How do I Beat Back Rush Tactics?

[Baalz]

DryaUnda said:

The one of the things I'm having problems with. Any suggestions on holding back the running of the bulls?

Gah, I should almost certainly refrain from answering that at the moment, but I'd suggest looking through the fairly comprehensive list of suggestions for dealing with elephants and see if any of them seem likely to translate well to minotaurs. A lot of them won't, but some should.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...&Number=540554

Gah, I can't catch it, it's slipping out....

I'd set everybody towards the back of the battlefield and have your Augurs use body ethereal, body ethereal, then start with the evocation spells. This should hopefully buy you the time you need to bring down the minotaurs.

Shadow blasts should work reasonably well.

Flaming arrows will effect all those javelins.

[theenemy]

One tactic I like to use against rushers is the scout spam(maybe someone here has mentioned it already, I haven't read all posts). Like Baalz mentioned, rushers tend to be aggressive so they PROBABLY invest most of their resources into steamrolling you. They mostly don't care about PD.
So what I like to do is to build a lot of scouts and them into the rushers territory. Remember: An undefended province can be taken over even by a scout.
Then I buy some PD in the newly conquered provinces and laugh an evil laugh.
Hopefully this will get the rushers attention and make him turn back his armies to reconquer his provinces...unless of course he thinks that he can steamroll you anyway.
This is not some kind of perfect plan, but it has worked for me a couple of times.

[thejeff]

Baalz, I suspect you've got a particular situation in mind, so those may be valid suggestions there, but I keep seeing things like this suggested for dealing with rushes.

As I understand the term, a rush is real early. First year, at least.
Flaming Arrows, Shadow blasts, etc, require quite a bit of research. Those are great mid-game counter for Minotaurs, etc, but they're hardly going to be available in time to stop an early rush.

[Agrajag]

theenemy said:
One tactic I like to use against rushers is the scout spam(maybe someone here has mentioned it already, I haven't read all posts). Like Baalz mentioned, rushers tend to be aggressive so they PROBABLY invest most of their resources into steamrolling you. They mostly don't care about PD.
So what I like to do is to build a lot of scouts and them into the rushers territory. Remember: An undefended province can be taken over even by a scout.
Then I buy some PD in the newly conquered provinces and laugh an evil laugh.
Hopefully this will get the rushers attention and make him turn back his armies to reconquer his provinces...unless of course he thinks that he can steamroll you anyway.
This is not some kind of perfect plan, but it has worked for me a couple of times.

I'm guessing that most players buy at least 1-3 PD in each province (and all players should), which should be enough to repel a single scout. And even if your method works, he'll just buy another point or two of PD (after he sees one province conquered, that is.) in every other province and the scout rush has been averted.
I don't even think the rusher will be in any financial difficulty, since he did use his rush strategy to capture a lot of surrounding provinces which gives a nice boost to your economy.

[vfb]

DryaUnda said:

The one of the things I'm having problems with. Any suggestions on holding back the running of the bulls?

MA Ermor, right?

You can try a few Behemoths with body ethereal and luck cast on them, backed up by archers and skelly spam. Minotaurs have low defense and low attack, so they should be vulnerable to being trampled themselves.

You don't need that many Behemoths, six is lots probably.

Edit: Just to clarify, this is advice for your current situation, not for a general early Pan minotaur rush.

Edit again: Whoops, got the Era confused, thought you were MA. If you were, you'd probably have your own blessed vestals to counter with anyway. Back to the drawing board.

Edit again: Have you tried Equites? They have a lance for good damage, and high defense, and they are the same size as minotaurs, so they won't be trampled.

You could also try backing up the Equites with Stellar Cascades. Since there are 2 minotaurs to a square, 1 cast should affect 10 minotaurs. If you can bring two S2 casters for every 10 minotaurs, that should be more than enough. (One Elder casting Northern Star, and the rest Augers would be good).