Burmese Rush (Brush)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

This was an idea that I played around with a year or two ago, then forgot about when I couldn’t make it work. Today I tried it again. The strategy utilizes three of the Burmese bonuses to work properly, making it basically only possible with them without extreme luck. Here’s how it ideally goes:

To start with, build two houses like usual. Send the sheep to the TC like usual, but instead of sending all three villagers to the sheep after the houses, send only one, queuing five villagers to the sheep. Send the other two villagers to build a Barracks after the houses, then send them to straggler trees.

At the same time, use the Relic locations to quickly locate the opponent as soon as possible, while queuing up three Militia. Create villagers and send them to wood or gold as needed.

Once you’ve located the opponent, attack them with the Militia. If you encounter more resistance than wanted, wait until the Feudal Age and then attack them again. Alternatively, you could also wait until the Feudal Age hits for them to arrive, but then you lose the element of surprise. Either way, they gain extra attack in Feudal, making them more dangerous. If villagers are still on straggler trees at this time, they gain the Lumber Camp upgrades for free.

After the initial attack, you can choose to continue with the all-in infantry aggression, or simply sit back and take a more relaxed approach, doing whatever strategy afterwards.

If executed correctly, you can tell exactly where the opponent is right off the bat, can attack them with infantry very quickly, and said infantry becomes extra powerful after reaching Feudal, making them more dangerous. Probably the only other civs that could pull off a similar strategy would be the Vietnamese or Magyars, but skipping the Lumber Camp in Dark Age is a bad idea for them.

Anyway, I think this strategy can be optimized and improved until the Burmese become the next Sicilians.

2

I’m a little confused. Are you talking about militia right away in minute one? You can’t put 2 on sheep, gather wood, build barracks, queue up militia and keep villager production afterwards. This pre-lumber drush needs a civ like Lithuanians or Persians, Burmese have no benefit for it.

This is the part where Burmese have some bonus and this drush referred to as french drush nowadays happens often but vills are mostly not going to be on stragglers yet with this build. Its going to be a regular lumber camp in this build.

Again I’m not sure what you imply here. Sicilians are a very weak civ, one of the worst civs for this kind of a build. No bonus for this.

The feudal drush strategy is good with many civs that get a dark age eco benefit. However the 2nd minute barracks and drush under 5 min is a very risky strategy. The damage you might be able to do compared to the damage this build does to your eco may not be in your favor. On an average you’d just force a slightly earlier loom but delay yourself quite a bit in return.

3

No, but as soon as you can afford it while still being economically stable. It’s an all-in strategy, so it’s risky.

You build Barracks after the houses and then put the builders on straggler trees. You don’t produce the Militia right away, but having a Barracks at the start reduces the wait time when you’re able to afford it.

What I mean is that it’s an all-in strategy that the opponent has difficulty responding to.

I’ll have to practice more and do more theorycrafting, but I feel like it’s definitely possible to perform a lightning fast drush while still having a stable economy.

4

I think better to do the 2021 pre-mill drush. This type of instant barrack build with 0 dark age bonus civ might be ok for some other maps but not Arabia.

So do you mean like very early drush and then keep making more on the way to feudal, get supplies etc? All-in strats usually keep doing a lot of the same unit or have a follow-up like forward castle drop or rams with repair vills. I’m not able to see what’s that for a fast drush.

You might find a sweet spot where you’re able to hit opponent base under 6 min. But my first question is it worth doing something like this in general. Mostly you’d force some idle time and make your opponent get loom early. But on the contrary you might have pushed just 1 deer, might get delayed by a minute to feudal. Maybe this is good on socotra or something. For Arabia I’m not sure if there’s any merit to produce militia that fast for a regular follow-up.

1 Like
5

Have you tried it on ladder?

6

No, I haven’t, because I’ve never played on the ladder.

7

Bring your strat to the true test, if you somehow think it’s viable.

8

I want to practice it first more and get a good rhythm down. But also my internet connection tends to be very unstable, or I would’ve started playing on ranked a lot earlier.

9

Yeah maybe win vs Extreme AI with it first

10

I can’t even beat the Extreme AI under normal circumstances.

11

This strategy looks forced because there is no reason why this strategy would work better with Burmese than other early game infantry civs like Celts, Romans, Japanese, Malians.
So ths is very different from the Youpudding and Hoang strategies: even if your strat works, it will mainly promote other civs.

Regarding Burmese, I feel that they are fine, despite their playrate. The “main problem” with Burmese is that to most players they feel overshadowed by “better civs” on the usual maps. Just like HD incas felt like a worse version of Aztecs/Mayans.

Players also seem to panic about Burmese lacking archer armor But this “xbow weakness” feels very exagerated to me and is nothing like the “knight weakness” of Dravidians or the “Onagers weakness” of chinese.