How do I Beat Back Rush Tactics?

[Baalz]

thejeff said:
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.

True, I was referring to a particular scenarios (he's EA Ermor around the beginning of year three), but to be honest I don't really see minotaurs being a viable rush (as in first year) option. The reason is because they really need critical mass to be effective. They have no shield, light armor, and no defense to speak of. They've got decent hitpoints, but they have to inflict a lot of damage real fast so the battle is over before those hitpoints run out. Heck, 10 minotaurs probably can't take out the PD on most people's capital (compare to 500 gold worth of other units used for rushing). For the same reason this means minotaurs are poor choices for initial expansion which makes them very difficult to mass in the first year. Minotaurs come into their own when you can field groups of 30+ buffed by haste though. Against human sized opponents this is really where you need a counter, before that point they're not terribly scary.

PS, thought of another counter for EA Ermor (and others) - don't they have fairly high defense cavalry? Won't help you at this point as your capital is sieged, but having the minotaurs run into those first should stop the trample and buy you the time to inflict damage.