The idea of fast Imp is that you go up with lower eco, often you struggle affording all 3 relevant upgrades (Arbalest, Chemistry and Bracer) and must market abuse to get them. Keeping production can also be challenging.
In general, all-in like 5 Stable Cavalier, or mass Towers counter fast Imp into Arbalest pretty well. More often than not, the Arbalest player doesn’t have a Castle to follow up, either.
The game is working as intended, even “super fast Imp” like Saracens with heavy Market abuse or 1 TC Imp is very easily countered by Skirmisher spam.
Learn to scout & adapt.
Hand cannoneers are already viable and used a lot, especially on Arena but occasionally on Arabia too.
I don’t get why people hate so much on Arbalest, Knights are a much more oppressive unit, requiring basically no micro and being able to trade decently into same Age Pikeman-line. Arbalest power spikes are intended to keep the unit viable, that’s the whole point of the unit, if it’s not scary in early Castle and in early Imp, then literally Crossbow is good only at minorly harassing woodlines and that’s it, it dies to about every unit in the game, Skirms, Knights, Mangonels, you name it.
In general the Archer player being up sooner than the Knights player is intended and good design since Knights are both a more versatile and more pop-efficient unit in a 200 pop scenario, yes you often see people win in early Imp with Arbalest, but if they don’t, Arbalest becomes weaker and weaker, while Knights become only stronger as the game goes on.
Like the amount of time I play in 1200-1300 elo, and you get some Berbers spammer flooding 5 Stable Knights, as if that takes any skill, is impressive. Let’s say you get a civ with no Camels, once he reaches critical mass (if he reaches it), it becomes rly hard to stop with Pikeman, you need some 5-6 Barracks shenanigans and if you lose the Pikeman mass in the 1st fight you are 100% dead, you can’t catch up once he is on top of your production.
Like I don’t get how people cry about Arbalest this hard when for 95% of the playerbase Knights are both the more often seen unit and the harder to stop. Crossbow is niche, if you are like 1200 elo and you see opponent massing from 3 Ranges into 60 Crossbow deathball, drop 3 Stables, get +2 armor, get 1-2 Mangonels/Scorpions to prevent 1 tile abuse, and like 30 Knights beat 60 Crossbows fairly decisively.
Stopping Archer all-in in like 1200 elo where people like to make 1 unit type for the whole game is really easy with also 1 unit type all in with Knights (or even Skirms), the Knight player is always favored in this sort of situations.