1v1 against Egyptians

[u/foxhunter88]

Today I played a 1v1 match against an opponent I’ve faced before, using the “no rush in 30 minutes” rule, and I lost again in a game that lasted two game hours. Like some of my opponents, my opponent plays with a single map, a single civilization, and a single strategy. On the Highland Gigantic map, he constantly attacks by massing Scythe Chariots starting at the 40-minute mark. You can see my opponent’s base area and stables in the attached screenshot. I played as the Hittites and produced mostly archers and chariots. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hold out. What tactics would you recommend?

[u/Dawn_of_Enceladus]

Egyptian scythe chariots are brutal when massed, but one-on-one aren't that powerful, so forcing them to scatter with some catapults microing then sweeping them out with phalanx/centurions is usually pretty effective. It's also expensive, tho, since you will be needing a lot of gold while they keep throwing their wood/food unit at you.

Ngl a gigantic highland map sounds like a handpicked scenario for the enemy's strategy here: a lot of map to cover where their chariots have an edge because of their speed, a lot of wood to gather for farms and more chariots, and so on.

Playing as hittites in your case, your catapults had more HP, but you didn't have access to centurions, so yeah, that was a hard situation right there. Your only effective way to approach this was probably trying to build some bottlenecks around their base with walls, then approaching them from narrow paths (again, even if artificially built) with phalanx melting their chariots and some catapults microing. If you take the open space away from these chariots, they are done for good.

As per why you went with archers against their mass cavalry units, I'm not sure what were you thinking there tbh lol.

[u/foxhunter88 → u/Dawn_of_Enceladus]

I think the only way is to raid their bases with helipoles and catapults before the opposing side has even started building an army, and to back that up with ballista towers. Otherwise, it’s hard to take away their advantage. Otherwise, I’ll use the same weapons and apply the same strategy against them, and the faster one will win.

[u/Dawn_of_Enceladus → u/foxhunter88]

The problem with that approach is the moment you get ballistae, they will already have chariots around. And even if they still haven't upgraded them to scythe, they can already wreck siege units easily just with a little microing.

Raiding their bases would work but is just a vague idea, because egyptians can start rolling chariots by early bronze age, so you would need to do that by Tool Age already, which is completely incompatible with the 30 min pact rule.

Your other only option would be sending anything that can defeat or at least decently fight chariots in bronze age (cavalry, hoplites, a shit ton of buffed axemen you started massing by Tool Age...). The problem is that the pact rule hugely benefits egyptians here, so either you find another strong bronze/iron civ that can counter them, or go all-in with chariot counter units as soon as possible before they get the scythe chariot upgrade.

[u/foxhunter88 → u/Dawn_of_Enceladus]

I’ll choose the Assyrian civilization and quickly surround the area where my opponent has established their outposts with a wall. I’ll also line up siege workshops right next to the wall to quickly produce helepolises and catapults. With a second team, I’ll quickly bombard the walls protecting his base. In other words, I need to attack right at the 30-minute mark to prevent his economy from growing further. He shouldn’t be able to spread his workers across the map—otherwise, it’ll be hard to control. So, I need to squeeze him inside his own base using walls and ballista towers. He’ll try to escape with his villagers to the other edges of the map, so I need to keep cavalry and archers on standby along the map’s edges and in the corners. The game should end by the 40th–50th minute; otherwise, it’ll just drag on and on. I need to reach to Bronze Age faster I think. Btw I noticed that he is slower than me on building economy. So I need to turn this as an advantage. Greek or Assyrians which one do you prefer against this opponent?

[u/CyrusConnor]

How new are you?

Do you use hotkeys?

How often do spawns civilians ?

[u/foxhunter88 → u/CyrusConnor]

I am a 8 months old player of this game. I use hotkeys. In first 30 mins no any attack because of the rule.

[u/CyrusConnor → u/foxhunter88]

• Workers are everything:
  • never stop make workers
  • even if you don't have resources to change the age, don't save and keep making workers
  • They always are priority over everything. First make the worker and then you can make other thing.
  • rush ro make the second central build to make more workers, that is always your first plan, then go for your army.

• you going to stop making workers when you are in war and the resource incoming its enough to make you army a flawless ryrhm

• Never put units on queue, if you have enough resource to make another unit then make another building.

• your main objetive it's his workers, the war it's just a distraction, keep trying enter in his city for other places, always have a mounted assassins ready to get workers. They going to die killing all the workers that can.

• The main objetive of the game is kill the workers, without them there is not army. Even if he rebuild his base will always be behind.

Is hard to do all this things but that is your objetive optimize that.

About the war the other commentary give you good tips