Flushing

[GrizzGolf]

Any good tips on learning how to flush?

[Experienced Noob]

If you don't know the build orders, look on Youtube for a reputable source that can show you the Dark Age builds for scout rushes, forwards, or acher rushes -- or watch top pros on Twitch. Then practice the Dark Age over and over vs the AI until you've got it down and fast and efficient with very little mistakes. Then take it online and learn how to cripple an opponent. It's about using hill advantages, knowing when to fight and when to run, learning how to micro your units, scouting the enemy base well enough to know his weak spots and predict what he's going to do, etc.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Just.... practice and git gud, really. Particularly, 1v1 the AI. 1v1v1 and a Flush don't go well together, as the third AI runs off to the Castle age and then overruns you with Knights.
But do enjoy it as you go along; take your time, spend those precious moments standing at the foot of a Feudal tower with some archers shooting the vils that come near... Enjoy the small things :P

Archer rushing is by far the easiest to pull off, because your food can go straight into vil production (gold + wood go into Archer production).

If the AI castles when you're still preparing for your rush, you might survive. If the AI castles when you are busy rushing them and killing all their villagers, you'll be fine. Just keep fighting; they spent a lot on something that's not that great unless they have a good eco, and you can fight off a Castle army with enough Feudal units.

[Heisenberg]

Originally posted by GrizzGolf:

Any good tips on learning how to flush?

There are several major types of feudal rushing, so each has its own requirements and therefore its own build orders. You should pick the type you go with based on several factors, among them:

1. Your civ - its tech tree and bonuses. Does your civ have any advantages or disadvantages that make one strategy more or less viable?

Examples:

* The native American civs (Maya, Inca, Aztecs) don't get cavalry at all, but they do get eagle scouts. So obviously a scout rush isn't viable, but an eagle rush is - the major difference here is that scouts are a trash unit that's heavy on food and eagles cost a fair amount of gold and food and the fact eagle rushing requires only a barracks which is a building you're supposed to have already.

* Turks get free upgrades to their cavalry line which makes conservative scout rushes (conservative in that you aim to preserve your scouts rather than sacrifice them) lucrative. They're also a gold intensive civilization which means any gold you can save early on will be important in the later stages of the game.

* Briton Archery Ranges work 20% faster, Archers are fully upgradable with +1 range in Castle age and +2 range in Imperial age. Finally shepherds work 25% faster which means early on you can focus less on sheep and accumulate more wood to get a wood gathering boost. So in this case an Archer rush is going to be very lucrative.

* Korean villagers get +3 line of sight, stone miners work 20% faster, tower upgrades are free. This allows a very effective tower rush with perhaps some forward bases thrown in the mix.

* Magyars get the +1,2,3 attack (Forging et al) blacksmith upgrade for free. Their light cavalry line costs 10% less, villagers kill wild animals (wolves et al) in one strike and archers get +2 line of sight. This makes them possibly the best civ for doing any kind of forward aggression in the feudal age where you can get villagers to drop towers and have archers to reinforce them.

You see where this is going. Study each civ to see what its strengths and weaknesses are so you'd learn the kind of strategy to go with.

2. The map. Clearly feudal rushing is viable only in open maps and when the distance between you and the enemy is reasonably short (but not too short! in which case drushing might be a better option!). The equivalent of flushing in a sea map is galley rushing, but water games behave quite a bit differently and you'd have to take all the things I said into account adjusted for water.

You should look at your map and your opponent's map and see if you or they would have any luck in walling off. If you can wall off then perhaps you're better doing a fast castle which opens you up to early aggression but potentially allows you to deliver a far more devastating blow. If they can wall off well you'd might want to figure out what their plan is and build a counter army (spearmen, skirmishers).

3. In team games you need to consider all of these things, with some adjustments taken into account. For example, in team games you want a market sooner for cartography, trading carts and just being able to sling. This goes at the expense of building a blacksmith or a second military building.

Your flush has to take into account counter attacks from the players you're not targeting. So generally you'd have to be more balanced in your approach (that is, be less inclined to go all in on feudal aggression and think about moving up the ages and defending).

-------------------

I know you asked about build orders but you have to understand what the build orders aim to achieve before you simply execute them and that is the right amount of resources and the right balance between economy and military in the early ages to allow you to execute the strategy you picked.

I would say the base build order before it starts to diverge is:

6 on sheep, 4 on wood (lumber camp), 4 on food (with the first villager popping up doing a boar lure and the rest milling berries or deer). This can change for instance - you can get 5 on sheep and 5 on wood with britons early on because of their sheep gathering bonus. You can get 3 on wood with celts assuming you go for some food intensive infantry rush.

Now that you have 14 villagers you're supposed to have a rough understanding of what you want to do assuming you scouted your map and started scouting your opponent.

If you're drushing, this is the time to start building a barracks. If not, you want to mill a second source of food. You can go with up to 4 villagers on food (for a total of 18) then you start with a second lumber camp in another spot. When drushing you might want to gather 10 gold without mine camping just to have enough for 3 militia and the man at arms upgrade in the feudal age.

Now depending on your strategy you may click up to Feudal age anywhere between 19 to 23 villagers (more than that stops being a feudal rush and starts being a fast castle).

Typically a scout rush requires no gold, so you may click up early. Archer and Eagle rushes do require extra gold and extra wood so you need a little more villagers on either of those resources before you click up.

Do bear in mind that a scout rush being food intensive can delay your castle time whereas an archer rush may not have a significant impact (you need the archery range anyway as a second building to click up).

Good luck and have fun!

Join my discord server at: https://discord.gg/2qv25MC

We matchmake games on the beta (5.2) and talk about strategies. You can learn a lot!

[GrizzGolf]

Originally posted by Heisenberg:

Originally posted by GrizzGolf:

Any good tips on learning how to flush?

There are several major types of feudal rushing, so each has its own requirements and therefore its own build orders. You should pick the type you go with based on several factors, among them:

1. Your civ - its tech tree and bonuses. Does your civ have any advantages or disadvantages that make one strategy more or less viable?

Examples:

* The native American civs (Maya, Inca, Aztecs) don't get cavalry at all, but they do get eagle scouts. So obviously a scout rush isn't viable, but an eagle rush is - the major difference here is that scouts are a trash unit that's heavy on food and eagles cost a fair amount of gold and food and the fact eagle rushing requires only a barracks which is a building you're supposed to have already.

* Turks get free upgrades to their cavalry line which makes conservative scout rushes (conservative in that you aim to preserve your scouts rather than sacrifice them) lucrative. They're also a gold intensive civilization which means any gold you can save early on will be important in the later stages of the game.

* Briton Archery Ranges work 20% faster, Archers are fully upgradable with +1 range in Castle age and +2 range in Imperial age. Finally shepherds work 25% faster which means early on you can focus less on sheep and accumulate more wood to get a wood gathering boost. So in this case an Archer rush is going to be very lucrative.

* Korean villagers get +3 line of sight, stone miners work 20% faster, tower upgrades are free. This allows a very effective tower rush with perhaps some forward bases thrown in the mix.

* Magyars get the +1,2,3 attack (Forging et al) blacksmith upgrade for free. Their light cavalry line costs 10% less, villagers kill wild animals (wolves et al) in one strike and archers get +2 line of sight. This makes them possibly the best civ for doing any kind of forward aggression in the feudal age where you can get villagers to drop towers and have archers to reinforce them.

You see where this is going. Study each civ to see what its strengths and weaknesses are so you'd learn the kind of strategy to go with.

2. The map. Clearly feudal rushing is viable only in open maps and when the distance between you and the enemy is reasonably short (but not too short! in which case drushing might be a better option!). The equivalent of flushing in a sea map is galley rushing, but water games behave quite a bit differently and you'd have to take all the things I said into account adjusted for water.

You should look at your map and your opponent's map and see if you or they would have any luck in walling off. If you can wall off then perhaps you're better doing a fast castle which opens you up to early aggression but potentially allows you to deliver a far more devastating blow. If they can wall off well you'd might want to figure out what their plan is and build a counter army (spearmen, skirmishers).

3. In team games you need to consider all of these things, with some adjustments taken into account. For example, in team games you want a market sooner for cartography, trading carts and just being able to sling. This goes at the expense of building a blacksmith or a second military building.

Your flush has to take into account counter attacks from the players you're not targeting. So generally you'd have to be more balanced in your approach (that is, be less inclined to go all in on feudal aggression and think about moving up the ages and defending).

-------------------

I know you asked about build orders but you have to understand what the build orders aim to achieve before you simply execute them and that is the right amount of resources and the right balance between economy and military in the early ages to allow you to execute the strategy you picked.

I would say the base build order before it starts to diverge is:

6 on sheep, 4 on wood (lumber camp), 4 on food (with the first villager popping up doing a boar lure and the rest milling berries or deer). This can change for instance - you can get 5 on sheep and 5 on wood with britons early on because of their sheep gathering bonus. You can get 3 on wood with celts assuming you go for some food intensive infantry rush.

Now that you have 14 villagers you're supposed to have a rough understanding of what you want to do assuming you scouted your map and started scouting your opponent.

If you're drushing, this is the time to start building a barracks. If not, you want to mill a second source of food. You can go with up to 4 villagers on food (for a total of 18) then you start with a second lumber camp in another spot. When drushing you might want to gather 10 gold without mine camping just to have enough for 3 militia and the man at arms upgrade in the feudal age.

Now depending on your strategy you may click up to Feudal age anywhere between 19 to 23 villagers (more than that stops being a feudal rush and starts being a fast castle).

Typically a scout rush requires no gold, so you may click up early. Archer and Eagle rushes do require extra gold and extra wood so you need a little more villagers on either of those resources before you click up.

Do bear in mind that a scout rush being food intensive can delay your castle time whereas an archer rush may not have a significant impact (you need the archery range anyway as a second building to click up).

Good luck and have fun!

Join my discord server at: https://discord.gg/2qv25MC

We matchmake games on the beta (5.2) and talk about strategies. You can learn a lot!

If it helps I play as the brits!

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

To be honest if you're learning how to flush basically any faction is pretty good. I mean yes, some are pretty shiny (like Huns no-houses and Aztec +5 carry)...

... but if you really want to practice your flush, 1v1 on a random map with you as a random civ and the AI as a random civ. The random map will occasionally throw islands your way :P in which case you may want to try Arabia.

[NIKFS]

Originally posted by aidenpons:

To be honest if you're learning how to flush basically any faction is pretty good. I mean yes, some are pretty shiny (like Huns no-houses and Aztec +5 carry)...

... but if you really want to practice your flush, 1v1 on a random map with you as a random civ and the AI as a random civ. The random map will occasionally throw islands your way :P in which case you may want to try Arabia.

wasnt there a random land map? might be another age though, aom had it but i think aoe2 did too

[Heisenberg]

Originally posted by GrizzGolf:

Originally posted by Heisenberg:

There are several major types of feudal rushing, so each has its own requirements and therefore its own build orders. You should pick the type you go with based on several factors, among them:

1. Your civ - its tech tree and bonuses. Does your civ have any advantages or disadvantages that make one strategy more or less viable?

Examples:

* The native American civs (Maya, Inca, Aztecs) don't get cavalry at all, but they do get eagle scouts. So obviously a scout rush isn't viable, but an eagle rush is - the major difference here is that scouts are a trash unit that's heavy on food and eagles cost a fair amount of gold and food and the fact eagle rushing requires only a barracks which is a building you're supposed to have already.

* Turks get free upgrades to their cavalry line which makes conservative scout rushes (conservative in that you aim to preserve your scouts rather than sacrifice them) lucrative. They're also a gold intensive civilization which means any gold you can save early on will be important in the later stages of the game.

* Briton Archery Ranges work 20% faster, Archers are fully upgradable with +1 range in Castle age and +2 range in Imperial age. Finally shepherds work 25% faster which means early on you can focus less on sheep and accumulate more wood to get a wood gathering boost. So in this case an Archer rush is going to be very lucrative.

* Korean villagers get +3 line of sight, stone miners work 20% faster, tower upgrades are free. This allows a very effective tower rush with perhaps some forward bases thrown in the mix.

* Magyars get the +1,2,3 attack (Forging et al) blacksmith upgrade for free. Their light cavalry line costs 10% less, villagers kill wild animals (wolves et al) in one strike and archers get +2 line of sight. This makes them possibly the best civ for doing any kind of forward aggression in the feudal age where you can get villagers to drop towers and have archers to reinforce them.

You see where this is going. Study each civ to see what its strengths and weaknesses are so you'd learn the kind of strategy to go with.

2. The map. Clearly feudal rushing is viable only in open maps and when the distance between you and the enemy is reasonably short (but not too short! in which case drushing might be a better option!). The equivalent of flushing in a sea map is galley rushing, but water games behave quite a bit differently and you'd have to take all the things I said into account adjusted for water.

You should look at your map and your opponent's map and see if you or they would have any luck in walling off. If you can wall off then perhaps you're better doing a fast castle which opens you up to early aggression but potentially allows you to deliver a far more devastating blow. If they can wall off well you'd might want to figure out what their plan is and build a counter army (spearmen, skirmishers).

3. In team games you need to consider all of these things, with some adjustments taken into account. For example, in team games you want a market sooner for cartography, trading carts and just being able to sling. This goes at the expense of building a blacksmith or a second military building.

Your flush has to take into account counter attacks from the players you're not targeting. So generally you'd have to be more balanced in your approach (that is, be less inclined to go all in on feudal aggression and think about moving up the ages and defending).

-------------------

I know you asked about build orders but you have to understand what the build orders aim to achieve before you simply execute them and that is the right amount of resources and the right balance between economy and military in the early ages to allow you to execute the strategy you picked.

I would say the base build order before it starts to diverge is:

6 on sheep, 4 on wood (lumber camp), 4 on food (with the first villager popping up doing a boar lure and the rest milling berries or deer). This can change for instance - you can get 5 on sheep and 5 on wood with britons early on because of their sheep gathering bonus. You can get 3 on wood with celts assuming you go for some food intensive infantry rush.

Now that you have 14 villagers you're supposed to have a rough understanding of what you want to do assuming you scouted your map and started scouting your opponent.

If you're drushing, this is the time to start building a barracks. If not, you want to mill a second source of food. You can go with up to 4 villagers on food (for a total of 18) then you start with a second lumber camp in another spot. When drushing you might want to gather 10 gold without mine camping just to have enough for 3 militia and the man at arms upgrade in the feudal age.

Now depending on your strategy you may click up to Feudal age anywhere between 19 to 23 villagers (more than that stops being a feudal rush and starts being a fast castle).

Typically a scout rush requires no gold, so you may click up early. Archer and Eagle rushes do require extra gold and extra wood so you need a little more villagers on either of those resources before you click up.

Do bear in mind that a scout rush being food intensive can delay your castle time whereas an archer rush may not have a significant impact (you need the archery range anyway as a second building to click up).

Good luck and have fun!

Join my discord server at: https://discord.gg/2qv25MC

We matchmake games on the beta (5.2) and talk about strategies. You can learn a lot!

If it helps I play as the brits!

Britons are a very good Archer civ because of the bonuses to range they get, so yeah, you probably want to do the Archer flavour of flushing unless your opponent is well prepared for it or counters it well. I do recommend however playing with all the civs so you can get a grasp of the game. It isn't a great idea playing a single civ, even for the simple reason that you need to understand what each civ is about to be able to counter it.

Yeah yeah, I know we all love massing those longbowmen and levelling the computer :) This tactic however doesn't normally work against human players though. glhf

[GrizzGolf]

Originally posted by Heisenberg:

Originally posted by GrizzGolf:

If it helps I play as the brits!

Britons are a very good Archer civ because of the bonuses to range they get, so yeah, you probably want to do the Archer flavour of flushing unless your opponent is well prepared for it or counters it well. I do recommend however playing with all the civs so you can get a grasp of the game. It isn't a great idea playing a single civ, even for the simple reason that you need to understand what each civ is about to be able to counter it.

Yeah yeah, I know we all love massing those longbowmen and levelling the computer :) This tactic however doesn't normally work against human players though. glhf

That's always my plan as the brits!