HI I would like to share with you guys a strategy which is going MMS on castle vs order, followed by early spear to counter ASS starts. I saw mystery do it plenty of times and copied it :p It may seem like a stupid strategy at first but works pretty well vs 1.8-2k ratings (if i don't screw up the start i win almost every time). Lots of players say its a noob strat, only to get destroyed by it. So here it is

The essence of it - MMS start (2 miners 1 sword), CA (castle archer), followed by early spear at aroundish 2:05-2:15 mark to kill their sword/archer/miners, followed by archer spam like any ovo spearcher game.

How to do it:
Start:
-2 miner 1 sword, then queue a 5th miner
-send sword to centre to scout
-if you see enemy sword archer, IMMEDIATELY cancel your 5th miner. Let your sword hang around the middle for a while to delay their archer, then run back to base. You must gauge when to run back your sword based on their archer forward kiting skills, and the hp of your sword.
-You will have 225 gold, with one miner going back to base to deposit 75 gold. Once he does so, you will have 300 gold for castle archer, upgrade it.
-He will run in with his sword archer. Pull back ur miners a little (dont garrison all of them or you'll delay eco by a lot), and when castle archer is up, you can bring them forward to mine. If your sword still has some hp, you can use it to attack their sword. Pull back any miners being shot at by archer because he will use his sword to attack and kill it too.
-once this is done, you should have CA, 4 miners, and 1 sword healing in base while he has tower.
-This is how you do it
http://www.stickempires.com/?replay=replay14040426&version=2.29
-if you do it right, you can avoid losing any miners. Take note of any damaged miners and be prepared for him to rush in and kill them.
-afterwards, if his sword/archer is at low health, you can use your sword to run to centre and steal tower possession.

Middle:
-spam miners. when you get 6-7 you can put one on mana. Stop building miners when you have 7-8. If you time it perfectly, you can get 450 gold by the time you get 50 mana and build a spearton. Once you get 50 mana, move the miner on mana to gold, reason is that you are not building any mana units immediately afterwards but rather gold intensive units (archer). After spear is built, go for archer, followed by miner, then archer. When you have 9 miners, put one back on mana, 8 on gold.

-spearton should be built around 2:05 to 2:15 ish. When done, rush in with your spearton and sword, use spear to tank damage for the sword, keeping it alive to dish good dps. The enemy should have around 2 sword/2 archer. Kill the swords first, then miners. Reason is because once swords are dead, their archers cant kill the spearton quickly enough on their own, giving you free room to kill miners. If you kill the miners first, you can only kill one before their swords take you down to low health. If you chase the archers , they can g kite while their swords attack ur spear. Go for archers if they are wounded/very near tho.

-When your spear is low on health, retreat back to heal. At this point, your archers built earlier should come and provide covering g-fire for you, making it hard for them to forward kite you.

-once you retreat, expect retaliation. They will rush your base with 1 spear/2-3 archers but it should be easy for you to hold, because you have castle archer and 1 wounded spear to tank some damage, and archers providing cover fire.

What to do next (build order)
-build archers (2-3) alongside miners (1-2)

-should have 8 on gold, 2 on mana. NEVER EVER EVER EVER have more than 8 miners on gold, its a super common mistake that 1.8k to 2k players make. This is because the 9th miner onwards will go to second row and get easily killed by enmy archers at the centre due to short size of map. Only go >8 on gold if you are leading the game in army size and can defend them.

-if your spear is on low hp and they have a full hp spear/2nd spear, for for a second spear to defend. If not, you can go for miner hustle. Hustle is super important as it prevents them from rushing in and getting quick kills on your miners, it makes them super fast and very easy to pull back to base alive.

-after hustle and second spear, the next step is merics. Lots of 1.8k to 2k players get merics very very late when merics are mvp in castle. Go for merics if your 2 speartons have decent hp, if they are on the verge of dying, get a 3rd spear first. You can go for one more miner on mana, bringing your count to 8 on gold, 3 on mana. 3 on mana allows you to get merics and the upgrades (fire arrows and shield wall). Build one meric and archers alongside it, afterwards get the upgrades, shield wall first , then fire arrows, then the second meric. Shield bash is optional, get it when you're ahead, or have a high spear count, or when your in a spear/archer/meric deadlock.

-the reason for going meric first before upgrades is because a single meric can substantially increase your tanking power, making it difficult to kill ur spear, and also to rush in to kill your archers/miners. You dont go fire arrows because at that point you will have too few archers to benefit from it. You dont go shield wall first simply because its not needed. In any fight at the centre, you can easily pull back to the safety of your castle archer which has insane map coverage on castle. If they attack you in your base, you have 2 spears + castle archer which is enough to defend.

-so right now you should have 2-3 spears, some archers (a row), 2 merics, fire arrows and shield wall.

-the next step is mage and more spears. for mage, you may build one more miner for mana, bringing your total to 8 on gold, 4 on mana. Keep pumping out more spears too to use as shields in the spear/archer/meric deadlock. Build a wall to allow protection for your mage to fall back upon if they have ninjas or mass spears.

Heres some replays of the build in action. They don't show me performing the build at its best or vs very good players but hopefully it should give you an idea of how to do it.

-Vs a not very good player, but it shows the build in action
www.stickempires.com/play?replay=replay13934105&version=2.29
-vs a better player, i made quite some mistakes but it shows how the build can function vs higher leveled players
http://www.stickempires.com/?replay=replay14042629&version=2.29

Why this build is effective

-conventional wisdom has it that MMS CA starts dont work well on small maps, only long ones, but there are reasons why this build is good on castle
-at the start, if you micro and macro properly you can prevent any miners from being killed
-because they invested heavily in ASS, you can get a 2 miner headstart, allowing you to push for a very early spear
-short size of map makes early spear deadly. Coupled with the additional sword, you can kill miners/sword/archer easily
-most players at that rating range dont know how to counter this start, and will have only 2-3 sword archer to defend against the spear+sword while their spear is still building and far from completion to save them.
-The CA will make it very hard for them to counter attack after they have been hit by the initial spear rush
-most players build >8 miners on gold, making it easy to kill them
-miner wall can only protect the first row of gold on this map, so they can't out eco you by spamming miners
-if you follow this build, you can get out merics and mage much faster than them and win

Notes
-this build can be countered by sword archer spam to deny the first spear
-this build sucks on other maps eg halloween because they can build miner wall, happily mine on second row of gold, and out eco you because you went for early spear while they went for miners

Any questions feel free to ask me

Quote from Josephong

How to do it:
Start:
-2 miner 1 sword, then queue a 5th miner
-send sword to centre to scout


snip

Middle:
-spam miners. when you get 6-7 you can put one on mana.

You will not get to 7 miners unless your opponent is insane or is spamming far more miners themselves. You're on Castle.

Can you explain in detail how I won't get to 7 miners? Like what build they use, timings, number of sword/archer etc.

As far as i know, even if the enemy plays the correct counter (2 Sword 3 archer by the time your spear appears)
-at the start, if you play well, you will end up with 4 miners CA and a sword, they have 2 sword, 1 archer, tower possession and 2 miner. You won't lose any miners. They cannot attack you with 2 Sword, 1 Archer as you have CA + sword
-they get 2nd archer out after 4/5th miner, by the time the 2 archer 2 sword is ready for attack at 1:40, you will ALREADY HAVE 8 miners. If they try to go for 2nd archer by the 2nd/3rd miner their eco will suffer greatly
-if they suicide their 2 swords, they can only at most get one miner, because you have CA + sword
-one miner lost at this point will not deter you significantly as the build can be done with 7 on gold, futhermore they lost 2 swords, which makes it easier for you to kill their miners/lone sword with your spear + sword. Thus the results of the trade is not too different than if it didn't happen.

Futhermore, this is with the assumption that the enemy applies the correct counter, and usually only high calibre players of >2k rank know how to. In fact, i've beaten players above 2k with it/fought them to a close loss. I wrote this guide with intention of it being used against 1.8k-2k players who don't know the exact counter to it

Usually, players of that caliber will
-spam too many miners
-match your miner count and be in the process of building a spear when yours attack

Thus i can conclude that it is an effective strategy at that rating. Mystery does it frequently without any issues at much higher ratings so i don't see the problem of using it at 1800-2000s

Quote from Skeletonxf

You will not get to 7 miners unless your opponent is insane or is spamming far more miners themselves. You're on Castle.

I can get 7 miners on the field between the 1:20 to 1:25 mark, the same time they are queuing their 2nd archer. IMO you are not very familiar with ovo on castle. But its okay if you aren't because many players too have this misconception that CA builds are terrible on castle

Why bother do all of that? SAS works everytime :)

I'm basing all timings in this on repeated tests ran on a bot game on castle while writing this up, so the timings I'm quoting are extremely accurate though assume nearly optimal purchase times for both players.

At about 0:25 your opponent has their sword reaching center with the archer closely following behind. They've spent 125+300 gold and probably queued the second sword. I'll assume they keep that sword queued, so their start is SAS as normal,

Just after by around 0:30 you'll have enough gold to actually buy your castle archer. By this point your opponent has a sword and archer streaming into your base with another sword to follow. I'll assume you fend of any deaths by letting your sword take the archer hits and that your sword lasts till your castle archer forces the opponent to back off. You'll almost certainly have a heavily hurt sword and would probably want to garrison it. At this point it'll be around 0:40 or a bit after and your opponent will have to pull out of your castle.

That second sword your opponent queued has been made and reached mid by around 0:45. Your opponent can almost immediately resume attacking your base with the new sword, and send the old one to heal up if it didn't die. At this point you've either go to choose to pull back miners or let your sword take even more hits, and it's not had time to heal. It's unlikely you'll lose a miner but you'll have taken hits on either your barely alive sword or on the miner.

At 0:45 you've got about 225 gold, CA, 1 badly hurt sword and 4 miners

Your opponent at 0:45 could have between 250 and 290 gold*, 1 archer, 2 badly hurt swords and 2 miners

*depending on how long they stay at center

I'll assume your opponent purchased a third sword once they were able to. At about 1:00 it's at mid ready to attack you once again. If your sword dropped down to about 1/3 health it takes about 20 seconds to move it from just behind your statue, heal up and then come out just behind your statue. As you were attacked a second time at around 0:50 your sword will not have had time to heal up for the second attack, in fact you probably won't have had time to even get it to your base at all, and again the interval is only around 12 seconds for the opponent's third sword to attack you at around 1:00, so again you'll have had 10 seconds to 'heal' up a sword that takes far longer to heal up. You don't have to suicide your sword here but it's not possible for you to fend off 3 dives with it within 20 seconds because it doesn't have enough hit points. You also don't have to lose any miners by this point, but you're probably going to have to cancel their mining at least once to stop them dying.

Assuming you didn't have to interrupt your mining at all and spammed miners with no other purchases after that sword you reach 1:00 with

7 miners with the 7th miner just starting mining, 225 gold, CA, 1 practically dead sword

So you've obtained 7 miners and want to start mana

Your opponent's situation at 1:00 having purchased SASSMS

3 miners, last miner has not started mining, 0 gold, 1 archer, 1 sword getting healed up, 2 badly hurt swords, another sword ready to dive you at 1:15

Your opponent's situation at 1:00 having purchased SASSA

2 miners, 45 gold, 1 archer, 1 sword getting healed up, 2 badly hurt swords and another archer to dive you at 1:20 with that first sword healed up and the next purchased sword.

Your opponent's situation at 1:00 having purchased SASSSSS

2 miners, 70 gold, 1 archer, so many swords that your spear is going to achieve nothing and the first sword is healed up and ready for another dive at 1:20 along with at least another healthy new sword

Okay so to be fair you can get to 7 miners without any major issues, but they will be hurt and your sword will not have healed up in time for a 1:20 dive and certainly not for a 1:15 dive. At this point your opponent has spent nearly 1k gold in total depending on build. Your spending of 1175 gold leaves you with a stronger economy for sure and with greater income.

Around 20 seconds later you're going to have your economy attacked by multiple swords and possibly multiple archers, plus your opponent now can stop buying so many swords and reuse the ones from their base for easily the next minute of diving your base. You will not survive 3 dives in just over 30 seconds with just a sword and castle archer without being forced to move miners off gold to stop them dying. This will mean your economy is slowed down.

Ignoring that and running a MMS followed by all miners till you reach 7, then putting a miner onto mana at around 1:00 and buying another miner to go for gold you'd reach 1:20 with 8 miners on gold, one on mana and 450 gold and just under 50 mana, your total income up to this point would be 1925 gold and ~50 mana for an absolute best case scenario with no opponent disruption.

If I take the SASSA build, then buy a sword and then a miner at 1:20 I have

100 gold, 3 miners, 2 archers and 4 swords

My total income at this point is 1350.

Your economy of 8 miners and 1 praying only gives you at most 575 gold extra because I've had center all game. Additionally you'll actually have less than 1925 gold because your economy will have been disrupted at least somewhat even if you don't lose any miners. Following 1:20 you're in a position to queue up your spear. Your opponent already has a strong enough army to kill it by 1:20 when you start to, and will have dived you at least another time by that point.

The earlier your mining is disrupted the larger the effect by 1:20 and the smaller the 575 actually is. Furthermore you're playing catchup to buy a strong enough army to push me off the center while I'm able to reuse my earlier swords and focus on getting a stronger economy by 2:00. On top of that being slow with purchases hurts you far more than your opponent because 100% of your economy depends on being instant with purchases and your opponent has center gold flowing in automatically and fewer miners to purchase instantly.

In my experience it's easier to stay on top of purchases when doing the diving because you control the timing of it. You can wait a second before you dive to buy your next miner and generally have control of the flow of the game. When 'defending' you don't control the timings and have to be reactive, it's more likely that you get dived when you needed to make a purchase and lose out on efficiency from being unable to do both things at once.

So unrealistic best case scenario at 1:20 you queue up a spear with a 575 gold lead against an opponent who is already in a position to kill it.

Quote from Josephong

I wrote this guide with intention of it being used against 1.8k-2k players who don't know the exact counter to it

Then it isn't a good guide.
Banking on your enemy not knowing how to counter something is silly.

Quote from AsePlayer

Then it isn't a good guide.
Banking on your enemy not knowing how to counter something is silly.

Playing SE at all is silly.

Quote from alternate

Playing SE at all is silly.

lol

@skeletonxf
That's a nice detailed analysis :)
I would like to add that
-at the start, your sword won't be heavily injured, as you can let some of your miners take archer hits, while your damaged sword attacks the enemy sword behind the miners/statue, so your sword won't take damage from archer hits
-You assume that the enemy attacks with 1 archer one sword, and gets the sword out alive. I assume that a castle archer kills 1 sword in 4 hits (or 3 ca + 1 sword hit) , so the enemy has to keep the sword on the edge of your second row to keep it alive, it cannot attack anything or it will die. Meaning their archer can only get in at most 2 hits. This makes one dive not very effective. They have to position their archer at the bottom while the sword rushes in at the top, or else the archer will get splashed and your sword can wrestle control of the tower. In short, diving with 1 archer and expecting the sword to survive does very little damage.
-if they go SASSSS, i find the statement "Around 20 seconds later you're going to have your economy attacked by multiple swords ... possibly multiple archers" questionable as its hard to build archers on a 2 miner + tower economy. Also, its basically like all in-ing a MMS CA user, which is a pretty bad strategy IMO. If you go for that, I can just build archers on a 6 miner eco and take back tower. (you only have 1 archer to shoot back and cannot rush into my base cos of CA splash damage) I'm not one of the top order players but i do know that SAS followed by pure sword spam cannot win a MMS CA who spam archers afterwards. Also gold lead doesn't matter too much, esp with swords, more important is archer and miner count.
-SASSA isn't too good either, as 2nd archer after 4 miners accomplishes the same thing with more eco and its a safer build. With SASSA, if you rush with 3 sword 2 archer, you can get 1-2 miners for the 2-3 swords, but you will face retaliation from the spear and following archers. You won't have enough miners to keep up the fight. It works only if you kill many miners enough to make a difference.
-also, players at the 1800-2000 ratings will likely crumble under this build as they don't know the appropriate counter.

@ase
This isnt a total cheese strat like spear cheese where if countered, it leads to an instant gg. Its a strat where most do not know how to counter, but even if they do, it just gives them a slight advantage in mid game, not a massive one, you can still win if you have the better macro in mid game.
This guide also helps explain some decently good mid game macros for castle.
The point is, if a 1800 player masters this strategy, he can have a good win rate on castle vs other 1800 players.

@gaismail
SAS heavily depends on luck, presence of lag and micro. Sometimes, even if you have better micro skills, one mistake/lag can cost you the game. I prefer MMS because its fun, can bring me to mid game which allows my macro to shine and win me the game. Sometimes, if your micro is better by a bit, but macro much better, its better to drag it to mid game.

Quote from Josephong

@ase
This isnt a total cheese strat like spear cheese where if countered, it leads to an instant gg. Its a strat where most do not know how to counter, but even if they do, it just gives them a slight advantage in mid game, not a massive one, you can still win if you have the better macro in mid game.
This guide also helps explain some decently good mid game macros for castle.
The point is, if a 1800 player masters this strategy, he can have a good win rate on castle vs other 1800 players.

@gaismail
SAS heavily depends on luck, presence of lag and micro. Sometimes, even if you have better micro skills, one mistake/lag can cost you the game. I prefer MMS because its fun, can bring me to mid game which allows my macro to shine and win me the game. Sometimes, if your micro is better by a bit, but macro much better, its better to drag it to mid game.

What if I just dodge CA hits with my archer and harass your eco? :^)

If you're making it to mid/late game on Castle you did something wrong lol


Most people will probably just stack archers and rush a spear and then you're kinda done for

At this point I give up explaining and Ill just offer to play you.

I can play evenings today or Thursday or Friday GMT time.

@skeleton okay then whats your code? And which timezone are you in? :)

@ase that requires a super high level of micro rarely rarely found in that rating range. And also ping needs to be low too. Also wen you mean stack archers, how many are you talking about? I doubt that they can stack archers and rush a spear out before i can, i'll probably attack them with my spear + sword when they are still building the spear. If they try to rush with spears and do the same thing as me, i have the benefit of the ca. When you say most people. what rating range are you referring to?

Quote from Josephong

@ase
This isnt a total cheese strat like spear cheese where if countered, it leads to an instant gg. Its a strat where most do not know how to counter, but even if they do, it just gives them a slight advantage in mid game, not a massive one, you can still win if you have the better macro in mid game.
This guide also helps explain some decently good mid game macros for castle.
The point is, if a 1800 player masters this strategy, he can have a good win rate on castle vs other 1800 players.

@gaismail
SAS heavily depends on luck, presence of lag and micro. Sometimes, even if you have better micro skills, one mistake/lag can cost you the game. I prefer MMS because its fun, can bring me to mid game which allows my macro to shine and win me the game. Sometimes, if your micro is better by a bit, but macro much better, its better to drag it to mid game.

SAS doesn't depend on luck. It depends on skill. And like Ase said, anyone could easily dodge your CA and screw your miners.