There's definitly been posts before about rifle rushes, but latly on the forums theres been alot of questions on viable strats. Ive flirted with alot from knight UU to longsword rushes. I wanted to develop a strat that has tech synergy as well as non iron or horse start.

In addition i wanted to be able to hit education in a beline aswell as get my cities up in pop and science rolling before commiting to domination. Now thats alot to accomplish aswell as survive the first 90 turns of diety. However, turn 100-130(90 with babs) depending on civ rifle's with cannons rushes really achive so much more then any rush could accomplish.

The start is fairly simple get up to five pop, beline writing build the library tech afterwards into lux resources and sell off your double or single lux plus open borders to whoever. first 500g goes into a maritime cs. Try and make it so this cs is placed between you and who will most likley dow you.this will also help growth aswell raise your happiness cap. finish the National college then build 1 settler the other comes from collective rule while teching upto the hanging sophia(forgot tech name). hardbuild the hanging sophia, then take a G.E to rush the Pt once finishing education,after completing the H.S while teching to Education build five pikes for defense and later upgrading into rifles they retain the 100% versus mounted on upgrade. after hiting education rush pt, then get universities up asap while hard teching to gunpowder. if your capble of growing quicky enough and getting three univeristies up you should be able to finish gunpowder prior to to having to open a second tree after finishing liberty (your second tree being rationalism). I know alot of players pick piety for domination but the tech boost from rationalism and opener really help you maintain your advantage and using scentific rev for mech infranty on turn 180-190 makes you literally immortal the entire game. If you cant make it to rationalism as your second tree take the patronage opener to help reduce the amount of gold you have to sink into your maritime cs, and then get rationalism as your next policy.

By filling your university with specialist you should recive 3 great scientist by the time you finish gunpowerder, youll then triple bulb Chemistry,Metallurgy, and ofcourse Rifling.

Upgrade your pikes to rifles, and go. Obviously theres more to it. you need to aggressively sell lux's also depending on the AI aggresion taking a ge from the liberty finisher for ND instead of a fourth G.S is what i normally do. If you luck out and get 2 iron in your cap or near one of your other 2 cities improve it and once you hit physics build two trebs. With that once you also have 2 cannons ready once you upgrade your pikes. (from upgrading the trebs to cannons).

Once you kill your nieghbor (who has for sure dowed you by now) use the cash to set up 3-4 ra's to get you to artilery by turn 155-170, once you hit that mark tech up to infranty and then up into electronics and you should finish at stealth around turn 220.If you feel you wont need strealth then investing more in cultural cs can be more benicficial then a second set of ra's to get you to sceintific rev faster.

This strat has really helped me get really strong starts on diety and to a lesser extent immortal when i want a quick game. the strengh of it is it allows you get your pop and infrustucture up quickly rather then doing a longsword rush which drains you on taking time building warriors and having to use your initial cash on upgrades and hurts your happines which could be spent on your intial cities. Im not sure if this strat would work on anything sub immortal as the Ai dosent really have the cash avialiable to aford all your lux's, Also it really allows you set up strong trading partners as your first wars will be defensive or atleast start that way allowing for good RA partners.

It also isnt resource dependent i cant count the times ive finished ironworking to find no iron anywhere near by, but most importantly Rifles seem to have such a longer lifeline then any medival tech does, by that i mean you wont see rifles untill atleast 160-170, which gives you a 40 turn advantage even more on immortal.

This works well with any civ especially babylon for a turn 90-100 rifles, spain a second maritime cs (natural wonder first discover, or just more rifles), persia immortals upgraded to rifles are amazing aswell as the golden age boost to movement. but my favorite being monty just cuase that U.A is so good for constant combat.

Anyway this isnt perfect and i know others have posted this many times before but its a strat ive gotten really far with, and wanted to keep it current. At the vary least it'll spark discussion as input on improving this would atleast help my game out.

I really like the sound of this.

I play at Emperor presently, but after winning four times at that difficulty i'm thinking i might be ready to move up.

I like doing the beeline all the way to Education and i already do that, but i've not figured out a good way to catch up in military, and this looks like a good route.

I've don't usually put specialists into the slots so early, but it sounds like a good idea if you can get a few GS that early on for the bulbing to Riflemen.

I usually have money issues early on though (even when selling everything), so i wonder where my cash for the Maritime CS will come from...

Any chance you can post a screenshot showing the exact order you work through the bottom part of the tree?

I usually end up leaving Currency till a bit later which results in me hurting for gold bigtime by the time i finally get there.

Your not going to open currency till after the bulbing, you will be almost dead broke once you finish the upgrades but given you have 100 turns to save up 2000g,( that includes the cs) you should be fine. Once you finish the bulbs you tech HBR up to chiv and then up to banking and have you ras resolve to get you most of econ and most of military sceince you then bulb artillery. Once you gone up that far you back trak up to and through sceintific theory and steam power and bulb replaceble parts and then set up to use sceintific revelution to get you eletronics. in terms of getting the cash part of that is playing on immortal or diety(they have more money then they can use) and scouting to get all the civs and most of the cs's sell open border and if needed you sell single lux copy to atleast get the maritime asap for the growth.

Even when double dowed you should still find the cash after buying archers, if you have to buy walls though you may have issues.

Almost forgot try and get riverside for your 3 cities and make sure and steal a worker from a hostile cs( espcially if its protected by a civ you want to take first to further bait a dow.)

Excellent guide. Realistic. Unlike a lot of proposed strategies from pseudo top players in these boards, yours really covers the reality I face in my games, instead of clearly manipulated starts.

Altough most of my Deity wins came exactly out of rifle wars, meaning we follow a similar path, I certainly can learn a thing or two from what you posted, so I`ll try your steps soon and report back.

What do you do with the GS from PT? Do you save it for the bulb to rifles? You said 3 cities w/ two specialists each, do those account for the 3 bulbs you need after gunpowder or will you get 2 from cities and one from PT by then?

you get 2 from cities one from pt. H.S you get a G.E to rush P.t, then use the liberty finisher for N.D for growth, or to sell single luxs to help with the upgrades on rifles, or to help manage the happiness issue the first civ you conquer is going to cuase you.

the only time you want to skip on N.D for another gs(getting 4 instead of 3) is if you really need to get started sooner but the 3rd gs comes right about the time you finish gunpowder anyway, so all you doing is cutting down on the time to artillery and sacrafcing 2-3 pop on your core cities which will effect your midgame and endgame.