How to defend aggressive push on Arena

Hey! I'm 1400 aoe2de and struggles a bit with super aggressive play styles on Arena.

I'm a real boomer. I like my 3-4 tcs and my post imp game. I know a few strats to defend from a Castle drop, but when you are in early Castle age with 3 tcs and no food/wood/stone to defend, it is super hard. Even if I spot the forward asap I feel like I'm not even close to have the army to stop the Castle drop in time anyway. I simply don't have the economy for it at this time. And from there he snowballs out of controll with his plumed archers, conqs etc.

How do you prevent this from happening? Do you always make army early to kill his forward, or do you always make a defensive Castle asap? I feel like if I don't know it is coming, I'm done. And since I can't scout his base I don't know it is coming in time.

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(Just to be clear. I know that a good way to react to a castle drop is going imp asap and treb it down. The problem is that normally my economy is scuffed when I have 10ish plumed archers in my base sniping my vills and no army to defend with. And even if I make army to defend with, he has a better economy and much more map control and wins anyway)