Ok, I have a lvl 10 Ottoman HC and I really don't like to rush. I like the ottomans because of their unique units, not because of their rushing style. Now that I am past the lvl 0-5 range where I would usually be fighting inexperienced players, I find myself fighting a lot of expert rushers. By expert rushers, I mean people that roll in with 33+ strelets or 16+ janissaries near the 5 minute mark. Since many experienced players know that the best way to beat the ottomans is to rush them (or double rush... quiver), I have had to face this MANY times so far. Which brings me to the point of this post.
How can I counter this EFFECTIVELY?
I know I could follow the rush build order and have the same fighting force as my opponent, but that really isn't and effective counter, it's just equal. Yes, I could add a few towers to the mix, but they really don't amount to enough of a threat to the enemy who is mostly after my villies.
First things first, set all but one villie to hunt, and let that 1 leftover villie gather the crates. After the crates are gathered, send him to build HOUSES. Now you're thinking "I'm ottoman, I need a mosque" but you don't. Your TC will still produce villies without a mosque, so you don't NEED it until you hit the 25 villie cap. After you finish with the houses, you should task that vil to wood, because you need wood to build a barrack/artillery foundry. All new villies should be tasked to hunt. Age up ASAP and choose the 500 wood option. I'm not sure about shipments yet, and your explorer should be exploring and gathering treasures. Now we get to the theoretical part. Since we want abus guns, we need lots of coin and plenty of pop room which is why we built so many houses at first. We need to retask villies from food to coin. Put half of your villies on coin and half on food and leave the one guy on wood as your builder. New villies should be tasked 1:1 coin:food. Try to get as much food and coin as possible because as soon as you age up you want to be able to build as many Janissaries and Abus guns as possible. At Age up grab the wood with one villie and build your barracks and artillery foundry, and make sure you have 5 houses. As soon as your military buildings are up you want to que up as many abus guns and janissaries as you possibly can, with more focus on abus guns. You should hope to build ~10+ abus guns and ~5+ janissaries ASAP. Now that's at least 1000 food + 1125 coin + 25 pop cost... which brings me to the next subject. Shipments are Very Important! The rush should hit you right around the same time as the third shipment so you will have to be very careful and quick. After you finish paying for your anti rush army you will need to task all new villies to wood for a while so you can build more houses, a mosque and a market. This should give you a total fighting force of 11+ janisaries and 10+ abus guns, which should take care of any possible rush. Focus fire your abus guns in groups of 5 for the best effect. The idea here is to train abus guns and grenadiers at about a 1:1 ratio. Of course you will need to ship in janissaries too, but that is a given. Unit costs are 50 food + 100 coin + 2 pop and 120 food + 60 coin + 2 pop. This build order requires equal amounts of food and coin so task your villies in equal amounts to those resources. Both abus guns and grenadiers are listed as anti infantry, so this army should counter most any rush. One benefit of this build order is that you can very effectively use it to destroy forward bases after you fend off the rush. Thank you and Good Luck! [This message has been edited by justiw (edited 10-28-2005 @ 12:35 PM).]
My first idea is to use the ottoman anti-infantry unit, the abus gun. At 50 food + 100 coin + 2 pop this is going to be a tough build order.
1st shipment: 2 or 3 villie card depending on availability.
2nd shipment: 6 janissaries.
3rd shipment: 3 hussars, used against ranged infantry or as an early raid.
Pretty much Identical to the first one but instead of 1 barrack and 1 artillery foundry, you should do artillery only. This strategy doesn't force you to task as many villies to wood, but it will be very pop intensive. You will probably need 5 houses for this option, but since you are only building 1 military building, this shouldn't be that tough.
I hope you found what I said useful. I have tried this against an Ottoman rush and a Spanish rush so far. It was highly effective as my kill/death ratio was about 3! This is really cool because you can now use the remainder of your army to kill the forward base. If your enemy doesn't rush you, you have the perfect raiding party of your own! It's not going to completely wipe a town, but it will do a whole lot of economical damage, which should knock them down to your slowish Ottoman economy level. Never let yourself forget to build houses and a mosque either, otherwise your town will come to a grinding halt.