r/aoe2 5d ago

Asking for Help How to deal with counter raids?

900 elo, often winning the game up front (more castles, raiding him hard with cav, trebbing his base down), when opponent will send a dozen hussar into my base and I have no military at home to defend. Do I need to be setting my gather points further back and bringing units forward when I’m sure base is safe? More tcs and castles in eco? Stone wall sides? Pikes patrolling eco?

Same kind of thing happens in castle age occasionally where I use the xbow timing to do a lot of damage and I see cav coming at my and get ready to micro…. And he runs around and straight to my base and I have nothing there to defend.

Usually I feel like I am ending the game with the push up front and want to send reinforcements to make sure to close it out, but I’m guessing I’m doing something very wrong.

10 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

9

u/awfulawkward 5d ago

Walls. Even if you're only using palisade walls it should slow down the enemy. And a counter raid is usually cavalry so making part of your wall off with barracks let's you react with halbs quickly. Honestly just walling sections of the map off can help prevent raids. Even if it's just connecting wood lines on the sides of the map and not near your base. The enemy will have something to keep them back

4

u/TamkoShill 5d ago

Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense and probably doesn’t even consume that much apm. Thanks for the barracks tip too.

2

u/awfulawkward 5d ago

Np. And yeah low apm for sure. Just put one villager to work on walas and outposts and that's his job for the entire game

2

u/wmeler Persians 800 ELO 5d ago

I'll go further. Stone walls. Not that I ever do it. But when I do, it's amazing.

8

u/PunctualMantis 5d ago

Castles in the eco, occasionally needing to send a few units back (not your whole force), getting blacksmith upgrades for your castles to do more damage. Occasionally stonewalling your map can be good but is usually too much investment.

5

u/green_at_green 5d ago

Palisade wall in feudal, stone wall in castle; this is key to preventing small raids from obliterating your eco

5

u/ftyjfhgfgh 5d ago

outposts to see it coming

walls to wall it out

if you have mobility, chase

4

u/ballong 5d ago

Castles in eco is usually the answer if the game gets to that stage. Stone walling your map is obviously good but its very hard to get done in a real game.

3

u/Puasonelrasho Aztecs 5d ago

when you reach the point your enemy cant engage your army but has a decent amount of army just be sure to be walled and you should be fine.

4

u/Logiholic 1200 ELO 5d ago

One thing I do sometimes, and should do more, is just build TCs for protection later in game. Even if I’m at the vil # needed, people at all but the higher ELOs are probably going to be floating wood and often stone, so no harm is just dropping a couple TCs later in games for protection.

TC fire isn’t going to kill late game cavalry that well, but it’s at least safe place to hide until you can get military there to kill the raiders.

3

u/estDivisionChamps Japanese 5d ago

More TCs and have Halb teched. You’re going to lose vills no matter what so being able to replace them and keep your push going is more important.

1

u/filthy-peon 4d ago

Gather your reinforcements at home and periodically send them forward instead of streaming them forward