CB Rush

[hai 1]

It has come to my attention in conversations I've had in other threads that CB rushes are often utilized. I am relatively new to Civ 5, and I wrongfully assumed that waging an offensive war that early without a UU such as horse archers would be foolish given the early tech disparity between player and ai. Though I have somewhat decent warfare mechanics (I have won via domination VC at Diety level), I can't seem to make CB rushes work without severely crippling my infrastructure if not just outright failing. So, a guide on how to pull off a CB rush or even just some tips would be greatly appreciated.

I would also love to hear the sorts of conditions you look for (early wonders in a nearby cap, already wiped out a nearby neighbors standing army in a defensive war, etc.), as even if its part of your repertoire I am sure there are times you don't pull the trigger. There is always an opportunity cost associated with going to war, especially an early one.

 

[Luven]

Well you just go for a standard opening. 1-2 Scouts, Monument/Shrine only if needed. Build Granay asap then Settler or (Library or Caravan). Go for 1 Lux Tech. Then start building Archers. (throw in some archers earlier if needed).

2nd City builds Granary then Archers.

Your Scouts and Warrier go steal 1-2 Workers from neares AI before turn 20. Optimally your war target.

Sell your Rescourses. Best thing to have is two nearby AI’s so you can Caravan trade with one and war with the other.

Then head to construction while building archers.

If you stole workers from your target you can just keep the war you already have going and constantly pick at his units with your archers. With a little luck you will even get a Great General in Time.

As soon as you hit Construction, upgrade as many Archers as possible and start surrounding the city.
If you’re not at war yet, you can bribe your target into war with someone else a few Turns befor you declare. His army will move away from his land.
You should be ready turn 70 or earlier.

Surround the city shooting at stuff that stayed, move in 5-7 Composites. 1-2 Volleys are normally enough. To savely take the city you need a scout AND a warrior. Or a spearman on a rough terrain tile otherwise the City often kills your single melee unit and you cant capture the city. A horseman works very well too if you have one.

Build 2-3 more Composites and you can keep going, often you can take out 3-4 Cities from 1-2 Opponents, keep the two Capitals and raze the rest. (Stronger Diplo hit if you wipe someone out completely). Keep them as Puppet until you are ready to annex.
Sometimes you will lose 1 Composite per City, thats Ok. Letting one damaged Composite die will leave the others healthy. But better to lose none ofc.
Your sucess depends a lot on map, opponents, terrain and city placement. It is much harder, sometimes impossible if your target is in rough terrain and the city is on a hill with walls.

Sometimes its the best option by far because the area is so crowded you cannot build more than two cities yourself anyway.

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

For a rough estimate, in my experience CBs are usually okay until up to around 23 city strength. Past that point you'll need to upgrade to crossbows to keep rolling.

 

[Resipsa]

IMO I enjoy pyramid rushing and pillage repair with 2-3 workers at the front. I skip the granary and open scout, monument (or shrine depending on dirt), archers until masonry is unlocked then the pyramids,

Once you've gotten your free settle push him out to a prime spot and then hard build one to drop him a few tiles from the AIs capital. In your satellites go monument, library you can buy a library in the third so you won't slow down your NC but make sure you have 80gold for each archer to upgrade.

Civs that get early access to extra gold such as Songhai do this type of opening well because you don't have to delay NC. You can push straight through to machinery without getting off the tech path too much.

 

[BenitoChavez]

IMO I enjoy pyramid rushing and pillage repair with 2-3 workers at the front.

Another thing you can do with workers is to bait the AI into taking them with their garrisoned unit. Move your archers/composites away from the city, but move the worker in close enough that the garrisoned unit can take it. Once the AI takes the worker use your archers/composites to kill the unit and retake your worker. It works great as your units will take less damage when taking cities.

 

[Justice1337]

The mechanics of what to do, build Archers and upgrade, are pretty intuitive. What you will need to pull it off though is plenty of early gold. As a consequence, it's not as reliable of a strat as it was in G&K. You basically cross your fingers for strategics and sell your luxuries, only you get GPT instead of a lump sum now. If you are lucky you will get a DoF with another civ to whom you can trade GPT for lump sum, but you can just do that anyway upfront.

Once you do get the 4-5 C-bows, conquest is pretty easy at around Turn 60. The Deity AI won't have Pikes for another 20 or so turns, more if he's following the expansive behavior.

The main question though is whether it's worthwhile. Razing one or two cities off the AI will buy you some space, but that space isn't always premium, and you'd better be ready to resettle right away. If my civ needs and expansive game or I opened Liberty, I will do some sort of early move when I'm held to 3 cities, but for Tradition builder strategies, 3 cities can be enough if the dirt was ok, and the diplomatic consequences of an open-faced declaration of war can be pretty severe if you don't otherwise plan on conquest.

 

[Syailendra]

one thing to put into acount is the need to level up the archers before upgrading them to composites. By the time the ai hit reinasance, your comps should be at lvl 4 at least.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

What about melee units? I generally like early DOW with crossbows, but usually will not do it without a horseman to swoop in and take city without being killed on his way in to take city. How much is your chance weakened without the horse?

 

[hai 1]

Starting to have much more success with CB rushes, thanks for the tips fellas. The key has been building archers early and saving the money to quickly upgrade them, rather than waiting until construction to churn out CB's. Seems obvious in hindsight, but early build orders are so cramped that I didn't like the idea of allocating so many resources to archers and thei upgrades. In practice though, I like to REX to my core 4-5 cities and often end up spending early gold on one or two libraries to not delay NC... with this strategy NC gets delayed anyway so I have time to hard build libraries. Also, I don't REX so much either due to the game limitations that encouraged me to mount a CB rush in the first place, or so I can focus on making the CB rush that much more potent.

 

[Resipsa]

Starting to have much more success with CB rushes, thanks for the tips fellas. The key has been building archers early and saving the money to quickly upgrade them, rather than waiting until construction to churn out CB's. Seems obvious in hindsight, but early build orders are so cramped that I didn't like the idea of allocating so many resources to archers and thei upgrades. In practice though, I like to REX to my core 4-5 cities and often end up spending early gold on one or two libraries to not delay NC... with this strategy NC gets delayed anyway so I have time to hard build libraries. Also, I don't REX so much either due to the game limitations that encouraged me to mount a CB rush in the first place, or so I can focus on making the CB rush that much more potent.

Also its cheaper if you have the gold available to buy archers and upgarde to composites, if I'm sitting on a bunch of gold because I did a 2 city as opposed to the 3 city opening You can buy your archers and then upgrade for a cost of 280 as opposed to a cost of 320 for a composite.

 

[budweiser]

If you take this pyramid>construction path, you would know if you had horses or not. And if you did, you could get out chariots faster and cheaper in terms of gold.