The benefits of the early rush have been well covered and it is an extremely good way to get yourself up and running at higher levels

Im interested to hear of what some of you do when it fails? maybe bad luck from the RNG or a surprise counter attack?

i think if you can recover from a failed rush on immortal or diety you are a true civ master

I only rush on Immortal if an AI is literally right next door to me and their borders will cause me immediate problems, or I have to move my first settler very close to an AI to get a better start location for my capital city.

I probably rush one in twenty games on immortal, as there are better things to chop and whip than an axe/chariot army. If I do rush, then I go in a straight line for the capital city, and if the rush looks like it will fail, then rather than attack cities I will keep my attacking army in one piece and use it to pillage copper / horses and any mine on a hill in case it's iron, (I can't see iron at that point, so I just take out all mines to be on the safe side).

The rush has technically failed, as I have now lost all speed, and the AI still has his capital, but all they can produce is archers. The enemy still has the problem units it build when it had copper / iron / horse, but the enemy civ is now contained and under control. To keep it that way, I will stay at war until I can have the necessary units to kill them off.

Rome is the most difficult AI to rush because of their UU, and my first rush attack against Rome is NEVER aimed at their cities, but at their resources.

The Celts and Sitting Bull are 50/50 and you can directly rush their cities if they only have a few UU in the field.

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The very early rush is fine at lower difficulty levels, but I just don't think it's a good idea at Immortal / Deity on a standard continents sized map with all settings on normal. The main reason is wonders, because if you don't grab a few yourself, then one of the AI will scream off into a tech lead and get an insane early culture win. I need wonders to win at Immortal, and I can't ignore them. The tech lead of a runaway AI who is wonder happy can be awesome, and I had to abandon a recent game because one of them had Rifles by 1200 AD. The game was normal everything / continents / marathon, and yes, that's 1200 AD - LOL. They were on another continent, so the first I knew about it was when they turned up with a stack of rifles against my mace, at which point it was game over. In hindsight it was my fault, because I didn't get any of the key wonders I should have, and the AI must have used a wonder sling shot to get rifles that early. I must admit I was really impressed, because that's the earliest I have ever seen the AI get rifles, so hats off to the to AI for their win, as it was GG and goodnight.

You can rush on easier maps at higher difficulty level, because you are basically not really playing at Immortal / Deity level on certain maps, despite the fact that it says you are. Normal sized Archipelago maps are several levels easier than continent sized maps, and if you reduce the size of any map or fiddle with the settings then you are dropping between 2 - 4 levels below a true Immortal / Deity game that you get on continents.

I think one of the problems with moving up to the very top levels of ciiv is that many people become reliant on the early rush, and don't realise that they are actually shooting themselves in the foot if they keep using it all the time. You have to be much more subtle and thoughtful with your game at these levels, and you definitely have to learn new strategies. It's tempting to think that you have learned everything there is to learn by the time you reach Emperor, but civ will quite happily stomp all over you when you move up to Immortal, and it will do it all over again when you move from Immortal to Deity.

Regards - Mr P

You make a lot of nice points there Rvil. I don't have much of a problem winning on monarch and am considering moving up to deity in my next game. I have a question though (sorry for being off topic): does an advanced start make the game any easier or harder in any way? I prefer this kind of start, and put it at 900 points, which I think is the default. Of course, since the AI gets the same amount of points it's a fair situation, but I'm curious if the AI is smart enough for it not to give the human player an advantage.

I tried an early rush when playing Incas lately. It was my mistake :) Instead of removing my neigbour I put myself in a long war. I finally managed to destroy Chinese but it did cost me a lot!

Quechuas - very nice unit, but its power and abilities is overestimated, I think.

I tried an early rush when playing Incas lately. It was my mistake :) Instead of removing my neigbour I put myself in a long war. I finally managed to destroy Chinese but it did cost me a lot!

Quechuas - very nice unit, but its power and abilities is overestimated, I think.

They are actually more viable on higher levels, where the AI starts with archers.

Just played an immortal game where I had to do a rush. My first tech was therefore "Bronze Working", but there was no copper on the map.

I could tech to horse or iron, but instead decided to rush with just warriors. The idea was to use my warriors vs his archers to stop his initial city expansion. The warrior rush did work, as I prevented him from founding any new cities and/or using the copper within the borders of his capital city and the one city he had founded, but I needed to use the jungle promotions and forested hills to keep the warriors alive, and I still lost a lot of them in combat. I obviously couldn't attack the city directly, but a warrior rush did contain him long enough for me to discover that I had no horses - eek, and tech to iron. I was then obviously able to take out his archer defended capital and one city with a stack of sword.

We get so hung up on copper / horses and iron based armies, that we forget that even the humble warrior is the ultimate unit to rush with, because if you want to contain the enemy at the earliest point possible, it does get the job done.


Regards - Mr P

We get so hung up on copper / horses and iron based armies, that we forget that even the humble warrior is the ultimate unit to rush with, because if you want to contain the enemy at the earliest point possible, it does get the job done.

Yeah, that's powerful to the point it's almost glitched. Stupid AI can't realize you WILL NOT move that warrior to take it's twice as faster settler, as you depend on that forested hill for the warrior to stay alive.

The pillaging-warrior strat works well for me in most cases. It started when I first played on Monarch and I thought I'd declare war on Louis because I though he had no defenders in Paris (couldn't see the actual city from where my warrior was).
Imagine my surprise when there were two archers in there, so I let my warrior pillage away before hiding on a forested hill across the river. Louis abandoned his worker/settler building program to build more archers, whilst I merrily expanded from my capital. He didn't even manage to kill the warrior, and I only sued for peace when one of his units arrived at my poorly defended capital.

Since then I risk this strat quite often instead of a rush.

Yes, it is a bit of an exploit doing a warrior rush, because the AI will not risk moving their new settler out of their capital, if you have the city flanked with warriors, even though it is escorted by the normal 2 archers + there are additional archers it can use as added escort. That said, the AI will often move a settler out via the back door, if your warriors are only on one side of their city.

A human player would safely move that settler even when the city is flanked on both sides via the forest tiles, and in that situation they would then found a new city directly on top of iron / bronze / horses to insure an uninterrupted supply.

The other thing I have noticed about the early warrior rush is that it's quite easy to steal the AI civ's first worker with a single warrior at the very start of the game. Most of the time the defending archers won't attack your single warrior to free their worker, but sometimes they do.

I have captured that first worker in the open on grassland / plains, and not been attacked. and at other times I have captured them on a forest tile and I have been attacked. I don't know why sometimes they attack, and sometimes they don't, but if the archers do attack, they normally manage to win back their worker.

Stealing the first worker doesn't cripple the AI's development of their civ any more, as they just build another worker. However, stationing one or two warriors next to their capital city does cripple it, because they then churn out archers until they have enough to kill those one or two warriors, who are not really a viable threat to it.

The AI is very weak in assessing risk at the start of the game, but I am sure the next civ game in the series will deal with this weakness.

Regards - Mr P