When to forgo early war/archer rush

When to forgo early war/archer rush?

  • If nearest enemy is 10+ hexes away with bad terrain

    Votes: 1 2.4%
  • If nearest enemy is around 20+ hexes away with bad (jungles/hills) terrain

    Votes: 2 4.8%
  • If nearest enemy is around 20+ hexes away with any terrain

    Votes: 3 7.1%
  • I never archer rush I like to build up for later wars and work on infrastructure

    Votes: 6 14.3%
  • I only archer rush if an enemy is within 10 hexes away from me and terrain is favorable

    Votes: 9 21.4%
  • I almost always archer rush/early war regardless

    Votes: 16 38.1%
  • Another answer/something else

    Votes: 5 11.9%
  • I usually wait later for horses then rush

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    42

Artifex1

Warlord
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
284
What do you think? Standard map, speed, shuffle, emperor/immortal would be settings.
 
Archers are almost always viable, and crossbows are lethal, so you need a very good reason to skip them. Considerable distance to your nearest enemy AND assurance (horses, iron, or a ancient/classical UU) that you can build a viable stand alone combat unit are necessary to skip them, imo. i play Rome mostly and will sometimes skip archers when I play out a low production, isolated start. Saving those cogs can get you another city which you can use to spam Legions. I imagine Eagle Warriors or Kongo's UU would work similarly.
 
When I want an interesting game that isn't decided in the first 60 turns.
 
If your trying to win? Never.

Hmmm?

If you're trying to win as fast as possible, then never. See the post above yours.

You may as well say, should you ever not do an archer rush with Persia? No, never.
 
Getting one of the early great general (probably doesn't work on Immortal / Deity), combined with a good classical UU (Rome, Kongo, Macedon, Scythia) might be competitive with an archer rush, though I can't say I've tried enough times to be sure.
 
Archer rush is dull. Well warmongering is dull really.

So i tend to skip this easy early game winner now.
 
@Esperr

Sorry, not stepping on your toes, just pointing out that there is a difference between playing merely to win and playing to maximize a win.

I certainly am in the group that believes an early archer rush is the strongest strategy.

And then I was trying to say that if you are aiming to maximize victories, you may as well play as Persia every game.

There was no slight intended whatsoever.
 
@Esperr

Sorry, not stepping on your toes, just pointing out that there is a difference between playing merely to win and playing to maximize a win.

I certainly am in the group that believes an early archer rush is the strongest strategy.

And then I was trying to say that if you are aiming to maximize victories, you may as well play as Persia every game.

There was no slight intended whatsoever.
If your trying to maximize wins then yes, you should play Persia or Nubia in SP every time.

Even if you end up being iso start you still want to begin the archer rush, worst case you end up with free barb gold, but because it ends the game by t30-40 you always want to start doing it as the opportunity cost still doesn't outweigh the benefit of effectively ending the game.
 
When you people mean archer rush, does that entail going straight to archers and building them off the 1st city, or something else?
 
When you people mean archer rush, does that entail going straight to archers and building them off the 1st city, or something else?

It ussually entails the whole gamut of quickly building archers and sacking as many neighbors as possible ASAP. The most common strategy is building slingers while beelining archery and upgrading them. 3 and a starting warrior is enough to take down your fisrt neighbor, ussually you need to produce more to keep going. But it can also entail strategys where you don't prebuild slingers and instead chop rush or use the civic to pump them out once you research archery. Essentially any strategy that has you sacking a neighbor with archers within the first 40 turns. Even on Deity it still works, but you can't wipe out like 5 or 6 dudes like on King or Emperor. Keep in mind this is SP, in MP, archer rush only works if whoever you hit assumes nobody is going to rush, so its almost always to risky.

Either way its pretty OP because you effectively end up winning the game by t50.
 
Does that work as well when the AI has built walls in its cities?
 
the whole notion with the early rush is both that the enemies have no walls yet and there is no (or reduced) warmongering penalty. That said it totally depends on what your goals are for the game and the settings you have it on. I usually max out the civs and city states for the map size which normally forces me to attack my neighbors at the start regardless of my victory goal for that game. If your nearest neighbor is over 20 hexes away i would imagine your efforts would be better spent getting more cities built and claiming as much land as possible. when spread out like that it doesnt make sense to attack since you have to wait so long for them to settle more cities
 
Not gonna lie, archer rushing your neighbours every game sounds kind of a miserable way to play.

It should have its place, obviously, but "Your best chance of winning is always to do this" is pretty much the antithesis of strategy.


'Miserable way to play' is how I view a lot of the strategies Deity-level players use to win. You are essentially learning an exploit and taking advantage of it in every game to win and get maximum points.

I'm nowhere near a pro-level gamer even although I have enjoyed playing video games for 20 odd years lol.
 
Does that work as well when the AI has built walls in its cities?

If guy 1 has walls you were to slow, sometimes guy 2 will, but you just have more archers at that point.
Not gonna lie, archer rushing your neighbours every game sounds kind of a miserable way to play.

It should have its place, obviously, but "Your best chance of winning is always to do this" is pretty much the antithesis of strategy.

I mean, single player is the antithesis of strategy, but for some people the fun is in winning in the most efficient way. Theres a reason single player is rated by turns rather then settings. Its not a matter of if you are going to win, but how fast and efficiently you can do it. For one reason or another, V and VI really ramped down the difficulty for Deity.
 
I never archer rush. It ruins the game for me. If I start out with an AI that is too close, then I usually restart.

I am very picky about the conditions of my starting position, and if they are not ideal for growth and development, then I start over.

Some people might consider this to be "cheating," but I don't.

Does anyone else have an opinion about this?
 
Does anyone else have an opinion about this
Fully with you, this game may be won most efficiently use strategy a but there is another 25 strategies in the alphabet that can be more enjoyable.

I play many different ways.
In a game I currently cannot mention I built one archer ... that's because I had 2 horses in my inside ring.
There are so many variations.
 
I never archer rush. It ruins the game for me. If I start out with an AI that is too close, then I usually restart.

I am very picky about the conditions of my starting position, and if they are not ideal for growth and development, then I start over.

Some people might consider this to be "cheating," but I don't.

Does anyone else have an opinion about this?

No, because you are being consistent. eg. you also reset situations that are favorable to you. You can't be expected to play something that is dull.

As for the rest, well, to me, a win is a win barring external sources, of course.
 
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