whats best counter to mass chariot archers

[madigby74]

hi ive ran into problems using the shang civ vs mass chariot archers. was wondering whats the best counter to them as i cant get enough cavalry to counter them. i'm no good at micro. also has anyone put out a shang specific build order?any help would be appreciated
thanx

[anglerman]

Foot archers are cheaper and deal the same damage so if your enemy is massing chariots while you mass archers you'll get an advantage. Get some slingers together in the front as well.

[jonoliveira12]

Your own Mass Chariot Archers.
Technically, the counter would be Cavalry, but only Cataphract has 3 Pierce Armour, and they are VERY costly, so a good, sustainable mass of CAs, can only be countered by another good, sustainable mass of CAs.

It is the most OP unit in the whole game, because it is a Trash unit that is almost as good as a Gold unit, so there is no realistic way to beat it, unless you can spam like an AI.

[3-Pio (DQHD)]

MORE chariot archers!

[Heimdall313]

Shang I assume is the Chinese?
Chariot Archers are Archers, so you can use Skirmishers as a zero-gold counter unit, even if you're losing 3 of them for every Chariot, you're winning the war by bleeding your enemy of Gold.

Onager can kill blobs of archers and cavalry archers, just a handful of them can kill dozens. They're expensive though, and you need to protect them with Pikeman.

Scorpions damage multiple units, and are fairly resistant to archers. You mostly use them as support behind the Skirmishers, or behind a rush of Knights.

Knights and Light Cavalry are fast with good pierce armor. Knights are obviously better, but Light Cavalry don't cost Gold.

You can flood waves of Light Cavalry and Skirmishers at them with pretty much any civ and minimal babysitting. Just keep them on Attack stance and use Attack Move into the mass to keep them engaged for minimal management. Onager and Scorpions, keep them Defensive, they'll do wildly stupid things if left unattended.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Your own Mass Chariot Archers.
Technically, the counter would be Cavalry, but only Cataphract has 3 Pierce Armour, and they are VERY costly, so a good, sustainable mass of CAs, can only be countered by another good, sustainable mass of CAs.

It is the most OP unit in the whole game, because it is a Trash unit that is almost as good as a Gold unit, so there is no realistic way to beat it, unless you can spam like an AI.

I feel like the answer is to win first - as long as you have gold they lose badly to horse archers, and until you get a ton they don't do much to stop infantry from wrecking your town


AOE1 doesn't seem to have the intentional trash war balance built in though for sure.

[chaoticbalrog]

Originally posted by Heimdall313:

Shang I assume is the Chinese?
Chariot Archers are Archers, so you can use Skirmishers as a zero-gold counter unit, even if you're losing 3 of them for every Chariot, you're winning the war by bleeding your enemy of Gold.

Onager can kill blobs of archers and cavalry archers, just a handful of them can kill dozens. They're expensive though, and you need to protect them with Pikeman.

Scorpions damage multiple units, and are fairly resistant to archers. You mostly use them as support behind the Skirmishers, or behind a rush of Knights.

Knights and Light Cavalry are fast with good pierce armor. Knights are obviously better, but Light Cavalry don't cost Gold.

You can flood waves of Light Cavalry and Skirmishers at them with pretty much any civ and minimal babysitting. Just keep them on Attack stance and use Attack Move into the mass to keep them engaged for minimal management. Onager and Scorpions, keep them Defensive, they'll do wildly stupid things if left unattended.

You don't get any Skirmishers or Knights in AoE1. Scorpions and Onagers are also called Ballistae and Stone Throwers respectively.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Heimdall313:

Shang I assume is the Chinese?
Chariot Archers are Archers, so you can use Skirmishers as a zero-gold counter unit, even if you're losing 3 of them for every Chariot, you're winning the war by bleeding your enemy of Gold.

Onager can kill blobs of archers and cavalry archers, just a handful of them can kill dozens. They're expensive though, and you need to protect them with Pikeman.

Scorpions damage multiple units, and are fairly resistant to archers. You mostly use them as support behind the Skirmishers, or behind a rush of Knights.

Knights and Light Cavalry are fast with good pierce armor. Knights are obviously better, but Light Cavalry don't cost Gold.

You can flood waves of Light Cavalry and Skirmishers at them with pretty much any civ and minimal babysitting. Just keep them on Attack stance and use Attack Move into the mass to keep them engaged for minimal management. Onager and Scorpions, keep them Defensive, they'll do wildly stupid things if left unattended.

There are no Skirms, Scrorps, Knights, Light Cavalry or Onagers in RoR, and Chariot Archers are exclusive to RoR.

[anglerman]

slingers fill the role of skirmishers, ballistas the role of scorpions, cavalry the role of knights and nothing really fits in with aoe2 onagers

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Your own Mass Chariot Archers.
Technically, the counter would be Cavalry, but only Cataphract has 3 Pierce Armour, and they are VERY costly, so a good, sustainable mass of CAs, can only be countered by another good, sustainable mass of CAs.

It is the most OP unit in the whole game, because it is a Trash unit that is almost as good as a Gold unit, so there is no realistic way to beat it, unless you can spam like an AI.

I feel like the answer is to win first - as long as you have gold they lose badly to horse archers, and until you get a ton they don't do much to stop infantry from wrecking your town


AOE1 doesn't seem to have the intentional trash war balance built in though for sure.

Problem is, Chariot Archers are available from the Bronze Age, while HorseArchers are exclusive to the Iron Age, so you get CA rushed much before you can have Horse Archers even available.
Chariot Archers are a power unit, at the cost of a Trash unit, which just goes to show that AoE1 had no real balance.

Could easily be fixed, however, if Scouts, who were recently given bonus damage vs Archers, had a Bronze Age upgrade. That way, you could actually have some Trash balance in the lategame.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by anglerman:

slingers fill the role of skirmishers, ballistas the role of scorpions, cavalry the role of knights and nothing really fits in with aoe2 onagers

Bllistas are high single target damage, Scorpions are low pass through AoE damage. They are not the same at all.
Slingers also do not act like Skirms, specially when they lack a Bronze Age upgrade, and fall off completely against Bronze Age Archery Range units, like the Improved Bowman or teh Chariot Archers, even worse against Horse and Elephant Archers.

[Quang Hung]

In Bronze Age, you can rush them with Cavalry and defeat them early. If they manage to boom and get a decent numbers, you can only fight them with your own mass of Chariot Archers. If you can survive to the Iron Age, you have some more options but they aren't available to everyone, if you have access to Scythe Chariot, they should be able to defeat CA, unless Scythe Chariot get some significant nerf. Your other choice could be Heavy Catapult but they are expensive to tech in and slow to react to threat.

I forgot that Minoan Compy should be able to deal with CA even in Bronze Age.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Quang Hung:

In Bronze Age, you can rush them with Cavalry and defeat them early. If they manage to boom and get a decent numbers, you can only fight them with your own mass of Chariot Archers. If you can survive to the Iron Age, you have some more options but they aren't available to everyone, if you have access to Scythe Chariot, they should be able to defeat CA, unless Scythe Chariot get some significant nerf. Your other choice could be Heavy Catapult but they are expensive to tech in and slow to react to threat.

I forgot that Minoan Compy should be able to deal with CA even in Bronze Age.

Heavy Catapult does nothing now, if the opponent is microing, and with the new movement, Cavalry are actually countered by the Chariot Archers, not the reverse (unless you already upgraded to Cataphract, but that is stupidly expensive for a normal game, and Bronze Cavalry do almost nothing, since CAs can upgrade to get +4 Armour cheaper than you can mass enough Cavalry for it to matter).
Minoan Compies do work, but they are a Gold unit, and very dependant on deathballing, so you will need to make sure you have a good number of them, before the Chariot hit.

Minoans are unironically one of the top civs now, as teh Compies behave like AoE2 Longbowmen (but with 100% accuracy), and buildings have much less HP than AoE2, so they are massive counteralls when massed, and nothing lives beneath their hails of arrows.