.If you are going to play against good players the first thing you must learn is how to handle the rush. In my estimation, the AoK DM rush is not as powerful as the AoE/RoR DM rush where forward building was a much more effective ploy. Painting barracks and stables all over the map is just not as sound a tactic in AoK due to the following factors:

• Unbuilt foundations can be built over and crossed over preventing advancing villagers from building
• Multiple villagers must be sent as packs of wolves will devour even a pair of villagers before they get to their destination.
• Buildings take longer to build than in AoE/RoR - not much relatively speaking but putting more villagers on the job doesn't decrease the time to build as much as it did in AoE/RoR.
• Unit queues and gather points allow you to train camels and horsemen and automatically route them to the opposing town.

Still, a Frankish paladin rush and/or a Chinese camel/cavalier rush can be deadly and on an open map it could be curtains for you quickly as even if you take the proper preparations, you can still be overrun - especially, if a rushing foe gets collaboration from an ally. Frankish paladins have 192 hit points, the Chinese get 3 extra villagers and their town center supports 10 population (all other civilization town centers only support 5 unit population) so these 2 civilizations as a rule are the "rush" civilizations, but any civilization in AoK can pull off a rush with a savvy and astute player at the helm. So, as a public service to all the arduous, aspiring learning deathmatchers out there, I am going to give you some tips on how to handle the initial onslaught. By following these simple steps, give yourself and your team better chances for victory.

1. Your first villagers build orders should be for a house and for a set of stables/barracks. Stables for those civilizations that can train camels, barracks for those civilizations without paladins and camels. You need to build houses before additional town centers because of the time required to build a another town center. Put your 5th or 6th villager on an additional town center. As soon as barracks and/or stables are constructed, start queing camels, paladins and pikemen. I'm sure that most are aware that pikemen get bonuses against mounted units and are a lot more effective than their displayed statistics would indicate.
   
   
2. Don't venture too far out to build your initial buildings. More time walking means less time building and greater time duration until you have adequate defensive forces. Also, don't build all the structures next to eachother - have a villager build a stable at 9 o'clock, and 2 others build a pair at 4 o'clock for instance. This is to ensure that if you get swarmed and lose some villagers and maybe even a stable or barracks, that you still have the ability to keep training units.
   
   
3. Once you have a steady stream of villagers being created at multiple town centers, then you can dedicate villagers to towers and walls. Before you have more than one town center constructed, focus on military buildings and castles. Walls are not complete answers and you will want to put a gate in your walls for your units to be able to pass through and strike at enemy siege units, but they will slow an enemy down and keep your villagers collecting resources safe from danger. Bombard towers do the trick better, and even if you are playing a civilization that cannot build bombard towers, you can arrange several towers together to achieve the same defensive effect.
   
   
4. After you lay your initial stables and barracks (4-6 total combined) get a couple of castles built. You will need some sort of siege soon as even if you repel the initial rush, a good player is going to have a castle with its trebuchet output in your neighborhood shortly. You also might see a wave of champions flood your town also, making your camels and pikemen useless. While your camels, paladins, and even infantry units can take down his trebuchets, you will need siege to eliminate the castles, towers, and town centers that will be popping up in the vicinity and archers and castle arrow fire to repel advancing champions.
   
   
5. Stagger the location of your military buildings - erect a castle, houses, town center, and a few stables and/or barracks in the rear or flank of your town along with the ones you build in your town or near the frontlines. This way, even if you are overrun, you can retreat the surviving units from the frontline and merge them with recently trained units in the rear and launch a successful counterattack.
   
   
6. Use the patrol command to give units an order to patrol an area for enemy presence. Watch your flanks and keep vigilant watch on the "backdoor". If your patrolling units discover the enemy, make sure your target any of their villagers first - only exception would be if their trebuchets were unpacked and inflicting damage on your towers, castles, or walls.
   
   
7. Communicate with your allies. If you are battling against 2 enemy civilizations, let them know immediately. Even if they are ill prepared to come to your aid, this information may enable them to strike at the enemy helper civilization - if he has devoted a lot of resources at helping his ally at blitzing you, then that means he may have inadequate defensive forces at his own town.
   
   
8. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. If you are getting rushed, then you won't be able to rush your opponent from the direction he is attacking. But that doesn't mean you can't swing some ships around (on maps with some water) and land a transport ship or blast away at his town with cannon galleons. Or you can slide around the map edge and erect a few castles and stables next to his town. Or come at him from behind after taking a zigzag direction around him. Speaking from my own personal experience as a Chinese player putting the pressure on a foe early, I can say that a rusher sometimes is so focused on driving you back, he neglects proper defense setup or securing resources (i.e. mines ...) because he feels he is close to eliminating his opponent.
   
   
9. Mine your gold and stone as quick as you can. With the new gather point feature - being able to assign "unborn" villagers miner duty before they are even created means there is no excuse for losing unmined gold. If you are fighting and replenishing your forces, you are going to need it soon enough. And if you're not using your resources, something is wrong - you should be fighting somebody somewhere as if you are not, your allied partners are taking abuse somewhere else.
   
   
10. If your town is indeed taken, don't despair. If you followed all these pointers here, it is doubtful that you were completely annihilated, and if you were it probally was the effect of multiple foes combining their efforts on punishing you or just the random bad luck to start too close to a Chinese foe. Make sure you save what villagers you can and rebuild - take cover under protection of your allies - but get busy rebuilding your army and get those trade carts going as you're going to be in the hole as far as resources go and your allies arn't going to appreciate you mooching off of them for very long.
    
    

Good luck and I hope these little tips help your game. See you on the deathmatch battlefields.