Chariot Rush

[Deckhand]

Let’s discuss Chariot Rushes. They have been described in many of these threads. I’ve tried it twice and it seems very powerful.

How Many? Recommend 2 chariots per defender. Six should be enough to start your conquest.
How many cities before starting? Two?

Difficulty level? I usually play Prince or Monarch. Does it work on Immortal and Deity?

Promotions? I tend to take combat 1, combat 2. Tell me when/why Flanking should be taken?

Copper? Should the victim be allowed to keep their copper in the hope they will build axes? Or pillage it to prevent spearmen?

When not? Vs Protective defender? Vs Greeks (phalanx +100% v chariots)? Vs Mayans (Holkan +50% vs mounted)? Vs Mali (skirmisher 4 str archer)?
(Can’t do without horses or when isolated).
Other situations where it shouldn’t be done?

Best Civ’s? Persia (Immortal +50% v Archers), Egypt (War Chariot 5 str)! Civ’s that start with wheel or AH prereq’s (Agriculture or Hunting).

Tech path? Beeline Animal Husbandry, procure horses, get wheel.
Agriculture and Hunting, to minimize cost of Animal Husbandry? Or just one to get AH sooner? (Yes).
Go AH directly if start with a prereq. Else whichever corresponds to resources in your BFC.
Is beelining AH superior to bronze working?

When Stop? When harass vs conquer? When keep and when raze?

How structure my cities in its wake? Other considerations?
Build toward / cut off Civs you aren’t rushing then settle conquered land at your leisure?

What else?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The most typical situation is easily accessible, preferably BFC horse. If you get BFC horse, you can pull it off easily on immortal/normal...with any kind of chariot.

6 is OK vs two archers if they're not on hills/protective. One of my favorite things to do is quickly take the AIs second city, then head to its capitol and pillage every single tile it has and sit there (only if I can't just take it). Leaving about 4 chariots in there like that will lock the AI there forever, as it whips its pop to 1 spamming archers but never accrues enough to do serious damage. Block other AIs so you can settle all that land, eventually bothering to get construction for some catapults to finish the job easily.

If you have BFC horses and are more ambitious you can just cut straight to the capitol with 10-12 chariots (less if war chariots/immortals) and try to take it. THEN if you go for them and make sure they have no metal, you'll run into fewer archers and can probably just kill the target off.

The above is all on immortal. If you're playing lower than that BFC horses will just about always kill the target outright if chariots are prioritized...you can hit with them by or around 2000 BC...ouch.

I generally prefer them to the axe rush on normal speed because axes are so slow.

 

[z0wb13]

that's a lot of questions.

i wouldn't expect a chariot rush to work past emperor. even then, i would bring more than two per defender.

flanking 2 promotions are usually better then combat 2, because then you can ignore the first strikes of archers, which are the ai's go to defender. that, plus the 40% withdrawal rate will give you much better survival rates.

however, they have a terrible time against spearmen, so you will need to cut off the enemy's mineral supplies. and i would say that immortals are generally better at taking cities than war chariots because of the strong bonus against archers.

chariots have a very short shelf life. if you are playing on marathon, they will be much more effective than when playing a quick game.

 

[bestsss]

just for the record immortals are not chariots. they are pure ownage esp. on marathon. they are truly immortal, most of the time i have them till the end of the game.
and yes pillage every single mine you see if you dont have broze/iron working, and w/o doubt every single mine not on a hill.

That being said: you dont need BW for the rush.

>>When keep and when raze
That's an entire different story. W/ Darius you can virtually always keep if the city has an ok location, connect it and keep spamming more immortals. With standard chariot rush it's truly game dependent, yet it looks more often like raze than keep. (Holy cities/capitals are a keeper, though)

Darius doesn't have simple chariots, so if you practice, pick some one else. Plus his traits are like godlike for unchecked expand. I expand (err, conquest) w/ him till I have negative income on 0% sci (and I have already managed to get writing in some way or I am sure the cities conquest will net me that). When you get currency+code of laws (and you are alive) it's practically game over.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

that's a lot of questions.

i wouldn't expect a chariot rush to work past emperor. even then, i would bring more than two per defender.

flanking 2 promotions are usually better then combat 2, because then you can ignore the first strikes of archers, which are the ai's go to defender. that, plus the 40% withdrawal rate will give you much better survival rates.

however, they have a terrible time against spearmen, so you will need to cut off the enemy's mineral supplies. and i would say that immortals are generally better at taking cities than war chariots because of the strong bonus against archers.

chariots have a very short shelf life. if you are playing on marathon, they will be much more effective than when playing a quick game.

All units are vastly more effective on marathon. Due to the 2 moves mounted drops off less as you raise speed.

Chariot rushes work on immortal. Look at immortal U napoleon if you must for proof.

They do have a short shelf life but if you can get them in time you can hit with tremendous speed and force before the AI can do anything about it. One thing I like to do is go writing after AH/wheel if I see horse, because that allows a) decent recovery via specialists and b) open borders, allowing me to instantly detect any metal the AI has and where (if you look at yields you can tell where they are even w/o the techs...). The AI does not have long to hook up metal if you do this, before it gets pillaged or the city with it is captured.

 

[Gumbolt]

I find when the Ai moves the settler out for its second city it leaves the capital defended with 1 archer on emperor in many instances.

Although 7-8 chariots is more safe. The minute the Ai start whipping archers then you are in the danger zone. Especially if you dont take the city on turn one.

Horse in capital BFC does help. if you built on the horse this saves waiting for wheel and road.

 

[tycoonist]

my experience with it on immortal isn't altogether positive. its not the sure fire thing that an axe rush is. however, if you have horses in your BFC, and you can either get to the enemies capital before a cultural defense builds up too much, or the capital isn't on a hill then you stand a good chance with a bit of luck. just never go against protective civs.

 

[shyuhe]

BFC horses, you can chariot rush on immortal. Second city horses, it depends on the neighbor (protective?) and hill capital/cities. Ideally, you want to strike the AI so that you attack the city of choice the turn you declare war. Obviously you can't do that if they've popped to 40% culture. I would also not rush MM with chariots (monarch+). It's almost always a bad idea as skirmishers are annoyingly hard to dislodge.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

BFC horses, you can chariot rush on immortal. Second city horses, it depends on the neighbor (protective?) and hill capital/cities. Ideally, you want to strike the AI so that you attack the city of choice the turn you declare war. Obviously you can't do that if they've popped to 40% culture. I would also not rush MM with chariots (monarch+). It's almost always a bad idea as skirmishers are annoyingly hard to dislodge.

Pacal's probably a bad call too .

That said, the 2nd city sniping works against PRO since it's usually a 3:1 favor to the chariots. You probably won't be getting the capitol though but the damage may be worth it. Especially if it's someone otherwise terrible like toku, gilgamesh, etc. Stomp the fire out before it spreads....

 

[DMOC]

Chariot rushes can certainly work, even up to deity.

Consider this scenario:

You're alone on an island with Gilgamesh. Who's spamming vultures. And his land is 100% better than yours. You're going to need to rush him with chariots. Oh, and here's a little something ... Gilgamesh, when he's alone on an island with a human player, tends to declare war on deity by 1000 BC.

If war chariots and immortals are factored in as "chariots," then chariots can definitely be used on deity.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Chariot rushes can certainly work, even up to deity.

Consider this scenario:

You're alone on an island with Gilgamesh. Who's spamming vultures. And his land is 100% better than yours. You're going to need to rush him with chariots. Oh, and here's a little something ... Gilgamesh, when he's alone on an island with a human player, tends to declare war on deity by 1000 BC.

If war chariots and immortals are factored in as "chariots," then chariots can definitely be used on deity.

Reminds me of Noble's Club montezuma .

 

[madscientist]

Chariot rushes are situational but do add the advantage of speed and they are cheap. Best leaders are the ones with an early chariot UU (Egypt/Persia). The best method is to take out the captial first, then worry about hitting metals/secondary cities. I go up the combat line in promotions but flanking may help if you want to preserve a few. I use 3 per defending archer, 4 if it's a protective leader.

I have chariot rushed several times in the RPCs I ran. Lord P used a chariot rush in the ALC 26 at Immortal level. I used chariot rushes off-line at emperor numerous times.

Pacal is the only leader I would never chariot rush.

 

[madscientist]

Since the OP wants some help on when to chariot rush, here is a start where it's probably a great time to utilize it.

Charlemagne
Emperor
Normal Speed
Map unknown

The Start

Charles start with mysticism and hunting, with seafood/irigated corn, pigs. He is protective and Imperialistic. Start by going after the food while heading towards a military, then utulize that "Weak" Imperialistic trait.

 

[shyuhe]

The AI is notoriously bad at spamming spears. I would consider chariot rushing Pacal depending on the surrounding land/situation. But Pacal is one of the easier leaders to get to friendly so if he founds a religion next to you, it's generally better to let him grow and take him down later (low unit build probability).

 

[DMOC]

Reminds me of Noble's Club montezuma .

So THAT'S the game that I was thinking of!

 

[Crusher1]

I find this

i wouldn't expect a chariot rush to work past emperor. even then, i would bring more than two per defender.

and this

my experience with it on immortal isn't altogether positive. its not the sure fire thing that an axe rush is.

to be exactly the opposite in my personal experience. Chariot rushes tend to be quicker due to there cheaper cost, faster movement, and less time for AIs to garrison soldiers/culture. I would ALWAYS prefer to chariot rush over an Axe rush. Throw in a UU like WC/Immortals and things get even sexier. With an early declaration, immediate resource pillage, and "Juke and Go" fighting........too easy.

The best method is to take out the captial first, then worry about hitting metals/secondary cities

I find this to be false in many many cases. If you find yourself playing on Immortal with an abusive leader like Darius I find the best strategy is to immediately declare war on 3+ civilizations from the very get go and immediately pillage every military source they have. This will easily allow you to capture 7-10 cities that are the least defended. In these types of wars the Capitals tend to be much stronger because you declared so early vs so many AIs to guarantee facing nothing but archers. Waiting for Construction or suing for peace then 10 turn ownage will be necessary...........

 

[Fleme]

I rarely do a chariot rush and when I do, it's usually with one of the UU Chariots. I was playing Emperor on Pangaea with a random leader and got Ramesses. Starting spot had 3 grass gems and a cow for food so it wasn't really the kind of start I usually like (I prefer a high prod cap)

Naturally I researched AH to work the cows but just so it happens that the tile next to the capital pops horses and I can't resist the urge to rush. Without expansion, I start building War Chariots and when I get 3, I move on my southern neighbor Sury. Take him out with just 1 chariot dead (he had 2 cities) and in the meantime my capital has built 2 more chariots. I feel like playing around so I move on Ragnar, my northwestern neighbor (some 15 tiles away, this is Marathon) and the same thing occurs. He's dead with the loss of 1 chariot which still leaves me with 4 and one more in the capital. So... I move far southeast and take out GK with the same method. He has hunting and bronze and the thing he whips is an axe before I take out the copper, so he goes down with the same method. This leaves me with 4 capitals at roughly 2000 BC and the entire eastern part of a Pangaea map.

I played it out, blocked my half of the map with just 3 cities (favorable terrain) and I actually settled the map all the way up to 1400 AD, totaling at 35 settled cities - which is also my own personal record. Also the only time when I had every single health resource in my own territory and the only happiness source I lacked was Furs.

It's fun to have a bash like that every now and then : )

I don't know if you could pull that off with regular chariots though - and I'm sure that at least I couldn't do that on Immortal.

 

[Negator_UK]

Creative targets can also pose a problem as their cultural defence builds up faster - I tried a chariot rush against Sury (IIRC) recently and it came to tears because of this.

Don't despair when you see pacal though I once rushed him without ever realising he could build free spears (I guess he didn't realise it either ) - check the Holkans are actually there before going chicken...

 

[Gumbolt]

I remember a mongol game on here. HA vs Holkans was not a problem. The tip is to be quick and not wait around for Pascal to whip holkans.

 

[capnvonbaron]

The great part about Pacal is that he wastes a good chunk of time in the very beginning of the game chasing meditation/polytheism for the early religion, instead of going for BW or archery. This also means a lot of times you have an easy holy city to take over