I'm trying to improve my early rushing game. I'm struggling to learn what the best method is to rush an opponent. Of course it depends on a variety of factors - the proximity of your neighbours, resources you/they have available, who your opponent is (are they protective, for example). I can't seem to rush without tanking my economy.
With early copper, it's easy. Research BW, build mine, whip axes, conquer numerous cities. Without copper or iron or horses though, it's significantly harder, especially since the AI start with Archery.
How would you tackle an early rush with no metals or horses?
Barring starting as resourceless UU civ: Archer Choke until Catapults. Choking is still highly effective for me in my comfort zone (Emperor) as long as you are close enough (=<10 tiles to their capitol). Protective helps, as it makes it easier to control AIs that get their hands on metal (chariots are not a problem really, stay off uncovered flatland tiles, but axes in force end an archer choke fast) and Hunting is a big plus since you can determine where they are and get Archery faster if you determine the need after BW/AH doesn't pay off. One of my recent games, as a proof of concept, was a
double choke with the best Archer choker in the game: Charlie
Had a PH Marble to settle on. Killed both HC and JC in succession about 100-120 turns into the game, who curiously both founded religions.
You gotta get used to abusing AI behaviors to choke effectively, as archers can't kill off things by themselves. Get them stuck in loops trying to improve a tile, or trying to walk out a settling party. Let them actually run off with their settling party right before your attack comes in so they move archers out of their city. Get them to chase a warrior/scout around aimlessly inside their borders. Etc. Just being inside their borders forcing them to build defenders and unable to improve anything will grind their game to a halt. I may have been behind everybody else in the game but just 7 archers ruined any chance HC/JC had of doing anything, and I ended up with double the land of all but one of the other civs. The point you end up at feels similar to being isolated and beelining for Optics.
Two different players of two different civ games have espoused this mantra and its holds quite true as far as I'm concerned: just continue to pressure the AI and they will goof eventually, which you capitalize on, whether it's stealing workers, shuffling out defenders, killing units in the open, having them put hammers into units they can't use (settlers) etc.
Economy is a difficulty, yes. You will have to cottage regular land whether you have the luxury of a river or not, and hopefully have a fishing spot to utilize, as every commerce will count. I usually choke with only 2 cities unless I need to grab an important resource (gold mines are top priority) so maintenance + unit cost doesn't absolutely tank me to the point I can't crawl to Fishing and Pottery. The goal is to eventually use Library Scientists to help you dig out and get toward Construction, and you should absolutely bulb Math to catch up as much as you can.
tiles to start with, chops, 6 archers next to AI capital on T42 (btw I think I got archery from a hut 
). I did win the war, but I had to beat 3 archers inside capital with 6 archers, so it's a high variance play. Game is a forum game btw, Immortal University Suryavarman (don't know the number), so the starting save is somewhere on this forum.
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needs to come from somewhere and you need to have a plan, be it cottages, coastal tiles, specialists, special high
