Blessed be the new Swordsman-line!

No joke, they are fricken viable now!

Ok, let's not get ahead of ourselves. I am a 1k2~1k3 player, playing random civ every game, and being ok with every map except islands and Arena. Lately I have been trying out a new strat. Everytime I got a civ with an infantry bonus, and I was up against a cav civ, I went ~20 pop up into a passive Feudal, with Scouts/spears as defense. Focusing on eco, walling, and a fast-ish castle with a robust eco (I know, kinda boring, it's not usually my style). I then go 3 Barracks (far enough behind my walls, so my enemy can't see them), get all infantry upgrades, and start producing [M@A](mailto:M@A). Oftentimes my enemy would be up before me and go knights, attacking my walls. This is where it gets tricky, because I have to defend, without revealing my Army. I get around that by rewalling, or in case I am up to castle already, 1 or 2 monks. I do that for long enough to have all infantry upgrades (including arson), and ~20 Swordsmen + constant 3 barracks production. Depending on my enemy's army size, I move out or wait for another 10 or so. Usually their eco will be ahead at this point, but they don't know that, since my full walls look like I am booming on 3 TCs. At this point they either try to boom themselves or add siege. Now we strike, and simultaneously we add 2 TCs, and -if possible- 2 more Barracks. Remember, you hardly need any gold income, 10 gold miners with the gold mining upgrade(s) are enough to keep 4-5 Barracks rolling. Their knight numbers might be enough to kill your first wave of Swordsmen, but depending on which civ you are, they might not even be able to do that. In any case, you will be able to spam enough, so that your second wave will wipe their army out (in order to keep up the spam, you might wanna idle TC here, army is more important right now). Ideally, your enemy only found out now what comp you are going for, and they will react with either more knights, perhaps scorps or Xbow. However, Scorps won't be massed fast enough, and Xbows require a tech switch, and since you should only do this against a cav civ in the first place, their Xbows won't be great, or at least not viable beyond castle. If your enemy keeps making knights, you can add pikes, but it's often not even necessary, as they have to rebuild their army in the back, while you are already spamming one. Additionally, with arson you easily destroy their stables, which are most like in the front. Now you basically just spam like you are Goths. Depending on their base layout you can nuke production buildings, with the right numbers even TCs. Don't be afraid of castles, 30 Swordsmen nuke those as well, if no big army is around. You will be surprised how little eco this spam requires, so your 3 TCs will actually bring you up to enough resources to get to imp really fast. You only have to take care that your army never drops below ~25, your strength lies in numbers right now. At the same time you need to keep up the pressure! Your army is slow as hell, so if your enemy manages to attack you at home, you can't go back in time. Force the fights, and destroy buildings whenever you can!

Again, I am only 1k2~1k3, but this strat has worked every single of the 7 times that I went for it. Of course you need the correct civ, so here is a list:

-Aztecs (Good eco + faster working Barracks + UT in imp)--Bulgarians (free upgrades + cheap and fast Blacksmith + UT in imp)-Burmese (Good eco + extra attack)-Celts (Good eco + fast infantry)Goths (obviously, but beware, they are the one civ, where this play might be expected!)-Japanese (Good eco + faster attacking infantry)-Malians (At least kinda, because of pierce armor, which comes in handy, if the enemy has viable Xbows)-Portuguese (Believe me, they suck against cav civs otherwise, and your Swordsmen cost 16(!) Gold!)-Slavs (Good eco + free supplies + UT in imp)-Spanish (Because they are bad at everything else in 1v1, and their Blacksmith costs no gold)-Tootons (Good eco + extra armor)-Turks (If you don't know what else to do against your enemy going camels lol, also you have 20% gold mining bonus)-Vikings (Good eco + extra HP + castle UT gives extra attack against cav)

Trust me, try it out, if anything it's real fun!

Anxious to read your thoughts on that :)