AOE II Indonesia: Agustus 2009

Land Nomad
Article written by Intimatum
Published at 09-18-2008; updated on 09-19-2008 by Luke Gevaerts

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My purpose in posting this is both to get comments on my strategy from those who are more skilled than me and to teach those who are less skilled than me. Comments welcome but let's have no flaming in this thread.

One of the most popular RM game types on the Zone currently, especially in Zone room 'Mediaeval Siege', is Land Nomad. The differences between a Land Nomad map and the standard 'Nomad' map in AoK:TC are as follows:
(a) LN is a land map, so no water of any kind (doh);
(b) you start with standard resources, so you need to chop wood before you can build your starting TC;
(c) on LN (unless someone clicked the All Techs button), civs get the same starting resources as they normally do on Arabia, i.e. all civs get 200 wood except for Persians (250), Huns (100) and Chinese (150)

Land Nomad maps generally have generous resources with plenty of forest and good hunting, although only standard amounts of sheep and mining, so in that way they are similar to 'Green Arabia'. The main differences between Land Nomad and a standard Green Arabia map are:
(d) no starting town centre (doh);
(e) no initial scout or no EW for meso civs;
(f) villagers randomly placed around your 'spot' and may be fairly widely scattered;
(g) no wolves on LN.

On the Zone, the convention is that LN games are played with Random civs and with a 'Conquest' victory condition.

The Random civs convention, and the random starting positions, introduce an element of chance into the game, although of course a good player will be able to make the best of any civ and any starting position.

In the initial stages, your most urgent priorities are to (1) walk all your starting vils to the same place to chop wood;
(2) build a LC by wood;
(3) find one or more sheep (for scouting and later eating).

Once you have 275 wood, you should then build a TC in a good spot as quickly as you can.

As mentioned, there is an element of chance in Land Nomad. The following elements are random:
(a) your starting position - you could be near forest, and near a good hunting spot, or you could spend 1 minute looking for forest; your vils could be closely spaced or far apart; you could be close to enemy or far from enemy
(b) the number of sheep you find initially - obviously this partly depends on how much ground your vils cover while walking towards the lumber camp;
(c) your civ.

The civilisation that you draw makes a huge difference to your game in LN, because, some civs have an advantage during what one might call the 'pre-Dark' age, that is to say, before the TC is built.

It is of extreme importance, in LN, to build the starting TC as soon as possible. A 'standard' civ (e.g. Byzantines) must start as follows: build a lumber camp (cost: 100 wood) then chop 175 wood before the TC can be built, and also chop another 30 wood to build the first house. Generally the first house will be needed in order to create your sixth villager, that is to say, to avoid idle time the house must be finished 50 seconds after the TC is up, and (working backwards) construction of the house must therefore be started 25 seconds after the TC is up. Allowing for a few seconds reaction time and the time it takes your builder to walk to the house spot, you will not have time to chop any more wood between finishing the TC and needing to build that house. Therefore you need to have 30 wood in the bank by the time the TC construction is finished.

With a non-bonused civ, the normal LN start for good players is therefore as follows:
(A) Press idle villager hotkey three times, and each time right-click minimap to walk the villager towards a spot in the middle of all 3 villagers (if you're mathematically minded, the shortest aggregate villager walk is to walk them all towards the median point of the triangle made by their starting positions)
(B) Watch each villager in turn en route looking out for forest, sheep (especially sheep at the edge of the field of vision), and allies' and enemies' villagers
(C) Build a lumber camp as soon as possible by the closest reasonable patch of forest to the spot which the villagers are walking to. For a good LN start, build the lumber camp adjacent to the forest, not one tile away like people sometimes do. Try not to trap a vil between the lumber camp and the forest, although this is not an absolute disaster if it happens.
(D) Build the lumber camp with one or two vils and chop wood with the other(s). Especially if building with one vil, watch the other two vils carefully as they will stand idle indefinitely if they succeed in chopping 10 wood before the LC is constructed - if that happens, you need to drop off the wood and reclick a tree manually.
(E) Don't let the AI automatically assign the villagers to trees after the LC is done. You should manually assign the villagers to trees adjacent to the LC. If you do this correctly, your vils will drop 10 wood each time without needing to walk at all. This will shave precious seconds off your 'pre-Dark' time.
(F) As soon as you have 275 wood (note: you should force drop wood to get to 275 when you see that you have 260 wood in the bank), start TC construction with at least one vil. Assuming you have found 2-3 sheep already, the best TC location is adjacent to forest - ideally with a good straight edge of forest to the Northwest side of your TC.
(G) Build the TC with two vils, while continuing to chop wood with the third. You need to make sure that you will have 30 wood by the time the TC is complete. This can include wood that is held by the TC builders. For example, with 15 wood in the bank, I would chop another 10 wood at the LC, then chop another 5 and then move the woodchopper, holding that 5 wood, to assist in the TC construction. That 5 wood will be dropped off as soon as the TC is complete.
(H) Once the TC is complete, build a house nearby with 1 vil, and scrape sheep with 2 vils. After the house is built, the builder can sensibly go looking for more sheep.

It is advantageous to build the TC adjacent to forest because:
(a) your vils are already at the forest, so building the TC right there reduces walk time before you start building the TC
(b) with the TC adjacent to forest, you can chop wood efficiently with no need to build a second lumber camp until Castle age, thus you save 100 wood
(c) villagers chopping wood at the TC do not bump so much as villagers chopping wood at a LC (except that occasionally a vil will walk all the way around the 'hard' part of the TC to get to the next tree after finishing a tree - try to prevent that from happening)
(d) newly created woodcutters in Dark and Feudal do not have a long walk to get to the forest
(e) the TC can protect your crucial woodcutters if you get attacked in Feudal.
(g) if you are building the TC with 3 vils, and you don't exactly have the 30 wood needed for a house, you can easily peel off one of the builders to chop a bit more wood

TC build time:
With two vils is 113 seconds
With three vils is 90 seconds

Therefore you save 23 seconds building the TC with 3 vils, which is roughly equivalent to having an extra vil by the time you Feudal.

Good players, especially those with Celts or Spanish, may be able to get away without having 30 wood by the time the TC is built: for example, you could build the TC with vils holding 15 wood, and quickly chop 15 wood after the TC is built, force-drop it, and build a house with all 3 vils.

While doing all of the above (typical TC completion time for a good LN player with a non-bonused civ and an average length villie walk to get to the lumber camp position: 7:00 minutes), you should obviously be scouting with any sheep you found, and then bring at least one sheep to the TC to be slaughtered. Personally I concentrate on scouting the area around my TC, and also the centre of the map and edges and corner of the map. I do not usually try to scout enemy areas with sheep, as that will give the enemy an extra sheep which they may be desperate for at this stage in the game. As a feudal attack in LN is generally unlikely unless an enemy is very close to you, there is no great value to knowing the enemies' precise location at this stage in the game, on the other hand you do obviously want to make sure that the enemy is not in your own back yard.

On the other hand, if you have several sheep, this early stage in the game gives you an ideal opportunity to scout right to the edges and corner of the map, to find those stone piles and relics that people sometimes miss.
What to do if you have no sheep
If you don't have any sheep, in my opinion (unless Chinese) you should still start precisely as described above, as you will have enough food to create 4 vils after the TC is complete, and if you still haven't found sheep then you could research loom. This gives you around 2 minutes after the TC is built to find some sheep, just like a normal Arabia game.

Of course, in a team game you should be communicating with your allies and they should send you 1 or 2 sheep in pre-Dark if they have any to spare, so that you can do some scouting. Their sheep will usefully scout for them while walking over to you. If your allies are really tight gits, you could always promise to send sheep back to them when you find some.

If your allies don't have sheep to spare, there are usually small groups of sheep all over the map in LN, so you may be lucky and find some within line of sight of your TC once it is built, or while building your first house. Failing that, you could send all 3 vils looking for sheep once the TC is built. There is also a good chance that you will soon come across and convert an enemy or allied sheep scouting your area (which is why I, personally, try not to sheep-scout my enemies' areas).

If you have no sheep and no helpful allies, then it is probably better instead of building the TC adjacent to forest, to build it next to a berry patch if there is one nearby, or better still next to deer. Berries will give you a smooth enough food income in Dark if you can pick them without bumping. You can hunt deer early if you build the TC near a deer herd, although you will have to force-drop food a few times; if you see a deer wandering across your actual TC area, certainly take the opportunity to shoot it there. You can even hunt boar once you have 5 vils (3 if Goths, 4 if Aztecs).
The Civilisation Lottery
These are the civs with an early advantage on LN. Obviously if you play it right that advantage can last all game.

(1) Chinese
6 starting vils instead of 3 is a huge advantage:
(a) it means that the additional 225 wood needed for the TC is chopped nearly twice as fast (110 seconds instead of 190 seconds approximately);
(b) it means that the TC can be built in around 65 seconds (5 vils on the job and 1 gathering food, see below);
(c) with your 6 vils starting in different places you should find more sheep, for extra early scoutability (and besides, you are soon going to need that food);
(d) TC supports 10 pop, so there is no need to have the additional 30 wood required for your first house: you can build the TC with all 6 vils if you like;
(e) Not only do Chinese have insane age times, longer lasting farms, and cheaper research, but they also have knights with Bloodlines. Yummy.
The main problem of the Chinese is the -200 starting food penalty, therefore the Chinese player needs to gather the first 50 food as fast as possible, in practice by the time that loom has been researched 25 seconds after the TC is up. The only way to achieve this is to have at least one vil gathering food while the TC is under construction; and you can have two vils doing so. Kill a sheep right next to the TC, and when a vil has scraped 10 food, then reassign that vil to building the TC while holding 10 food. An additional advantage of doing this is that when the TC is built, the builders will be auto-assigned to the sheep instead of to forest.
Therefore once the TC is up, provided the Chinese can get the food in fast enough, they should be up to 7 vils ahead of other civilisations (3 extra starting vils, 75 seconds faster initial wood gathering=3 vils, 25 second faster TC construction=1 vil) - and that advantage lasts all game! That is a phenomenal advantage and can be translated into a very fast (for LN) castle time: the Chinese player can castle a full 3 minutes earlier than most others. Every team hopes that someone on the team will draw Chinese. (But every team member also hopes that it will not be him, as that early micro is very hard to perfect and you are almost certain to get doubled in mid-Castle!)

(2) Mayans
4 starting vils instead of 3 is a great advantage, but not so good as the Chinese:
(a) it means that the 175 wood for the TC is chopped in 130 seconds instead of 195 seconds: that is a 65 second advantage. In practice, the fourth vil will probably be far from the wood so he will have to spend some time walking, so maybe it is a 50 second advantage in practice;
(b) three vils can build the TC (90 second build time) while the fourth chops wood for the first house: for the Mayans, construction of the first house must start shortly before completion of the TC lest the Mayans be housed at 5 pop - on the other hand, if the house is built in time, the Mayans can loom at a normal time (10 or 15 vils) which means they retain the advantage of being 1 vil ahead throughout Dark Age, which is better than they can do in Arabia.
Basically the Mayan player can start a LN game 3 vils ahead of other civs, due to saving 50 seconds wood gathering time. There is a slight saving in TC building time as the Mayans can have 3 vils on the TC throughout its construction; and the Mayans 'resources last longer' bonus is good on LN as there is plenty of hunting, it also means that the super efficient trees adjacent to the TC will last longer. That can translate into a castle time approximately 1-2 minutes earlier than non-bonused civs. The Mayans can also usefully spare a villager at an earlier stage to go looking for unclaimed sheep and enemy sheep (see below).
Mayans are the second best card to draw in the Random Civs deck.

(3=) Persians
The 50 wood bonus at the start translates into less wood needing to be chopped and therefore a 55 second speed advantage in getting the TC construction started. The 50 food starting bonus will help to achieve a good fast Castle time. Once in Castle the Persians get Bloodlined knights and also a superb boom. Tied for third place with the Japanese in LN.

(3=) Japanese
The Japanese lumbercamp costs only 50 wood, leaving 150 in the bank, so, like the Persians, only 125 wood needs to be chopped for the TC. The three Japanese starting vils will chop 125 wood in roughly 135 seconds, which is 55 seconds faster than other civs. That Japanese TC will be up sooner, and that 55 second speed advantage should soon translate into two extra vils or a 1 minute earlier Feudal and Castle.
The cheaper mill (and cheaper mining camps in due course) will also help the Japanese player to Castle fast, and will be helpful to the boom in due course. The Japanese, tied with the Persians, are the third best early game civ in LN.

(5=) Spanish
The 30% increase in builder speed (a bit of maths for you: in practice, that is only a 23% reduction in actual build time) means that that TC goes up in 69 seconds instead of (say) 94 seconds with 3 vils on the job: roughly a 25 second advantage. That is equivalent to a one vil headstart. Because the Spanish build houses in 20 seconds instead of 25 seconds, there is also more leeway in the initial 30 wood requirement which makes an optimal start slighly easier to achieve. With Bloodlined knights, and a powerful UU, and good trade for the whole team in late game, the Spanish are a strong civ in LN and take equal fifth place.

(5=) Celts
As everyone knows, Celt villagers gather wood 15% faster than every other kind. That means that the 175 wood needed for the TC will be obtained in 165 seconds compared with most civs' 190 seconds: a 25 second early advantage, which (like the Spanish) is equivalent to being one vil ahead once the TC is up and in continuous production. Again, there is slightly more leeway in the initial 30 wood requirement, making it easier to use all 3 vils to build the TC. With plenty of opportunity to boom to Imperial for great siege, Celts are tied for fifth place with the Spanish. The Celt infantry speed bonus also gives rise to a unique Dark Age strategy, as we shall see.

(7) Mongols A feature of LN is that the herds of deer are often large (maybe 6 or 8 deer), and also that boars are found in groups of up to five and you can reasonably hope to find at least 3 (your allies may be generous and let you take one of theirs, or you may be cunning and steal boar from your enemy). Hopefully you will have found good hunting with your sheep scouts, in which case you could even consider locating the TC closer to the hunting grounds.
Even more so than in Arabia, on LN the Mongols can achieve a fast (but low pop) Feudal and Castle, alternatively can go for a normal time with more resources in Castle for creating Bloodlined knights. Thus in age advancement times the Mongols can match the Persians and Japanese, perhaps even the Mayans or Chinese if the hunting is really good, although the Mongol economy will not be so strong. Although LN games have no starting scout, in a way the Mongols have a scouting bonus as they are likely to hunt early so allowing most of their sheep can do more scouting before they need to come in to be slaughtered.
Just don't forget to be ready to start farming when the sheep run out, otherwise you will face a nasty food shortage in early castle.

(8) Aztecs
The +5 vil carrying capacity (which equates to 33% less walking for Aztec vils in Dark) will lead to a slight speed advantage in chopping the initial wood requirement that wood, but probably no more than 10 seconds all told. Free Loom equates to being one vil ahead from the time that other civs loom (typically at pop 12-13, on LN maps), although there is accordingly more pressure on the Aztecs to keep ahead with both food production and housing: be alert to force-drop food when required. Together, these economy bonuses are only slightly less advantageous than Celts and Spanish in a LN game. As noted, a feature of LN games is that most players usually make it to Imperial, and Aztecs in Imperial are a surprisingly powerful civ with the best Champions in the game.

(9) Britons
On LN it is possible to find LOTS of sheep (especially if you send a vil in the enemies' direction, he he), so the Briton player is likely to have plenty to keep his food gatherers busy. LN can also be a boomers's map, which suits the Britons just fine.

(10) Koreans
The +2 vil LOS can be useful early in LN, as vil scouting is important - for example, the bonus helps you to find more sheep as the vils walk on their way to the LC. More sheep = more sheepscouts and more free food. It also makes it easier for you to take sheep from the enemies' side of the map. A feature of LN games is that if you are adjacent to an enemy you typically trush instead of flushing, and the Koreans can do an excellent trush; the free tower upgrade upon Castling is particularly pleasing if you are able to both trush and achieve a fast Castle time (it is a good team strategy to ask allies to tribute you some food to help you Castle within a reasonable time despite your trush).

(11) Teutons If you are unlucky enough to find no sheep initially and no hunting, that could mean that you have to build 10 or more farms in the Dark Age. In that case, being Teuton might just save your game and/or Zone reputation. Also, as noted already, LN is often suited to booming, and the Teutons have an outstanding boom; Bloodlined Knights are an alternative. Due to the bonused TCs, Teutons are relatively safe from raids, and therefore if Teutons in the pocket you can consider going for a no-military fast-imp (obviously by agreement with your allies first).

(12=) Saracens
The Saracens have no Dark Age bonus, however they can do a surprisingly powerful krush with their Bloodlined knights through using the market skilfully to obtain plenty of food in early Castle. Check out Saracen market strategies elsewhere: essentially, the Saracens' economy is most efficient if they mine stone and gold instead of building farms, until food costs more than 153 gold. (This also means that no farms need be built until farm upgrades have been researched.) The good hunting that is typical on LN will assist this strategy. Even so, you may find it advisable to build 3-5 Saracen farms in Feudal so as to maintain a smooth food income if you forget to visit the market on a sufficiently regular basis.

(12=) Turks
The gold mining bonus can help the Turks build plenty of Bloodlined knights, roughly as many as the Saracens; this bonus can also mean you can castle with only two gold miners instead of three, allowing an extra vil to be used elsewhere. Turks are also one of the top Imperial age civs if they can survive that long, which they usually can on LN.

(14=) Goths, Byzantines, Franks, Vikings
These civs have no useful early game bonus (the Goth boar bonus does not really count as useful, indeed it can be counter-productive if you shoot the boar off the TC patch).
They are, however, all good in different ways in Castle age and Imperial age. After all, AOK:TC is a very well-balanced game.

Goths have Bloodlined knights.

Franks have something equivalent.

Byzantines have cheap camels.

Vikings have a better-than-average Castle age economy (effectively, +3 vils compared with another civ which has to research wheelbarrow) which means that they can in fact do a good knight rush, despite having no Bloodlines and poor Imperial age cavalry.

(18) Huns
The Huns are in last place on LN because, unlike every other land map, the Huns are the slowest civ in LN. The cause of this is that 100 wood starting penalty, meaning that the poor Hun player has to spend all his wood on a LC and then chop 275 wood in order to build his TC: with 3 vils chopping away, that is a 105 second speed penalty compared with even the slow Byzantines. The Huns can claw back a few precious seconds by virtue of using all three vils to build the TC (build time: 90 seconds) and not worrying about 30 wood, but that will still leave the Huns roughly 100 seconds behind even a non-bonused civ. That is essentially a 3 vil starting disadvantage (3 vils, not 4, because other civs basically have to use 1 vil constantly to chop wood for houses and to build houses (130 vil seconds per house, against 125 seconds for the TC to create 5 vils). At a lower level of play, the Hun disadvantage is less than 3 vils, because the other civs will not build the TC and first house optimally, and the other civs will manage to get themselves housed from time to time. Despite this starting penalty, the Huns are not a total washout, because they are a good civ once they get going, with Bloodlined knights or the Cavalry Archer alternative which probably interferes less with the boom.
Land Nomad: Flush or no flush?
Once you are feudal in LN, the main differences from a normal land map game (e.g. Green Arabia) are as follows:
(a) everyone's age times are 5-7 minutes later than normal (depending on civ);
(b) some civs (especially Chinese) have had a massive speed advantage already, as detailed above;
(c) you only have 100 starting stone, not the usual 200, because you used 100 stone already to build the initial TC;
(d) your TC is probably better located than it would be in an Arabia game i.e. it is directly adjacent to wood and protecting your woodies; it may also be nearby gold or stone;
(e) you should have gathered more food and/or started farming later than on an Arabia map, due to the good hunting on LN;
(f) no player is likely to have scouted any enemy town thoroughly until mid-Feudal at earliest, as sheep scouting of enemies is not very effective!

The consequence of points (b), (d) and (f) (and the Hun starting penalty!) is that a flush is much less likely in LN than in a normal game. Also, LN is generally a team game, often 4v4, which again makes a flush less satisfactory and a fast castle more likely. Point (e) is also in favour of a fast castle. Point (c) is a point against a feudal-age trush.

But ultimately I think it is point (d) which is the real reason why a flush is rare in LN. The principal objective of a flush is to shut down or slow down an enemy's wood, and on LN that is often impossible in Feudal unless the enemy is badly positioned or the forest is so thin that you can put skirmishers and a tower on the far side of it.

The very fact that a flush is rare, and therefore unexpected, can mean that it is a good strategy to adopt. I am including a feudal tower rush as a specific class of flush, by the way.

In particular, I have recently seen good results achieved by towering up a Chinese opponent, as the Chinese player will almost certainly be going for a fast Castle with little or no military at that stage in the game. But your tower rush needs to be very very fast and must ultimately result in 5 or 6 towers preventing him from farming or mining on one whole side of his TC, otherwise you will find that he is in Castle before you know it and ramming down your towers while his knights hit your Feudal Age economy.

In 1v1 LN games a fullscale flush can be very effective (depending on civs), as your opponent might not be expecting it and it will be a while before he even scouts your town.

Some people will do a fast Castle with a small scale Feudal attack, e.g. 2 scouts or 4 spearmen, if they spot an enemy's town at the right sort of time. For example, you can sometimes hit an enemy's gold miners while they are unprotected and far from the TC; or with a few spears built during the Castle transition you can ambush an enemy forward builder or the vils building his second or third TC. A scout rush also has the advantage that through doing it you will be able to scout your enemy's town properly.

If flushing in a LN team game, good communication with your allies is of key importance, as the flush will leave you highly vulnerable to a castle-age attack by the flushee's ally. 'Doubling' (where two players jointly attack one enemy) is very common in LN games, and a player who has flushed an opponent is asking to be doubled or tripled later on. A good ally will station a few pikes in your town and also keep the enemies busy with raids to prevent them from potentially assisting your flushee.

Ultimately, whether or not you decide to flush in LN depends on what civs you and your allies are, what civs the enemies are, and map position - you need to adjust your strategy accordingly. Counter-intuitively, the very fast civs (Chinese, Mayans, Japanese and Persians) should almost always aim to fast castle rather than flush, as a knight or cav archer raid, while the enemy is still in Feudal or in early Castle with no military and no second TC built, is by far the most devastating blow you can strike.
Special strategy for Celts in Land Nomad
As noted, Celts have a good start in Land Nomad, being fifth equal in terms of speed of construction of the initial town centre.

Celts also have the advantage of faster moving infantry. This means that Celt swordsman line units move faster than (non-Wheelbarrowed) villagers and Celt pikeman move very nearly as fast as non-upgraded knights.

This means that Dark-Age scouting of the enemy with militia is more viable with Celts. That can be advantageous in four ways:
(a) You can pick up any outlying sheep between you and the enemy, thus keeping your economy strong
(b) You can scout the ground between you and the enemy, and the enemy towns, at a stage when most players will not yet be scouting. If you are an experienced player you should be able to predict what strategies the enemy will ultimately adopt from this scouting in late Dark age. Once your allies (hopefully fast castlers with Bloodlined knights) have researched Cartography, they will benefit from this scouting that you have done so that they can do a better directed raid in early Castle.
(c) You may be able to steal sheep, due to the Celts sheep stealing powers. That kind of thing can really screw up an enemy's carefully laid fast castling plan.
(d) You can attack villagers. Although loomed villagers will easily defeat militia, the point about Celts is that they can run away faster than the villagers can catch them if the villagers do decide to counterattack, and Celt militia also have a chance of evading TC fire. Thus, although you are unlikely to kill anything at this stage, you can cause a major distraction; you may even succeed in making a panicky player garrison all his vils or make some other economic error.
I've never heard of anyone doing a drush in LN, although I suppose it's possible; but what I have in mind instead is a one or two militia scouting, raiding and sheep stealing party.

The infantry speed bonus also means that a flush with Celtic infantry units is a respectable strategy. The Celtic spears are able to kill more enemy vils, because they can walk much faster than the vils, and they are able to retreat from enemy archer, skirmisher, tower and TC fire more easily. They are also able to outrun enemy infantry if the enemy counters with barracks units. Indeed, if one enemy's defences are too strong, it will not take too long for the Celtic feudal infantry raid to walk along to the next enemy. The enemy will probably not have Cartography at this stage so at the very least you can cause confusion by doing this.

The fact that the Celts are the fifth fastest civ to start on LN (equal with Spanish) and have a woodcutting bonus means that there should be plenty of wood available for building a forward barracks, or two, in Dark age.
In a LN game, is it better to boom, krush, power krush or fast Imp?
As noted, most players fast castle in Land Nomad, and don't flush at all. The three basic strategies are then:
(A) knight pump from 2 stables (or EW pump for mesos) and raid economy with 4-6 knights around 24-25 minutes, and keep creating more knights as your economy allows.
(B) boom from 3-4 TCs, then go for a late but powerful knight attack e.g. 20 knights at 30 minutes, probably with all military upgrades
(C) boom with no military (except for spears/pikes for base defence), going for a fast Imperial

Opinion is divided. Most rooks go for strategy (C), the boom, while many good players go for strategy (A), the krush. Strategy (B) can be devastating, which is why I have called it a power krush.

As with other strategic decisions on LN, much depends on the random elements such as positioning, civilisation, and quality of your allies and enemies - this is what makes LN such an exciting game.

Strategy (A)

Strategy (A) tends to involve: 26 or 27 vil feudal, wheelbarrow in Feudal age, 3-4 gold miners, plenty of farms. Your Feudal Age buildings could be stables+blacksmith. You should probably create one scout in Feudal, so that your knights can see where they are going. Ideally you want the first stables on the enemy side of your town, and a second stables as far forward as you dare. You might partially wall in your town, or the most vulnerable part, with houses + barracks + blacksmith + stables; do not build stone walls or gates. In early Castle, build a second TC as soon as possible: without mining stone or building a market, this is the most you can do as you only have 100 stone at this stage. Personally I build the second TC six tiles away from the first, for mutual protection and so that I can create a vast farming area; I ignore stone at this stage although gold is worth going for.

Create knights from both stables, if necessary at the cost of a small delay in villie production at your TC(s). Gatherpoint the knights as far forward as you dare. When you have 4 knights, hit the enemy. Alternatively you can hit the enemy earlier with 2 knights, and send another 2 knights to another part of his town 30 seconds later on. Even if you lose the first 2 knights, it is probably a worthwhile exercise if you can kill 1-2 vils and/or make him garrison his vils for a significant length of time. Fairly quickly you should be able to maintain continuous villie and knight production from 2 TCs and 2 stables respectively, then you can start stone mining, build the 3rd TC, research stuff and boom away. I used to make the mistake of researching blacksmith upgrades before building knights, but I now realise that is generally not the best use of resources until you have 10 knights already built: it's better to have 4 knights than 2 upgraded knights, etc.
Exceptionally, if you have superfluous food during the Castle transition and plenty of sustainable food income then you can research Blacksmith upgrades. I would research the attack upgrade before the armour upgrade because it will enable you to kill a vil in 4 hits instead of 5 (I think that's right, anyhow you get the idea).

IMO, Franks, Mongols, Persians, Spanish and Vikings in particular should usually go for strategy (A). For various reasons, these civs are able to create more knights, sooner, than other civs and they should press this advantage home. (Vikings not as good as the others, and they don't get Bloodlines, but it is still Vikings' best strategic option as Vikings are at their relative strongest in early Castle.)

Saracens and Turks can do it too. Equally, they can go for the same quantity of camels to counter an enemy doing this strat, or to help out an ally. As an alternative, Turks can do an earlier light cavalry raid (maybe buying food at the market).

Chinese players almost always go for strategy (A), which is, perhaps, a reason why they should not as although the Chinese can strike with knights while the enemy is still in Feudal, the enemy will almost always have built heaps of spears. On the other hand, the Chinese could be cunning and hide a couple of forward barracks near an enemy who is further away, who might not have had the foresight to build spears. The possibilities are endless.

Meso civs often go for strategy (A), although personally I don't like it as a small handful of EWs is a fairly weak force; although if you can build 15 EWs from 3 forward barracks by 25 minutes that would be a different matter. If you don't forward build, one problem is that on an 8 player map (typical for LN) the EWs simply don't run across the map fast enough to attack at the earliest, most devastating, time.

Strategy (B)

Assuming you can defend reasonably well against small scale raids coming from enemies implementing Strategy (A), Strategy (B) can turn the course of a game. The idea is to boom from 3 or 4 TCs, with a view to building a later, but stronger, Castle Age army. This army should be sufficiently powerful that if you raid with it, it can knock out an entire enemy TC and remain relatively undamaged (unless the enemy matches with an equal sized army). Alternatively, if your ally is engaged in a 1v1 or a 1v2, this army will turn the course of the battle and ensure that your side wins. I would say 20 knights, with some support (eskirms, camels etc) would be a minimum size army under this strategy.

You can build up this army near your base or at a point between you and the nearest enemy, so that it can serve the function of defending you against raids in the meanwhile.

You obviously need to mine stone (or buy it in the market, which is very inefficient unless Saracens but it is probably sensible to do it for the first 100 stone needed for the third TC). Your third or fourth TC will probably be on stone. Because you will be building up your army later, you need to be able to do it faster so you should start with one stable (keep wood for booming), and add three more stables when you can.

You could do a 25+2 vil, blacksmith+market fast castle, then wheelbarrow from the second TC as soon as it is built; ideally you need to have the resources to build both the second and third TC as soon as you Castle although this can be difficult with this size of economy. You will probably get all the Feudal economic upgrades, and the Castle wood upgrade, but don't bother yet with Heavy Plow because it is costly to research and its bonus doesn't save you any resources until at least 30 minutes (i.e., the time when your farms built post-Heavy Plow would be still going, had you researched Heavy Plow at 25 minutes, instead of expiring as they will do if you don't research it). By that time, wood should be plentiful and your army should be on its way to do its damage in any case.

Strategy (B) is good for late castlers, i.e. Huns, or for people who had a bad start for one reason or another (e.g. no sheep and no hunting). Huns, in particular, are at their strongest doing this strategy, because it involves a rapid build-up to a pop of 100 or more by 30 minutes, and every other civ would have trouble keeping up with the housing for that whereas the Huns civ bonus really comes into its own doing this.

Strategy (B) also encompasses non-knight armies, i.e. massed crossbows or massed cavalry archers, in both cases with pike or camel support. Thus it is a good strategy for Britons (excellent early boom, excellent crossbows); Mayans (early Castle leading to excellent boom, cheap crossbows); Huns (cheap cavalry archers); Saracens (good cavalry archers, wood+gold based economy). Apart from Saracens, these civs also have difficulty in doing strategy (A).

It is also an option for Chinese, as it is slightly unexpected for them, and it makes excellent use of the early Castle time and the cheap technologies.

It is essential to have a few spears or pikes at home, and a reasonably well walled-in town, in case any enemy knights slip through the net.

You should research Cartography if doing Option (B), as you may well need to send your army to help out an ally who is being doubled.

Strategy (C)

A pure boom (a boom + 8 pikes at home, or a boom + 4 camels, or a 2 knight raid in early Castle + boom, all count as a "pure" boom for these purposes) should only be attempted if you have notified your allies well in advance and they don't object. You also need to be in a pocket otherwise you will get raided so much that it fails.

Even at a good level of play, a boom is respectable if (but only if):
(a) you know how to defend against a raid (pikes);
(b) you boom well, and you know how to fast imp and do something useful and game turning when you do (champs or siege or UUs or a really massive army);
(c) you have a civilisation which is at its strongest in Imperial (Turks, Teutons, Koreans, Byzantines, Goths, Aztecs, Celts);
(d) you are willing to tribute resources to your allies who are not booming (see 'Slingshot' below)

Ideally, no more then one civ on a four person team should boom. Essentially, three keep the enemy busy, while one booms and then comes along in Imperial to strike the death blow to the enemy. You should be strong enough to attack two enemies simultaneously, as one of your allies may be in retreat at this stage in the game due to lack of help from you.

You probably need to partially or completely palisade wall your town/corner of the map (single layers of walls - you are just trying to keep out pesky raids), and you certainly need to maintain spears at home - you may maintain 12 spears instead of 8 pikes, to save on the pike upgrade cost at this stage.

In practice, it is possible to achieve something like a 34 minute or 35 minute Imperial time on LN, but I think 36+ minutes with a stronger economy is better. You are probably looking at something like 5 or 6 TCs, but few military buildings until you start the Imperial upgrade.

Most rooks play this way. The difference between a good player and a rook in Strategy (C) is: the good player can boom from 3-4 TCs as soon as they hit Castle age; the good player will only do it where the conditions highlighted above are met; the good player will only do it where his allies agree; the good player will hit Imperial by 36 minutes and have a powerful army ready to deploy as soon as he does hit Imperial.

Champs are probably the best option for most civs under Strategy (C), as they are the easiest to mass, and yet they defeat virtually any Castle-age unit 1v1 and they rape and pillage enemy towns.

In my view, Teutons are particularly suited to strategy (C), with a slow castle time but a good boom due to the cheap farms, fully upgraded champs, powerful siege, a great UU, and very effective base defence due to the TC attacking bonus. Teutons should be able to fast Imperial and tribute several hundred food to their allies if need be.
Tribute / 'sling shot' strategy
Because of the remarkable difference in age times, the sling shot strategy can be very powerful in Land Nomad.

A typical example would be: Teuton player with good farming has food surplus in late Feudal, tributes 300 food to Persian ally who has just fast castled with 3 stables. The Persian can use that food to make 5 extra knights compared to what he otherwise would have made, which can make a devastating difference that early in the game.

The Teuton's tribute, in the form of the food for 5 extra Persian knights, is likely to be more effective in hammering the enemy than if the Teuton player had built 5 later, slower, knights of his own.

Obviously the Persian ally needs to have sufficient gold miners to have enough gold to create those extra knights immediately. This requires excellent communication between the allies. For example, the Teuton player needs to say around 19 minutes, "I am going to sling you 300 food at 23:00", so that the Persian can prepare his build-up appropriately. Obviously the Teuton player then needs to do precisely what he promised (or close enough: no reasonable ally is likely to mind if you tribute 200 food at 23:00 and another 100 at 23:20).

You can take this to greater extremes - the Teuton could stay in Feudal for longer and tribute the full 800 food and 200 gold that he would have otherwise used to castle (probably 600 food and 133 gold after deducting 30% tribute fee) ... just imagine what his Persian ally can do with all that. But it is a shame to do that, because it prevents the Teuton from reaching Imperial within a reasonable time and Teutons are one of the most powerful in Imperial.

I mention the Teutons as the sling, because Teutons are safest from raids with their TC bonus, and also Teutons can easily achieve food surpluses with their cheaper farms.

Vikings can also be a good sling, because they have a powerful Feudal economy (free wheelbarrow) but they are weak militarily on a land map.

Believe it or not, Britons can be a good sling, because they have good early food, and even if they castle late they can rapidly catch up in booming terms due to the cheaper TCs.

There, I've practically written a book on LN, and given away most of my best strategies (one or two not disclosed, he he). Hopefully those who read this will be on my team, and those who don't will be enemies. Over to you.

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