Papal company FI

A build to rush to age 4 and ship a papal company to push around 11min. No boom and no lombards.

Age I

Perform the long age 1 opener

• Villagers on food crates, until you can start training villagers at the TC. As soon as one villager is in queue move one villager to the wood crates
• Architect builds a market, then a house, then a trading post. Accelerate the market when it costs you 70 wood
• Keep queuing villagers until you are at pop cap. You need to reach the pop cap before the first market tech is researched
• Explorer prioritises coin with absolute priority until hunting dog is reasearched
• While you wait for your coin, research blunderbuss and great coat. If you have the coin then hunting dogs, then blunderbuss, then great coat then gangsaw, then placer mines, then sell some food to buy wood/coin to pay for steel traps

Ageup at ~3'40' with 18 pop w/ the governor

Transition

Once the architect is done with the TP bring him back in base to build houses. No need to accelerate.

Queue two villagers in the TC.

Split your vils 60% on food and 40% on coin. You want to macro for 1200f 1000c to pay for age 3 as soon as possible.

Age 2

Build the tower, gather the coin crates. Ship uffizi. Build the basilica in base to speed up the architect's construction speed and research town watch and gas lighting for two extra villagers.

Age up as soon as you can. Use the politician that will give you units to defend a push.

Transition

Gather coin for 1 architect (queue) and 1 villager. Then all villagers bar one on food. Ship advanced politician whenever you can.

Age 3

Ship 1000 coin asap. By the time the crates arrive you will have enough to pay for age 4. The choice of politician depends on the reaction of your opponent.

• If you are pushed, the papal guard can get you units out now. Combine this is a unit shipment for a defensive "pop"
• If the ennemy is leaving you in peace, age up with the pope himself and ship 1k wood to prepare for the papal company shipment after you have aged up

Transition

Summon your architects to build a barracks. If time is short, market abuse to accelerate. Then back to houses and Lombard.

Age 4

• With the papal guard : ship 2 papal bombard and push
• With the pope : pay for the papal company and push

In age 4 you can support your papal bombards with bersaglieri (vs light cav) and some heavy infantry (vs heavy cav). Look for shipment downtimes to purchase some papal units from the basilica. They shadow tech.

From there the world is your oyster. You can troll hard by revolting to Brazil after you have shipped your factory and the Florentine financiers. Re train your architects immediately and build as many TCs as possible, and ship Brazilian importers (to speed up the training of basilica units) and minas gerais (to reboom).