The Iroquois Option
By MrMilo
The new patch boosted all of Iroquois’ Colonial Age units and introduced a brand new versatility to the Iroquois playstyle. In this guide I will go over some of those options and how you can use Iroquois’ versatility to befuddle your opponent and gain an advantage. Here's a link to a Voice Over Demo (VOD) where I perform one of these options and discuss what else I could have done. If you don't have the Xvid codec for Windows Media Player, you can get it here.
Getting Started
As usual, you’ll want to gather your food crates quickly, get villager production going, and get your villagers to hunting. I suggest finding a second hunt early and start working it back towards your TC.
Your set of options takes place at the beginning of the game:
Your starting Travois gives you a versatility that other civs don’t have early in the game, and allows you to do several different things, depending on your starting crates, such as build a trading post, market, or have a travois ready to build a corral once you hit Colonial. Iro will always get 2 Food crates and 2 wood crates to start. You’ll get a random crate, either food, wood, or gold, on each map.
Take a look at the diagrams to see what options each staring crate and travois set-up provides. One thing not covered there is your options on maps with a lot of herdables. There, I suggest you build a farm with your travois and send all of your herdables to fatten. This will give you a huge boost in mid-colonial (or fortress, if you FF)!
Scout and Creep Intelligently
As long as you don’t let him stray too far from your town, the starting travois can be a great scout early in Discovery. Use him to get the layout around your town and to find second hunting. Also use converted guardians, when you’re not using them to creep, to scout the map. In the VOD I scout roughly a third of the map with one converted guardian before the Colonial age. Also, keep an eye on your opponent’s base just as he hits Colonial. The more you know about where his buildings are and what he’s doing, the more easily you can adapt your strategy to win.
When creeping with Iroquois, and all native civs, I like to use my converted guardians as a meatshield when fighting other guardians. They’ll absorb a lot of damage that would otherwise dished out to your War Chief, which is important because you want him to have high HP throughout the game.
Head up to Colonial and Pick Your Strategy
On most maps you should, after sending the 3 Villager card, advance to Colonial with 15 Villagers, using the 200 food, 100 wood, and 100 gold politician. The strategy that you’ll be doing once you hit Colonial will dictate your Villager distribution while you age.
Below some of these options are detailed, but I’ll give a quick run down here. If you’re going to FF, you’ll want to have most of your villagers on food, with three or four gathering gold. Alongside the 100 gold you get from aging up, you’ll want to gather 300 gold, so that you’ll have 1000 when you ship 600 gold. If you plan on sending 5 villagers instead of 600 gold for your FF, you might want to put more Villagers on gold while advancing, although if your gold mine is behind your TC, I suggest gathering the necessary food first, which is usually harder to protect.
If you’re planning on fighting in Colonial, you won’t want any gold while advancing, but you will want wood. If you’re going heavy on infantry, you’ll need less, because they’re pop efficient (so you don’t need as much wood for houses) and cost very little wood, especially if you use the Big Button. If you’re planning on using some Kanya Horsemen, you’ll need more wood both for houses and for the cav. I suggest putting five or six Villagers on wood in this case.
Exercise Your Options!
Once you hit Colonial, there are a bunch of different things that you can do. Here are a few of the basic options. I suggest you work with them and see what you like, tweaking where necessary to fit your play style.
A few general notes: Try to keep in mind what your opponent is doing and how that affects what you want to do. The 5 Villager card is often a great one to send as your first in Colonial, but this usually isn’t viable against aggressive civs like Russia who can get an early mass. Be aware of these factors, especially when you consider card order. Be sure to always keep your War Chief with your army, whatever you are doing.
Infantry Heavy Push
With this strategy your army will consist mostly of Aennas and Tomahawks, although you might ship 4 Kanyas. I suggest using the first Big Button at the town center. This army will be fast training, giving you an early mass that few other civs can match. It will also be strong against an early cav attack. This can certainly work if you build a trading post in Discovery, as you won’t need the corral early and Iro has three great infantry shipments in Colonial.
Aenna and Kanya
Here, you’ll likely want to have saved your travois to build a corral as soon as you reach Colonial, as I do in the VOD. Use the great speed of your army – Aennas have a whopping 5 speed! – to play aggressively. Unless you position yourself poorly, you should be able to get out of most sticky situations. Keep Aennas attacking heavy infantry and your Kanyas disrupting your opponent’s eco and ranged infantry.
Eco and Kanya Semi-FF
This is a great strategy to do against a non-aggressive civ – think booming civs and other civs that might FF on you. Basically, you’ll want to make a corral once you hit Colonial, having the travois saved is not crucial because when you don’t have to defend yourself early against an attack you can afford to chop some wood. A trading post helps especially, as with all FFs, with this strat. Once you have you corral up, build anywhere from 5 to 10 Kanyas and go raid. Your economy should otherwise be focused on going to Fortress and your card order will be 5 Villagers and 4 Villagers before aging up. Hopefully you’ll have dented his economy, at least by containing him a bit, and you’ll be on your way to a relatively quick Fortress with a great eco. Also, as with all FFs with Iro, you’ll want to use the fast-up politician.
Eco FF
Here, you’ll likely want a trading post, although it isn’t crucial. Your first card in Colonial should be 5 Villagers, as you’ll gather the gold necessary to age up. A variant of this strategy, if you have some shipments waiting (for this a TP is necessary), is to send 600 gold and then 5 Villagers immediately after. You’ll usually still have a shipment waiting once you hit Fortress, but you’ll also have a nice eco.
Straight FF
This used to be incredibly popular back when Iroquois was a top civ. Basically, you’ll send 600 gold as your first card in the second age and head up to Fortress as soon as you hit 1000 gold. You should reach Fortress around 6:30, and assuming you haven’t lost any buildings or travois, you can have (from your two age-up politicians) a corral and war hut ready to roll, which is a versatility that no other civ can claim with such a fast FF.