Why do people like rushing?

[KnightSoul]

AOE is the first game i ever played many years ago. I mostly played vs AI but i never understood why people like rushing and finishing each match in a few minutes. You don't get to enjoy the game, at least i don't.

[Vonklyce]

Neither do i, rushing in AoE, feels like buying an expensive car, but never shifting past the first gear, like, never actually getting to the fun part.
Or maybe playing a chess match, moving two pawns and saying "mate in 16" and then your opponent loses without even knowing what happened.

The treaty option is kinda pointless unless you're playing with trustworthy people, because usually it's used to wall your TC and you can't do ♥♥♥♥ for the rest of the game.

[Jackbrick]

Originally posted by Cross:

AOE is the first game i ever played many years ago. I mostly played vs AI but i never understood why people like rushing and finishing each match in a few minutes. You don't get to enjoy the game, at least i don't.

Play a team game of michi or black forest to stop rushing. Easy. Or some map like that. Many players play to win to end the game as early as they can by rushing you.

[AgentFlea]

I'm forced to rush, because everyone else does. And if you can't play fast, you lose to people who can play faster.

I gave in, and learned to micro hella quick. It does suck that games end quickly, but oh well...
Every now and then you get a game with people of equal skill, and it's incredibly fun.

If you're playing rated, or somewhat seriously/competitive, then you pretty much have to rush, or learn how to be quick enough to defend against it. Or else you get completely stomped.

[aflashman]

The game doesn't necessarily finish in a few minutes. For most experienced players rushing is a standard part of the game. You can either use the attack is the best defense strategy and also rush your opponent (hopefully beat them to it)k or you can be prepared for a rush with palisades and careful building placement to add to the walls. Rushing costs resources. It's not necessarily an instant win. A failed rush can set your opponent back considerably.

Your core problem is you don't know how to play the game well yet. Watch some video tutorials and learn some build orders. The easiest rush to practice against the AI would be an Archer Rush (with towers).

Otherwise play against your friends and make an agreement not to rush. That's what I do with my friends who only play occasionally and can't handle rushes either.

[Mack Daddy]

While I do somewhat agree a late game can be fun, the thing is look at it like a boxing match. Both fighters try to win months before the actual game (in comparison you start planning your win when choosing a civ./map). They don't hold back either from the first second of the fight, they look for weaknesses, openings, an advantage, somewhere to pressure. RTSs, ALL OF THEM, are exactly the same. Try to deny your enemy map control and so resources or harass him so he is economically disadvantaged, micro your army to lessen his military strenght, etc.. RTSs (on a starting-to-decent skill level all the way to pro) are a fight to win, these aren't city builders. Of course that doesn't mean participating is more important, but why race cars? Why play golf? Why rap battle? To win in a thing you find fun and getting your arse kicked from the start isn't fun, neither is stomping others. That is why equal level fights are so entertaining, it can swing both ways at any moment, there is action from the get-go!

[Quintem]

To quote a funny animation on Youtube.
"Cuz its easy...and does a lot of damage"
(If you know where this is from gold star to you, yes I know its not an RTS game)

Simple question? Why don't you learn to defend against rushes. If you do that, the game will last longer.

Also what is a rush to you? I'm going say it but unskilled players tend to call anything before late game a rush. For me a rush in Age 2 is anything between 10-14 or so minutes. That's when most common early game aggression happens. A knight rush is usually later than that and might be around 20 minutes. I think the term rush, is more the fact the person rushes to get knights than to actually being a very early attack but its early for knights.

Another question, have you played through the art of war tutorials?

Finally the new AI if played on the higher difficulties I think hard or higher. Will do feudal age aggression or a "rush".

Originally posted by Aegis:

I'm forced to rush, because everyone else does. And if you can't play fast, you lose to people who can play faster.

You're not forced to rush. You don't need to play fast to win. I used to be a high diamond level player in Starcraft 2, diamond is the top 20% and I was upper end of that at my best, I'd sometimes get matched against Master level players considered to be top 2%, I generally lost against them. To get to my point I had an APM of 60-80. Most people I played against had double. Oddly enough sometimes though those with the highest APM played the worst. Trying to be too fast for their own good.

[AgentFlea]

^Yeah but this isn't Starcraft. When I say fast, I mean micro. Hotkeying from building to building, making the proper setup. Proper resource management according to your strategy.
Walling quickly against rushes, etc.

I used to think 14m fast castle was fast... then I see lower, and lower times.

And it all goes to sh!T if the player is aggressive enough.

[Quintem]

Starcraft 2 can be very demanding on micro. Splitting Marines back in the day was like a must have skill for Terran players such as myself or they'd die in 2 seconds to a bunch of Banelings (honestly it still is).

The faster your age up the weaker your economy. If somebody gets to Castle Age THAT fast. Then attacks you, if they don't kill a good number of your villagers they're going fall behind. I used to help new players out a fair bit in Starcraft 2 and they would always complain about they're not going fast enough. I'd say look at how fast I'm playing. It's not the speed it's the precision that matters. Once you've got the steps in the right order you can keep trying to go faster and do more. Don't run before you can walk. That's an age old problem in RTS, people go online and everyone seems to be running compared to them while they're walking or some cases crawling. I think its a perception thing personally.

Then again I might not be the best person to ask, I've always had a good affinity for dealing with rush and cheese strategies in RTS games.

At this point I'm mostly just giving opinions.

[Vonklyce]

Originally posted by Vanroyan:

While I do somewhat agree a late game can be fun, the thing is look at it like a boxing match. Both fighters try to win months before the actual game (in comparison you start planning your win when choosing a civ./map). They don't hold back either from the first second of the fight, they look for weaknesses, openings, an advantage, somewhere to pressure. RTSs, ALL OF THEM, are exactly the same. Try to deny your enemy map control and so resources or harass him so he is economically disadvantaged, micro your army to lessen his military strenght, etc.. RTSs (on a starting-to-decent skill level all the way to pro) are a fight to win, these aren't city builders. Of course that doesn't mean participating is more important, but why race cars? Why play golf? Why rap battle? To win in a thing you find fun and getting your arse kicked from the start isn't fun, neither is stomping others. That is why equal level fights are so entertaining, it can swing both ways at any moment, there is action from the get-go!

I kinda like your boxing analogy, but the way i see rushing in AoE, it's like when you expect your opponent to attack you with punches, but then he kicks your balls instead... in a boxing match, and then the referee says: "keep going, it was your fault for not see it coming".
But then you feel so angered by that unfairness, that you do the same and kick your next opponent's balls, and then your opponent kicks his next opponent's balls.

[Cacomistle]

I go for early aggression pretty frequently for a couple reasons. First of all, it makes the action happen in a game quicker. And second of all, its good and if I want to be good at the game I have to be able to do it.

However, I very rarely commit to allins. I don't like allins for the reasons OP mentioned. It feels like, its just a short checkbox of whether it worked or not, and I like the experience of playing the game more than the win or loss.

So ideally, I attack early, I get some sort of slight advantage, it goes into castle where we fight for a while with a lot of military, I get map control, it goes to imperial, and after a short while of fighting I slowly push them into a corner and get the win. That's my ideal game.

But it just doesn't always work that way. If I'm better than an opponent by enough, I win really fast. If I'm worse by enough, I might just die right there after my aggression fails.

And that kind of sucks, but if our skill levels are far apart, it works the same way. Had one for example on ghost lake against someone who I suspect banned arabia and favorited arena (which I had banned) and didn't know there were sheep in the middle. So he just walled himself in, I got all the sheep, outboomed him easily, and when I finally attacked like 35 minutes in with a maxed out arbalest army in imperial age, I killed him over the course of about 5 minutes. Which is around same amount of time as my wins/losses in feudal age. It ends up being the same thing.

So to me its sort of like, a filter kind of. Early aggression filters out uneven games that would often end very quickly after aggression starts anyways. Hopefully if I've gotten a somewhat even opponent the game shouldn't end from the feudal.

[djcarey]

ITs a easy win for records. lol

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Quintem:

Starcraft 2 can be very demanding on micro. Splitting Marines back in the day was like a must have skill for Terran players such as myself or they'd die in 2 seconds to a bunch of Banelings (honestly it still is).

The faster your age up the weaker your economy. If somebody gets to Castle Age THAT fast. Then attacks you, if they don't kill a good number of your villagers they're going fall behind. I used to help new players out a fair bit in Starcraft 2 and they would always complain about they're not going fast enough. I'd say look at how fast I'm playing. It's not the speed it's the precision that matters. Once you've got the steps in the right order you can keep trying to go faster and do more. Don't run before you can walk. That's an age old problem in RTS, people go online and everyone seems to be running compared to them while they're walking or some cases crawling. I think its a perception thing personally.

Then again I might not be the best person to ask, I've always had a good affinity for dealing with rush and cheese strategies in RTS games.

At this point I'm mostly just giving opinions.

Splitting marines was never a must have skill up until diamond/masters (although you kind of needed to go mech if you weren't gonna micro at all).

Like you said, you just do a build in the right order, and make sure your macro is on point. And that could be done with pretty low apm.

I actually think this game requires more speed than starcraft in a way up until high levels. You need a baseline amount of speed to get macro down because the builds are a lot more complex than sc2. If you do the builds right, that gets you to the top 20% of players or so probably, and I think its only at that point that starcraft requires more speed than aoe 2.

[*| Lion Heart |*]

Originally posted by Cross:

AOE is the first game i ever played many years ago. I mostly played vs AI but i never understood why people like rushing and finishing each match in a few minutes. You don't get to enjoy the game, at least i don't.

That is because those that "rush" have no idea how to actually think for themselves...and they just try to memorize the first couple quick builds, and then just spam units, trying to overwhelm the opponent...a tactic of simpletons...similar to the brainless click fest of statecraft...where people just memorize build orders, and try to click spam, vs actually using their brains and figuring out cool tactics...that's why sup com faded away, because it was designed for thinking people, that liked to actually solve challenging problems, and figuring out new approaches...

[WingedKagouti]

Originally posted by Vonklyce:

Originally posted by Vanroyan:

While I do somewhat agree a late game can be fun, the thing is look at it like a boxing match. Both fighters try to win months before the actual game (in comparison you start planning your win when choosing a civ./map). They don't hold back either from the first second of the fight, they look for weaknesses, openings, an advantage, somewhere to pressure. RTSs, ALL OF THEM, are exactly the same. Try to deny your enemy map control and so resources or harass him so he is economically disadvantaged, micro your army to lessen his military strenght, etc.. RTSs (on a starting-to-decent skill level all the way to pro) are a fight to win, these aren't city builders. Of course that doesn't mean participating is more important, but why race cars? Why play golf? Why rap battle? To win in a thing you find fun and getting your arse kicked from the start isn't fun, neither is stomping others. That is why equal level fights are so entertaining, it can swing both ways at any moment, there is action from the get-go!

I kinda like your boxing analogy, but the way i see rushing in AoE, it's like when you expect your opponent to attack you with punches, but then he kicks your balls instead... in a boxing match, and then the referee says: "keep going, it was your fault for not see it coming".
But then you feel so angered by that unfairness, that you do the same and kick your next opponent's balls, and then your opponent kicks his next opponent's balls.

It's more like someone entering a MMA match expecting to win using the rules established by the Marquess of Queensberry for Boxing matches.

Rushing is a tool in RTS games, complaining about it is like complaining that your opponent in a fighting game is blocking your attacks and striking back when there's an opening.

[KnightSoul]

Maybe this kind of game is just not for me. AOE 2 was the first game i 've ever played in 1998. But now i like more slow based strategy games like Total War.