How to beat 2 teamed AI adversaries?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hi

For a fun game I would like to beat two AI civs that are teamed together, on Arabia, extreme level, with Teutons.

I’d like to turtle and defend before attacking myself.

But I keep on failing. I’ve started building wooden and stone walls, trying to put castles on high ground … but in imperial age I get overwhelmed by the combined strength of the combined AI civs…

How do you beat two AI civs/team on extreme?

Any advice/strategy/tips is appreciated!

:smiley:

2

Early game they are weak, in late imp they are beast. So turtling isnt the best approach. Hit them early.

3

Well, against 1 adversary that works fine…but against 2 …that seems impossible … they outproduce me …

4

Indeed, the more units they have the more they can micro. The AI does not need to focus on a few single units at a time like you have to…

You can decrease the pop limit to 100 but that is kind of cheating ^^

You can try to use a few early archer to deny their resources (AI villager will oftentimes fight against Militia/MAA but run from Archers).

I like to go heavily into eagle warriors and raid…

5

It’s possible to outboom the AIs, provided you can execute a BO while managing a bit of aggression. AIs will always try to rush you early but they do a poor job at it and you can take a huge eco lead in castle.

The following strat works 90% of time against 2 AIs:

  1. Pick a paladin civ (eg. Lithuanians)
  2. Go for a 27+2 pop FC BO. Scout your resources and plan where to place 2 TCs later. Lure deer with your scout. Do not scout the AI base.
  3. While on the way to Feudal, build a barrack. When hitting Feudal, build archery range and market. Research wood upgrade but not farm.
  4. On the way to Castle, train 2-4 skirmishers and have your scout ready in your base. The AI will definitely come at you with archers. If you micro correctly, you should make them suffer huge losses, or maybe even destroy their rush. The goal is to have them lose most of their archers before they upgrade to xbows.
  5. When hitting Castle, build 2 TCs and boom. Go mainly for food and wood, very little gold, and use the market to balance resources if needed.
  6. When you can afford it, build a monastery. Train 1-2 monks to gather close relics and fight knights later. Start walling your base.
  7. About 2-3 min after you hit castle, the AI will heavily rush you with knights and archers. This is the hard part. But with good play and plan you should be able to hold by reactively walling and converting knights, while keeping all your TCs busy. AI micro is really poor and focuses too much on buildings, you shouldn’t even lose villagers in the attack. Some tips: wall a lot and don’t be scared to lose buildings, use market if needed to balance the resources, train more monks if they go for knights or a mangonel if they go for archers. Building a castle is also very good against AI and pretty much guaranteed to destroy all their army.
  8. At about 80-90 pop, click imp.
  9. While imping, stop producing villagers, build 6+ stables and research cavalry techs. Try to build a castle if possible.
  10. As soon as you hit imp, research cavalier + paladins, train knights and 2 trebuchets. The opponents will hit imp shortly after you, but they will not be prepared. Attack halfway towards paladin.
  11. With good timing, you should be able to raze one of them completely. Paladins+Treb spike is too large for them to handle. The spike will not last long until they start spamming halbs, so you must aim at attacking and razing one of them as fast as possible.
  12. Steal the resources of the guy you razed and now it’s a normal 1v1 in post imp that you should be able to win.
1 Like
6

Alternative: Black Forest, Teutons vs double Goths, spam walls, spam TK and enjoy the ownage 11 (edit: you said Arabia so it will be harder but hopefully it should be doable if you bait them with buildings a bit away from your base)

7

i’d like to add a bit info cause I mostly play with AI and learning to improve AI making them stronger.

  • in early game they are weak easy to rush, this last all the way till just about early castle.
  • early castle to mid imperial are their hardest time, pop cap, full on mass production
  • late imperial they get weakened out this maybe due to lack of AI optimization.

optimization such as not enough food/wood and too many trade carts causing them to continuously purchase wood/food with gold, thus losing gold when they should be making more farmers/lumber jacks. numbers are based off pop cap and map size and I think with more farmer/wood cutter they’d be hard even late imperial.

8

Beating two AI on Arabia without rushing is extremely rough. Not rushing is practically giving away the most abusable factor of the map to your enemies for free. It’s like playing gold rush and not playing for the gold.

If you want to win on a map without rushing, you should play a map that is less open and easier to wall up (or starts with walls) and definitely not Arabia. Winning against multiple AI is already pretty tricky but trying to do it without rushing is moreso difficult.

That being said, beating multiple opponents at once is all about pop efficiency. They outnumber you heavily, so you need to make sure you’re investing into units that have high returns and are extremely population efficient whilst also hoping your opponents invest into a lot of low-value, low-cost units that you can capitalize against. So it’s going to come down heavily on civ matchup. Trying to win against something like Portuguese + Burmese or Indians + Koreans is going to be downright impossible if you don’t rush simply because their units are too pop efficient and they’ll have both a population limit advantage and a population value advantage.

The three things you need to do to win against multiple AI:

1. Identify your greatest lategame threat immediately

If you’re going Archer mass as your method of victory, you need to find and hit the Celt/Korean/Mongol. You can’t let that absurdly efficient, anti-archer army to get going. Going Cav? Hit the Viking / Japanese / Italian. They need to be first on the chopping block.

2. Use your age up advantage to control map and pressure opponents immediately

You will want to hit the next age running. Don’t let them recover if they spent all their resources on military. Pump out a few knights, kill that archer ball, and raid woodlines. Once you hit imp, get those upgrades and march. Once both players are in Imp you’re in deep trouble.

3. Spend your resources on powerful, efficient sources of military

Don’t make trash. Trash doesn’t push. You need to make a more population efficient army than your opponents if you want to win since they outnumber you. There are plenty of units that will hold value better and still work against the unit you are trying to counter, even for the Teutons. ETK’s vs Cavalry and infantry. Siege (in general) against Archers. Paladins against siege. If you’re making something else, you’ve probably messed up. That goes for any civ.

1 Like
9

You probably look for some ideas from SOTL:

It’s 1v1 though