Early Persian Rush

[Ashurdan]

So I have the 6 cities and access to horses for once, vanilla as Cyrus. I have a mediocre economy (not losing money at 70%) but I have large hammer outputs that are only going to increase, I am starting my build up for an early rush with immortals, the question is do I just focus on them or do the higher production cities(half of my 6) focus on axes? And after reading Obsolete over and over again, even tho they come with a 10% free increase with the withdrawl chance should those Immortals (why are they cavalry?) be given strength instead of flanking. Again, patched Vanilla. Thanks in advance.

PS: I know everyone will say "it depends," but when you notice that you can fit more then just 6 cities in your empire pretty easily w/o conquest should you postpone an early war and do so or continue with the war and hope that the area doesn't get picked up by some twit in a galley? I play on large maps so it usually turns into 7 comfortable cities and this situation happens alot. I never know whether to just screw it (I want to use harsher language but it somehow doesn't seem appropriate) and grab the sites or continue with the axemen plan and backfill later...

 

[cabert]

you have 6 cities?
How could that be an early rush?

When I do an early rush with immortals, I research HA straight, while building a worker, then a settler if no horses are in my initial fat cross, I get my horses asap, building barracks in the capital, then I go full speed immortals to rush 2 or 3 neighbours.
Just keep the capitals, the rest can be resettled later.

 

[reverend oats]

6 cities is too late for a proper imm rush. Your enemies will have spears and swords which will stop you in your tracks.

 

[Refar]

You are probably too late to attack (i don't dare calling it rush) with Immortals. The AI will probably have Copper already and could field Spears. If you are going to make war, you should Aim for a mixed force.

 

[CivMcNut]

I used to play Persia all the time on Vanilla. That UU is pretty tough, but it comes so early you really have to be on the ball to get the horses hooked up and crank a bunch of them out before they become obsolete. If you can make it there in time that the enemy just has archers, you'll blow right through 'em. Once spearmen start showing up in every town, you might have to bring along some axes and swords.

 

[gdgrimm]

As others have mentioned, if you have 6 cities, you're past the rush phase.

But, if you do an Immortal rush (with probably only 2 cities on your part), it will work wonderfully before Copper is used by your enemies to build units.

It'll even work well for a little while after that. You just need to take out the Copper at the very beginning of the war, so your enemy has to get by with what he/she has already built. Then go at him with a few Flanking promoted Immortals (use them as "suicide" attacks against any Spearmen/Axemen in the cities, with the Flanking helping them retreat after damaging). Follow that up with Combat promoted Immortals whose goal is to actually kill whatever they attack.

The Immortal rush loses it's value when it becomes too difficult to deny the metals (either Copper or Iron), or too long has went by and the enemy is likely to have more than 1 melee unit per city, or cultural borders start getting to 40% (even well promoted Archers are kind of tough then, any spearman unit becomes almost unbeatable).