AoE 2's unique approach to counter relationships

written 2025-09-27

One of the interesting and unique things about Age of Empires 2, at least compared to the later AoE games, is the way it designs counter relationships.

In the later games, counter relationships work like this: spearmen have damage bonus against horsemen, horsemen have damage bonus against archers, archers have damage bonus against spearmen, etc. And these relationships hold in practice pretty much all the time. There are almost no situations where spearmen can be effective against archers, etc.

In AoE 2, counter relationships work similarly on the surface, but in practice they're much more nuanced and situation-dependent. For example let's look at the three basic types of warships: galleys, fire galleys, and demolition rafts.

Galleys are the most basic and versatile ship. They have a medium-ranged arrow attack that can be useful against land targets as well as other ships.

Fire galleys are specialized to counter galleys: their high pierce armor means they take little damage from the galley's arrows, and their fire spray deals a lot of damage to ships at close range.

Demolition rafts are suicide bombers that are effective against fire galleys because their damage is almost a fire galley's max HP, and they can hit multiple at once. But they're weak against galleys because their low pierce armor means that galleys can often snipe them before they get close.

But in practice, at least 2 of these counter relationships often don't work the way I just described, and can even go the other direction!

Galleys can counter fire galleys because they have both longer range and are slightly faster, so they can kite indefinitely.

Fire galleys can spread out to prevent demolition rafts from hitting multiple of them at once, and if they can't hit multiple at once, the demolition rafts are not cost-effective.

I used to think this meant the game was just poorly balanced because galleys counter everything and demolition rafts counter nothing. But then I got better at the game and realized there are still situations where fire galleys and demolition rafts are good, it's just not all about the surface-level counter relationships, it's more strategic and tactical.

Galleys require constant manual micromanagement to kite fire galleys, while fire galleys require no micro at all, so if you make fire galleys against an opponent's galleys and pressure them on land at the same time, they can't defend against both effectively.

Galleys require more investment than fire galleys. While one galley can theoretically kill 1 fire galley with infinite space to maneuver, this would take forever. Normally people consider galley kiting against fire galleys only viable if you make at least 4 galleys and get the arrow damage upgrade. If you make 1-2 fire galleys and opponent invests all that, you can give up control of the water and use the saved resources to gain an avantage on land.

Demolition rafts can surprise people. If you make a distraction elsewhere and then send demolition rafts at their navy during the couple seconds where they must be looking at the distraction, you can do massive damage.

Demolition rafts can corner people. Some water maps have long narrow channels of water, so if your opponent's navy is sitting in the middle, you can come at them with demolition rafts from both sides. In this situation, even if they have galleys, they might not be able to shoot them all down before being blown up.

So how is it in practice? Which type of ship you should make depends on a lot more than just which type your opponent makes. On maps with small ponds, fire galleys dominate because they come out quickly and there isn't space to kite them, and demolition rafts aren't necessarily effective because you might only have 1-2 fire galleys at a time. On maps with large bodies of water that are very important to control (where there is no land crossing between your and your opponent's base), galleys dominate because they outscale fire galleys and people are willing to spend a lot of resources and attention on the water. On maps somewhere inbetween those, all 3 types of ships can see play.

It's not a perfect balance since there are many maps where the naval part of the game revolves around just one type of ship, but there are also many where it doesn't, and it's a unique and interesting approach to balance.