Hussar opening

Garja posted a bunch of Sweden replays here. Alas he never wrote a full guide. This is an attempt to formalise a build after watching quite a few replays. The church build is very vulnerable to a crossbow opening, whereas this one performs very well against this type of opening. Think of these two build orders as complements.

Game plan

Get to the second age quickly and keep your opponent in his/her base by producing hussars. Use the distractions caused by your raids to set up your infrastructure, then do a full tech switch by massing caroleans from two barracks

Age I :

Standard 2 torp opener. All the usual tricks apply. Build the torps on mines, herd the hunts toward the torps so they gather from both the berry bush and the animal. Explorer focus on food and livestock tresures (livestock to be brought next to the torps and killed to be gathered by the torps themselves).

Age up at 15 villagers with the naturalist. In transition gather wood for a market, hunting dogs, a TP and 200w for a stable. Then split your settlers 75/25 on food/coin. Gather from the mine that has no torp.

Age II :

Send dominion, kill the cows next to the torps and build the stable. Keep gathering food. Once dominion arrives, build one torp in base and set the economic rally point on one of the torp in base. Send the other torp wagons on far away mines. Produce a batch of hussars from the stable. Harass your enemy with these but do not commit. We want to induce your opponent to produce heavy infantry.

Once you get your 3rd shipment, ship 700w. Once it is there, build 2 barracks and some more torps. It is now time to pump some caroleans. Power up your unit production by shipping 700c.

Follow up :

• The 5th shipment is usually 700f to maintain double barrack production.
• If the enemy turtles hard, ship 600c and macro for age up.
• If you spot light infantry, the two elather canon shipment can help you poke their mass while caroleans cover agaisnt heavy cavalry.