your TC
Unlike the conventional douche, you sit your TC in range of theirs only so they are intimidated and cannot farm around half of their TC. They may attack your TC, however all you need to do is repair it every now and then and make sure you have Double Bit Axe and plenty of woodcutters. Any idle villagers in their TC are only hurting their economy. Persians have double the TC HP so they only pay half as much to repair the same amount of HP.
Alternatively, let the enemy destroy your TC and immediately rebuild it. You accumulate ~400 total idle time rebuilding whilst the enemy has accumulated ~2130 idle time destroying it.

Taking down enemy buildings
Although taking down a barracks/ mill won't prevent them from subsequently making ranges+stables/ farms, the idle time vs the resource cost when using a villager is actually closer than you might imagine. Ideally you'd want to take down their buildings in the Dark Age as they're weaker, but more often than not they'll hit Feudal before you.

Feudal buildings taken down by 1 villager
Barracks (175 wood)- 11:18 idle time, during which 244 wood could have been gathered.
Dropoff building (100 wood)- 5:48, 121 wood.

If you manage to attack the building downhill, even better.

Using a funnel to zone the enemy
If you've ever watched a pro game where they're defending against a drush, you'll know that they funnel enemy militia into their TC with walls/ buildings. You can apply this concept to zone off a large portion of the enemy base using your TC as the focal point.

Steal their resources (whilst protecting your own)
Pretty self explanatory. Make sure to wall in your villagers at your old base.

Cleaning up

After the initial Feudal Age chaos, it's essentially a normal game. Here are some strategies that you can follow up on.

Castle rush into siege/ castle drop
If the enemy's economy is incapacitated enough, you can attempt to take out their TC with a Castle or a mangonel. The mangonel/ villagers will be protected by your. Their TC will be down faster than any TC arrows could compare.

Tower spam
Ah, the good ol' trush. Keep in mind you'll need extra stone before you can get your first tower up. If you can box your opponent in, you won't have to invest as much defending your old base. Keep an eye on their score and keep scouting to determine if they escaped, then clean them up with some military or towers. Make sure to keep boxing in their original base.

Feudal Age war
The biggest hit resource when Persian Douching is food in most cases. Denying berries and farm space greatly hinders the enemy's ability to advance to the Castle Age as well as to produce defensive units e.g. spearmen, skirmishers. Keep the pressure on and they'll eventually crumble. Make sure to keep some villagers handy to wall and tower up.

For those with AoC User Patch, I've made a TC dropping AI. Works best with Mongols as the extra scout sight helps it explore faster and find the enemy TC.
{COLLEGAMENTO RIMOSSO}http://www.mediafire.com/download/o5ctk1rt2py3ttr/Delivery_Man.7z

Replays

Unfortunately, more recent games that I chose to TC drop aren't recorded. These replays don't follow the current build order in this guide and are a couple minutes slower than what's possible.

Map: Black Forest
This replay demonstrates tower rushing into Castle Age siege.
The douche in this game denies all gold, the mill and half of the remaining berries. The douched mistakenly creates militia to fight off the builders, resulting in him not having enough food to advance to the Feudal Age. He continues to make villagers, further delaying his advancement until his ally slings him food. By that time, the doucher has towered half of his farms and he's struggling for food. He puts up 2 towers to defend (he has stone) and tries to make a third in range of the doucher's TC, yet as he spots a siege workshop coming up he realizes it's too late and resigns.
{COLLEGAMENTO RIMOSSO}http://www.mediafire.com/download/2p9rv432ru2hvxr/blackforst_PD.aoe2record

Map: Yucatan
Overall sloppy play on my part, but we won, so yeah. First game after several weeks is a TC drop.
In this replay, I see that his berries are deep inside his base, so I simply put my TC in front of his base. This ends up denying a huge deer patch and 1 boar as my TC was close enough that he couldn't take them safely. Game proceeds as essentially 3v4, with my pocket pushing through and winning our side.
{COLLEGAMENTO RIMOSSO}http://www.mediafire.com/download/8vneusbf3sqzc42/Yucatan_4v4.aoe2record

Map: Continental
Very smooth execution since the opponent didn't put up too much resistance. Typical Barracks->militia response. A short wall prevented anything from interrupting the builders, towers placed under TC/ far from resources before moving in.
{COLLEGAMENTO RIMOSSO}http://www.mediafire.com/download/1jfe6bmt9kt86kq/Byz_tc_drop.aoe2record

[I'm scared of Toasters]

This was an interesting guide, very well written and makes you understand weak and strong points of it overall. Great for learning both how to do it and how to defend from it, thanks! Also, don't mind the salty old farts, they already forgot how to have fun xD

[The2lied]

theres a reason i don't play this game. Its fucking cancerous and far to sweaty

[tavin44]

A guide on being an asshat would be a better title for this lol..even tho its old i can still see people doing this to troll.

[korbik vintage]

Dat Squee's face doe.

[Sexy Bae]

Ok so your opponent was utter trash so I'll keep this short. Try to do a few games and send the more evenly matched ones.
Towers too aggressive, wall them in and cover bases.
Wall villagers in when building castle.
Scout enemy earlier.
Ungarrison villagers!!
TC was basically idle the whole game

Good points
Outpost spamming.
Much improved castle time

If the enemy has no berries, try to at least get the TC closer to the enemy's TC to deny farm space and another resource. Luckily in this one he had a giant gold mine for you to take.

[bTeancum]

But I went back to the replay and took notice at when I started building the castle. It was at 27 minutes almost exactly. Sorry, I didn't remember the exact the time and didn't want to give an impression like a liar's.

[bTeancum]

Alright thanks

[Sexy Bae]

I'm not at home atm so i can't give a full analysis, so I'll just respond to your comments.
I'll elaborate more about followup strats like monks etc in my guide.
Try to build your first tower in range of your TC, then expand from there. Try to wall the base of the tower to stop infantry. If you want to build elsewhere, build a tower much further away before building in their vision so you have coverfire. Tower rushing has its own difficulties and is not easy against a good player.
20 mins for your castle seems like a huge improvement. Looking forward to watching the replay.

[bTeancum]

Oh and I also forgot to research double-bit and horse collar as soon as Feudal hits. I did research it a bit later, but still.

[bTeancum]

Also monks against a knight rush like my first attempt would've a good counter to the expensive early cavalry. A mention or a form of heads up in the guide like a "how to counter their counters" or something of the sorts.