My first immortal game. I am Zara on pangea and I'm on a peninsula blocked in by Ghengis. If I conquer him I can block of the peninsula with room for about 9 cities. I have no metal anywhere near me. But my capital is perfect for a chariot rush. I started with pigs so went AH first and pop horses. At size 5 I can work pigs horses 2 ghills and a phills. Really nice production but it's a floodplains start so I really need to save my 4 trees for health. My build order was worker warrior barracks chariots. I've reloaded a couple of times and tried attacking with 7 , 10, and 15 chariots. 7 and 10 was a disaster. 15 I had some success by going for outlier cites and drawing units out of the capital. But he has so many units I have no hope whatsoever. When I attacked his capital directly he had 2 archers 2 spears 3 chariots 2 axemen. He has 3 other cites with around 3 units each plus a couple of more chariots scouting that return home and join the fight. So I get a perfect start for a chariot rush, he has no cities on hills, but in the amount of time it takes me to build 10-15 units focusing only on units, Ghengis can put out 4 cites and 25 units. And his units have 2 promotions so he must have several barracks. I guess I should have played Willem on arch for my first immortal game. Help?



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Now I actually played through this game to 1650 ad once, was very unhappy with some of my choices, so I restarted. I probably had a winning position at the time. I often do this when moving up in difficulty to learn from my mistakes. The first time I barely destroyed Ghengis with the rush. I can't explain it. He had far fewer units the first time. I may have used slavery the first time for a couple of whips, can't remember for sure. The thing is though my tiles are great, I was was always working improved tiles. I doubt whipping is optimal since I can get to my happy cap fast with the pigs and I did not have a granery.

chariots are very weak against cities; their best use is for pillaging and fighting on plains. your best bet is to try flank 2 promotions to ignore the archers first strikes.

with no metal, i'd go to HBR and horse archers. combat 2 HA ignore first strikes and have the strength to take archers in cities.

another option is to forgo an early rush altogether. turtle up for awhile and make best friends with genghis, then send him out as your attack dog.

I have room for 1 other good city with high food, and maybe one more without any food resource. I can't imagine turtling up being a good option. I suppose I could build one more city and go for HBR, but I have to tech fishing if I build the second city. I have a great capital but little else going for me. I have a floodplains start so I could tech fast after pottery then switch to the hills later. My chariots that were surviving did get flank ii.

Ghengis has a high unit count, always a bad thing. He's agg so spears are more annoying (and formation spears are just brutal with chariots).

That being said, your unit counts seem off. If you are hitting with 7 chariots an Immort AI should not have 9 units in its cap. Given that you described a FP start; I'm guessing the real problem here is lack of production (particularly choppable production) and not the chariots themselves.

When chariot rushing on high levels you need to consider several factors:
1. Can you block metal access. Camping AI Cu and Fe first, then building the army can be more cost effective; it runs the extreme risk that some other AI will just settle into the void. However with a hard block it can pay off.
2. How many moves does it take you to blitz the cap. Aside from other chariots, you have equal mobility to the AIs roads. Thus if you spend 0 or 1 turn inside of a city's BFC the AI cannot redistribute forces terribly efficiently. In some cases it can be worth it to drop a city just so you are sure you can walk into the cap on turn 1 or turn 0.
3. How far away is HBR. HA are a reasonably good trade of damage per :hammers:. The better your start is at getting out :commerce:; the quicker you can send off enough HAs to take down the AI.
4. Can you slingshot feudalism with Oracle? Hitting with Drill II LBs is pretty much uncounterable if bloody warfare.

In the main, chariot rushes on Immort require:
1. A UU. WCs are utter ownage; immortals also.
2. Many choppable :hammers:.
3. Committing to the rush from quite early.
4. An AI without metal.
5. Ability to blitz the cap on turn 0 (rare unless the map is very crowded or you have something wicked for early culture).

If anything, chariot rushes are more effective on immort as the power of not giving the AI time to shift defenders and whip in new units goes up DRASTICLY.

No. A while back I saw someone do it at deity.

If you have food but not enough hammers, do a 2 pop chariot whip for double the fun.

I just executed a successful chariot rush a bit earlier on immortal however as mirthadir points out:

-I committed immediately
-I blocked copper
-I scouted well and was able to hit the capital very quickly
-I transitioned to HA's asap
-I did not attack Ghengis Khan

I also chopped and whipped very harshly.

If done it a few times on this level and they can work ok, although if you are not blocked too hard and you can establish a good production base first, HAs are another good option if you hit during the window before AI gets LBs.

mirthadir makes good points, speed is the most important point here, both in blitzing the capital during the attack and in acquiring the army.
You have to commit and realise that a health point more ore less is irrelevant compared to the short term advantage of a rush that starts several turns earlier.

If you have food but not enough hammers, do a 2 pop chariot whip for double the fun.
You mean from rax overflow? Chariot itself is 1-pop whip.

Appreciate the responses, a couple of you missed in my first post where I told what tiles I was working though. The reason the failure troubled me so much is htat I have a great production start. With pigs, horses, 2 grassland hills mined, and one plains hill mined, I can't imagine doing much better production wise. And I am commiting to the rush immediately. Only building one worker 1 warrior and a barracks, and also roading right up to his capital. The huge negatives I have are, no choppable trees unless I want to make myself unhealthy, attacking an aggressive leader who started with copper, and an incredibly lousy terrain which makes me attack on the 4th turn after declaring war unless I want to attack across a river. It takes 5 turns to get to the copper. He has trees in his bfc on my side, and cites that block me from going around and attacking from the other side. I think the 4 turns is the worst part.


I think I realize why the rush worked the first time but not on the retry. He did not build one of the blocker cities and I was able to attack on the 2nd turn after dow. I took the capital which cut of his metal access. Then he sent a lot of troops to try and retake the capital but I was able to fortify and killing off several chariots and he even sent his archers to attack. Then I cleaned up the other cities. I think there was some luck involved also since I cought the capital with a lot fewer units, but that's also a function of attacking on the 2nd turn as opposed to the 4th.

You said you had a good second city site. I probably would settle that as well first. Whip barracks then chariots would probably give you more earlier. Any chance of settling your second city close to GK? Pillaging his copper is vital. The AI will build spears when it notices you attacking with chariots and when he has spears effectively rush over.

P.S I tried this on BOTM15 which was emp level against KK and failed dismally though I still think it was the right way to go. I did have to settle the second city for horses though. :)

P.P.S. What time/year are you attacking?

P.S I tried this on BOTM15 which was emp level against KK and failed dismally though I still think it was the right way to go. I did have to settle the second city for horses though.

Not so sure on BOTM 15 ----> I tech whored with KK and used practically no micro and blew that game out (it might just have been the first time ever I finished before you in our history :lol:). The other continent was ridiculously backward.

@TMIT

I gave a good lesson in that game on how not to chariot rush. Tbh I was probably a couple of hundred years to late which cost me big time. Couldn't even pillage his copper as he had built a city on top of it with a couple of spears inside. :(

I did make a mistake later in the game by deciding to go for space. With the scoring system as it is dom/con give you much better results. Lesson learnt. Sort of. :lol:

That or "a botched rush can almost compensate for micro failures, in a bad way". :lol:.

they're doable, but:

- most important thing - both his cap. and his copper/iron source must be out in the 1st 2 turns. Best in 1st, but hey... Can't do that, don't bother. 2 of spear/sword + 2 archers + wall will make fun of very many chariots.
- high unit prob. kinda screws them;
- agg. screws them big time if the target has metal;
- having lumber to chop is the most important resource imho;

but mostly - not being able to hit cap. fast where he can whip galore(the other cities can't, being too small) and agg. which means high unit prob.('xcept hammu, but you can take hammu out easy at any stage). Otherwise, probably HA, but even there, taking out someone like ghenghis, who'll probably be wheoohrn already and building up for his future victim, is very hard.

needless to say, don't rush mali or maya with them... also pro. are hard to rush.

Chariot rushes work situationally on immortal, I have had success against even prot AI's at this level with chariots(suck it Sitting Bull), however you generally need to get them out faster and earlier than lower levels because they do build fast, if an AI's capital is a bit hard to reach or on a hill (and so are several other cities) it may not be the best idea to chariot rush them.

I thought it would be hard against Prot AIs, especially sitting bull if he gets totem poles up.

I suck at rushing before Knights and Trebs, chariots are too weak, and by the time I have HA's, AI has spears.

But if you keep their copper blocked, it can work. Use Chariots to pillage and keep copper blocked and capture any workers or settlers you find, then attack cities once you get HAs. I've never gotten it right though.

If you can build 12-14 chariots by 1300 BC and if you can attack their capital and metal within 2 turns of the war then no problems. Take 2-3 cities, get peace, and then finish them off after the treaty is up.