Of all the people I've played with among TWers, nobody really seems to know how to flush (feudal rush) so I figured I'd make a guide for it.

So, when should you flush?

This isn't a simple question to answer. In 1v1s and 2v2s, as a general rule, you should rush every game. If you want to fast castle, you can rush in the dark ages using militia (drush) while you obtain enough villagers for your fast castle. If you don't want to rush with militia, you should do a feudal rush.

In 3v3s and 4v4s, players are either adjacent to one teammate and one enemy, or adjacent to two teammates. If you're adjacent to two teammates (pocket), you should not rush, and instead fast castle, and then either boom or send knights to your allies or opponents, depending on the situation. (There are other fast castle strategies that work as well, but long swordsmen rushes are not one of them).

Everyone here seems to know the gist of how to fast castle, so I won't deal with that in this post. Instead, I intend on dealing with feudal rushing.


Who should you rush?

You want to rush the enemy player who is nearest to you. In 1v1s, this is obvious. In 2v2s, there will be one enemy adjacent to you and one roughly diagonal to you. You should rush the one adjacent to you, as your troops can reach them sooner and you can send them back home to defend more quickly as well. In 3v3s and 4v4s, the same logic applies. Of course, if there are huge differences in skill level amongst the players, it's probably better to rush the most dangerous player first, but typically players will be at roughly the same skill level.

How do you feudal rush?

This is where civilization bonuses and tech trees come into play. Certain civilizations may be missing major castle age upgrades or have bonuses that favor a certain unit line. I will list all of the popular feudal rushes though:

1. Spear/skirmisher rush. In this rush, you should be advancing to feudal on 20-21 villagers. Spear/skirmisher rushes may seem ineffective, but what this rush accomplishes is distract your opponent from his economy (economic upgrades, villager production, idle villagers). You should remember that villagers will easily win battles against spear/skirmisher armies, so your goal should be to continually hit and run, to distract him as much as possible. Almost invariably, you will want to eventually transition into archers, because they deal 2-3 times more damage to villagers and scouts.

2. Scout rush. In this rush, people typically advance to feudal on 21-23 villagers (usually 21). Scout rushes are much, much more dangerous than spear/skirmisher rushes. They get wrecked by spears, but they have 2 pierce armor and are much faster than archers. They're also much faster than villagers, and with each hit dealing at least 4 damage to villagers, you can quickly snipe villagers and run away before his spears can do much. After a scout rush, players may advance to castle age or begin making archers (which counter the spears).

3. Archer rush. This is a more difficult rush to pull off, because it requires quite a few gold miners, which don't help with your wood/food economy that you need in order to make buildings and villagers. However, archers deal quite a bit more damage to villagers and kill off barracks units very easily. You will usually want to include a few spears as well, to deal with scouts.

Those are the three most common rushes, with some variations, such as building a watch tower behind the forest they're chopping.


Feudal rushes can be very effective if done early enough, but it's important to make sure the opponent hasn't walled. For example, if somebody fully walls their base with palisades, your scouts are useless, because they can't get in, and they can't even prevent villagers from repairing the wall.

That's why it's important to constantly scout your opponent to gauge what his plan is. For example, if you see villagers on gold, he's either going to fast castle or rush you with archers. If you see him making a ton of farms in the dark ages, he's probably going to rush you with scouts. (It requires 13 farms to maintain scout & villager production simultaneously).

How do I set up my economy for my feudal rush?

It depends on your strategy. For a scout rush, it's helpful to hunt deer and make a lot of farms. For a spear/skirm rush, you need more wood and less food. For an archer rush, you need less food, more wood, and more gold collectors.

One last note, when you're rushing, it's tempting to focus completely on your rush and neglect your town at home. DON'T. It defeats the entire purpose of your rush. You should hotkey the units you're rushing with so that you can easily find them and control them. Then, you want to hit and run. When you run, you should go back to your town center, make sure it's still making villagers, and put any idle villagers to work. Then press the number your army is hotkeyed to, hit space, and continue microing.

My thoughts:
1. Never "drush", with very few exceptions. Dark Age military just isn't worth it.
2. Archer rushes are the best, with Skirmishers mixed in. You aren't interested in killing everything, just harassing and disrupting their economy. Ranged units are better for this because it's harder for villagers to fight back and because a quick poke will often cause a villager's AI to leave whatever they're doing.
3. Towers are very good. Bring several villagers along (you should have already to forward-build your military buildings), and start towering near their gold/stone.

How to fight off a FLUSH:
1. First and foremost: THOROUGH SCOUTING. If you keep tabs on their base it can become obvious if they're planning to rush.
2. Building houses (and maybe even watchtowers) at range around your base in likely places that the enemy will forward build at. Use them to extend your vision.
3. Creative palisades. Don't be afraid to spam this ****. Build double or triple thickness. Start walling off chokepoints between your base and the enemies early. Wall around your gold guys. Wall between houses just outside of the farms around your TC. Do it everywhere. Don't waste stone on stone walls in Feudal unless it's really necessary.
4. Fight back will villagers. This isn't easy but is worth it. Focus fire on enemy units if they get too close to your guys.
5. Harvest some stone and build a tower or two.
6. Counter-attack. Often rushers are using a very unforgiving build order and aren't equipped to deal with any kind of disruption of their econ. Even just a few units in their wood line can totally **** them up.
7. Move. This is helpful if someone is spamming towers around your base. Towers are immobile. If your gold is towered, sneak off and find another gold mine far away.

source: I invented the FLUSH. I'm not even joking. (this doesnt mean I'm an expert now, though. I'm too old to be actually competitive in a game anymore. Plus I have a kid)

while on the subject of forwarding: don't forward if you're scout rushing. scouts are extremely mobile and can travel across the map quite quickly. typically when you forward you want to start with an archery range + tower on their wood. THEN WALL IT OFF. if you don't, your enemy will just rush your tower with his vils and destroy it.

how to counter a forward:
1. first send an army to his base. when players forward, they are counting on keeping the battle in your base.
2. use vils to destroy his tower. wall his archery ranges. (if you do this, the archery ranges cannot produce units, only garrison them.