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

What is a rush?

A rush is done by immediately launching into an attack and striking the opponent before he realizes what just happened. He might be building the 5th farm, getting ready to age, and boom! in comes your army from the darkness and takes his capital. Yeah … thats what I am talking about.

How is it done?

Pretty simple really. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.

1. Research Mil1 (some civs already come with this, you are lucky then). An alternate is to go Sci1, Mil1 (but I feel you end up loosing precious timber)
2. Start scouting and build 2-3 villies and put atleast one on farming
3. Build a barrack and start churning out Heavy Infantry (HI). Use the scout on auto, and HI created on micro to search for more ruins. Fastest way to build your resources.
4. Build atleast 4 HI and start heading towards the general direction of your opponents capital. Ignore other cities, you will get to those later. If you are not able to find the capital, then only go for other cities.
5. 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.
6. The minute you find the capital, use all soldiers to attack the capital. Beware of towers and archers.
7. Keep an eye out for the opponent’s barracks. If you have been fast enough, then he should be constructing it right now. Use one HI to tear the construction down (but this is not your priority, the capital is)
8. That should do, you will get the capital sack (+500 resources). If you think that you can hold onto this city (i.e if you have suffered minimal damages, then continue churning more LI (2-3) and some bowmen. Then age. If you think you are going to loose the city, then start razing resources (timber first, farms next, temple, market, university in that order)

Counter

You can counter a rush. Here’s how -

1. Go Mil1 and build a barracks
2. Build a tower behind your capital. With behind I mean, keep the capital between the tower you build and the direction from which you most expect the attack from.
3. In the barracks build 1-2 archers
4. Focus on booming and aging to the next age. Post which the first research should be attrition in the tower

Pros

1. If done properly, you can now use the existing resources as a launchpad for the next opponent. I have seen players do double and triple rushes even taking out 3 players in a go
2. War happens far away from your capital leaving you with a busy resource churning capital
3. In the least it cripples the opponent and makes him ultra-paranoid

Cons

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

In the screenshot I have attached, I was playing a 1-1 Arena match against a Tough comp (piece of cake). I started out with enough resources and a good civ (Turks – faster assimilation). I was not able to find the capital, so I took the city I could find (see the minimap). Then I got to see the border of the capital and moved towards that direction. By this time the Brit had made a barrack (+1 free archers). Fortunately I had 2 slingers to take on the archers. All is well . By the seventh minute I had taken 2 cities and game over.

Seasoned players, feel free to chip in.

Vipul says (and I agree) -

If you see that the map is a sea map and you have already started plans for the rush, then you need to change strategies a little bit. You need to go for a delayed rush, and switch from pure rushing to delayed rush and booming.