How To Counter A Tower Rush “Trush”

The Trush or Tower Rush is an aggressive ‘old-school’ strategy – The aim of this strategy is to deny you from taking essentially forward resources and put a delay in your economy as well.

Before we get to countering the Trush, you should learn the clues of a trush.

To spot a Trusher in Age of Empires 2. You should learn how to scout. So what should you be looking for when you are scouting a trusher?

• Stone miners at 08:00 mins (Ingame time) If your opponent is playing as Mongols ==>Stone miners at 06:55 mins.
• Only 3, 4 or 5 Maximum Lumberjacks at 8:05 mins.
• Dead wolf body in explored areas of the map you had earlier scouted.

How To Deal With A Trush?

First off, Let’s start by putting some basics into perspective…

• Do you have Forward Gold and Stone piles?

Tip: Build your barracks in Front of them.

• Do you have a Forward Wood patch?

Tip: Always and First of all take wood at the Back of your town center.

• Do you randomly construct buildings? 

Tip: Construct your buildings Forward in a form of a Wall.

There are certainly many ways to which you can stop a Trush. And I going to be covering as many as possible.

Let’s learn how to defend a Trush…

Standard Economical Defensive Strategy

My personal favorite and by far the easiest and most successful. Especially when executed correctly.

This is a 22 pop standard scout rush build order. However, in the following example that you are about to see. Blue player built an archery range instead of a stable. Why? The Red player can NOT invest in an early skirmisher war because he only has few lumberjacks and low food income.

Which makes sense.. As in, later on, The Blue player will only make archers and farms to get ahead.

Thanks to the forward barracks above, the Blue Player was able to spot the first tower from Red Player

Straight-up here is how Blue player reacted to that tower:

• Queued 2 Militias at the barracks.
• Sent 3 more villagers + 2 builders which are a total of 5 villagers.
• Uses the scout carefully Not to lose it so he picks off running injured villagers.

Here are the results:

Seeing that he was winning the fight and denying an enemy building. He instantly sent 4 villagers to mine gold while he already built an archery range when the fight was taking place.

At this point, If you were the Blue player you would think that red would not Trush you anymore? Well! That’s wrong!

Blue Player is an experienced player and He most certainly has played many Trushers before.

See what he did there? In the other side of the map where his lumberjacks are chopping trees. Blue player built an outpost in anticipation of another Trush attempt. Very small trick but It is certainly annoying for a Trusher to get busted by outposts.

The blue player also used the palisade wall trick to spot the second Trush attempt Without any scouting information.

He was aware that Red player is slowly building towers towards his gold miners. So Blue player intentionally and smartly lets Red player waste stone on towers

Once the Red player has finished building his ‘secret’ towers. Only now Blue player starts building a defensive tower

It is 22:00 mins (Ingame) And Blue player has already clicked Castle Age with 17 farms, 12 lumberjacks, 9 gold miners, and 3 stone miners. The score difference is huge. Clearly Blue is the obvious winner in this game.

Could you be asking for any happier ending?

The bottom line is you can go further than just defeating a Trush if you intelligently execute the strategy. Watch this recorded game [1.5 RC patch R5]

Busted! “I See Your Trush Mate!”

A Trush is originally meant to be secretly executed. Therefore, once It is detected – The chances of its success are less probable.

That is why sometimes just by Scouting your opponent mining stone OR Seeing forwarding villagers heading towards your town.

Your enemy might just give up his Trush and resigns OR return home to play defensive.

The Trushee Becomes The Trusher

The Trusher might hypothetically say “I will trush the woodline, berries and the main gold. And as long as I am doing my thing my town will remain safe.” He may not type that to you in chat though.

But that’s a fact! When an aggressive player is putting pressure. He only expects defensive reactions from the opponent.

Now, how about exceeding his expectations and execute The Trush yourself?

Trush his stone miners, his berries OR Wood line. He will be forced off Trushing your town. Instead, He will go back home and put defensive towers.

You can do something like that if you feel that your opponent does not match your multitasking skills or his macro is just the worst.

Be The Smart Tower Guy

Another option is while you are doing a standard 22 pop build order. You also add 4 stone miners and try to defend against his towers with efficiently positioned towers.

Meantime, you are spamming lots of farms.

• By 16 mins research wheelbarrow
• By 17 mins you should have at least 15 farms.
• At 20, 21 or 22 mins you should be able to click castle age With 6 Lumberjacks, 11 gold miners, 16 farms, 1 stone miner.
• While going up to castle age:
• Send a forward villager nearby the enemy’s base.
• Build 2 stables.
• Upgrade Gold.
• Upgrade plate armor at The Blacksmith, and Bloodlines at the stable.

When you reach Castle age:

• Use the forward villager to build a siege workshop and queue rams or mangonels (if the enemy has archers preferably mangonels then repair them using villagers).
• Queue knights from both stables.
• Upgrade chain barding armor at the Blacksmith.

Once chain barding armor is completed. Use your knights to get as many villagers kill as possible (ignore Town center or tower fire) Your knights absorb a lot of arrows and essentially take longer to die.

When there is nothing to kill OR the enemy has way too many spears just retreat to spam more knights.

Eventually, if you play it cleverly the win is yours.