How to deal with HRE timing push as English

I have troubles dealing with HRE MAA timing push, and would appreciate some tipps.

Example situation:

  • 1v1 - Mountain Pass - English vs HRE
  • I do standard opening to age up, and parallel could wall and outpost the “pass”, so I thought I am in generally good situation.
  • I start producing some longbows who march to the palisade wall. When I have 4 longbows, opponent shows up with 5 MAA and start burning the wall. One vill cannot keep up with repair, more wills too far away.
  • Longbows barely do any damage.

I start producing my own “vanguard” men-at-arms at home to prepare for the arrival. The issue is, until opponent is there, they have better MAA, upgraded cheaper with +1s. So my theory was, that since his MAA are better and longbows seem to be useless, I need to age up to be able to produce longbows. This opens a timing window for them where they just produce more MAA,

On mid-level ELO, many player don’t do retreat… so they just push in, scatter all the men at arms around the base… It’s obvious they will loose that army eventually, but meanwhile my whole eco is idle.
Once in castle age, I produce more MAA and crossbows, I can repel two other attacks (with army of 15 MAA and 15 knights ca.), but meanwhile enemy is also castle age and upgrades very cheaply again.
I build castle next to town center, had burning oil and springald update on it… Enemies MAA while fighting my units under the castle, still torch the castle, and burn it down - they are quite tanky…
So at this point, it seems like the game is lost, so probably should have stayed in feudal, but then how can I deal with 6-10 MAA who are better upgraded then the English units at the stage?

This post is not about either of the civs too weak or OP, I just genuinely would like some ideas how to effectively deal with the situation. I tried it 1x or 2x and failed, and from experience it takes ca. 2-3 weeks until I face HRE player who uses similar strategy. (And so I find it quite hard it develop a strategy against things.)

The best suggestion I can give is to make nights in age 3, they can do alot more damage to MAA’s and they can take alot more damage, or if you want a quick and less expensive way, get the handcannoner upgrade in the outposts, i think its 75 stone, it does a good amount of damage to armour, 500 wood and 375 stone and you should 1 shot each MAA, it’s not the best but it certainly does a good bit of damage everything they walk in, and its better having 500 wood for the towers rather than 10 Lbows which are going to do nothing to them

@WiseConcil,
The HRE can’t spam that amount of MAA in the very first minutes. Either he lacks in economy, or he brings himself so far behind, that he has already lost.
Instead of initially walling yourself in, you could use your scout to see, what your opponent is up to. If he only builds a Rax, you could mass LBs / or put in a stable to harras his eco. Invest your ressources in units and upgrades.
Your +1 rangedmg is essencial for your early pressure.
A HRE MAA in Feudal has 120hp + 3 rangearmor (w/o BS upgrade). So it takes ~15 - 20 LB to 2shot one kiteable MAA. Its not that big of a deal.

@Danknuss96
No. He is playing english, not chinese…

ahh, I havent played english or hardly any others to see if their towers had the handcannon slits, i main china, and basically just china :smiley:

Yeah, i read about that in other topics, so i was aware of that.

Thx for the feedback. This early pressure / harass eco is one of the weakness in my play atm, must probably exercise that a bit more… As you have guessed, I wait usually too long until I feel confident to push out and in most matches the opponent attacks first… Which is fine, i believe, with some of the civs, play styles, but probably not in this case, where HRE stacks up units and tech upgrades until too late for me (eco wise I was better, but then whole eco gets idled)

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Ive barely versed or played HRE in 1v1 so I don’t have much experience, but the HRE economy is going to skyrocket past yours the longer the game goes, I would try aging up very fast and harrasing with longbows, they shouldn’t be able to match ur longbow numbers with Maa If u do some decent damage early on, and u can kite Maa quite easily. If they respond with Maa I’d get blacksmith upgrades early, potentially even do Maa yourself. Just keep in mind if u can’t damage their eco and you’ve invested in an all in feudal, the HRE are going to destroy English nine times out of ten. I wouldn’t try fast castle as they can just do it better and get relics.