Roman Rush

[kamex]

Okay, planning my first serious game as Rome later.

Was wondering if rushing with legions is as effective as rushing with horsemen (getting bored now).

I guess it depends how quickly you can hook the iron up, if you have any. Iron Working is a tech I often don't priorities due to preferring horses.

So, are legions worth the hassle, or should i stick to horses?

 

[Soronery]

Depends if you can iron or not. Usually you can warrior rush a nearby enemy city (usually not the capital) and take it. Then research ironworking and hope you get iron

 

[Snapp]

If you do a legion rush you can do a warrior rush at the start which is very effective and then a second push when you get iron working. Swordsman/Legion work quite well imo, they have better str than horsemen (legion do) and they get defensive bonuses that horsemen do not.

You just lose out on the movement.

The other benefit to this style of play is that your legion will be upgrade-able until the end of the game, unlike the horsemen who lose there usefulness after cavalry.

 

[elthrasher]

Legions are also good because you build nothing but warriors at the start. You steal a worker, so no need to build one. That means you can deal with barbs a lot better, pick up more gold, maybe make a CS friend, take a second city or even a capital. The horse rush is strong, but leaves you slightly vulnerable while you're waiting for HBR to finish. You probably won't get killed off, but your horses could get pillaged or something, which will waste a lot of turns.

On the downside, sometimes you get no iron. That happened to me in my latest game. I went for swords instead of horses and no iron, despite blocking off a good-sized chunk of land. Solution: REX, then beeline rifling with two fast scientists and the rationalism SPs. Getting four free techs in a row is pretty cool. I managed to buy two iron off Alex in the mean time so I could upgrade my poor warriors at last.

 

[stormerne]

My favorite Roman Rush is... building a road for a city state. Request... legions are often already in place... and bang, it's there!

 

[Tabarnak]

My favorite Roman Rush is... building a road for a city state. Request... legions are often already in place... and bang, it's there!

 

[bryanw1995]

Legions are also good because you build nothing but warriors at the start. You steal a worker, so no need to build one. That means you can deal with barbs a lot better, pick up more gold, maybe make a CS friend, take a second city or even a capital. The horse rush is strong, but leaves you slightly vulnerable while you're waiting for HBR to finish. You probably won't get killed off, but your horses could get pillaged or something, which will waste a lot of turns.

On the downside, sometimes you get no iron. That happened to me in my latest game. I went for swords instead of horses and no iron, despite blocking off a good-sized chunk of land. Solution: REX, then beeline rifling with two fast scientists and the rationalism SPs. Getting four free techs in a row is pretty cool. I managed to buy two iron off Alex in the mean time so I could upgrade my poor warriors at last.

yeah, it's funny how the resource spacing makes such a difference. my current game I had 10 horses with 4 tiles of the capitol, I just built 8 quick horses and took over the entire continet (playing large/standard/continents). the last game I had zero horses but lots of iron, would have been ok but I was unable to ally with any maritimes. got stuck in a 150 turn war with the ally of the only 2 maritimes I could find, by the end of the war he had mechs and I had rifles. 10 turns later it was all over...