Best trait for rushing

Hsinchu said:

Not true, necessarily. Depending on how effectively I want to wage war or how close/far my target is, granaries are essential for production and recovery, at least for me. I'm not sure what "classical war" refers to, but if you are talking about the civilization equivalent to a six zergling rush, I'll have to concede that Agg wins for that rush. If I am rolling horse archers or axeman or chariots, in the end, I do prefer the added flexibility of granaries/expansive.

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Rush usually mean "before classical age". Classical war are war during classical age. The difference is that they are a lot more difficult, since AI begin to make wall, to expand like crazy, and to have some army. One of the key of rushing is killing an opponent before he can make extensive use of copper unit. It save a LOT of problem, and by a LOT, I mean it.

Hsinchu said:

I am not really even counting the worker hammers as the hammers saved. For one thing, you don't always need a Barracks, and when you do (agg opponent) The granary helps you accelerate and recover from whipping a barracks in the first place. If I am rushing, I don't usually plan to straight build the latter half of a barracks.

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You don't alway need barrack. But by that account, you need nothing more than 3-4 warrior if timing is right. ANd I fail to see where granary help you to recover - since you have depleted your city a lot more than with a barrack rush. I seem to think that a barrack is decorative, when it does help a lot to make stronger unit. 20% strength is a lot.

Hsinchu said:

If a worker is good for anything, its for building the farms needed to accelerate whipping and get metal/horses that much sooner so I don't waste any more time building warriors/archers I don't plan on using and to chop out the granary I want for infrastructure ASAP (or barracks).

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I will repeat a single thing : if you rush, you don't whip a lot. You'd better chopping, really. Relying on whipping mean having near depleted resource at the end, a city with +3 or +4 unhappiness, or a "rush" that may fear your opponent fielding longbow.

Hsinchu said:

Also, if I'm rushing a close neighbor, saving one or two turns by having a road can mean all the difference in finishing a war before the next archer pops (or the opponent discovers BW and switches to Slavery).

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And you make a granary faster than two turn ? Wow. Even with whipping, it mean you have a 3-4 food tile city.

dalamb said:

If I understand TMIT's HA strategy correctly (especially with Kheshiks) a key is to get Flanking II and attack only with the first move, reserving the 2nd for a possible withdrawal; even against spears, 50% retreat probability helps a lot. I've never tried it, but plan to, One Of These Days.

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I use a combination of flanking II guys and guys going down the combat line. If the defenders are strong, I lead with flanking, otherwise against flatland archers in cities for example I'll just attack them with combat II (> 70% odds of winning outright, and OK retreat odds).

One unit gets sentry. This unit lets me see cities from far enough away to know if I can take them out or if their garrison is too strong and that I should blitz the next city. Stick n move is very effective against the AI (and a lot of humans though you might want to raze cities in that case...very demoralizing and it's hard for them to chase your stack while they can't retake what was lost)...every time a city is taken, there is less productive potential. Not only that, but this tactic FORCES the AI to fight on flatlands or lose all but 1 city (which eventually gets over-run). However with sentry it's often difficult for the AI to strike my HA forces when I don't want it attacked.

The results are fairly ridiculous. Only deity AIs have turned it away...I've cut down pacal (who is actually easy despite UU), gilgamesh, shaka, and basically every other supposedly-difficult to rush civ on immortal using HA rush. Too easy to catch the AI out of position.

The trick to rushing multiple civs or an entire continent is to stop when you lose momentum with 1 civ, heal, and continue to the other ASAP. You can damage tech pace so badly that nobody gets feudalism even after 500 AD, which means eventually you can cover the whole continent.

If you do that, mind diplomacy, and wheeze to emancipation + cottages (or anything really, but cottages make it super easy), you win. Your conquests kill the world tech pace and that allows you time to catch up in tech as the largest empire.

Through all of this, it is important to note that EARLY MOMENTUM is CRITICAL. Don't attack garrisons that run the risk of stopping your attack entirely.

dalamb said:

If I understand TMIT's HA strategy correctly (especially with Kheshiks) a key is to get Flanking II and attack only with the first move, reserving the 2nd for a possible withdrawal; even against spears, 50% retreat probability helps a lot. I've never tried it, but plan to, One Of These Days.

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Rushing with Keshik's is plain awsome, When you consider that the UB is the Ger, as long as you got horses, dont worry about building an empire take it by the sword ... Whats really cool about the Keshik's is the fact that they ignore terrain movement cost, so they move really fast through any terrain.

With the Ger you can actually give them two promos each, so i go with combat I & II for about 70% of the units and flanking I & II for the rest only to use if the odds are bad.

>>With the Ger you can actually give them two promos each,
Well even you can do that w/ stable, what I like is using flanking II and getting more XP, faster next promotions and more great generals.

This tactic is awesome and i using it always i playing Survayaman too. His early hunting and need of jumbo-line, so HA is best option. Only game i won on Immortal it was Sury/Epic Speed/ Early Domination win (Also i should thank my luck of awesome tech huts and awesome city spots near to me, it was fairly lucky too, the only game i suceed on immortal, and then failed few times on bigger maps with more ais), based on flanking 2 mobility 1 / combat 3 horses opening and then turning into massive conquest.

Semi-rushing (hurting alot and then peace/vassalize) with horses works awesome. All you need is just "to get rid" off those rivals. So if you hit majority of them and they are "hurt" - you done 50% of your way to victory.

TheMeInTeam said:

I use a combination of flanking II guys and guys going down the combat line. If the defenders are strong, I lead with flanking, otherwise against flatland archers in cities for example I'll just attack them with combat II (> 70% odds of winning outright, and OK retreat odds).

One unit gets sentry. This unit lets me see cities from far enough away to know if I can take them out or if their garrison is too strong and that I should blitz the next city. Stick n move is very effective against the AI (and a lot of humans though you might want to raze cities in that case...very demoralizing and it's hard for them to chase your stack while they can't retake what was lost)...every time a city is taken, there is less productive potential. Not only that, but this tactic FORCES the AI to fight on flatlands or lose all but 1 city (which eventually gets over-run). However with sentry it's often difficult for the AI to strike my HA forces when I don't want it attacked.

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Have you tried this with Hannibal ? You can chain produce mobility/flanking II numidian cav with a stable, too. The main problem is that the sentry / mobility one need some XP when keshik sentry / mobility are produced immediatly, and numidian cav are less adept at destroying archer, but it should work too, no ? Especially since Financial will help to get the tech quickly.

Inca's starting settler rush. No trait needed.