How to rush with axes

[VoiceOfUnreason]

From what I've seen, Axe rushing looks to me to be less forgiving than in previous versions.

In warlords, it didn't particularly matter if you got the timing of the attack precisely right. The AI didn't respond. In BTS, it does - though not to the extremes lengths that a human opponent would go to.

In the first one I had Charlemagne uncomfortably close to me

Translation: Charlemagne was one of the AIs loaded during the map generation. Look out! He's coming right for us!.

 

[shyuhe]

rushing emperor AIs isn't too bad as long as they're not protective/creative. It's not really worth rushing 40% culture cities in bts though since you'll suffer massive casualties pre-catapults. Same goes for protective archers on hills with CG2. The same goes for immortal but they had better be very close and have good land or it's not worth the early trade off of sinking so many hammers on axes when you could make settlers for cheaper. I don't remember the numbers but I think it's about 5-6 axes = 1 settler.

 

[Giaur]

I never axe-rushed, cause I am keeping to the rule of 50. 50 percent combat odds at least.
But I enjoyed once immortal-rush on Emperor (Vanilla). Destroyed two civilizations completely. But you know - immortals were overpowered in Vanilla (now they are underpowered ).

Even early, when I was playing my domination deity games, I never declared war before knowing Construction (almost). Some people brought good points - it's not worth to build 6 axes, when you can have some wonder instead. But every case should be considered situationally. There are no iron rules in this game.

btw. In Warlords (on Emperor) I made harcher-rush. Flanking2 horse archer has 50% odds while axeman about 17%. Just use the calculator ...

 

[gettingfat]

One other thing that makes early rushing more difficult in BtS is I find that the AIs apparently settle on hills way more often. So often they will give up the long-term benefit of settling at river tiles and go for the hill tiles where the rivers begin. This combines with their tendency to whip for archers, making the job much more difficult.