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Obake  Re: Monk Rush 
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OK, here's my perspective from both sides of the coin. I have successfully defended against the monk rush several times. I have also engaged in Monk rushing (friendly only) and have even been involved in a monk v. monk rush! (man was that a mess!)

The key to a successful monk rush is to accumulate as large an army of monks as possible! Choosing 10WM's at H2 is a sure way to die quick as a rusher. Shum's suggestion is much more valid on the 5k koku limit (16wm's varying in honor between 0 and 1). This is usually what I see from monkey rushers. 

The key to defeating the rush is to deploy well back in your setup zone, archers forward. 
Make sure that you have a MINIMUM of 4 archer units (H2)and 2Mu's. 
(I will typically take 3 H-0 Mu's since honor bonuses do NOT affect gun accuracy!) 
Make sure that your archers are set to skirmish so they will fall back on their own when rushed. 
Your primary hth troops should be a core of monks as well (4 is a good number, usually at 1 honor). This will enable you to pin, even if temporarily, the enemy monks at first contact. 
The balance of the army should consist of ND's on the wings and maybe some H2 Nag's and/or a couple of YS. 

As the initial wave of monks gets pinned by your monks, the ND on the sides swing in and flank while the nags move in to support your monks and the archers continue to fire into the mass of enemy monks! If their monks are of low enough honor(0), they may even route before they get to you!(It's true, I've lived to tell the tale).

Low honor monk armies rely heavily on closing ground fast and hitting hard! 
All it takes to beat them is to not give in to the psychological pressure of having 1000 monks running at you, Weaken their assault with jabs while they charge by maintaining your distance and lastly, hit back just as hard if not harder than they hit you!

Of course this won't work everytime, no tactic will! But this should enable you to win more rushes than you lose. And Barocca.........Shum's right! You'll never get a good rush from the AI, even on expert. I agree with him that you should get online and find someone who will show you how a good rush works in a friendly game!
 

I have over-simplified the situation. All that was done was provide a framework for many to build on. Defending against a monk rush is as much of an art as a good monk rush can be and will take many attempts, much thought, and a strong consititution to digest before one becomes proficient at it.

From my perspective, with all the new players being subjected to monk rushes, and adopting those same tactics; there is no loss of honor in helping those same players avoid the pitfalls of the monk rush!

Obake 

We live in a world where the sons and daughters of lions have become sheep. 
I choose to remain a lion! 

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There is some dissent about wether or not Honour affects Musket effectiveness.
I'll update here as more opinions or proof's one way or the other roll In.

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Fire...

...within minutes we fled...