When do you _not_ do an archer rush?

[Forster]

two or three towers and the city will die quickly without you ever having to worry about wall's effect.

 

[KoKid90]

I am under the impression that it is worst to use both (tower + ram) at the same time since the damage would be split and you want to either take a city quickly with many melee units by bypassing the walls or you want to take down walls to stop the city attack. And having more than one of any type makes no difference.

 

[Forster]

It seems to me that it was quicker with more towers. Next time I get to use them I will try with 1 and then more.

 

[chazzycat]

yeah, ram + tower makes no sense. One bypasses the walls, the other damages walls more. Just pick one or the other

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I'm finding the archer rush to be less viable after the new patch update. I was never all that great with it anyway and they take forever to whittle down city walls which go up earlier now. The AI also builds more archers to counter this attack. I also find that archer rushes are pretty ineffective when there is a lot of forest, hills, or jungle surrounding a city because their range is reduced. Generally I try to beeline more towards bronze working now and try to secure some iron for early swords. I find it much easier to conquer capitals with swords + battering ram rather than an early archer attack.

 

[stinkubus]

yeah, ram + tower makes no sense. One bypasses the walls, the other damages walls more. Just pick one or the other

If you use them together then the first hit will both destroy the walls and do damage to the city.

 

[chazzycat]

initial thought: "right but what's the point of destroying the walls (ram) if your attacks ignore them anyway due to the siege tower?"

...and right as I typed that out I realized walls still affect ranged units. So yeah, there could be some benefit to having both, if your goal is to take down cities ASAP rather than maximize XP gain for your ranged units.

 

[TurboJ]

You can do early war completely without ranged units if you want (even on deity). Just use melee and cavalry. Cavalry deals with enemy archers; battering ram makes taking cities easy. Why you would play like this then? I like to role play stuff, even on deity. It makes it more fun for me even if it adds challenge.

 

[Victoria]

I played an English swordsman snowball as I had some iron the other day. I ended up having to delete some because I had taken too many cities and could not afford them. I brought an extra barb, upgraded both to swordsmen, with 3 archers and a free swordsmen in every city you take it becomes a bit crazy if you have a lot of useless CS around you.
I just took the CS for the lol factor but the smile came off my face when I hit -4 GPT