Co-op only quest [You Complete Me]

I started AoEO around a week ago and I'm currently level 29. I've had a lot of previous experience with RTS's and have found nearly all of the previous quests very easy, however this one seems impossible.

In this quest, the AI attacks with around 10 spearmen (including a few elites) at the 3 minute mark. Me and my partner are fairly competant yet we consistently got roflstomped! In the previous quests in this coop only line the AI would attack at 5minutes which is easy enough to cope with by spamming units, though in You Complete Me, even if we both start making spearmen off the bat and defend with our forces combined, they're still wiped out by the early spearmen. The only way to survive seems to be microing your units around your town center/guard towers to wear the opponents down whilst your villagers gather safely south of your town center, though we just get wiped out in the next few waves which consist of elite hoplites,elite hypasists and eventually lots of pelt spamming...

Help please?!? I'd greatly appreciate a basic build order that will have a worthy defence by 3 minutes. As I'm newish I've not mastered build orders, and going for tech 2 for an archery or stable is too late and will get stomped by the 3 minute elite spearman rush... I was thinking perhaps rushing to Age 2, focusing on early gold and using consumable summon units to defend initiallyy? Nothing else seems to work for me...

PS first post :D

|||I have occasionally run into this in solo. Gernerally all I have to do is keep the scout handy. The AI spearman will chase him around the map for eternity if I wanted them too. This works for me in solo, just gotta micro that scout well. Cant see why it wouldnt work in CO-OP.
|||Get a castle up near your TC as soon as possible. The AI is not using any Siege and that turns that tide in the quest. Things get much easier after that.|||

best thing to do is mass toxotes, and attack their base when u have 20+ (just kill some vills, retreat when his army is too big)
fortress might help u for a while, but it gets hard when they are coming with elite prodromos

that quest gets easier when u are lvl32 (u can buy epic gear in argos store with argos points)

to survive their early rushes, just run around with ur scout a bit (close to ur towers, so they get damaged)

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Yeah... whilst scouting i did notice how dumb the AI was to chase my scout away from my city but I didn't think much of it really. I have been having them chase my villagers/spearmen around but you still lose a lot of resource gathering time. It's only really the early game that I'm struggling with... is it even possible without abusing the poor AI to chase your scout?

And as for fortresses... well it seems that elite units are passable as seige units lol. I'll try it out with the scout lure again, thanks for answering.

|||Me and my friend were trying it also but it is way to hard I think it is for like level 35+ but we can get it at level 29....its to hard for that level and they spawn way 2 fast also
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Yeah... whilst scouting i did notice how dumb the AI was to chase my
scout away from my city but I didn't think much of it really. I have
been having them chase my villagers/spearmen around but you still lose a
lot of resource gathering time. It's only really the early game that
I'm struggling with... is it even possible without abusing the poor AI
to chase your scout?

And as for fortresses... well it seems that
elite units are passable as seige units lol. I'll try it out with the
scout lure again, thanks for answering.

Sounds like a gear issue. Fully geared Forts mow though any elite apart from siege units.
|||I had alot of problems with this quest too. I did it at level 27. I failed with about 5 different partners, but eventually I found a really really good level 40. I forgot what his name was, but he gave me a lot of tips that have really helped me improve my game. Just keep looking for a really geared level 40 and you should be fine.|||You bumped up my very first post XD I've done this on elite over 30 times now. Twice solo (team mate lagged out). Gear makes all the difference.