I think all you need to know about the Tariq campaign is how in the second mission Toledo is described as only having "a token garrison." Said garrison has over 100 units. In this campaign, "token" literally only means "finite."
We need a difficulty tier list for campaigns with Transport Ship unloading being broken. The "reinforcements" not arriving in the Siege of Paris? No big deal. The Elephants not dropping off properly in The Lion and the Demon? Problem.
lol, try Yodit 4. The 2 transports only unload 1 villager and you don't even have the control of it so you can't even start the mission since you have no units
@@ImNegator I was playing Tariq 1, I killed roderic but then an orange transport sailed up to the island and just sat there. No vils no way to finish the mission
Maybe it's just 'cause I'm a singleplayer only no hotkeys nor meta player, but that was the one campaign (maybe Tariq too) where I didn't enjoy a single mission. They felt like a never ending grind
@@hopelesssituationwarrior6996because the AI is given infinite resources and just spams idiotic units. Thankfully, you can build castles (which need to be surrounded by walls with 1 tile spacing between the castle and walls so that AI rams get confused more easily)
I am still waiting for William Wallace to disembark his forces at Falkirk. He promised he would come, he never did. Only for that, I suggest putting that campaign to 3 swords for emotional damage.
@@DosCaracteresplayed one of the AoE1 ones recently, where you start on water with loaded transports, on a timer for efficiency (to take down some towers) and an overall timer for achievement. Restarted 7 times just for better transport RNG 11
I really think the devs should have made an extreme difficulty for all the campaigns, including those pre-nerf ones as a challenge for the player :( Missions like Kyotan 2 and Bari 5 was tough but rewarding when players complete them
Definitely agree with adding a 4th difficulty. I get they want to make it more accessible but it feels weird when skirmish mode has such a wide selection of enemy difficulty and they try to make the higher levels harder, meanwhile the campaigns are nerfed even on hard.
@@Kogoso i think they should take some example from other games and just make the hardest difficulty available ONLY after beating the mission once. So no theres no risk of someone getting steamrolled from the get go.
Also I think the original difficulties of said campaigns add to the immersion, like how impossible the odds were at the time of history. Kotyan 2 the Mongols felt like the most unstoppable and dreadful force I've ever met in AoE2, your teal ally packs and leaves once you hit castle age, sending in bombard cannons in 30 mins from China... You felt how desperate and helpless the people were against them.
Alittle sad to hear that Bari 5 was nerfed so much. There are quite a few campaign missions where you defend a city. But none have matched the feeling of trying to hold on against overwhelming odds quite like Bari 5. Last onslaught lasting like 10 minutes straight is one of my favorite campaign memories. Anyway most changes seem to make sense :)
It was nerfed? Recently redid all campaigns for gold medals/achievements and it was still as I remember it 2 years ago. As long as you handle the secondary objectives well enough and mass archers, there would never be any problem. I even almost defeated Yellow before quitting because of boredom.
As a dedicated yet casual player last berber mission (played on hard) was just a multihour grindy experience of trying to plug 5 holes at once with trash unit spam and progressing one building at a time. I had a very very simmilar experience while clearing out the whole map in first vietnam mission - difference being that it was a silly self imposed challenge in that case, you're ment to just destroy like 3 towers and fuck off. It shouldnt feel this simmilar.
@@michabaron4129 It's been a while since I've subjected myself to Tariq, but my approach to Razzia was always to kill the Frankish army before Bordeaux with the reasoning that I could kill most of their base without having to fear warships, which I had no direct answer for since I didn't want to waste gold on ships or naval upgrades. Maybe that is the best way to do it though, because contrary to what Ornlu's said about that scenario I never recall really being pushed to the limits of my gold reserves or even having to tech into hussars at all. You just need to make sure to keep up good numbers of heavy camels and camel archers, pull weak units back to heal and micro carefully.
@@teddyhaines6613 there is a very good chance my macro was faulty but it feels like no other mission punished me so harshly for it. Also oops, i didnt mean to post it as a respond to somebodys comment about sth completely different
@@michabaron4129 I think one of the keys for me was scouting carefully to spot all the extra golds. There's a lot of them on the right side of the map in particular, so once you clear the purple village and the red mini-base over there, there's like 5 or 6 gold mines you can take in relative safety.
@@erwinwendler4621That reminds me of how ridiculously easy full on water scenarions are (as in Gajah Mada). Where you can just take your standard Islands build order, and Galley spam your way to victory.
I noticed that the 4th scenario (Challenging a Thalassocracy) in Suryavarman is much more difficult in Hard than how I remembered it. Now 11 minutes in there are cannon galleons and near +20 galleons eveywhere.
In the last portuguese scenario, the timer ends immediately after you convert albuquerque. And the last sicilian, the enemies start harrasing you like almost instantly. I saw some videos when that doesnt happen
The tariq campaign gave me a crisis of confidence when I was first doing the campaigns on hard. I thought I must be total garbage if I was getting my ass kicked by it. Then I checked the forums
I played "Lion of Africa" from the portugese campaign just this weekend. Yellow had the production buildings but the units got buffed, cause in my game they only had camel scouts, no canon galleys and the Pirates still had the castle. Red now has a castle instead of his "Wonder" and in your version only wooden gates
it's definitely harder than some of the 3 sword campaigns, for sure. I'd definitely rate it higher than Yodit, although I'd consider those two the cutoff-point betwen 2 and 3.
Tariq is easily a 3 sword campaign. Never had so much trubble with a campaign as with the last mission. Crazy lategame macro needed and I never play online so that is something I never really practiced before.
Fun fact of the Francisco de Almeida campaign: in the second level, if you shot with your cannon galleons to red's castle when he is your ally, you will win immediately
Man I gotta get the Dawn of the Dukes at some point. The fact that it probably continues/occurs around the same time as the events of Kingdom Come: Deliverance really sells it for me. Plus, Jadwiga seems like a fun campaign.
Kind of feels like many of the Sword-ratings go out the window when campaigns are played on hard unless you only consider the complexity of scenario design and mechanics.
Idk, as a lower-mid player (PvP wise) I could generally clear 1 sword hard easily, 2 swords ranging from easy to challenging and some three sword ones (+Tariq) I still need to crack some.
@@matt_9112 I'm also low-mid, still going through the campaigns in hard (just finished Tariq in fact). Never really got the sword rating at all, I've spent hours in some of the "easy" scenarios and campaigns but found others like the whole Tariq campaign to be way easier to manage although maybe a bit longer. Might have to do with how I play, I'm a better defender than attacker and some levels REALLY punish you for not going on an early offensive while in others you benefit a lot from some well done turtling.
Razzia is all about building 2 castles next to each other in the terrain close to blue's base....AFTER making enough camels to hold on Purple Paladon attacks
Ornlu, speaking of campaigns; will you be adding the Return of Rome campaigns to the Tier List? And will you be playing the AoE 1 campaigns the devs will be adding?
I disagree with the notion that straightforward scenarios equate to lower ratings. For instance, while almost the entirety of Tamerlane is build and destroy, the individual scenarios have you facing down a lot of enemy spam. In particular, the second scenario with the enemy Mangudai micro is really annoying, and you also have a limited eco like in Ivaylo 1. First and second scenario are also tricky due to the number of enemies if you don't know what which scenario objective achieves and how useful those objectives really are. So while it is straightforward where you need to destroy a lot of enemies, it also can be difficult. In this regard, I'm not sure I agree with Bari being bumped down, even if it isn't as difficult as before. It is still comparatively difficult, when looking at other three sword campaigns, at least in certain scenarios. And Babur is mostly alright, although the fourth and fifth scenario feel decently tough. I'm also not so sure that Almeida really needs 3 swords? The scenarios are complex but not that difficult in my experience. Tbf, I figured out some tricks by this point that make them easier, so I'm not that well acquainted with the ins and outs. I also don't really see why you would have Gajah Mada at 3 while leaving Bari at 2. That being said, I never felt like the last scenario is that difficult in that one. There are several things that they didn't touch I would see changed, personally. Attila(mostly fine, last two scenarios are a pain), Tamerlane (annoying cav archer micro), Algirdas and Kestutis (not even close to the level of other 1 sword campaigns), Bayinnaung (not really any difficult scenarios left here) and Alaric (only difficult scenario is the last one) would have 2 sword difficulty indicators, while Prithviraj (last two scenarios are really difficult) and maybe Gajah Mada would be 3 swords.
Ornlu isn't saying he necessarily espouses the idea that the swords should correspond to complexity rather than difficulty. He's saying that based on what he's seen, that's how the devs approach it, so these changes are consistent with the existing philosophy.
I'm not sure if its just me but, not so much the difficulty rating but going from Standard to Moderate difficty feels like a massive boost in actual difficulty. Like I went, as Barbarossa, from having little difficulty to being swarmed nonstop, especially in the mission where you have to drop a wonder in one of the cities, just couldnt get it done before I got overwhelmed (especially now that theres dromons there), or my attempt at taking the city and building the wonder would just get smashed. Other than that, I dunno if I can really talk about swords ratings as I'm mostly a casual standard player. The ratings dont seem to matteruch at that level, other than Bayinnaung(sp?), and Jadwiga
Changing Jan Zizka to two swords make sense, I went in fully expecting it to destroy me and left surprised by how didtracted I get by secondary objectives
I don't remember the khans in Ivailo 3 being so tanky to arrows. Horse archers are fine with Bulgars and that was THE scenario to play them but with 9 pierce armor, you don't want to create them anymore. Very sad for me.
I think the new The Fate of India is really hard. Didn't struggle that much with the old version but have yet to beat the new one, that and the last mission of the Khmer is the only thing i have yet to beat on hard.
Ornlu. I love you man. You're a good guy. That said, I really miss "best laid plans" in original. Such a fun challenge. What is your favourite campaign by the way? Any one that you have played many times?
Disagree on Portuguese being that high, aside from the first mission. The gunpowder units you have access to trivializes most of the enemies. If they're rating based on complexity then Tamerlane should definitely get 3 swords especially for the first three missions having numerous side objectives and having to face 5-7 enemies at once
Seems like Ornlu didn't check, but the campaign itself hasn't necessarily been made any easier. They just adjusted its rating in the campaign menu. And to be honest, if it wasn't for Ornlu I'd never have noticed the swords in the first place, and I'm guessing that goes for a lot of other players as well.
since now the tutorial campaign is The Art of War, I do believe that William Wallace campaign should be remade more fitting to the original war of the scots vs the britons and make it also the hardest campaign, period but I mean brutal hard, make The Siege of Varna look easy in comparison xD
Almeida being 3X is a joke. It was the easiest of the "african" campaigns by far when I first played it around LotW. Replayed it recently (yellow had buildings, but i swear you didn't get free CG, green had a castle) and its still easy, with the exception of the indian mission, where siege elephant spam is a pain to deal with. One sword, no more. Khmer should stay at 2 because of Thalassocracy alone, though I didnt replay it recently. Sforza is a joke, no idea why it was 3X, it is 1. Ivaylo can be tricky but it was not 3X before, and after post spamming imperial Lithuanians with +4 relic cav got replaced by Poles the only hard scenario in campaign became much easier.
Agreed, but somehow a lot of players can manage pretty hard Build & Destroy scenarios yet struggle as soon as mechanics get a bit more complex and require micro/adapation and thinking outside the box of "boom and steamroll"
6:40 On easy difficulty those two first scenarios are dumb easy. I beat them while doing other stuff, with just like 10apm. Scenario 2 you just pickup the army that’s given to you and place it under the wonder with the hero monk in the center and that’s it. I added like 10 skirms to the army for the final enemy push but it wasn’t even needed.
I played the original aoe2 campaigns countless times before hd or de. I have only recently begun to dive into the "new" campaigns. I tried during hd but did not like having to read everything. Would like an option to go back to the original camapign voices though.
tariq's 4th campaign is hella hard imo. Like going through the passage u lose all your hp. All the other ones are pretty easy all the other changes also makes sense.
"into china" i think the second or third mission of ghengis khan's campaign is unbelievably difficult for me as someone that plays on standard difficulty. the constant flow of units attacking you where ever you put your base while simultaneously having to thwart something stupid like a 25 minute wonder rush. i have literally never struggled with a single campaign mission in this entire game more than that specific one. holy shit I'm seething just thinking about it.
When I was a little kid (like 6-7 years old), it took my dad and I several days and over 5 hours ingame to beat Into China on Standard. It's a tough mission, so don't feel bad about it :D
@@OrnLu_AoE Honestly it's super simple once you've got it "figured out" like most things -skip virtually all your techs after wiping out the engineer base to build a small defensive force of cavalry and archers with monk support -send a contingent of 5 stone miners back to the starting area with a tower for protection -finally build an offensive castle north of jin and rush imp to get trebs
Build your base on the north of the island where Jin is located (northeast corner of map). Jin is beatable with just camel/pike + trebuchet + horse archers. Best part is none of the other chinese factions will attack your base on Jin's island.
This scenario was heavily nerfed. In fact, on hard I have found the entire Francisco de Almeida campaign to be MUCH easier since the Indian DLC was released. The fifth level I believe had the map size shrunk significantly 12:18
There were some cosmetic changes maybe? Other than that, I didn't notice anything different than what we got after the slight rework the mission got after DoI
The rating of the campaigns is probably accurate, but they should stop nerfing the campaigns themselves... People are free to choose difficulty levels after all, so if they want to make the 'easy' mode easier, fine by me, but why nerfing down the hard level?
Anyone remember the difficulty on last mission of "Joan of Arc," when DE just came out? That was a challenging mission. Shame they nerfed it. The whole nerf a single player difficulty is simply annoying. Probably steam achivements players were b1tching or something.
I never liked Bari as a Byzantine campaign since it's barely about Byzantines (you even play as made up people instead of real ones), but if they were gonna nerf any scenario, I wish it was the second one. I started playing campaigns on moderate after completing everything on standard, and that second scenario is brutal. Haven't tried the other scenarios to know how they compare, but that second scenario is way too hard imo. Still not as hard as Gajah Mada and Prithviraj. Fuck the last Gajah Mada scenario and the fourth Prithviraj one in particular.
Kinda sad that Bari got bumped down a whole sword. Definitely needed some attention but it was quite the feeling of pride to finally complete it on gold back in the day.
