It's the worst, especially because the new extreme AI can be very challenging now so there was no need to stick to using the old braindead AI and just giving it infinite resources. I did the math on one of those, the first mission of the Khmer campaign, and both the enemy AI's receive 20,000 free resources in total every 5 minutes for the duration of the mission (the equivalent of 166 villagers working optimally), in a mission where the human player is limited to 125 pop. It's still a super easy mission because the bigger AI threat is scripted to never attack ever, so you can freely boom and send in suicide waves of rams and trash until you wear down their production buildings, but it's all around just a horribly boring mission.
I find if you just make an army of Heavy Camels and Elite Mamelukes, you have the speed and damage output to take down the many enemy assaults. Also, be sure to trade with the Persian trader via trade cogs. I think it does deserve Honorable Mention simply for being the hardest AOK scenario, and STILL one of the more difficult
Saladin 6 is easy .at start make 10 galleon and attack genoise sunk their war ships and block their dock they keept making only fishing ships no any war ship. Then you have all sea full of fishs for food and just defend after cca one hour they run out off gold and they will be recruiting only villagers and few light cavalry .also you can destroy grey with canon galeons
Le Loi 2 should be on the list. At least in hard difficulty. I won in my 10 try. Saving and restoring, bomming and quickwalling in the right and then adding bombard galleons to kill the towers to then kill the production building. It was insane.
2 onagres,4 vils repairing them and all initial army, clear the path to the end and boom with vills at the path. Start making unique unit and cavs fully upgraded. With the cavs snipe trebs or onagres,unique unit to chukunus. I passed it at the first try by accident
Deathmatch style scenarios in general tend to be really difficult, because the AI is almost always better at multitasking and micromanaging huge armies and economies than the player. You see this in both the Fate of India and Tsar of the Bulgars and, to a lesser extent, in The Old Tiger.
I just came back to Age of Empires after a while, and decided to play through the campaigns in historical chronological order. The first really difficult one I've run into was the final Alaric mission. After five pretty easy scenarios, the difficulty felt like it spiked through the roof. After two attempts of trying to build up on the mainland, I built my base on the original "island" and snuck villagers to snipe resources that I needed on the mainland. I tried assassinating the traitor Goth in the middle a couple of times, who was by far the biggest threat, but he kept rebuilding with seemingly infinite stone. That's about when I found the Gallic towns didn't rebuild, so I used my resources hollow them out and destroy them. In the end I didn't even finish building the final Castle (which was actually a rebuild) because the Goths in the center ran out of resources and sent their commander to attack me. I played that scenario for HOURS. I'm still not sure how best to hold the initial attacks back, but next time I play I will focus on destroying the Markets of the three towns, and try and steal the relics as early as I can manage.
The easiest way to win for me was to use all of the initial units to destroy TC of Goth commander in the center of the map. After I killed most of the peasants and production buildings I started to recruit Gothic infantry units (I think you are have Anarchy tech from the start so you dont need castle to get them). When I destroyed Castle with my infantry their commander attacked my base and was killed. After that you can destroy most of the Red opponent base so you don't need to worry about missile units he will gonna spam. Then you are basicaly 1v2 so from there it is pretty much doable. I had to restart campaign twice because I didn't kill that Goth traitor from start and I noticed he sends against you most forces and is a real pain in the ass.
@@Vince-tt1uj That's actually a great recommendation. I never attempted to attack with my starting units. The middle island would be a lot easier to defend from the other cities too if I seized it early on. Definitely going to try this next time I do the scenario.
No one talks about the final Hun mission " Fall of Rome"? It may not be the absolutely hardest mission(although for me it is) but it definitely is the most unfair. You have 4 enemies that build Wonders, that you must destroy, and all 4 send massive armies all the time.
@@somehuman1901 u just get castles to build on your left, in front of the mountains, then train around 15 tarkans in the castle, the rest of the pop space u just get tarkan, cave archer and 5-10 trebs, get your trebs to attack the buildings and stuff while your troops just defend. It's easy, only thing is that it's long
@@somehuman1901 its relatively easy to take out green early in the game, bait out his army and use the tarkans to kill the siege, then slowly destroy their production buildings with trebs, with green out of the way it becomes way easier since the lower part of the map becomes completely safe for you to boom, you have access to plenty of trees and a massive gold pile. place a castle in the middle and wall up the upper and middle part and just boom, with some decent macro you can boom and get an army going way before the wonders start to count down, so its just rushing trough enemies until you win. your order should be purple-orange-red
Le Loi 1 is pretty simple if you play it slow. Your base is never attacked. You just need to build a castle and a siege workshop in your ally bases and they become invincible. You can also trade very early, as soon as you clear the 1st village. Mine stone, buy stone, build castles and you can't lose, Ming is 100% unable to deal with castles.
Yeah, especially in March 2021, this scenario was easy. Maybe different patches changed things. I would replace Le Loi 1 with e.g. Kotyan's Huts. The impending Mongol attack gave me a heart attack.
i believe that you can also make your allies train more units if you feed them resources, which can help if you forget about them or need your population focus elsewhere
the only thing that makes leloi 1 a bit difficult is low pop cap, 75 iirc. you either produce, defend, or attack, but you can't do two of those things at the same time
My top 5 hardest scenarios would be: 1. The Mountain Siege (Le Loi 2) - There's absolutely no end to the spam of Ming units, and it turns into pure hell once they start producing Trebuchets. I can barely focus any attention on clearing the path, let alone wait for the villagers to flee as well. 2. The Best Laid Plans (Bari 4) - I was able to win with the Castle defense victory by forcing the Teutons to chase my discounted Camel Riders around the archer-garrisoned Castle and using them to destroy the Trebuchets, but to say the pressure is intense would be an understatement. 3. The Breath of the Dragon (Dracula 3) - The Castle you get is hardly enough to defend you from the constant mass-assaults from your five enemies, especially since you're stuck on an island with limited resources and vulnerability to boat attacks. 4. A Kingdom of Our Own (Alaric 5) - DO. NOT. LET. SARUS. GET. TOO STRONG. 5. Consolidation and Subjugation (Tariq ibn Ziyad 2) - Wonder victories combined with constant attacks from four enemies is pretty deadly. Merida alone makes the mission twice as hard as it would be otherwise. Honorable mentions go to The Old Tiger (Bayinnaung 5), The Battle at the Kalka River (Kotyan Khan 2), and The Battle at Hanoi (Le Loi 3). The Le Loi campaign is the hardest overall imo.
Le Loi 2 is not hard I think. In fact, the only thing that makes it hard is the stupidity of IA that will attack the Ming when they must flee. And you can't control them.
I am having the same problem with Tariq 2! I can destory 2/3 enemies, but the constant spam of rams, mangos, huskarls, and cav archers from Red makes this impossible for me. From watching Ornlu play it, it seems that you have to full stone wall, boom fast, and strike early; the enemies didn't seem to be producing units as quickly as they do later in the game, when hit early.
Dracula 3 is not that hard, probably in top 10 but not in top 5. As long as you wall the southern bridge, the units from orange, cian and gray get stuck in the bridge. And if you get rid quickly of the green, you just have to focus on yellow, and try to not build economy near costs due to galleons
@@sergioacosta452 Dracula 3 is even easy if you strike before to take the ottoman city. But if you don't it's really hard I find. Tariq 2 is also very if you don't strike quickly. You must destroy the pink at first, then the reinforcements come and you destroy sevilla. Only Guadalajara is left and easy to destroy (the red is nearly impossible with 4 castles on hill).
Le Loi 2 is not hard if you only do elephants. Bari 4 is not hard if you go to put rams around blue's castle at the very beginning and if you wall your base. Dracula 3 is not hard if you go to destroy green, orange and teal main buildings very early with your bombards (easy with a transport ship) Alaric 5 is not hard at all if you build a transport ship to kill Sarus in the early game. Kotyan Khan is quite hard but not among the hardest. Tariq ibn Ziyad 2 and Bayinnaung 5 mainfully are among the hardest nevertheless.
The easiest way to beat The Best Laid Plans is to immediately build 10 Petards when the mission starts and send them to your ally's castle. Then as soon as they betray you, you can instantly blow it up and they'll return to being your ally again. That way you not only get rid of one enemy immediately, but they'll also keep orange occupied quite a bit (and eventually can even defeat them with the help of the yellow mercs). That's how I beat it on hard at least after getting absolutely destroyed every time I tried to play the mission the intended way lol
I won this game after Teutons destroyed my base and have to run away to my ally and build a fleet with cannon galloen and galloen take their economy down then destroyed them all 😅
The trick about Kotyan Khan 2 is to go full on aggressive: don't bother with TCs, just throw all resources into rams, scout cavalry, bloodlines and fletching (mainly for starting kipchaks) it's not very hard to beat tatar's starting army and cripple their economy. If you can prevent them from getting to castle age they basically can't make any more military and you can win the scenario in 20 minutes
I find it easier staying in the Feudal Age, seriously. Forget about ageing up and just spam out rams to get to those Tatars before Subotai comes to eviscerate you
Bari 4: First of all recapture Capua by Petard , then block the entrance from the North , enemies will attack from the south but they will first deal with yellow and blue. Thus, in this way, it becomes very easy even in hard difficulty.
i did not play it on hard - and i basically got away with building towers and gates into/behind the existing wall. some patrolling cavalry around the castle, archers in the towers and done.
Best laid plans wasn’t too hard. If you petard blues castle then it’s almost far too easy. Personally the hardest I’ve had so far is Bari 5. That is impossible. Having to defend against enemies on all sides and having to send units to compete missions
@@trystar-sl1mi That one was kinda easy too. Ich beat it on very hard. You have to do all missions exept for one so they don't send in the big army. You can trade with your ally. And yust build crossbows, nothing else.
orion 123 never mind, I played it again and it was so much easier this time. I just spammed crossbow, had them on attack ground and patrolled them. Meanwhile i would my light cav and some archers to do the missions
I'm amazed you've managed to complete them all already! I've been getting through them pretty quickly myself, but I still have 6 campaigns and the historical battles to get through.
@@datditdet Le Loi campaign wasn't hard for me, im a defensive player and have no problem with scenarios where we have to defend, like the top1 of this video Bari, wasn't hard for me, I defended the castle with blue attacking too. I struggle in scenarios where there is a clock, where I have to destroy something in X minutes or misson over.
I knew Bari 4 was gonna be on this list. I certainly wasn't able to beat it on hard since I am nowhere near the strength of the mighty OrnLu. Merry Christmas!
I've done Bari 4 on Hard and did so while defending the castle. If you are only able to choose one secondary objective, choose the Norman Mercenaries. They take the heat off of the castle a good deal. It is not number 1 on my list, but it is a top 10 hardest campaign scenario, period. Bari 5 is also very difficult.
Bari 4 is actually incredibly easy if you play this like a tower defense game. All you have to do is get strong eco and spam towers behind the walls where the castle is. I can win this scenario by just sitting behind the walls with less than 10 cataphracts and sniping any trebuchet or rams with them. I usually end the match with about 30 towers, and eventually, the arrows become so overwhelming that they're even taking out rams before they even get a single hit in. I'm literally able to win without even leaving my base and doing any secondary objectives that benefit me
I think the hardest are actually on historical battles, Dos pilas( going with tiklal) and bapheous, especially if you're going for the "turkish delight" achievement
actually no, turkish delight isn't type of ach. that makes you try again and again or that takes too long to do. only problem is yellow who's going to attack you every sinlge time they have couple units to send your base. they might be challenging during early-boom so be careful. taking down castles are easy since you can go with bombard cannons and trebs. so as long as you start killing enemies starting with yellow, rest is not a big deal.
I'm glad Fate of India made the list. God that was a pain. 3vs1 and they start with nearly infinite resources was not fun. Heading over to green's econ base early on and massing priests to take their elephants helps a lot. Destroying green's economy and nearby red's economy makes it a lot easier. Putting castles right before the trench helps get a height advantage against red's CA spam.
I think the second Tariq mission is much more difficult than either of those on Hard, but both of those levels are difficult. I can't believe the Tariq ibn Ziyad campaign only got 1 sword difficulty, insane.
The Best Laid Plans was nerfed. I had been reading some forums and many people were scared to death of it years ago, but when I played it I beat it at my second try in the intended way (more or less cause I used a cheap trick with petards and a castle lol). On the other hand, when I played Prithviraj 4, that was absolute Hell. The only way I was able to beat it on Hard was with the Wonder trick, but on my current level I just couldn't destroy more than a single monastery.
Joan of arc cheapter 6 made me cry while playing it on hard it changed alot since the brungandy is civ now it needs to be on the list you need to replay it , its much harder now.
I bari 4 like 5 times without the petards at the blue castle and kept losing. Finally, I looked up a video and barely made it through, definitely one of the most challenging experiences I've had in the campaigns.
Kotyan Khan 2 was a PITA doing the Feudal only challenge, but it was seriously easy mode if you play normally and advance to Castle. You can hold off the Mongols indefinitely and clear them off the map by just setting up some castles in the one chokepoint and using Light Cav to absorb aggro and snipe siege. After you've dealt with yellow, you can open up a decent trading lane with the blue Slavs up north, put out some siege and begin trashing Orange. There's even a voice line for destroying Subotai's wonder as well.
Notice how they're all new dev team missions. I feel as if the new devs made these scenarios with hardcore players in mind, compared to the original Ensemble Studios team who made them for the average gamer who may not know all the hotkeys or play multiplayer. I think that's why I don't really like the newer campaigns aside from sub-par or overdone level design and voice acting, they're just not made for a casual player.
Even the new missions which weren't super hard often aren't very fun. A lot of the times they are downright tedious. Still, it did seem they got better with this over time.
Th emost difficult one for me was the one in the Berber campaign in which we have to cross the Pyranees, The fact that our units constantly loose HP when crossing the mountains made it really hard.
I completed bari 4 on hard first try. After having scouted Dattus's tower I docked outside Capua, and built a couple of cannon galleons to snipe it and defeat Dattus before they could even deal any damage. Capua then turned on me, but conveniently the castle was close to the waterline, so the cannon galleons took care of the castle as well within a short time. They proved to be very useful against the trebs from the holy roman empire as well (I'd walled up the northern pass, so the teutons had to go the long way round), and they sniped a few of the trebs before finally getting converted by the Papal states monks. By this time I'd recruited some arbs to help defend the castle and my economy was decent enough to defend (with help from the norman mercenaries).
@@ShadowCrystallux I got still easier. Build two siege workshop at the beginning to train 5 rams. Go imperial at the start of the game to train two trebuchets and help the rams when Capua betrays you. Whe it is done and Capua's castle is destroyed, send the two trebuchets in Dattus' camp to take down the tower. Send the five cataphratcs too. Since Capua will attack him too (he has just become back an ally), it is enough to protect the trebs. Once it is done, you just have to wall your base to protect it from Holy Roman Empire raids and train archers to deal with the soldiers on the other side on your walls while you are developing your eco.
What I did that made this mission so easy to the point I took out all my enemies before the timer was that. First I spammed petards and placed them next to blues castle. Second I sold some wood to get enough gold to tribute yellow. After that, I built gates around the castle and left a small choke point at the southern gate, I used my cataphracts to distract the enemies to go around in a circle whilst the castle sniped the Teutonic Knights and the Pike to clear up the cav. Honestly by doing this it wasn’t hard at all.
My strategy was pure cheese. I didn’t liberate capua and I completely forgot to hire the normans. However, the enemy AI is easily distracted (well, duh). I created a group of cataphracts, most of the time keeping castle age tech, and lured every attacking unit to run around the castle taking arrow fire from the castle and they miraculously ignore it. All the while, I quickly snipe any siege that manages to be smarter than their cavalry support. As cataphracts start dying, I simply make more. Let me tell you, doing that for nearly an hour was tedious, but it was funny watching every color of the rainbow dying and leaving their mark around Troia.
One thing I notice with every pro who plays the campaigns and has issues with them is that there is basically no defense from them (no walling, towers etc..). They rely on rushing and booming economy. That's it. I got through these hard scenarios by just cheesing with multiple layers of walls and defenses while occasionally raiding their economy. Sure it turns into lengthy battles but it does the trick.
that was my first though after first try, but fast imp with 2 trebs is better, cs u have imp and 2 trebs insted of loosing petards and you can destroy orange's tower woth trebs from yellow's camp too. And defend your castle from enemy's tebs by your own
For Fate of India, if you build a Wonder at your base, finish it, then destroy one Monastery, you win because this is not a conquest victory as since this victory allows relics and wonders. If you destroy an enemy monastery after a wonder is done and you give a bit of time below 200, you can beat the timer after the enemy timer resets. Just make sure the wonder is not within reach of enemy trebuchets.
The key for "The Best Laid Plans" ( Bari 4 ) was to like you said petard Blue Castle as fast as they change diplomacy to enemy, hire as fast as possible mercenaries and build many galleons on this river near Capua. For me the worst in term of difficulty was Pachacuti campaign - for me really boring and sluggish.
I did manage to do Bari 4 by saving my castle. It took me at least a dozen tries. For me it was like completing a jigsaw puzzle by moving right pieces in the right place at the right time.
I did as well. I tend to be the kind of player that loves parrying off assaults, so I actually like the level, just wish it were ever so slightly easier on Hard. The key for me was hiring the Norman Mercenaries. They can create serious distractions.
I couldn't hire the mercenaries as I didn't have sufficient gold since I was using it create arbs and cataph. Mostly the former. Mercenaries did trouble my eco towards the end. I did the relic objective a little late. Had I done it ASAP maybe I could have hired them. But my priority was to cause the avalanche and fend off the initial 15 mins. The enemies actually attack every 15 mins. Other times they send small armies.
I don't understand what happen with the campaigns on DE. When I was a kid I beat all the conquerors ones, and when the forgotten was out I did the same (until I reach the "El Dorado" one that was so bugged that was impossible to play, at that point I left the campaigns). Now I am back to it, with a better understanding of the game mechanics, and I am constantly struggling. I don't know, it feels like they did something wrong. Also, I miss how before you have to play them in order, from (supposedly) the easiest to the hardest. I don't get how did they rate the campaigns for DE, doesn't make much sense to me.
I'm writing this 3 years after the video upload, so there could be made some changes to campaigns, but most of them feels actually easy (I started aoe2 de just one month ago and i was playing them on hard). All you need to do is just to build forward castle and garrison it. For kotyan 2 two castles full of your unique horse archers can hold you from mongols for hours. Dai viet is similar, you just rush castle to one side and attack another without worries that it'll fall. Ivaylo 3 and prithviraj 4 goes the same way with the difference that sometimes you need to snipe trebs with ur cavs. Bari casstle def is doable this way aswell, you just add some monks inside to convert anoying units and set ur cav outside with passive stance to kill trebs. Ai there rushes to ur castle and ignore them totally, leaving theirs trebs undefended.
Also Honfoglalás and the one Sfroza campaign where you are castle age against post-imp unit spam :( but with how they remade the scenario, I started to miss the old Honfoglalás though, just felt a lot more epic
@@tcsiyic3584 but the battle only happened in the Carpathian Basin. Without the Pechenegs raiding them. They have to leave thr Russian area so that they'll be safer from Turkish incursions.
I haven't played all the DE campaigns but for me at this point: 1.- the last Saladin's scenario is tricky, you need to be super aggressive. 2.- Last Alaric they punch my face every time. 3.- Le Loi has like 2-3 difficult maps. 4.- From Tamerlan's campaign when you go to Russia. 5.- 2 water maps from Malayan's campaign. 6.- The river mission from Dracula's campaign. 7.- Honfoglalas (Magyar's scenario). They're not in order. But now I have even more difficult suggestions from Mr. Mongolian Wolf.
agree at all - except for tamerlane 3- any scenario where you get castles and your enemies dont get trebs is an easy scenario. in that particular case, wall up, pay cyan to get constant food, send weps to yellow right and he will manage orange, send a lot of cavalry on agressive mode to black and make him resign in 20 sec, put castles in yellow left to defend him while he sends convoys of rams after red. use those castles to spam petards, send petards to green castles, boom
I didn't find Best Laid Plans that bad... as you can heavily cheese the start. As soon as it starts, build a bunch of rams, place them next to your ally's castle, and perhaps even wall off the area around the castle to prevent him from sending knights against your rams. Once he flips to being an enemy, you can flip him back in less than half a minute. He'll send out some units quickly against orange and you can follow along with your rams and quickly destroy his tower, taking him out (with just that it goes from 1 v 4 to 2 v 2). Also at the start, wall off your castle with gates and bring all your missile troops in (perhaps even locking the gates - the Germans are weak against archers). Send 5 villagers up to mine stone to cause an avalanche. At this point you could raid the monastery with light cav (bonus against monks), which gives you enough gold to hire the Normans. Wall off the river on the left and near where the monastery is to prevent the remaining enemies from getting into your base.
Great video, Ornlu - but I can't believe he last Bari scenario and the last Le LOI scenario weren't included!! The Le Loi one broke me for about a week
The two last Lê Loi are also quite difficult! An I think the Lion and the Demon (Saladin 6) also would deserve an honourable mention? Bari 4 is hard, but walling in, using the Monks and allies and sniping the objectives I managed to play it all right compared to most of the hardest scanerios on the list!
I almost 100% agree with this! I would probably lower Kotyan II a bit and maybe kick the Dai Viet or Rakhine scenarios for Ivaylo III and Yodit I, although Tsar of the Bulgars is quite easy to cheese. I think everyone will agree on the first one though, definitely the hardest single campaign mission of the whole set! I was looking forward to seeing Viper go through it but he does not seem too interested to keep playing the campaigns nowadays.
I find the second Le Loi mission much harder than the first one. In the 1st mission, you can pretty much ignore the allied villages from the beginning and instead focus on economy and protecting your 2 allies. I have done that by simply building a second castle in their base and garrisoning them with light cavalry (against rams) and a few villagers (to repair the damaged walls/towers/castles). You can also build more walls arround the enemy bases if you want (since the allies do not have fortified walls). There are 3 relics in total on the map so gold is not so much of a problem. Once you secure your allies, you can focus on eliminating the Chinese patrols and occupying forces in the allied villages. A great advantage for the player is the fact that the Chinese do not attack your base, so you do not need to build any defences and just support your allies. Also - Dracula 3 was very hard, I won by building walls on every section of the bridge where it was possible in order to keep the grey player away while I dealt with the rest.
The Best Laid plans is kinda hard, but it gets way easier if you know this cheap exploit: 1) Wall up like crazy around your castle. You want to delay the HRE ever getting to your castle (remember they attack you with this huge army at like, minute 10). Best thing to do is to delay them as much as possible. 2) Make some cavalry and place it outside your city so that, when HRE trebs arrive, you can snipe them with ease. Mangonels may help too, but this is kind of dubious. 3) At the very start, send 2 vils to build a dock in the river near Capua. You have access to cannon galleons, so build 2-3 of them. 4) Snipe the orange tower in order to defeat them extremely early. 5) As soon as Capua turns, destroy the castle with the same cannon galleons 6)Pay off yellow as soon as possible. Now you have taken out 2 enemies, made a friend and are in a position to slowly push back the HRE and the popeman. I strongly suggest taking out the grey monks, which provide gold to the HRE and the popeman. I don t remember much about the rest of it since I played it long ago but, if you start like this, you are already well positioned to take on the scenario.
Not sure if someone already mentioned it, but Bari 4 has been nerfed (not sure which patch does), now Teutons make trebuchet only in the very late game. (pay attention to the "our mighty siege engine......" dialogue) The early trebuchet push is the only reason I think why the scenario is hard, without that, just wall the base and the castle will do most of the work. now, I think it is harder than Le Loi 1, but easier than all 4 other scenarios you mentioned. And I think Bayinnaung 5 and Pachacuti 2 (with no walls & gates achievement, or even try to keep both allies alive) should be on the list!
I saw from a chinese player a cheese strat for bari 4. Rushing the monks for their gold to use for the mercenaries and making a cannon galleon for the tower and castle.
My top 5 1 - Pachacuti 3 : needs to be widely focused on your micro throughout all the game and hurry up. 2 - Bayinnaug 5 : three poor stables to spawn elephants while your ennemies get tens and tens of buildings. 3 - Honfoglalas (Historical battle) : needs a very good micro and no mistake tolerated to kill yellow in the very beginning with a very few scouts and ca. 4 - Le Loi 3 : you have not an eco yet that you have to handle mass imperial cavalry, archers and trebuchets. 5 - Tariq ibn Ziyad 5 : not very hard but facing paladins when you have barely built your first tc is somewhat challenging (building two castles in the early game is nevertheless very efficient to kill them).
Honorable mentions : JoA 6 : Everything depends on the numbers of guys you spare after the battle to capture purple's base and take its ressources. If you lose more than just a few, it is game over... Prithviraj 5 : Not very hard but very annoying I think. Almost no eco and your enemies get infinite ressources....
@@theophertil4495 prith, using f3 you convert the two most westernest bases, which gives you a free castle, a relic in front of you, and a galaxy of fish to eat, voila. it doesnt deserve to be the ending of a campaign
I'm curious as to what your thoughts would be on the 5 hardest mission specific achievements in AOE2:DE. I had quite a helluva time knocking out the Jin before they get their wonder up, reaching the king in Gajah Mada before 10 minutes (not nearly as hard as the Jin) and defeating the Hungarians before Subotai arrives, also in the Genghis campaign.
Bari 4 was a bitch to complete. Couple things that i personally did that helped. Build extra towers around the castle, hardwall off bottom path to reroute blue north, buy mercenaries (they basically deal with orange and green through stalling them) and mine the stone to collapse the trade route, it nueters the tuetons. Build up a bunch of calvary to stall and deal with seige and stuff your castle and towers with archers or skirmishers. Dont early rush orange, it weakens your early defense to much and eventually you can buy the normans to deal with them anyways. I actually did so well with that strategy that i destroyed my own castle with 10 seconds left so i could annihilate everyone
for kotyan khan 2, you find it hard becuse you take the wrong approach. You don't need to build TC and make economy, just go straight siege workshop + ram + make some upgrade and add some scout to your beggining army, and you could defeat tatar from the start. It's take like 8 minute to complete this scenario like that, and it's so much easier than let tatar become stronger
Just finished Bari 4 after getting my ass handed to me then getting inspired by your own video on it, its honestly all on the initial setup, send most of your starting vills to the stone excavation (except 2-3 which you keep at base building new TCs and finishing the wall around the castle), start training some 3 petards and a few extra units to invade Dattus early and rush his tower, train 9-10 petards more and send them to capua castle, hold out for the first waves of enemies until the excavation ends, and then it's a breeze, sack the monastery with your acquired breathing space and give the gold to the normans for an easy win (not paying the makes them turn on you, and if you haven't finished the other optional objectives, it essentially turns an extremely hard 4v1 into an impossible 5v1)
Just beat Bari 4 today! I did cheese it by watching your video of that campaign and doing the petard trick. But I also built a TC beside the stone in the mountains to kill the trade
I just went through The Best Laids Plans in hard. I dreaded it, cause I was barely good enough to finish it in standard last time I tried. Long story short, it was a breeze. Maybe they rebalanced it, but I hardly ever felt under pressure after the last attack. What I did was : - Take my starting army, raze Montecassino (grab the relics if you can), use the gold to pay of the Normans. - Take three peasants and immediately go mine the stone to shut down the trading route. - Make a dozen petards to blow up Capua's castle. I also did a path of walls to herd the AI toward the castle (it seems it sometimes prefer to wander around and destroy your base, rather than go for the castle). I boomed, got to Imperial age, destroyed Melus' tower with a treb deployed in the norman mercenaries' base (but Melus was almost gone by that point, as yellow and blue were pounding him). I had to destroy one treb, maybe two. But it seems red won't make any once the trading route is shut down. I had an army of 60 cataphracts by the end, while green was slowly getting destroyed by blue and yellow (+ my siege)
Old Tiger was not so hard for me. At first, protect the monk during meditation was tricky, but when you finally have your base, it's pretty easy. 100% sea control, destroy every docks, so you're not attacked anymore and then, destroy every single buildings you can with cannon galleons. Finally, you can make land units and start defeat your enemies. To me, the hardest one was the last Vietnamese campaign. A hell of a fortress and million ressources, so hard!
Razzia was literally the hardest thing I beat on aoe2. BC even if you beat the other enemies and stop the attacks on your bases, even if you have a lot of resources (which you most certainly don't at the end when playing on hard) the enemy just spams troops so quickly that I just couldnt destroy his military buildings. No matter how large an army I sent, if I had a foward base to train more and send quickly, there was just no way my troops survived long enough to destroy the enemy buldings, which was the only way to stop him as it had no eco. I got lucky after countless hours on my 4rth or 5th play that the enemy had amassed a large army on the other side of the map when I hit his base from west, so with enough rams I destroyed many of its buildings before his troops came back and while he was at his pop cap. Once half his buildings were destroyed the rate of his spaming was reduced enough so I could hold back his paladins while the rams destroyed the rest of the buildings. But I was so mad I left a final building standing so I could raze all his walls.
First, thx for the videos I did the old tiger in a different way...started to kill the Portuguese, converted their Feitoria, and with the resources, built a lot of towers to protect my base. Converted the blacksmith and upgraded all the stuff, converted other buildings and made all the updates...in the end was fun :)
Me too, i didn't want to micro 2 places at one so i converted the feitoria and played tower defense for 3 hours until i was able to demo all the enemy docks, then bombar gallon the shore and win
I go to the mission as always meditation and destroy any castle on my way and after this flee to my island and build a huge fleet with cannon galloen and galloen destroy enemy docks and buildings and won the game
I haven't really played the FE campaigns, so I can't comment on their difficulty. I definately agree on the 3 other mentioned (I only won Kotyan 2 because the mongols ai bugged out a bit). That Sundjata one how you are locked in feudal and get constantly harrassed would be one of my picks, had it not been for the fact that you can cheese it. Anyway, I don't like the newer campaigns as much. Having to fight more enemies that have infinite resources (supported by no eco) feels tedious on hard. Alternatively, raiding ecos on earlier campaigns is viable. You would actually get rewarded for hyper-aggression and interesting tactics.
I'm always torn on which I prefer. The old campaigns when you can raid their eco are always a cakewalk, can beat them with like 5 units. But the infinite resource spam get tedious as well.
Bari 4 took so many tries for me as well. You can actually treb down the orange tower from the Norman Mercenaries’ camp if you go to the very edge of the cliff. Eliminate them right away and once they are gone, get fortified walls and start walling the side of your base in order to funnel the enemy attacks against your castle and boom with multiple tcs behind it. Even with the funneling it gets extremely hard to withstand when the teuton assault begins because they bring a lot of siege units. But once you fully garrison your castle and build a couple garrisoned towers aswell and have enough cav to snipe their siege, it starts to get easier. I know funneling is a bit cheesy against the AI but I think that’s the only way if you want the castle defense victory.
Actually 'The Best Laid Plans' is like ivaylo 3, which means it's easy to defend the castle on hard indefinitely once you know what to do, it doesn't even require cheesing objectives before they happen. The AI doesn't even use trebuchets, so defending is easy peezy. Wall in the castle except 1 block on the wall so the AI will walk to it instead of attacking the walls, position 20~30 arbalests inside and that's it, no teuton/italian/capua army will ever be able to take it from you.
How about Kotyan Khan 5 - Bulgaria (HARD) after july 6th? I know you did this one late last year but it seams that something changed since then. I´ve managed to defeat the Latin Empire but I can´t beat the Byzantines. Is this mission bugged? The huge amount of army you encounter is overwelming. Thanks a lot.
I think it is bugged. It says that you have to either defend the Bulgarian wonder or defeat the Byzantines. The wonder got destroyed but I killed the Byzantines and nothing happened. Only the ships spwned. I even made a castle next to the spawn point and killed every wave of ships and the game didnt progress. I guess there were empty transports left at unreachable places. Also took me multiple attemps to get this far. When that happened I just did the other path.
Tbh I only ever succeed in campaigns because of videos of people beating them. Can't get anything done by myself.. and even on standard mode I only get bronze.
I found that for the Best Laid Plans Mission it is wise to send 1 vil to your ally's base to build a dock and create 2 cannon galleons. They are pretty much invincible once you get them in the water as I never had to deal with enemy ships and on the off chance you miss your window for getting the Norman Mercenaries (which I did because I was too busy defending my base) they are perfect for sniping all their buildings and forcing them to resign. Doing that while building towers and units to defend, quick booming for economy, and sending a few vils to mine out that stone (they won't be attacked), and I found that I was able to push up and take out the enemies one by one. Cannon galleons early on make one enemy completely trivial which helps. Still though I agree it took me several tries to get it.
Devs nerfed every mission mentioned in the video :( My hardest lists after DoI : 1. pachacuti 2 2. Jadwiga 3 Dual of dukes 3. Rajendra 3 4. Gaja mada 5 5. Tariq 4 Honorable mention - Ivalo 3 - tariq ibn Ziyad 5 - Kotyan Khan 2 - Jadwiga 4 - Jan zizka 3
I completely cheesed the Number 5. I beat the Yellow and the Portuguesse, and after that. I started converting the houses military buildings and the Feitorias
I just beat Bari 4 while defending the castle, and with no cheesing (i.e. no petarding Capua castle immediately as it turns bad). What I did is as follows: 1. Wall off northern side above castle. If you do it far enough, the red AI will waste a lot of time trying to tear down the wall instead of going directly against the castle. Also garrison all archers in the castle. Buy yellow's alliance asap. 2. Immediately make 6 petards (but 4 could work?) and send them to destroy the orange tower that you're asked to destroy. If you do this early enough when Capua is still your ally, then orange will be distracted by blue's attack, so your petards can literally walk up to the tower and blow it up. 3. Do the avalanche sidequest, it has a somewhat strong effect on enemy army I think. Enemies will not bother you much up there. Save the stone to repair the castle, get murder holes, make extra walls to the south of your base to funnel enemy to the south-west castle entrance. 4. Army composition: camels and cataphracts. You also have to be somewhat quick. But it is certainly doable (I am not very good!). Alaric 5 seemed much harder to me.
Where is Lake Poyang?! The mission from historical battles. I think is the hardest mission and deserve at least honorable mention! The best laid plans: Make a bunch of arbalalest and stuck them near the castle, you won't have problems killing every enemy, but you also need few cavaliers for trebuchets, hide 4, 5 in a corner and send them only for treb. I've done this before the update, when the game was really hard.
Just started campaigns because of server maintenance. I picked Cumans, because why not, and hard difficulty. Little did I know how weird the second part will be. I managed to beat it after an hour or two but I'm glad the other campaigns aren't as crazy.
So far hardest for me has been the Sargon campaign (Return of Rome) "The Land of Kings" mission. Looks a lot Like Le Loi 1 But I haven't played any you mentioned in the video yet, the one in the intro looks like it's going to be rough
Yeah, this mission took me a lot of trial. it is actually a timer mission, if you are too late, enemy will start sending a lot of siege rams and trebuchets to destroy your castle. However, the annoying part is where the escorting part starts. Enemies come from all over the direction killing the escaping military which takes a lot of time to complete. You might want to clear the eastern camp fast so you won't get stuck at the very slow process of escorting your friend's army which kinda out of your control. However, the other problem comes if you do it too quickly, you might don't have enough resources to build some towers or army to defend the escaping army since the blue camp all around the map will change ownership to cyan and they will start training units spam before you can even make enough your own. So, you're too fast, you screwed. you're too slow, you screwed. And a lot of multitasking by defending, making economy as fast as you can, and keep an eye out for the escort.
Bari 4 in hard surprised me initially and I got slaughtered first try, but on the second, I made a lot of tower around castle which was enough do defend against most attacks, some building outside so AI targets them. Paid Normas really fast to get the bully other enemies. They slowly build up eco and army and I managed to slowly wipe out enemies from south to north. Was a bit challenging to figure out start.
I think the second Tariq ibn Ziyad level, Consolidation and Subjugation is top 5 most difficult. Hard difficulty, of course. It's funny how different people experience different "issues" with each campaign scenario lol. I personally don't find Razzia to be a top 10 hardest scenario on Hard, but can see why it is honorable mention. I also find the second Prithviraj scenario The Digvijaya incredibly frustrating, while I find the fourth, The Fate of India, merely difficult, but again, I can see why it is on the list. A scenario in my personal top 5 would be the final DE Alaric mission, A Kingdom of Our Own, especially if you do not kill Sarus immediately. Anyway, great list. Love the content! -Good call on The Old Tiger! Wouldn't be my number 1 most difficult on Hard, but definitely top 5, and could be my favorite scenario overall. It is what urban warfare should look like in all the scenarios. For instance, the 4th Tamerlane is laughably easy on Hard. It should turn into a bloodbath. You are assaulting DELHI, for fs sake!
Agree with the levels mentioned in the video (although in no particular order). I actually loved those as they finally challenged one to focus and most of them took multiple tries. I believe that a campaign, where you can take as long as you want and also make multiple mistake AND yet be able to win, is a bad campaign.
The fate of India is actually a pretty easy one. It seemed hard to me at first, but the 3 monastaries are so close to the wall that with some bombards/traps you can easily pick em of from outside the enemy base!
Attila's sixth and last battle is by far the f*cking hardest and has the most annoying AI. 4 vs. 1. The British will spam long-bow archers, the French axe throwers, the Celtic siege machines and the Teutonic paladins... and all that mixed up with 4 wonders to destroy. A NUTHOUSE.
5. i heard this was harder back in the days but you can just kill orange and purple, convert their feitorias, millitary buildings and reds houses. And do whatever you want. 4/10 early game is a bit stressful 4. build castles in your allies bases, its free 4/10 3. wonder victory…easiest mission in the entire game 1/10 2. dont build a TC, just a lumber camp and a siege workshop, get BS upgrades, some scouts and attack thwm immedietly when your first ram is online ( attack the tc, when down move to the second tc, they dont produce units in feudal) 3/10 1. ally the paladins, wall your castle and place archers in it, mine the stone at the trading route.2/10 None of these are hard at all, you just need to approach them in an unusual way
In the Fate of India mission, you can "cheat" by starting to build a wonder right away and then you need to snipe just one monastery (or two if you started building it later). I also often exploit the fact that AI land units usually don't attack ships so if you have a map with rivers or lakes, you can use them for defense. Just be careful about onagers.
Le loi, the second mission is where I am stuck right now. Edit: finally beat the scenario after booming fast and putting units at every gate, using light cav to snipe the trebs.
