Catapult III Speed Run

The primary goal of this strategy is to quickly gain the technology for Catapult Mark III and to quickly build an army of them. This guide uses inns for population growth and employing skilled workers. This strategy is feasible even if you start with a small treasure but is slightly different according to a few settings such as starting population, income, amount of AI, and AI aggressiveness. Other than that, you should play the game as usual.

Basics:

If you begin the game with 40 peasants, you will be short a few peasants until the village grows. A basic empire needs:

• 2 in the mine.
• 8 in the factory.
• 24 or 32 in the towers of science.
• 1 or 2 construction workers.

So if you start with a natural resource nearby and intend to mine ore or import goods, play as usual, but staff the mine with only 2/3 miners that can keep up with a fully staffed factory. Also, if you set random kingdoms settings, reduce the amount of towers of science to 3 considering your reduced population.

How to start:

• Set a tax on the village at 40 loyalty.
• Train 1 construction worker and build 4/6 inns.
• Train 9 researchers and build 3 or 4 towers of science.
• Keep training researchers and fill them completely.
• You will achieve Catapult Mark III circa 2 1/2 or 3 years.

While researching Catapults:

• Hire manufacturers from the inns (60+ skill points).
• Build war factories with high skilled manufacturers.

When you finish research on Catapult mark III,

• Sell all the towers of science.
• Build 4/6 war factories.
• Begin mass production of Catapult Mark IIIs.

By circa year 4 and 1/2, you should have 2 forts full of Catapults or more depending on how many war factories you built.

Originally by Infectorpp on 7 June 2016‎, Adapted by Ra 2021