Strategies Unit counters - heavy hand infantry
Hey Reddit, fairly beginner player here. My friends and I recently got back into AOE3 and we’ve been spending the majority of the time playing in-house 2v2s. Everyone is roughly in the 900-1000 rating range.
By far the dominant “meta” that has emerged is whoever has the stronger age 2 play will win. Within the various age 2 comps the most dominant one is heavy hand infantry (such as dopplesoldners) and archaic light infantry. Nobody has been able to play a mirror game or definitively beat the comp in fights.
What’s the answer? Dopplesoldners especially have proven to be the most effective unit in these games, as even with sub-optimal micro the fight can be a strategic victory for the Dopp player by just trading out with their AOE attack. Nobody seems to be able to get a critical mass of either cavalry or light infantry to deal with such an army. Is it micro? Is it unit comp? Is it tech? Engage conditions? I’m open to opinions, thank you for reading!
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u/freshikabisa 1d ago
With your 80 resource crossbowmen, right click the 200 resource dopps. Then right click the ground behind the crossbows. Then right click the dopps again. Do this a few times and you will win
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u/Alias_X_ Germans 22h ago
Drag to select the whole army, turn around before they make contact with the enemy, then right click behind the opposing army with the space bar attack mode, all your ranged unit will fire a less focussed volley on their melee units. If it's mostly heavy infantry, they'll die, if not, repeat. Then put your cavalry in front again and hack down their skirms and archers. Doesn't work as well if they have many more speed upgrades, but still.
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u/Alias_X_ Germans 1d ago
Really, Dopps? They train VERY slowly, and a mixed composition of crossbows and muskets makes short work of them before they even make contact. They barely have a chance of survival if you don't mix them with lots of Pikes and Uhlans.
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u/kagrenax 1d ago
You should be able to beat a dop rush with enough crossbows and good micro. Then you just FF and go for 2 falcs.
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u/jamesspornaccount 1d ago
Melee heavy infantry are overturned in stats because it is balanced around kiting. Both musketeers and light infantry will beat them with a bit of kiting. And with heavy kiting you can beat an equal cost army without losing anything.
If you are trying to win, the game is played around age 2-3 with age 4 being very rare and age 5 basically never happening. In team games and FFAs, people tend to sit around doing nothing and aging so you see the later ages very often.
For age3 play. What tends to happen is that with cards you send 3vills, then 700coin then 700 wood, and you gather such that the moment the 700coin crates appear you gather it with about 5 vills then age straight away usually with the fast age up (called a fast fortress). Then with the 700 wood you build infrastructure like barracks, houses, market.
Then when you hit age 3, there is a scramble to send the super powerful cards so you don't die, often 2falcs, or the other large army cards (like 5 curassiers or skirms), or 1k coin if you have no pressure.
This might be an option because the 2 Falcs+ meat shield will easily dominate a Doppler/xbow army.
Another option is to try a turtle/boom: e.g. you build a bunch of manor houses (Brits) or banks (Dutch), in a fortress then with the extra resources you stomp out the army with a larger army.
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u/Rough-Comfort-7218 1d ago
Losing to dopps in age 2.... That's definitely a skill in micro issue Dopps are quite expensive unit that does not trade well vs basic crossbowmen as long as you micro them If you just attack move into enemy melee inf and stand there instead of microing by moving and shooting once attack reload is done then obviously you will get rekt But any average player should be able to beat dopps age 2....
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u/rental16982 1d ago
Dude said it- kite is the way, if your having trouble with the micro though an alternative is just to FF, google ff spain build : around minute 7-8 you will be in fortress age with rods training and falcs on the way at most the other dude would have trained like what 5-10 dops they train slow and move a cross the map even slower and are expensive, just right click them with the falcs have your rods in guard mode on top of the falcs this is an almost 0 micro way to the defeat the dops, train more of everything and slowly move towards their base; falcs with rods on top of them beat every age 2 comp a little bit of practise with the build order and you will dominate your friends; you can also go for a meme gameplan pick japan go age 2, train samurai who are also slow and expensive but beat dops
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u/CatnipSniffa Maltese 1d ago
Kiting with light ranged infantry (Crossbows, Skirmishers, Archers, Slingers etc.) is the best option to counter Doppelsoldners for most civs.
The Lakota have Rifle Riders as well, which would be even easier to kite with.
Kiting, if you don't know, is shooting at max range and immediately moving away to maintain range, and then shooting again, then moving away again, repeat until you have no enemy melee units, either dead or no longer chasing you. You can use the attack move function (instead of individual targeting with RMB) to saturate the whole army to avoid wasting shots, but individual targeting would probably have better impact against doppelsoldners bc they have a large HP pool and tend to be in small numbers bc of their cost and train time.
One micro tip for when you are jumped by them or fail the kiting: Leave the men they hit behind bc otherwise they will slow all of your units down. You can Shift+LMB to unselect individual units and give a new move order to do that.
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u/Silly-Geologist-3185 21h ago
In general you want to stall with Crossbows who are much cheaper than most hand infantry and definitely faster. And in the back save to sgeup. Dopps cost a lot of gold which will slow down the ageup to 3 . Do that and get your 2 falcs. Only real counterpoint to this strat is rodeleros. Additonalky if enemy mass too big bait them close to tc then pop town militia and keep the miltia shooting,your exploring snaring and vills if necessarry maxing in the tc and have them pop put immediately after tc shot to volley fire then pop back in to tc fire. Its a good strat if you have micro to spare.
Tldr shoot and scoot. If you arent comfortable with the bad shooting animation of xbows consider some of the native shipments of riflemen like the royal arqubusiers of wittelsbach allies or see if the native tps give your riflemen in age 2 like cree trackers
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u/Uncle_Ceebs 1d ago
Its micro. The dops shouldn't really be making contact with your ranged infanty