Imperial unity FF

The imperial unity shipment has seen some use since the early days of DE. This build is an attempt to maximize the yield of that shipment.

Game plan :

Perform a naked FF and prepare your economy to spam discounted mercenary shipment in age 3.

Age I :

15/20 TP+kancha house. Priority on wood treasure until the kancha house is built, then focus on food treasures. Your first shipment is 3 villagers.

When your 14th villager comes out, eat the starting llama. Age up at 15 villagers with the chief (2 builder travois).

In transition ship ceque system to increase your XP generation. Macro for a market+hunting dogs, then split your villagers on food and coin and start macro-ing for age 3.

Age II :

Use your builder travois to get two tambos on a trade route. These will synergize with ceque system, giving you the equivalent of 5 TPs on trade route.

Your 3rd shipment is 700c. It is preferable to over gather food and sell at the market to get the missing coin for age 3. You will increase the lifespan of your mines later on. Age up with the messenger.

In transition send 600w. Once the wood crates arrive, build one kancha with one villager, and send another one to your most forward tambo to build a kallanka. Once you have a villager in queue, shift all but 3 villagers from food to wood and coin. If you fear an earlier agression, you can wait until you have banked 600f (to call the plume spearmen in a pinch) before reallocating.

Age III :

Send imperial unity as soon as possible. Produce some huaracas from your kallanka and garrison them inside. You are not pushing yet and we want to protect these fragile units from raids. Once imperial unity is in, ship the conquistadores or the lancers (depends on what your opponent is producing). Keep villager production, huaracas production (you won't be able to finish batches early on, it is ok) and sending high value native shipments. Do not push until you have call at least 3 mercenary shipments. At this point imperial unity will have paid back its opportunity cost. It is time to push.

Follow up :

If you want to boom, shift villagers back to food and either ship the 2 TC wagons for a strong boom, or ship 1k wood to build kancha houses and macro for age 4. The age 4 shipments are heavily discounted by imperial unity.

Variant :

You can reduce your early vulnerabilities to a rush by doing a 2 Kancha opener into the priestess age up. You will hurt your XP generation in the long run however. On the plus side, you will have priestess to convert enemy units in your base and no exposed tambos vulnerable to raids.

Your shipment order is 1=>A=>B=>C=>D. In transition to age 2 chop extra wood for a community plazza and placer mines. In transition to age 3, you can assign some villagers to the plazza for more XP or get an extra priestess.