Is rushing in AOE3 dead?

[mGravitus]

Rush: Building military to attack your opponent as soon as possible, usually at the expense of long term resource gathering bonus or research.

So is rushing dead? (Lets obviously ignore Iro). I am not talking about the small containment skirmishes with some musks and huss whilst you grab a TP and market upgrades. I am talking about the all in, cease villager production after aging hardcore rush. The kind of rush that win or lose the game is going to end in <8 min.

Current deterrents to rushing:

- Easy, nearly unavoidable scouting.
- Strong defenders advantage with TC fire and minutemen.
- Walls - nuff said.
- Fixed siege range (anyone remember how sieging was in AOE2?).
- Elitist pro attitude (lets be real) that looks down on rushing when it is a fundamental vertex in the Boom>Turtle>rush triangle.
- Abundance of nearby resources (esp with herding)

I think the nerfing walls was a good step in the balance direction. To increase the viability of rushing, I propose the following changes:

1. Scout or Gather Treasures: : Every civ does both tooo easily. The following changes may make it more of a decision.

- minor nerf to explorer vision radius.
- nerf to explorer hp.
- minor nerf to explorer speed

2. Removal of kynesie wall bugs This is a blatant exploit. How is this arguable? If you delete part of a wall there should be a hole in it.

3. Lower Defenders advantage:: A few suggestions:
- Decrease TC fire radius or
- Decrease damage per garrisoned vill.

Lets restore some balance to RTS triangle. Rather than every game being some boom-turtle hybrid with a "who can be the most greediest and get away with it" mentality.

[forgrin]

All-in rushes are dumb in any RTS and shouldn't work except as a surprise. Yes, the meta is more boom-orientated now, but that's mostly because Otto/Iro were too good at rushing and had to be nerfed. Now the issue is tbh that most maps have too many hunts near or in base for rushing to be good, which hurts India/Russia.

[OttomansAreOP]

ur musketeers r dead after my OP janissary kills them.

[Mitoe]

I am talking about the all in, cease villager production after aging hardcore rush. The kind of rush that win or lose the game is going to end in <8 min.

Yeah, it's safe to say that this is dead at a high level of play. That's just how it is when you end up damaging yourself just as much if not more than you damage your opponent. Unless your opponent is completely unprepared you're not going to be very successful with any sort of all-in rush against a competent player.

However, that doesn't mean that people don't sometimes play aggressively.

It's just finding that balance between doing damage early without damaging yourself.

[NekoBerk]

Some rushes still being kinda hard to stop (for me), like that daimyo rush with Japan, how can i stop that using brits? sometimes i can stop it but sometimes it's almost impossible for me xD.

[iNcog]

If hunts are bad then rushing becomes quite gooD.

[deleted_user]

I think a key point missing in this thread is the idea of containment. You can be aggressive and apply pressure without fully committing under a tc with an all-in rush, and hold map control.

[iNcog]

I think a key point missing in this thread is the idea of containment. You can be aggressive and apply pressure without fully committing under a tc with an all-in rush, and hold map control.

Russia especially can be very good at this.

[DaRkNiTe1698]

Rush is bad most of the times, it's dead at high level games as mitoe said

[SoldieR]

Containment is probably the most annoying way to lose

[Mr_Bramboy]

Hey could you schedule our games please thanks.

[pecelot]

IMO rushing doesn't require much skill, hence we shouldn't find ways to buff it. Take a look at the most common rushes, like jan spam or India 10/10. You just make spammable units, ship units and charge. Should all games be like that? It's not funny at all, you're barely „using" 1/5 of what the game has to offer, ending a game <8th min. Currently the benefits of such rushes are outweighed by eco losses. Most of the times, almost no pro player will be entirely defeated by an all-in assault, which is necessary to make it viable, since it's all-in and in the background you don't have much going on in terms of eco.
I also think that YouTube and Twitch helped a lot. Things like H2O's vills defence are essential now when it comes to fighting under your TC, and you can listen to his wise tips on streams or in videos.
Actually, rushes can still be somewhat viable in certain circumstances. Knowledge factor is key — Portuguese 36 musks timing, for instance, can be deadly if not scouted. Aztec early pressure, British colonial play are both still powerful.
In conclusion, I don't think we should buff such a broken feature, although it being an inherent part of any RTS game. It just isn't worth it in terms of AoE3. On the other hand, though, you still have many viable options available, therefore I don't think we should change anything.

[Rikikipu]

On esoc maps, doing a rush requires good skill actually because it's not really viable. As I've always said, I don't think semiFFs are too good as everyone said, it's just that their counter (rushes) are too bad on EP. It's a bit the darwin theory, if your hunters are dead, you proliferate a lot.

[momuuu]

I think not only rushing is dead, but also any sort of builds involving serious pressure are kinda dead.

[_venox_]

As long as not everybody is a top player there are people who will lose to rushes.

[Goodspeed]

Yes, rushing is certainly dead at high levels of play.

I think not only rushing is dead, but also any sort of builds involving serious pressure are kinda dead.

Era of the timings

Timing attack (noun): An attack that is designed to hit at a specific time when your military is relatively strong and/or your opponent’s is relatively weak.

With a timing-based metagame, we need to be playing with a clock. We don't age asap and make units ASAP, we calculate ahead and think of ways to invest in a mid- or lategame plan. Sometimes you're going to want to attack. Why, though?
Because you're the civ that gets outscaled, meaning you lose if you leave the enemy alone for too long (for example if their economy grows faster than yours), or
Because you need to take map control in order to gather more resources.
In both these cases you're going to have to leave your cozy base and attack at some point. The next question is when to attack.
In AoE3, like in every other RTS, answering these questions is among the most important things a player needs to able to do in order to win. This part of the guide will focus on the “when”, and how to tailor your build to fit the timing.

There are 2 types of aggression: There's constant pressure, and there's timings. Of course, there's also raiding and obviously raiding is always good if you have the unit composition to do so, but raiding is different from actual aggression in that raiding is meant to gain small advantages by damaging the enemy's economy while aggression is more large scale, and meant to take the map or win the game outright.
Sometimes, constant pressure is the way to play. This is something Otto for example are very good at. An Otto with jan abus in colonial will keep hitting your army with abus again and again while his army is growing steadily. Slowly but surely he gains enough of a military advantage to break you. This style is the opposite of a timing, and rarely used. The way most civs attempt to win a game is not by constant pressure, but by designing their build order to get the most possible units out at a certain time in the game, and then suddenly becoming aggressive around that time. This is called a timing attack, and using this concept well is one of the biggest differences between a good player and a great one.

Example. Let’s take a simple timing, the French bow/pike rush. Note that this is not purely a timing, it’s already strong in early colonial and can maintain constant pressure. However, there is a certain time when this build comes together, when its unit mass is almost unparalleled by any other civ. This is not after the 700w, not after the 600w, but after the 8 xbow shipment. At this time, most other civs’ rushes will have run out of steam, most boom civs’ economies will not yet have paid off in unit mass and FFs or semi-FFs won’t have an army yet. This is when this build wins games. A good player will therefore not commit to the enemy’s base until this time because he knows this is when the difference in unit mass will be biggest. A somewhat lesser player may think he sees an opening earlier, and may just lose to a well-executed defense because he eagerly moved in and overextended. Another frequently made, timing-related mistake with this particular build is going eco (4v) after 600w. This is viable when you can’t do damage with the timing (because he has lb behind a wall, for example), but neglecting the timing and going for economic development instead is not playing to the strength of the build and is a sign that maybe you shouldn’t have chosen that build in the first place.

The other type of timing is not meant to end the game but to break out of your base and take map control. This kind of timing is most often used by boom builds or FF builds, which will move out when their eco and/or tech starts paying off. For example as Brits versus France in a somewhat prolonged colonial war where France is attempting to contain you to your base and you know your hunts are going to run out at some point, you’re going to have to choose a time to move out and take the map. Since your eco is superior you want to do this as late as possible, preferably just before your hunts run out. Your build can then be tailored to have the most possible mass at this time, and not necessarily before. The trick is to go as much eco as you can while holding him off and going for the most efficient mass around 10 minutes (or whenever hunts run out). Following this logic, you can quickly see that a card like 5 vills is not worth it before you take the map. The reason is simple: it takes too much time to pay off. After the (almost forced) 700w first, another resource card (like 600w) at 6 minutes is better than 5v, and after that 700g at 7.30 is better than 5v simply because 5 vills won’t gather even close to 700 gold in 2:30 minutes. The 600w part is closer because it arrives earlier which means your 5 vills have 4 minutes to gather, but the math doesn’t lie:
5v gathers 2.5 wood per second. This means it takes 240 seconds = 4 minutes to gather 600 wood. If your 600w arrives at 6 minutes, this would mean the cards are technically equal in value if you’re aiming for the 10 minute push. However, the earlier you have this 600w the better. At 6 minutes it can already be used for manors (=XP and vills) and market upgrades which means that by 10 min it will still be worth a lot more than the 5v. But, if you were going for a 12+ minute (possibly fortress) timing and you don’t need the extra units early on, 5v may be worth it over 600w. Keeping this in mind it follows that if you’re planning to send 5v at some point, it’s always better to do it as early as possible since the card takes a while to pay off. In most cases this is not worth it, but that’s another discussion.

The moral of the story is that if you plan ahead correctly and know at which point in the game your civ has the best unit selection and/or mass compared to the opposing civ, you can tailor your build to work most efficiently for this particular time. Look at it as if it’s treaty X, and you’re deciding what X is based on the civs and map and you’re building the best possible army at X minutes. Now obviously in supremacy a lot can happen in X minutes so you need to be adapting at all times, but still in the back of your mind should be the timing at which you know you can overpower them, and before that time all you’re doing is surviving, raiding and scouting to possibly adapt your plan into some other, later or earlier timing attack based on their build. Adapting like this, planning timings and tailoring your build on the fly is an underrated skill that can really give you an edge in this game. Obviously though, you have to understand your and the opponent’s civ very well in order to be effective at this.

[momuuu]

I dont even think its the era of the timings. Its the era of no rush 10.

[Goodspeed]

No rush X, where X is the timing of the civ that gets outscaled and therefore needs to attack at some point.

[Laurence Drake]

Since when was it a good strategy to cease villager production in order to rush?

[sdsanft]

I do agree rushing is bad on EP, but mostly because of maps. I think it could really interesting to see atleast a few lower res maps (maybe like few hunts in base but some/a lot in the middle or out on the side) just to give some contrast.

[Rikikipu]

I do agree rushing is bad on EP, but mostly because of maps. I think it could really interesting to see atleast a few lower res maps (maybe like few hunts in base but some/a lot in the middle or out on the side) just to give some contrast.

I totally agree, but then you will have people complaining a lot about that and saying that "this map sux". Example : Cascade Range

[Goodspeed]

Low res maps may seem exciting on lower levels or when spectating high level games, and they are good to mix in (which we are doing). The thing with them is that forcing shorter games severely hurts strategic depth and impedes development of the metagame. From a strategy perspective, maps with balanced resources produce much more interesting games.

[site]

Wouldn't low res games help develop the meta in their own way? As a low level player low res maps or maps with some wide spread have helped me to think more critically about how I use the res. That's just me though.

[pecelot]

Of course more balanced maps are and undeniable factor here, but I think it's not everything, like when you're rushed hard you don't gather at all regardless of whether you have 1 or 3 hunts.
@site

notification

, it seems that low-res maps have been a common theme in AoE3 since the very first day, and we can see how the meta developed...

[Goodspeed]

Wouldn't low res games help develop the meta in their own way? As a low level player low res maps or maps with some wide spread have helped me to think more critically about how I use the res. That's just me though.

Good example and yes, that's why they're great to mix in. What I should've mentioned earlier is that I think we've struck a good balance. I mean in the round of 128 there's 1 TP map and bengal and pampas aren't very high res either.