After having read many articles in these forums about early axe rushes, I've tried to do it in my game, and I have a good opportunity to do.
I played epic, as Tokugawa (BTS 3.17, Monarch). I found good old Shaka at about a dozen tiles from me, and decided to axe rush him. I found copper close to me, and found a second city to grab it. Then, I whipped and chopped like a mad, and at turn 100 my nine double-promoted axemen were close to Ulundi to start the attack. (I went past his closest city and pointed the capital).

I often saw people starting for an early rush with eight axemen, and being able to completely take over an opponent, even with three cities. So, I considered nine axemen to be enough.

Ulundi was on a plain, +40% defensive bonus, defended by a swordsman and three archers. The second city contained a chariot and two archers.

Trying to give them the best promotions at each attach (city raider, cover, shock), I attacked. The attack was completely uneffective, and my entire stack was destroyed after having killed only one enemy unit.

Furious, I reloaded!! (gosh! for the first time, I reloaded!! :))

I changed the promotions for the first attacks, trying to change the random number sequence.
The second attempt was better than the first. I conquered Ulundi, but a single axeman survived, and was immediately destroyed by the counter-attack of a single IMPI.

Ok, things are better to change, or it's no more mr nice guy!!!!!! :mad:
Reloaded! Changed promotions again.

Better again, three axemen survived and fortified inside Ulundi.
While trying to whip a couple of swordsmen to conquer his second city, he founded another city.

I gave up.
I expected an early axe rush to be able to completely destroy an enemy, and easily.
I don't know, what's wrong in what I did?

Turn 100 normal speed? Did you have to build a monument at your second city to access copper (obviously this delays your attack a little)?
ways to get more axemen:
You can get more workers while waiting for the copper mine to finish, and chop almost everything in your borders
Build a road to shaka

Did you attack a hill or across a river?
Did you declare before you got into his territories?
Did you move through his borders diagonally to minimize the time he can react?

It was epic speed. I didn't need a monument, the copper was close to my second city, so no culture pop needed to get it.
I declared before entering his land, and moved diagonally to Ulundi (even because this path was hilly, and ended with a forested hill near his capital!).
No rivers near Ulundi, and it was on a plain.
I built a section of road to Zulu land (about three tiles, but no more).

ViterboKnight,

It sounds like you did everything right, except bring enough units.

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc199/kesshisan/CivIV/1770Axes.jpg

This is from a Deity game I was fooling around with. I was able to take and hold 3 of Asoka's cities with those Axes. Well, militarily hold 3 of his cities. My economy crashed soon after and I never recovered.

Early wars are unlike late wars. You won't have a dedicated military city replenishing troops every few turns. Instead what you attack with is what you end up with. So make sure to bring enough to get the job done right!

Also, when you say "double promoted" do you mean Combat 1 + 1 promotion, or 2 promotions? You said you were using Tokugawa, so I'm going to assume Combat 1 + a promotion.

Care to share the save? Also, in the current Emperor Cookbook game (link in my .sig) there are 4 or 5 saves which performed an early rush (pre-1500BC). We were playing India so we had the advantage of Fast Workers, but no free combat promotion and no cheap barracks. One of the rushes was performed even without barracks! We were lucky that Shaka had no horses or metals, but it's still worth watching. IIRC my rush took the capital with extreme losses and I had to bring reinforcements to take down the rest of the cities. At one point even Shaka's ex-capital contributed an axeman to the attack!

Anyway, you can check those saves to see how the rushes were done. (you have the reports to tell you which were rushes and which weren't)

i have found that only mounted can get to a city in time to kill it quickly. I suggest teching to Animal Husbandry to see if there is any horse and if not then go back to the Bronze Working route. The worst rush tactic in so far as units is the Axe rush, slow, (unless you make sure to give it woodsman promotions) takes time to build, and are better off used as defenders.

i have found that only mounted can get to a city in time to kill it quickly. I suggest teching to Animal Husbandry to see if there is any horse and if not then go back to the Bronze Working route. The worst rush tactic in so far as units is the Axe rush, slow, (unless you make sure to give it woodsman promotions) takes time to build, and are better off used as defenders.

True, now if you insists on using them (axes), the only promotion you want to take is the city raider one. Sure, when they get attacked by other axes they get owned, but YOU should have enough troops to go on the attack, soak up their counter and still be able to hit their cities. If you do not have enough troops to do so, you should not even consider rushing.

PS. best rusher, Either Egypt or Darius....DARUIS ftw :D

The early rush is about speed more than pure power. A few comments without seeing a save or screenshots

1) Were you attacking across a river?

2) Was the Zulu Swordsman promoted to Shock? Remember Shaka is also Agressive and a military Spammer.

3) Why not bring along A CG II archer to defend against counter attack? Toku is protective, might as well leverage it.

4) By passing the first city works under certain conditions. Turn 100 of epic against Shaka I would have taken the closer city first, defend it and let Shaka break his troops against it.

5) Try settling ontop of the copper and have a road premade if you really want to rush someone.

6) If possible find Shaka's horses and copper first, pillage, then take him out. He is not stupid and we heavily defend his lands.

If you into reloading for faster rushes I would suggest this

Toku starts with Fishing/wheel. Tech mining/BW first if you have access to seafood, otherwise start with a food tech first. Anyway, the first three techs should have mining/BW. Get a worker going early for the road, build a settler once at or near the happy cap. After mining/BW hit hunting/archery. You may find this works amazingly better.

Good luck

PS. best rusher, Either Egypt or Darius....DARUIS ftw :D

I will disgaree here. The best rusher is Sitting Bull. He starts we great food techs (fishing and agriclutlre), research Mining/BW and you have access to an instant attack force. Sure you need a few extra Dog Warriors, but you plenty of time. I have done successful Dog rushes against protective leaders on a hill, often before they even have slavery to whip defenders.

Rush is a risky tactic, relying much on luck and circumstances (is capital on hill etc., sometimes you can't know it). Sometimes it works very well, but sometimes a single drill & CG-promoted archer on hill city kills 4 axes. :(

At least you must be QUICK. Even when opponent has no resources, they will tech IW pretty soon which can be devastating especially for chariots. Attacking at 1000 BC is usually too late.

PS. best rusher, Either Egypt or Darius....DARUIS ftw :D

Sorry, but Darius makes no sense. For an Early rush you're not limited by tech rate, but by production and unit qualities. If you're going with Persia than Cyrus is a better rusher hands down. Charismatic will work miracles, and even Imperialistic will help with getting the settler for the horses. And anyway, that early in the game you'll have no cottages, so unless you've got an Oasis or are working coastal tiles/lakes Financial won't even help with research. And Organized won't do anything either.

@MkLh, Agree with this, that's one of the reasons i don't like games where you have to rush someone early. Sometimes you don't have a choice though.

As others have said, speed is very important, some guidelines from immortal:

-if you can hit around 1500 bc then 6 axes could well be enough, i've seen others do this often in the immortal student series. You need a bit of luck in this case.

-I usually attack somewhat later ~900 bc, i build around ~15 axes in this case,declare and keep building axes, this really is enough most of the time.

As a guideline you should have at least 2 attackers for each defender, preferably more. If the city's on a hill 3 attackers for 1 defender seems about right.

I agree Kesshi. That's probably not enough axes to get the job done versus Shaka with iron working. 8 might do the job against a civ that didn't 4 strong units already there, and was highly likely to have enough in other cities to launch an effective counter-strike.

With 3 archers and a sword, not to mention the ability to build axes and chariots, You need a serious stack of axes to make this rush stick. I'd say that the minimum requirement here would be 8 CR axes, two Shock Axes, a C2 Spear, and one of them CG2D1 Archers. You'd want those last four units to move into the city after the CR's take it. You'll also really, really, need to hurry up and pillage that iron he's used to build that sword. If he cranks out a couple more axes to defend the remaining cities, you're pretty much screwed.

8 axes is enough if your opponent is really close by and you are able to hit them quite early (usually when copper is in capital). But if you have to go a little bit of a distance and/or you have to wait to get copper hooked up, I usually prefer to go in with around 15 axes instead. That usually gets the job done.

i have found that only mounted can get to a city in time to kill it quickly.
Not true. Axes do just fine, just as long as you know what you're doing.

I suggest teching to Animal Husbandry to see if there is any horse and if not then go back to the Bronze Working route.
Risky - if you find neither Horses nor Copper, you risk being swamped by barbarians.

And slow - don't dawdle in finishing Bronze Working, or your rush will be slow indeed!



In general, I'd far trust the guides by people like Sisiutil than the likes of Attacko... :rolleyes:

The best axe-rush I ever did was vs Toku. I built a worker, chopped a second worker and then chopped a settler (one of several standard starts). Beelining BW from day 1 meant that I knew where the copper was as soon as I had chopping ability, so the settler founded near the copper.

Getting a second city earlier meant i could grow it into a military producer sooner although I play on Monarch so barbs didn't get me like they would have if I started like this on, say, emperor.

This start also needs plenty of trees...

Shaka seldom goes quietly into the night.

PS. best rusher, Either Egypt or Darius....DARUIS ftw :D

Pir Lan Tota,

I've found that I can make an incredible rushers with any Imerialistic leader who start with Mining. You do the order like this:

@ Size 1 Warrior -> Barracks (partial)
@ Size 2 Settler*- Whip when BW comes online
@ Size 1 Warrior -> Barracks (partial)
@ Size 2 Worker - Whip when you can

*Here you want to rearange which tiles you're working so you have 0 food surplus and maximize your hammers. The Imperalistic bonus applies only to hammers, not food.

If you have one Flood Plain this will get you Bronze Working very close to the time when you can whip out that settler (depending on map size.) This will show you where all the copper is just in time to settle a 2nd city near it.

Your tech order should be: Bronze Working, Fishing (if applicable) , Aggriculture, The Wheel or Sailing (whichever way it takes to get a route.)

Cyrus + horses = pwn. Build a worker and a settler, then immortals until the continent is cleared or the game is won. It doesn't get any easier than with a fast unit that gets bonuses against the first two capable units available in the game.

all the frenzy of hacking and mining compared to the delicate, quiet pasture of horror that can deliver an attack at twice the speed with flanking which furthers the amount of available troops. also a perfect counter to axe rushing imbeciles that fall into a chariot slaughter house in MP games then they quit afor crying home to mama.

all the frenzy of hacking and mining compared to the delicate, quiet pasture of horror that can deliver an attack at twice the speed with flanking which furthers the amount of available troops. also a perfect counter to axe rushing imbeciles that fall into a chariot slaughter house in MP games then they quit afor crying home to mama.

enough with the attacko writing style