The road to not-quite-a-noob-anymore

Small guides and build orders from a proud noob.

Beginners Guide, Dark age

Ladies and Gentlemen:
The Flush – Age of Empires II

Feudal Rushing, or 'Flushing' is the technique of building into a fast Feudal Age, and attacking your enemy early. Normally to the benefit of causing enough economic damage to set your opponent back, while you steam roll ahead and take the game.
Flushing has been an integral part of the Age of Empires II meta game almost since its release; and there are many variations on this strategy: The Galley Rush (or Grush), the Archer Flush, the Scout Rush (or Scrush), and the Tower Rush (or Trush) just to name a few. All of these variations are used for much the same purpose: to cause early economic damage by means of killing Villagers/Fishing ships, zoning your opponent off resources and just general map control.
Now, there are pros and cons to each of these different methods, and each one is certainly situational. The Scout Rush, for example, works well on very 'open' maps (like Arabia), but is likely to cause you more economic damage by making them on more 'closed' maps (like Mongolia). Scouts have good speed for a rush, but are easy to counter, and so on. So it always wise to consider variables like the map, civilizations, and scouting information, before executing any particular strategy.
Here I will show you a generalized Dark Age build order to get you to the Feudal Age in good time, ready for a Flush. If this article gets enough interest I will share my more specific builds and how to execute the Flush itself.
The Opening
Upon beginning the game, there a several actions that you should learn, they will become your 'Opening' for almost every game. (with the exceptions of civs with non-standard starts)
First, with the 3 villagers that you have, construct 2 houses, with 2 villagers on 1 house, and 1 on the other. (remember to leave space around your Town Centre (TC), for farms), once the houses are complete send them to gather sheep.
Next queue up 4 villagers in your TC, if you have sheep already captured, send 2 of them under the TC and set a gather point for one of them.
Scouting! I recommend control-grouping your Scout (ctrl+1), and begin scouting around your TC in concentric circles, your aim is to find all your sheep (which you can use for a little scouting, before sending them under the TC), your closest wood line, your 2 boar, your berries, your 2 gold piles, and your 2 stone piles.
The Build Order
This build is for a 21 Villager Feudal Age, 22 Population in total.
1-3: After your opening send these to gather sheep under the TC
4-6: Send these to gather sheep under the TC
7: Build a lumber camp on safest/closest wood line
8-9: Send these to gather wood at new lumber camp
10: Lure 1st boar (I recommend luring your front boar first to prevent laming), while luring; build a house with a villager that is on wood, remember to send them back to gather wood after completing the house
11: Build a mill on your berry bushes
12-13: Send to berries
14: Lure 2nd boar, build another house with villager on wood as before
15: Send to berries
16-17: Send to wood
18-19: Build 2 farms around TC, also build 2 farms with injured villagers from the boar lures (this will keep injured villagers safe)
20-21: Send these to gather from sheep/boar, alternatively, build 2 more farms for a total of 6
GET LOOM
Advance to the Feudal Age!
You Should have a total of 16 villagers on food, and 5 on wood.
I also recommend splitting your lumber camps when possible after advancing, This will not only help efficiency, but also help keep your villagers safe from raiding.
With practice this build should be able to get you feudal before the 11 minute mark. This is a build I have learned watching many expert games, and it can be adapted into any kind of feudal aggression, to which I will elaborate on in future posts.
I am by no means an expert player myself, so please feel free to leave comments with your variations on Dark Age build orders, I'd love to try them out!

With Wololo's;
RazzleRy

[Porky]

There are actually 2 four tile golds and the main gold (an 8 tile) per player. also there are often other golds that are not related to the player spawns so it pays to scout as much as the map as you can. Plus score is increased based on the amount of tiles scouted so just because your score maybe slightly lower than your enemy it may be just they have scouted more

[anakita]

i tried flush but its poop when enemy is on another island

[coldwind81]

I would add that maybe switch a couple from food or wood to gold if you plan an archer rush.

[LustyArgonianMistake]

@Seraphanie ~ Certanly still viable build order, feaudal aggression is definatly the most advisable tactic in a 1v1 or even a 2v2 game. The sucess of any stategy does rely very much on execution, and when they are applied. Nomad is certainly a very different game and following a 'build order' as such this kind of game would never really quite work. This build can be adjusted slighty to fit most game types though for a variety of basic strategies as the opening minutes of any aoe game (save for a few specific game type) should always be the same for maximum effecientcy

[I'm just here to Snipe]

Ok now this makes sense and explains why the builds never worked for me :D

[Morrigan]

@Seraphanie ~ this build order is a version of a 21/22 population scout rush build order that is most common on maps liek arabia. Nomad is compeltly diffrent. if you do this on nomad, and dont get fish u deserve to die :-)

[I'm just here to Snipe]

Does this still work? This was gold back when the game came out , but nowadays , I play alot of nomad and I'd say 8-9 times out of 10 if someone attacks me Feudal they lost the game. Towers can easily be killed by villagers , militas can be kileld by villagers and even archers can be killed by villagers , it's kinda a PITA but it beats letting them push you around the map.