OTTOMAN JANISSARY RUSH
I’m an alright player, not a pro by any means but practicing hard.
HOWEVER, every single time I fight vs an Ottoman player I start to cry.
No matter what I try, the Janissary rush always beats me down, pretty much everyone as Ottoman use the same strategy:
- They age up around 30secs earlier than me in any civ.
- They start to mass Janissary until they have from 15 to 20 REAL fast.
- They combine it with either Abus guns or grenadiers.
Literally only 1 time I managed to counter attack his economy while defending my own town, in the end, not being able to manage a raid and protect his economy led to his doom.
I asked once a player who beat me on what could I do vs that type of rush, he replied that he has issues with light infantry mass and outposts/blockhouses, I’ve tried that since, but only got a little further before losing anyway.
So that’s why I better get suggestions and opinions from you guys, the community…
What Ottoman strategy has killed you the most?
- Janissary alone
- Hussars alone
- Abus guns alone
- Grenadiers alone
- Janissary + Abus guns
- Janissary + Grenadiers
- Janissary + Hussars
What main strategy has worked best for you?
What civ works the best/worst vs Ottomans?
Leave it up on the comments :3
Thanks for helping me out, cheers. 
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Any civ with Crossbows deals with Janissary Rush easily, the issue is when they bring in Abus Guns, because those destroy Crossbows.
British Longbowmen and Japanese Yumis, or Dutch Age 2 Skirms, all deal well with Ottomans.
French also deal easily with Ottos Jan + Abus, if you have the Early Skirmishers card, and Wilderness Warfare card.
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Certain civs have units that are fantastic vs heavy infantry, such as India (Urumis) and Aztecs (Jaguar Prowl Knights). You can do a FF and then pop these out and decimate a Jan mass, then he will have a hard time recovering from it, as you will have most of your units left and he will have none and be stuck in Age 2. You need to think ‘what power unit can I get that will decimate age 2 Jannisaries’. Lancers and Tokala have cards which make them kill heavy infantry really fast, ‘counter infantry rifling’, an aresenal improvement, also helps kill them fast. Colonial Militia card and colonial militia itself for 400 food/gold does a great job also. If you hide your villagers on the sides of the map (which is what people mean by ‘booming’ I think) you can keep resources coming in while getting jan rushed. As French you can send pioneers and research great coat and attack upgrades for villagers at the market and actually use them to help defend vs a Jan rush. Don’t forget otto is EXTREMELY vulnerable to a counter raid on his villagers, (they can dish it out but they cant take it) they won’t have great coat so they die fast, if you run your forces into his base and he pulls back, he will often have a hard time ever remounting an assault on your base.
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Against the ottomans, it’s important to keep in mind that if they are rushing, they are going to have a weak follow up, so you want to play defensive and make choices that are going to let you defend in the short term, even if it means hurting yourself in the long term, because either way, you will be able to beat ottomans in a long term game. Jan abus is very difficult to beat in age 2, what I recommend is some type of skirm/ archer unit combined with hand cavalry, if you micro properly you can pick off jans without the abus massacring your archers, then, once they don’t have enough jans to protect the abus, you send in the hand cav to clean up the army, sending unit shipments is useful, and if you have to choice to idle your town center for a few seconds in order to get a full batch of units, go for the full batch of units, obviously you don’t want to idle your town center the whole time of course.
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