How to beat 17 vill Teuton Tower rush in Arena?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Lately I’ve been running into a ton of Teuton players on Arena who do a really early tower push — usually around 17 villagers with 8-10 forward vills — and I’m honestly not sure what the proper response is supposed to be.

They start by building a tower next to the wall, break in, and then chain towers forward to deny berries, gold, and often even stone. Since Teutons get double garrison space in towers, they always win the 1v1 tower fights, and with cheaper farms they usually hit Castle and Imperial faster too. Most of the time, defending turns into a long repair war where I eventually run out of stone while they’re still taking map control.

I’ve tried a few approaches:

  • Loom early and fight the first tower: Sometimes works, but fighting under their tower is risky and usually costs villager HP or deaths. They can also bait with fake towers to provoke idle villager time and just delete and run away if not. As we are fighting under a tower, 10vs10 is not really feasible to ensure victory, but if we send more villagers thats just more idling.

  • Fast Feudal into defensive towers: Teuton towers out-garrison others, and if it turns into a repair battle I’ll run out of stone first.

  • Pre-emptive towers with Fletching: Helps protect key resources but doesn’t actually stop them from pushing forward or tanking damage while building a tower of their own and then garrisoning.

Even if I manage to hit Castle first, I’m often forced to drop a defensive castle while they’re free to place one aggressively or boom behind the pressure. Rams can get deleted by vill fights, mangonels lose to upgraded towers, and going fast Imperial isn’t always possible because their eco is usually untouched. If you try to push with rams to destroy castle he can easily defend with a couple of teutonic knights

It just feels like there’s very little counterplay in the early stages — militia and villagers die too easily to towers, archers can only delay, and committing to defense often just leaves me behind in eco and map control. Trying to age up faster with less space, less resources and under pressure is usually also futile, and even if i reach imperial i cannot push with bombards only with trebs due to crenallations. But if my only castle is destroyed and got no stone left its instantly GG.

Is there a reliable strategy I’m missing here? Curious how others deal with this at ~1100–1400 ELO. Towers are usually described as a defensive building, having them be the best offensive option in feudal age for teutons does not feel quite right.

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Tower rushing is laming if your civ has a bonus for it.

The solution is to remove all the civ bonuses from the Feudal Age towers, or to refuse to play with lamers.

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I agree, been instaquitting teutons on arena but there are so many now that it sucks not being able to play my favorite map half of the matches, most teuton games degenerate to villager fights and repairing towers

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100% what is said above, I’m 1100 elo on ranked ladder, and there is no counterplay to this. If I use vils to take down his tower, if it goes up or before it goes up, they win because they have forced me to the same delay without any penalty. I tried to do a fast men-at-arms to help break the towers immediately, like a Drush, but that simply isn’t good enough, as the cost of the men-at-arms with gold and food is not effective.

I don’t want to say anything much about balance, other than maybe the extra arrows should come in at castle age and only allow more to be garrisoned in futal. Either way, if you counter tower, you need 2x the towers, which puts you behind in resources immediately, as you need more stone. Secondly, you need both towers to hit the same tower. Furthermore, as stated above, you get cheaper farms, super-strong infantry as the Teutonic Knights come out of the impending castle that follows this rush. They also then have the ability to go paladain and bombard cannons, controlling the whole map

The only semi-counter I’ve seen was if I go to Cuman and make a ram right away and fill it with the men-at-arms.

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1100 the tower rusher is also not experimented and will not play a very efficient tower rush. I am also low elo (1300 - 1400) and usually, if Teutons are on my flank :

  • I place buildings on a second protective line as early as possible.
  • I sell stone (useless to build counter towers vs Teutons. It’s just waste).
  • Fast castle with maximum efficiency
  • Siege units/Monks
  • Counter attack enemy base

Most of the time I can reach CA and make siege.

But not sure it works at higher Elo

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Sure, but the issue is that even the secondary wall of buildings that I make is easily killed as they just break the wall and build another set of towers, which impede these buildings and kill them quickly if you do not defend them. Also it will only consist of houses, blacksmith, market, and a rax/houses. You could use the stone to make a secondary wall but thats only a short delay. I guess maybe stone walling back enough that they dont see until the first tower is done, buit in anycase the time to build that wall depending on where they want to place it can really screw with things since you cant cover the whole surface of the front of the base, and also then you cant sell the stone.

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Yes but if the guy is same elo as you, you have a chance to be better. You earn time to make siege as fast as possible before opponents surrounds you with tower.

If you manage well you can reach CA before the 3rd or 4th towers.

I think the key is not over reacting and dont waste moves. Also if you berries are exposed near the walls, collect it earlier. If your gold is exposed, take the other gold not exposed.

If both golds are exposed near the walls it’s bad luck.

I mean, it’s not easy but wait for the mistake of the opponent. Tower rush is not an easy strat neither so you keep in mind that your opponent is not a better a player than you.

And you if really fear tower rush, you can play Arena like Arabia and go scoot or infantry at 19 villagers. Opponent should not have time to build a second tower and you can get rid of the first easily.

To be honnest I also die vs tower rush but 50% I can manage. In team game its another problem if opponent pocket is helping then you pray for your pocket to help.

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No, you don’t.

If someone tower rushes a lot, then they have done the tower rush far more often than you have defended against it. Therefore they will be better at doing it than you, if you’re the same elo.

”I fear not the man who has practiced 1000 punches. I fear the man that has practiced 1 punch 1000 times.” - Bruce Lee

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You do otherwise it means that 100% of tower rush are successful which is wrong

This is your interpretation. Specialists of Tower Rush on Arena are higher than 1100 Elo on 1V1 (till they reach an Elo where opponent can counter easily).

At low Elo Tower rushers are doing a lot of mistakes which means you have a chance

To be honest I often see some tower rushers early quit after they wasted an all in crap tower rush

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But at lower elo, you also make more mistakes. It goes both ways.

This is likely why lower elo tower rushers are less successful, because they quit sooner.

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Yes it’s exactly what i am telling.

But why they would quit if their tower rush is successful :sweat_smile:

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I’m not saying if the tower rush itself is successful, but the rusher as a person is more liable to quit early due to some small thing going wrong.

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It makes sense that civilizations with strong tower rush potential like Koreans and Incas were nerfed, but I dont understand why the developers are leaving Teutons tower rush untouched. Tower garrison bonus should only start applying from the Castle Age.

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Found this video on this subject.

But while watching it I had a great idea, on how to punish this as well. Since they will break the wall and move in to build another break the wall out of their vision send a vill to the original tower that has no one there, and make a wall at the base blocking them from going back to garrason it.

Then bum rush the new tower they are making in your base with your vils and block the exit of his villagers.

Obviously, this may not work every time, but it’s a good idea to at least punish the tower and delay while you head to the castle with only one vill. If it doesn’t work, you should have already been making the second wall. Either wait, there is no answer, and this is a terrible strategy that’s just annoying to play against.

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Summary of the video, which went over 3 methods:

  1. Vil fighting (a good tower rusher will know how to handle this)
  2. Wall to buy time, counter with fast castle into siege (recommends 3 mangonels)
  3. Use your own towers/walls to buy time (you won’t take down their towers, but will stop their advance by keeping them from safely building towers)

Some of the same principles for fighting a castle drop also apply here. It’s a good idea to create a second layer of walls that are outside the range of the tower, and this is something you can prep ahead of time with houses and market/blacksmith without sacrificing your own build. This will force your opponent to make another tower before they can advance further. You will need to clear the towers up eventually, but so long as you avoid taking damage (or idling your tc) while investing less than your opponent, you will have an advantage. And if you create a second TC, you’ll gradually get a villager lead.

I don’t think any strategies currently in this game are truly unbeatable - some are less common, but there are still ways to counter it. If you still can’t figure it out, try it yourself and you’ll experience the weaknesses soon enough.

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Yes. Mango are the best solution. But you must secure a gold because repair costs a lot. Sometime it works (depending on the situation and tower positions) to make a second TC to cover rams, mangonneau and repair fast.

But if the tower rusher is very good (good tower positions, good villagers micro etc), you will not have 275 wood and 100 stone + long building time to put in a TC. Especially if you sold stone to reach CA faster.

It’s very situational.

I agree. It’s just a question of level gap between players.

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I think this strategy is good only on 1000 to 1200, after that, (even not skilled players) anyone can counter it really easy.
For the ones wondering, how to deal with it, make a barrack, do not fight with your vills and that just it.
Of course it requires a little more micro from you that from your opponet, but it’s an insta win.

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Barracks come in late, and even if you manage to get 5 militia, 10 vills and a tower will beat them all. Also requires more gold miner early on, hindering the castle time even more.

Mangonels also require a lot of gold to repair, that is if you have enough res to reach castle.
Tower garrisson should be nerfed to fire only up to 5 arrows, no matter if more vills are garrisoned or not.

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How will militia deal with it if there are two towers guarding each other? Or if the towers are walled. MAAs certainly can be used to take down towers, but there are ways for the tower rusher to deal with them. And if you do manage to take down the towers, the map is Arena, so counter-attacking will be a bit tricky.

And creating a barracks may mean pivoting your strategy and will certainly delay castle age.

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Ofc you do. They win it 50 % of the time, that’s how matchmaking with elo works.

@JuliBudin I like that you ask these questions in the forum. Even if there is already threads open about these topics and ofc various content around in the internet. Sometimes interactions also change, so it’s helpful for the entire community to reassess these questions from time to time. And don’t listen to people who try to make you fear stuff. There are ways to handle every and each strat in the game and there are enough people out there who happily share their experiences with you.
Ofc we currently have again the issue of noob basher griefers who preferably use these kinds of strats. When you encounter one of those you will probably suffer a hefty defeat. Just to prepare you. If you are aware of this you can hopefully bring that experience in the right perspective and see that this isn’t a you problem but a “their” problem.

Generally I have usually 2 approaches against trushes. One is to stay in feudal yourself with better eco and try to drain them. Especially on lower elos this is potentially the better approach. But you need to get a bit of experience in it. The first time you probably won’t be able to do the right steps coordinatevily even if you know them.
There are countless tutorials how to defend against prolonged tower rushes.

The other one (only possible when you are on a designed fc buildorder) is to try to only place one defensive tower to restrict them from placing followup towers in your base. And the mentioned 2nd layer of defence. And try to get to castle age as quickly as possible, using the military options you get there (eg Knights and Siege) to push back the trush. This needs a lot more of adaption and is heavily depending on your build. If you have a too tight buildorder you might not be able to get the food in you need for castle age. If you are too slow the trusher might be able to overwhealm you. This is ofc heavily depending on the opponents level of play.

This is ofc very simplified, at high level of play the first option often isn’t as promising as in many cases the trushers manage to squeeze in archers (usually not as teutons, but other civs). Then you don’t have the economic advantage anymore and often lose in a prolonged battle.

Generally trushes are heavily tactically demanding and you need to get some experience. Watching tutorials and videos of other people will help you a lot of getting an idea what are the key moves there. However you need to get the experience aswell. Trushes strats often are seen as “noob basher” strats for good reason because if you really have no idea and experience how to react to that it’s basically impossible.

However if you understand the basic principles in the 2 methods here (buy time to get your better eco rolling or get the military tech advantage to push back) in addition to the moves you can learn from the tutorials you can get quite good at defending trushes even at a considerably low level quite fast.

One other method (to get experience) is also to become a trusher yourself for a limited time and see how it is from the other perspective. This can also help you understand the dynamics.

I also just watched the video from stark. I see one notable difference in the fc strat which is NOT to make a defensive Tower. This works well if your opponent can’t break in too fast into your base like it was in the video. This can have various reasons, sometimes the maps have coded in higher HP for the starting walls. It’s definitely better to do so if you KNOW it will work, but if you don’t it’s usually better to place that one defensive tower just covering the next most exposed part of your base withing the secondary defense layer.

Ofc it’s always an option to try punch down towers with your vills, but only do this if the towers aren’t covered by other towers and not walled in already. I don’t like this option cause I think it’s not consistant and bares an unneccesary risk. It’s usually the better approach to jsut ristrict the opponent so they can’t bring up the towers in dangerous spots and later on use the Siege options you have. That’s just more consistant in my experience. However there are countless examples where this strat works. So if you want to go for it and you are happy with the win ratio you get from it, just go for it. It’s definitely the strat that requires the least experience and learning to encounter trushes. And games tend to end rather quickly in either direction with this.

(note: I figured out that unfortunately it’s basically impossible to explain the tactical moves in this forum. So all information I wrote here is only meta information to deepen the understanding of the strats you can learn from teutorials like that of stark. But fortunately there are enough tutorials out there you can watch)