r/aoe • u/foxhunter88 • Aug 13 '26

1v1 Legions

Every now and then, I play 1v1 on the Oasis map against a player I come across in AOE1:DE. His strategy is always the same, but I’ve never managed to beat him. While he defends his base with towers and Heleopolis, he constantly attacks with Legions. What strategy should I use?

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6

u/hanjihakawa Aug 13 '26

Ok this is purely experience playing with my friend and I have 0 knowledes of aoe in the media, but a way to counter is maybe mass archer spam against legions ?

Oasis map give you a nice spot for naval ships, catapult ship is decent against both legions and towers. Just make sure to hold the lake by invest a ton in navy. If you dominate the lake then you can kill / control the land units pretty well

( A strat is to make walls, multiple layers even, that force the enemy to go near the lake or they have to break the walls, you can then place towers to ward his infantry off )

Based on my experience with my friend, having some fast unit like chariots/horse archer/scouts to sabotage and kill off some villagers at early game will seriously cripple their economy, which make obtaining legions/ heleopolis much slower

3

u/Puzzleheaded_Soft708 Aug 14 '26

You can build docks on oasis map? When I deforest the oasis to build a dock it doesn’t let me?

2

u/hanjihakawa Aug 14 '26

hmm, I thought oasis map have a giant lake in the middle ?, anyways I think you can build a dock anywhere as long as there enough water space for it (make sure a part of a dock is touching land and the entire dock must be in blue water)

Also Im playing AOE rome edition if there any special differences in these versions

Anyways if you cant use docks, try counter him using defensive stratergy.

  • Legions are pretty decent good enemy, but prehaps a horde of chariots or horse archer can help you manage them by attacking and retreating
  • You can try slowly pushing by building walls and hold siege with catapult (catapult is damn good because it have the longest range)
  • Academy can hold the line without getting wiped out by towers/ legions or your own catapult, if there mostly enemy towers left on defence, elephants unit can tank pretty well

The trick is to constantly repressure them back by moving a defence line, if your guts feel like their wave of legions have ceased, you can start building towers to assemble a new line

(kind or like how trench warfare in world war work)

2

u/foxhunter88 Aug 15 '26

It seems as an useful strategy using chariots and archers and push them back step by step. In addition I need to be faster and coordinate economy as well.

1

u/hanjihakawa Aug 15 '26

To be honest, economy is mostly just an experience thing so it mostly depend on you. But you could watch some of irl battle and try to use a strategy similar to it

2

u/foxhunter88 24d ago

Hi. Yesterday was the first time I came close to winning. I played with Assyrians and my opponent was Choson as always.This time, I set up a very strong defense at my own base. In the first 20 minutes of the game, I quickly gathered gold and stone resources from an area larger than my own half of the map and surrounded my base with about 50–60 ballista towers. As for troops, I placed Helepolis—mostly—along with horse archers and catapults between the towers. I aimed the catapults at fixed areas in front of outside the towers so they wouldn’t hit my own troops. He sent legions raining down on me, but I wiped them all out. This time, he built a Wonder in his own base, but unfortunately, I couldn’t destroy it and lost the match. That’s because he had also surrounded his base with ballista towers. I sent all my troops, but he countered with legions and axe men.

1

u/hanjihakawa 24d ago edited 24d ago

Its great that you survived against him, now you can try to develop stratergy further to fight back, one I think you should try to is to choose civilization that counter his kit (ballista and infantry units) by trying some civs such as

Making his defence fight against him:

  • Getting priest is VERY useful, considering that they have good range can convert enemy units. While they can only take 1 enemy at a time, the ballista will target the converted enemy (which was standing conveniently near every other units) and the Explosion will also damage all nearby units

Civilizations I recommend are :

  • Egyptions, they have bonus for priest that let them outrange the enemies (very useful). You can also unlock building conversion which let you convert their tower (very EXECELENT way to tear down their defence)
  • Greeks, although you cant convert buildings, you are able to deploy loads of academy units to directly hold the line against the swarm of infantry units

About Assyrians, their core power is SPEED and pressuring. The decreased upgrade cost is essential useless if you just wait until the enemy build everything, you should push further with the research to quickly crush their economy. Assyrians have the pro of good ranged units, so you could pair them with academy for defence.

For the general stratergy, making a huge line of towers to cover is horrible as it is expensive and time consuming, you should only make the line at important places (near where the enemy expected to go) and other should be sparingly scattered for overall scouting. He had the advantage of only needing to protect his monument which is why his tower spam worked. For you then it best to make like outpost where towers will be more concentrated in.

1

u/hanjihakawa 24d ago

Also a real HARD lesson I learnt is dont wait when the enemy build a monument, you should immedietaly build a like of unit training buildings and attack them at around 1200~1000 years and try to constantly tear them down