Terminator scout FF

A meme build casted by Lionheart some time ago. I feel it deserves an entry on the website. I will include a section on how to counter it at the bottom of this guide.

Game plan

Perform a fast fortress, then drown your enemy under a continuous stream of native scouts buffed to terminator level.

Age I :

Standard lakota opening. Nothing more to add. If you get a big coin treasure in base, go for a market. Most of the time you will just go for a tepee. Explorer focus on food and coin treasures. Age up with the chief (400w).

In transition build a market+hunting dogs if not already done then macro for age 3. Try to sell food at the market to earn villager seconds. Focus on coin treasures to avoid mining as much as possible.

Age II :

In age 2 build 2 TPs with your warchief. Ship 700c asap. Age up with the warrior. In transition research two wood gathering upgrade at the market, then put all but 4 villagers to wood. Ship advanced scouts in transition, and train scouts with your warchief.

Age III :

Ship black arrow. Spam native scouts with your warchief while you grow your economy behind. Outmass your enemy, idle the economy and choke to death.

Follow up :

If the enemy turtles up with walls, ship 1000f to age up and get the mortars in age 4. If he manages to get a mass of units that trade well vs scouts, send the counter unit shipments (rifle riders vs lancers and artillery, wakina vs musket infantry and super melee).

How to counter this build ?

The natural reaction of players is to look for a cost effective counter. Problem : Native scouts are a strange unit as they do not have any keyword. They do not have the infantry tag so they are very resistant to falconet shots. They don't have a shock infantry tag either so they don't take bonus damage from heavy infantry/light cavalry either.

Only super melee infantry organ guns (and equivalent), and strong musketeers perform decently, but it is a ruse : the warchief can print native scouts faster than you can train the counters. Native scouts cost 90wood, which sounds bigs until you realise that the Lakota player has two wood upgrades and a tepee (wood gathers at 0.75/sec with all these). The game plan of the Lakota player with this build is to drain/idle your economy by taking cost effective fights with you while he slowly builds his economy at home.

Here are some pointers to stop this build :

1. On maps with a low amount of TPs, civilisations that can easily TP boom (#chinese_immigrants) can deny the Lakota player the XP he needs for the build. This will delay the lakota, but won't stop him.
2. The build is the most vulnerable in transition to age 3. If you can hit the Lakota with a timing attack at minute 7, he won't be able to get the wood needed to train native scouts, and he won't benefit from black arrow to print scouts fast enough to repel you.
3. Force the warchief to run for his life. Scouts have horrible siege and big penalties against villagers. Prepare dragoons to hunt the warchief while you keep the the scouts busy with villagers. As long as the warchief runs, he cannot train native scouts. Once he is dead, you can start pushing his base.