[Baalz]

See, the thing is I think this discussion is generally discounting the risk of rushing. Rushing has obvious advantages, which have been pointed out here. It also has *disadvantages* which are not taken into account. An elephant rush, as presented here, is not simply a bonus on top of what you were doing anyway to expand. If you're really pressing an early rush you're doing it at the expense of other expansion - pushing into another player's territory instead of taking easy indies. If you're supporting it with a pretender push you're sacrificing the other things a pretender could be doing for you. The relevant point here is that if the rush is successfully repulsed the rusher is now at a significant disadvantage. If you attack with a dragon pretender on turn 4 and I kill him, you're fairly crippled (long term). If you attack with 25 elephants and I manage to beat them with minimal losses you've just sacrificed 5+ expansion parties and all the relevant opportunity costs. The defender has several built in advantages. PD is an obvious one. Better research/income is generally another as the rusher uses mage turns and design points for rushing rather than growth. Having a chance to react is another one: if elephants attack my border territories I almost certainly have a turn or two to recruit/research specific counters before they threaten my capital. The rusher has advantages, the defender has different ones.

I think it's obvious that in a contest between equally skilled opponents you'll lose more than half the time if your opponent successfully applies a national strength (a strong early rush) against one of your national weaknesses (a slower start). I don't think this means that any nation with a slower start is horribly crippled, it's just one of the weaknesses that you have to consider in your overall plan. Some nations are fairly screwed if they are targeted by an early rush. Some nations have weak research and no astral/death magic and are screwed if they don't take an early lead. Some nations have very specific counters like anti undead/demon spells so they're very screwed if they happen to have a certain type of opponent at a certain stage of the game. Every nation has strengths and weaknesses and some of them are easier to use than others.

Not being able to rush/counter-rush does not mean a nation is crippled. In my experience there's a fairly good mix between the initial fast expander being able to translate that into a win and the tortoises being able to pass the gasping sprinters as they brightly burn out. Being the defender has it's own advantages, and if you're able to capitalize on them you can show the rusher what he's given up to be able to rush.