Rise of Nations: Rushing Tips

What is a rush?

This is for all game enthusiasts who play Rise of Nations (and/or Thrones & Patriots). of the most effective strategies is speeding early on in the game. I shall put it down with pros & cons that I have experienced in the last 18 months of playing the game.

A rush is completed by immediately launching in to an assault & striking the opponent before they realizes what happened. They might be building the 5th farm, preparing to age, & boom! in comes your army from the darkness & takes his capital. Yeah... that is what I am speaking about.

How is it completed?

 simple . It is of the oldest tricks in the book.

Research Mil1 (some civs already come with this, you are lucky then). An alternate is to go Sci1, Mil1 (but I feel you finish up loosing precious timber)
Start scouting & build 2-3 villies & put at least on farming.

Build a barrack & start churning out Heavy Infantry (HI). Use the scout on auto, & HI created on micro to search for more ruins. Quickest way to build your resources.

Build at least three HI & start heading towards the general direction of your opponents capital. Ignore other cities, you will get to those later. In case you are unable to finding the capital, then only go for other cities.

Keep the unit queue in your barracks active. I aim for 6HI + 2LI (light infantry to take out archers). For speed you can do 5HI + 1LI as well.
The minute you find the capital, use all soldiers to assault the capital. Watch out for towers & archers.

Keep an eye out for the opponent's barracks. In case you have been fast , then they ought to be constructing it right now. Use HI to tear the construction down (but this is not your priority, the capital is).

That ought to do, you will get the capital sack (+500 resources). In case you think that you can hold onto this city (i.e in case you have suffered minimal damages, then continue churning more LI (2-3) & some bowmen. Then age. In case you think you are going to lose the city, then start razing resources (timber first, farms next, temple, market, university in that order)

Counter

Go Mil1 & build a barracks.

You can counter a rush. Here's how -

In the barracks build 1-2 archers.

Build a tower behind your capital. With behind I mean, keep the capital between the tower you build & the direction from which you most expect the assault from.

Focus on booming & aging to the next age. Post which the first research ought to be attrition in the tower

Pros

If completed properly, you can now use the existing resources as a launchpad for the next opponent. I have seen players do double & triple rushes even taking out two players in a go.

War happens far away from your capital leaving you with a busy resource churning capital. In the least it cripples the opponent & makes him ultra-paranoid.

If countered well, you are left with a crippled economy & defenseless. It takes a nice player to come out of this situation. In case you are attacked by another player when your army is attacking someone else, then its bye-bye capital & without a city  immediate loss.

Cons

In the screenshot I have attached, I was six times playing a 1-1 Arena match against a Hard comp (piece of cake). I started out with resources & a nice civ (Turks - faster assimilation). I was six times unable to finding the capital, so I took the city I could find (see the minimap). Then I got to see the border of the capital & moved towards that direction. By this time the Brit had made a barrack (+1 free archers). Fortunately I had six slingers to take on the archers. All is well:). By the seventh minute I had taken six cities & game over.