|
Barbarossa - Part 4: The Lombard League Mission 4 Starting Text Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - T Station "As long as Barbarossa's knights were present, peace endured. But the emperor could not be everywhere at once. Whenever he went to Italy, Germany would flare up, and when Barbarossa returned to Germany, the Italians began plotting again. Milan had fallen, but the remainder of the Italian cities joined together in a confederation known as the Lombard League for the purpose of defeating Barbarossa. If Barbarossa intended to make Italy part of the Holy Roman Empire, he would have to conquer the Lombard League city by city. But Barbarossa still had a secret weapon: Henry the Lion and his seasoned troops."   Teutonic Soldier: Our fort is under attack by the Lombards! Henry the Lion: I will send my knights to assist you, though I fear they will be too late. The scenario starts with your base under attack by a large force from Padua. There's no real way to save it, so the first order of business is rushing everybody to the Transports and getting out of there.  I leave a couple of troops and villagers to extract resources from the southern base, but these guys are mostly disposable.   Instead, I sail a little bit further east, where a whole bunch of preexisting units are set to join your fleet upon discovery. After destroying a few of Venice's outlying patrol ships, I move the fleet up to the northern area, which is going to be my main base of operations.  Because I'm primarily focusing on the northern side of the map, it's important to get a Castle up. With Crenellations, the Teutons' unique tech which increases Castle Range, this Castle can effective control the entirety of the river.  Henry the Lion: Barbarossa, I do hate to strike you when you are down, but the Lombard League has agreed that I would make a better emperor. So sorry. Oh no. Who could have seen this coming. In the original game, Henry would either betray you at 23 minutes or the instant you built a Castle. In the Definitive Edition, both need to be true, but in all honesty he's a pretty useless ally anyway, so no big loss. As it is, him and Verona are pretty much non-entities, though they would be your primary opponents if you decided to stay on the southern part of the map and go for a land-based approach.   Venice, playing Byzantines, has a very large and powerful navy, but is forced to engage via the river where it can't bring those advantages to bear and instead gets shot to pieces. Apart from that, all they really bring to the table is a few Halberdiers. Padua has Siege, Cavaliers, and Genoese Crossbowman, though I am a bit lucky here in that they decided to attack my southern base in full force before trying for my northern one. Those Siege units are gonna take a long time to haul over the entirety of the map by foot.  At which point I have my army fully up and ready to go. The victory condition is to build a Wonder within the walls of one of the Lombard League cities, but don't worry about running out of resources. The bases have plenty and you can always trade via the Market for more, even if at a poor exchange rate. The most important thing is to thoroughly crush the city in which you plan on building the Wonder.  Rare live footage captured of Teutonic siege breaking down walls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOsbyuLyPbE   The Castle and the Towers are the big threat here, destroy them and you can move all your Villagers up to start building the Wonder.  As it turns out, the Paduans have a large number of Cavaliers and Genoese Crossbowmen saved up for one final charge to prevent the Wonder from going up. Likely from their facilities on the left side of the map that they used to attack the southern base. I'm able to grab my Paladins back from the southern part of town to fend them off, though I probably should've been less greedy and just built a defensive Castle before I started on the Wonder to guarantee victory.  Teutonic Soldier: Thus shall the Lombard League realize the might of the Holy Roman Emperor! In this scenario, you win the instant the Wonder goes up, no countdown timer required. Mission 4 Ending Text "Henry the Lion was immediately banished to England. Separated from his wealth and army, there was little more he could do to plague Barbarossa. After six campaigns down to Italy, Barbarossa was weary of crossing the Alps. The fighting ended with the signing of the Treaty of Constance, which said effectively that the emperor and the pope were equals. It was a tenuous peace, and one that seemed unlikely to endure when, suddenly, the pope died. The new pope was less interested in squabbling with the emperor than he was with events down south. You see, the Europeans were being driven out of the Holy Land. It was time for another Crusade." This was, at least somewhat unintentionally, the easiest way to approach this mission. But there's a lot of different angles of attack on this one. You can win the naval battle against Venice and build the Wonder there, safe from most of the land fight. You can push back from the south, turning Venice into the sideshow while you fight through the rest of the Lombard League and Henry on land. Good replay value, if you're into that sort of thing. Extra Slides Mission 4 - Intro Slide 1 Mission 4 - Intro Slide 2 Mission 4 - Intro Slide 3 Mission 4 - Intro Slide 4 Mission 4 - End Slide 1 Mission 4 - End Slide 2 Mission 4 - End Slide 3 Mission 4 - End Slide 4 Mission 4 - End Slide 5
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 00:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 06:14 |
|
|
In the original game, you could cheese this mission- Venice's city limits included the southern tip of the peninsula Jossar built his base on, down past the gold and woodline. Building the wonder there counted and was much easier to defend than defeating an opponent and building it in their base, though you'd have to defend it from the sea. Fixed with DE
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 08:47
|
|
|
Trusting Henry the Lion to come to your aid seems to be akin to trusting an AI not to try to kill you
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 11:59
|
|
|
tithin posted:Trusting Henry the Lion to come to your aid seems to be akin to trusting an AI not to try to kill you There's an achievement in one of the expansions named 'Never Trust An Age of Empires AI.' IIRC it's for preemptively attacking and destroying an AI ally before their scripted betrayal of the player.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 12:12
|
|
|
BlazetheInferno posted:Fun fact: There is an achievement to beat this level without converting any villagers. It's tricky, and it needs a little bit of luck on the conversion speed, but it's doable. this achievement was a pain in the rear end to get... i managed to get it on the end but it put me off od attempting many other achievements.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 16:35
|
|
|
I... did not know that there was a time-scripted trigger for Henry's betrayal here. I thought it was always as simple and clean as "Once you build a castle." I remember I went through this mission a few times just never building a castle... but instead rushing to, and building a crapload of Bombard Towers because it was funny.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 18:01
|
|
|
tithin posted:Trusting Henry the Lion to come to your aid seems to be akin to trusting an AI not to try to kill you Allies in campaigns are either useless or will betray you, with a few exceptions. Also, if you watch the minimap/Henrys base in this mission you can sometimes see a villager from Verona walking around there, which gives away that Henry never actually fights the Italians.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 19:50
|
|
|
more like Henry the Lyin' imho
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 20:12
|
|
|
Update may or may not be happening tonight due to some real life stuff. In the meantime, here's the official release trailer for Return of Rome that dropped today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sgkT-od04 Consider the following: - They just fully gave up on AoE I Definitive Edition, here it is in AoE II instead with a few additional modern gameplay tweaks. - Please enjoy your bonus classical era Vietnamese civilization. - No, you can't just have the Huns face the Babylonians or whatever, they're two entirely separate experiences. - Unless you're the Romans, in which case please enjoy your bonus medieval era Roman civilization which we definitely didn't already h... *gets trampled by Cataphracts* - Please enjoy your bonus classical era Vietnamese game mode. - 3 new campaigns (Sargon of Akkad, Pyrrhus of Epirus, Trajan). - Will the old campaigns be coming back too? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Apr 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 23:48
|
|
|
I see the Palmyrans and I make a minor lol, but well, they do have one moment of critical relevance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 00:11
|
|
|
There's no way the old campaigns aren't getting ported - also guess I'm spending a weekend re-beating every AoE1 campaign
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 00:20
|
|
|
They have the Palmyrans in but not Canaanites nor the Mittani, or the Hatti, and Caesar doesn't have Gauls or Celts to fight. I foresee many an expansion pack. E: ^^ I am downloading AoE1: DE as I edit this. EE: To my shock and horror, Palmyrans appear to have been in AoE1, which just goes to show how much I should trust my sponge brain. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 00:23
|
|
|
SIGSEGV posted:They have the Palmyrans in but not Canaanites nor the Mittani, or the Hatti, and Caesar doesn't have Gauls or Celts to fight. Rise of Rome was full of interesting decisions. Sure, Romans and Carthaginians, get them in, but Palmyra? And the Macedonians were pretty much already covered by the Greeks. And yet, no Celtic tribes of any flavor, even the more famous ones like the Gauls or the Britons, no Germanic tribes, not even a non-Roman Italic tribe. Hell, AoE1 is really lacking in late Antiquity civs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 00:54
|
|
|
The official statement on Civilizations is that everything you see here is exactly the same as it was in AoE1, except for changing the bonuses around slightly to account for balance and new features, and the addition of Lac Viet as a thank you to the Vietnamese playerbase for keeping interest alive in the original game. Not porting the old campaigns would be a little bit of a gut punch, but it is possible that the development team might have thought they were bad and wanted to wholly replace them with the new campaigns. This has already happened: Definitive Edition has a missing campaign from The Forgotten, El Dorado, where a bunch of Conquistadors ran off into the jungle to look for the mythical city of gold, which was instead replaced with a campaign focusing on the Incas, Pachacuti. My personal suspicion is that this is going to be a one and done thing, with no further development/expacs, unless sales of Return of Rome and active play count blow everybody's expectations out of the water. Pretty pessimistic, but AoE I has never really seen the same level of global success that AoE II has, even with updates. I was able to get out of that RL thing, so update will be happening tonight, if a little bit delayed. EDIT: Also, my comment above about the Byzantines is extra notable since we also have the Italians in the game, so expect that for the first 2 weeks there will be a ton of gimmick matches which are all Romans v. Byzantines v. Italians on Italian peninsula maps. Maybe include Teutons/Slavs/Turks/etc. depending on how far you want to stretch the definition. Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 01:03
|
|
|
I get AoE focusing on the Eastern Med and Mesopotamia for its bronze age and early iron age focus, dumping the Romans, Etruscans and Celts and such, it makes sense, it's a place where we actually have a lot of documentation, such that a big problem is that there's not enough translators. But having only one civ for the levantine coast, and a fairly minor one at that, that was added in an expansion pack, for the grounds where the Hittites and Egypt are having their great pissing match over ten thousand vassals (with Extremely Significant intrusions by the (Neo-)Assyrians and (Neo-)Babylonians), that is a weird choice.
SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 01:08
|
|
|
Have they actually said that the original campaigns are not coming back, or have they simply not said that they are, and people are jumping to conclusions?
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 01:26
|
|
|
They haven't said anything one way or the other, but it stands out precisely because of everything else the developers went out of their way to confirm was coming back. Anyways, there is one thing that makes a definitive difference which I might as well get out of the way, here and now. So putting on my LPer hat: Jossar posted:Because of the official announcement of the upcoming Roman civilization, I am putting a moratorium on any campaign where I would face the Western Roman Empire until the expansion pack releases. Off the top of my head, this at least includes the Alaric and Attila the Hun campaigns. As this will once again be reducing the number of campaigns in the voting pool down to three, I will be adding campaigns from The Forgotten until we are back up to a total of seven options.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 01:54
|
|
|
In that case, have a multiplayer overview of one of the civs that won't be played for the time being. Competitive Multiplayer Overview: The Goths Unique Unit: Huskarl - infantry unit resistant to archers Unique Techs: Anarchy - allows the creation of huskarls at the barracks. Perfusion - increases the working speed of barracks by +100%. Civ Bonuses: Infantry are 20%/25%/30%/35% cheaper in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age Infantry have +1/+2/+3 attack bonus against standard buildings in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age Hunters have +5 attack against aggressive huntables (Wild Boar, Javelina, Elephant, Rhinoceros) and carry +15 food. Hunt lasts 20% longer Loom is researched instantly +10 population cap in the Imperial Age Barracks work 20% faster Competitive Rating: Low Well, you can't say the Goths don't have a theme. Unfortunately, as I've discussed before, infantry are bad in competitive AoE2 and the Goths are the most purely infantry focused civilization. Unfortunately, none of their bonuses for infantry help with why infantry aren't used in the competitive scene much: their gold cost (not so much the amount as that they cost gold at all) and their [lack of] speed. The Goths are further hurt by lacking the final tier of archers, having gently caress all for monk upgrades, and godawful defense options. Irony, they don't even get the full kit of infantry upgrades, lacking the final infantry armor research. Goths are oppressive in the lower ranks of AoE2's competitive circuit, but vanish once you climb into the upper tiers. Against inexperienced and unskilled players, Goths can be a horrific steamroller. Experienced players will pick them apart with ease. That being said, the Goths have a remarkably good navy, and if they can reach the Imperial Age with enough resources to get both of their unique techs, even top-shelf players can struggle to cope with the Goths operating at full power. When you see Goths in the high end of the competitive circuit, the choice is almost always intended as a gamble on whether they can hit that critical mass. Most often this is seen on mixed (i.e. land/water) maps where the Goth navy can work in the early game. The gamble does typically fail, because while the Goth endgame is still a thing of terrible beauty, they have very little to help an experienced player get to that point. Even so it does happen every now and then, which keeps the Goths an option in the back of everyone's mind. The other place you'll somewhat regularly see Goths in with high-tier play is team games, where strong early game civs can give the Goths the cover they need to boom and reach critical mass. It's still a significant gamble, the Goths are always a weak link in team games and likely to be focused on early to keep them from doing their thing, but it is a team pick strategy that sees occasional use.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 02:13
|
|
|
Jossar posted:Update may or may not be happening tonight due to some real life stuff. In the meantime, here's the official release trailer for Return of Rome that dropped today: Awww I liked AoE 1  Though I guess I didn't play the DE all that much for whatever reason. Guess I better grab AoE 2 DE...
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 02:50
|
|
|
Barbarossa - Part 5: Barbarossa's March Mission 5 Starting Text "The Holy Roman Empire was complete and, for the moment, both Germany and Italy swore fealty to Barbarossa. Alas, the peace was not to endure. The Crusader states in Palestine were crumbling. A Saracen king named Saladin had evicted virtually every Crusader from their castle. The Pope called for a new Crusade, before the Holy Land became Saracen once again. Remarkably, Barbarossa agreed to undertake this new Crusade for the pope he had fought so hard against. King Philip of France and England's Richard the Lionhearted had already boarded ships bound for the Middle East. But Barbarossa's army was the largest by far, and there wasn't a fleet in Europe that could transport it. The emperor would have to march overland, to Constantinople and through the land of the Turks to reach the rendezvous in Jerusalem. Constantinople was the capitol of the Byzantine Empire and one of the most glorious cities on the globe. Barbarossa's army would be able to rest and resupply in Byzantium before it began the great march."  Paladin: Your Imperial Majesty, we must cross the Sea of Marmara to reach the Holy Land. There are two places where we might commandeer ships: the weak port of Gallipoli, or the heavily fortified city of Constantinople. You start the scenario with a large army, but no villagers and no way of getting any. That means that the entirety of this scenario is about how well you can work with what you've already got, although you can recruit a few extra soldiers/Monks if you know where to look. For this reason, losing all of your Monks and Trebuchets/Siege Onagers is really bad, since you'll no longer have access to healing your army or anti-Building Siege, although as long as you keep at least one of each things will be fine.  This Galleon stranded here by the Saracen Navy is your first opponent. You used to be able to convert it, but now it seems that the Saracen Navy just has Heresy from the start and it dies immediately upon conversion.  Teutonic Soldier: An abandoned house? (after triggering the trap) No, a Saracen ambush! A whole bunch of Mamelukes pop out of this house, which can take down a few of your units before getting killed off, but that's all that they're meant to do. Attrition is the enemy, here.  Byzantine Emperor: No, not more Crusaders! Emperor Barbarossa, I do not want that filthy army in my city. Turn back at once! Paladin: Your Imperial Majesty, if we want to use the Byzantine navy, we must invade Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor is upset because the previous Crusader armies that went by the land route had a bad habit of pillaging the Byzantine countryside, and he doesn't want the Holy Roman Empire's forces anywhere near his city.   Get too close and he'll send out his army to attack you, which sort of makes my decision for me on which of the two routes to take.   After that it's just about patiently destroying the Byzantine outer defenses and Castle before marching troops up to the Hagia Sophia.  Byzantine Emperor: Very well Barbarossa, you have made your point. I will allow you to use my navy if you will take your looting Crusaders and leave.    The Byzantine Navy allows you to travel across the Sea of Marmara in style, smashing the Saracen Navy with ease, though it's better to just push on to a landing zone as quickly as possible rather than try to rule the waves. If you go the other way, you have the potential to run into a Saracen Navy base, but it is also possible to skip it entirely by hugging the coastline. Either way takes you to Gallipoli, which gives you Transport ships, but no navy. That makes the sailing section a lot more treacherous, but you have the chance to find a couple of Throwing Axemen and a Trebuchet that presumably got stranded from one of the French crusading armies, and an easier shot at a dropoff zone closer to one of the end routes of the map. Or, y'know, nothing stopping you from doing both. But I found it made for better mission pacing just to pick a single approach and stick with it.    I land at the closer dropoff point to Constantinople, which means a relatively longer land-based section fought against the Seljuks. A lot of this section involves me sending in a Scout to check for enemy Keeps and troop composition before bringing the rest of my army forward. Most of the Seljuks' troops aren't that dangerous as long as you unit-counter properly, but the Bombard Cannons are brutal, especially in a scenario where you don't want to waste troops. Going east leads you to a Seljuk fort with a couple extra Siege Onagers to recruit, and a theoretically shorter but more hazardous path to the end of the map if you use Siege to clear trees, but I find that it's not worth the effort. Just keep moving forward.  Oh, another reason to scout ahead and look for safe passageways is because the Seljuks have a bunch of troops stationed on difficult-to-access cliffs that will just blow up your army if you aren't careful about where you're walking.  If you used the Gallipoli route, your closest landing would be just to the north of these Seljuk troops, who are the climactic fight for this scenario. Again, destroying the Seljuks' Cannon Bombards takes priority. There's a Monastery with a couple of recruitable Monks to the west of this position, but if you've made it this far and haven't been beaten down to your last few soldiers, you don't really need them.  Teutonic Soldier: The ground rumbles as if alive. (the screen shakes) Earthquake! The game fakes you out into thinking that you have to assault this walled off and heavily fortified position, but a conveniently timed earthquake kills everything here and you're free to pass. It comes with a really cool screen shaking effect, though it might trigger motion sickness in some people.  There's another Seljuk Castle further on, but at this point you can just make a break for the end.  Hospitaller: The forces of Frederick Barbarossa! What happened? You look like hell! Head for the castle. You can rest there.  Hospitaller: Welcome, Emperor Frederick. You may rest here with us before you continue your journey to the Holy Land. Getting 10 troops to the flags by the Hospitaller Castle ends the scenario. Mission 5 Ending Text "Barbarossa's weary army had marched for hundreds of miles through the cracked mountains in the heat of July. So when it stumbled upon the Göksu River, the men were astonished and grateful. Barbarossa himself could not resist plunging into the cold water without even pausing to remove his armor. To the disbelief of the surviving troops, Barbarossa drowned. Some said the emperor could not swim in his plate armor. Others believed his sixty-seven-year-old heart had finally given out. Regardless of the exact cause of death, Barbarossa's Crusade ended there, on June 10, 1190. The Holy Roman Emperor was gone." Well, that's a bummer. And yes, that screwup with the dates is right there in the script. Another fun scenario with multiple ways to approach it. It was pretty quick, but I could've gotten through it even faster if I wasn't trying to scout ahead so much and pretend I was playing a stealth action game instead. Extra Slides Mission 5 - Intro Slide 1 Mission 5 - Intro Slide 2 Mission 5 - Intro Slide 3 Mission 5 - Intro Slide 4 Mission 5 - Intro Slide 5 Mission 5 - Intro Slide 6 Mission 5 - End Slide 1 Mission 5 - End Slide 2 Mission 5 - End Slide 3 Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 04:30
|
|
|
quote:Technowolf posted:Rise of Rome was full of interesting decisions. Sure, Romans and Carthaginians, get them in, but Palmyra? And the Macedonians were pretty much already covered by the Greeks. And yet, no Celtic tribes of any flavor, even the more famous ones like the Gauls or the Britons, no Germanic tribes, not even a non-Roman Italic tribe. According to the civ's leader list, Palmyrans in RoR perform triple duty as Palmyrene Empire + Kingdom of Pontus (Mithridates VI) + Numidians, a "basket" for miscellaneous enemies of Rome, or from another perspective, African and Levantine interlopers between major powers of Classical to Late Antiquity. Their gameplay identity is defined by the more expensive & better Villagers. They play a few other minor roles in the campaigns. Jobbo_Fett posted:There's no way the old campaigns aren't getting ported - also guess I'm spending a weekend re-beating every AoE1 campaign For porting them: it's not that simple. This DLC has enlarged the tiles to AoE2's size, meaning all buildings are larger, and a tile accomodates more units, which necessitates changes to building HP, ranges and AOE sizes; AoE2's formation system also means unit behavior is completely different from AoE1. The entire balance has to be rejiggered for these changes, and porting campaigns practically requires them to all be remade from scratch. This is exceedingly unlikely. cuc fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 07:50
|
|
|
Do you lose the scenario if you have less than 10 units? Also  that's some anticlimax.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 07:50
|
|
|
Jossar posted:Not porting the old campaigns would be a little bit of a gut punch, but it is possible that the development team might have thought they were bad and wanted to wholly replace them with the new campaigns. This has already happened: Definitive Edition has a missing campaign from The Forgotten, El Dorado, where a bunch of Conquistadors ran off into the jungle to look for the mythical city of gold, which was instead replaced with a campaign focusing on the Incas, Pachacuti. They also reworked all the other campaigns originating from the Forgotten in some way, which is for the better to be honest. Everything from the Forgotten originated in the fanmade mod of the same name and some of the campaigns were quite clunky in their original versions. YaketySass posted:Do you lose the scenario if you have less than 10 units? I don't know if you lose outright (probably, other scenarios do this), but you're atleast softlocked. Edit: Tested by deleting units at the start, you do in fact lose once you have fewer than 10. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 09:50
|
|
|
cncgnxcg posted:They also reworked all the other campaigns originating from the Forgotten in some way, which is for the better to be honest. Everything from the Forgotten originated in the fanmade mod of the same name and some of the campaigns were quite clunky in their original versions. It was definitely for the best that Definitive Edition reworked The Forgotten's campaigns. I appreciate what The Forgotten did in terms of opening the gates for new content for the 20 year old game... but holy crap, it was obvious that it was a fanmod and not made by a professional studio. A competently made fanmod, don't get me wrong, but a fanmod nonetheless. Official campaigns and Fan Campaigns have very different feels to them, and they very much felt like Fan Campaigns.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 18:37
|
|
|
For the other civ announced to be off the table for the time being: Competitive Multiplayer Overview: The Huns Unique Unit: Tarkan - cavalry unit effective against buildings Unique Techs: Marauders: allows the creation of tarkans at the stable Atheism: adds 100 years to Wonder and Relic victory countdowns and reduces enemy relic resource generation by 50% Civ Bonuses: Start the game with -100 wood, but with the population cap at the maximum Mounted archers are 10%/20% cheaper in the Castle/Imperial Age Trebuchets have +35% accuracy against units Stables work 20% faster Competitive Rating: Average The Huns are a very specialized civ best thought of as a cognate to the Mongols. They have similar fundamental styles with their emphasis on mounted archers (regular cavalry archers for the Huns rather than the Mongol Mangudai) and hussars, and a correspondingly cagey but aggressive play that emphasizes map control. Where the two differ is that Huns favor a more macro-intensive approach and the Mongols favor heavy micromanagement, and that the Huns have a flatly inferior tech tree across the board. If I sound like the Mongols are just a better version of the Huns, well, in most respects that's exactly what they are. Atheism is consistently deemed by the community to be one of the most pointless techs in the entire game. What won't be obvious to a new player is that one of the Huns' 'bonuses' is actually a drawback in the highest tiers of competitive play, and that is them not building houses in favor of starting with a max pop cap. A very popular tactic in the competitive scene is what's called 'house walling,' using houses and other structures to ring your base and prevent access instead of or in addition to actual walls. While more expensive than the normal option of palisades, the thinking is that you need to be building this stuff anyway so why not put them somewhere useful? Yet, you'll still see Huns quite a lot in tournaments and they pull down wins regularly. This is largely a result of the draft-and-ban system that most tournaments use to boost diversity in civ picks. Yeah the Mongols are better but what if your opponent drafts Mongols for their selection, or just bans them? The Huns are a fine consolation prize, and as a rule any player who's very good with Mongols is also going to be very good with Huns. Tarkans are also a solid unit in their own right, often mixed into the hussar floods for added punch against castles. As one of the perennial 'second choice' civs of the competitive scene, the Huns enjoy a consistent presence in the highest tiers of play.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 02:34
|
|
|
Barbarossa - Part 6: The Emperor Sleeping Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Smells Like Crickets, Tastes Like Chicken Mission 6 Starting Text "Barbarossa's soldiers were devastated. Several knights committed suicide. Others converted and joined the Saracens, so convinced were they that God Himself had deserted them. However, a handful of knights were not yet willing to board a ship bound for Europe. The body of mighty Barbarossa was fished out of the river, pickled in vinegar, and sealed in a barrel. The army of the Holy Roman Empire would not be joining in the Crusade. Yet there was still a chance for a small victory. The surviving knights vowed to take Barbarossa's body on to Jerusalem. Even in death, the emperor would keep his promise!"  Paladin: All we can do at this point is attempt to deliver the emperor's body to Jerusalem. The Saracens and Persians do not view us as a threat, so we should have 10 minutes to plan our attack. The final mission of the Barbarossa campaign is, intentionally or not, a mirror to all of the other Age of Kings campaigns. Like Joan of Arc's final mission, your goal is to deliver a symbolic victory unit to the heart of enemy territory. You're literally fighting Saladin in a mirror match of one of his scenarios, although it's his Jerusalem one rather than the finale at Acre. Like Genghis Khan's final mission, you have a timer which alters the conditions, although this time it's to your detriment rather than your benefit. (Like William Wallace, the English are here.) The game wants you to build like crazy in the first 10 minutes. To aid you, there is a pen with a bunch of sheep to the northwest to assist in your food gathering and plentiful resources overall. If you're quick enough you can also grab relics to your south and inside Saladin's eastern base, but I didn't have the time for that and it turned out not to be necessary.     Saladin: I thought these German goats whipped. No matter. They will die as well as any Crusader. This line being spoken by Saladin is a Definitive Edition change. Originally, like most of the AoEII: Age of Kings protagonists, Saladin never spoke anywhere in the game. But I guess the rule is that if you're a villain in a scenario, even if you were originally a voiceless protagonist, you now get dialogue? Weird. Saladin himself doesn't do all that much this mission, he mostly just maintains a series of fortresses that stop you from circling around and attacking Jerusalem directly. He does harry you with a few archers and Mamelukes. Damascus is your main foe, and they throw the kitchen sink of Persian units at you. They also bring in a bunch of Trebuchets that can threaten your Castles, which is why I didn't build a third and just focused on keeping enough stone to repair them back up to full health.  Richard the Lionheart: These are my Teuton reinforcements? I had expected more. And where is Barbarossa? Alas, we shall do the best we can. After surviving the first wave of attacks, Richard the Lionheart reveals himself and allies with you. Wait a second. An orange colored AI ally, with lion theming, in the Barbarossa campaign? Don't try to play tricks on me game, I'm on to you...   I'M ON TO YOU! (No, Richard the Lionheart does not betray you. In fact he's pretty competent at breaking into Saladin's western base, though he stalls out after that if left to his own devices. He's one of the few AI allies that might be worth actively backing up, if you wanted to try that route, but I find Damascus to be aggressive enough that it's worth taking them down rather than trying to perform an end-goal run on Jerusalem.)    Damascus burns. I even manage to convert a few of their War Elephants to assist in tearing down the town.  Saladin has a couple of troop producing facilities south of Damascus which are nice to take out, just to ensure less units harassing you for the next part.   Teutonic Soldier: Almost there - just a little bit more. Jerusalem is not nearly so well fortified as the last time I took it, though it has a lot more towers and a lot more Monks. The Monks pretty much never stop trying to convert my army until the end.   While you still have to avoid destroying the Dome of the Rock, this time it also serves as the mission's victory location. After destroying all of the intervening towers, I bring the pickled Emperor in a Barrel across the map to the flags, and with that, complete the scenario, the campaign, and the original Age of Kings. Paladin: The emperor has reached Jerusalem - not in the manner he expected, but it is one final victory for Frederick Barbarossa. Mission 6 Ending Text "There is a legend concerning every great king, from Arthur on through Barbarossa, that says the king will return someday when his country needs him. Myths and legends about the sleeping emperor were passed down in German folktales. The Holy Roman Empire did not endure. She fell back into a patchwork of tiny nations. Some would say Barbarossa's rule was a failure. But is it not a greater testament to the man that it was the force of his will alone that held the empire together? And what of Henry the Lion? With Barbarossa gone, there was nothing stopping him from returning to the Holy Roman Empire. But I am an old man now. What harm could I possibly do?" Henry the Lion would then proceed to raise an army, sack the city of Bardowick, one of the richest in Germany at that time, and burn it to the ground apart from the churches. Oh no. Who could have seen this coming. I'm surprised Saladin didn't put up more of a fight, but I suppose if you had him being aggressive in addition to Damascus, it would be too overwhelming. It's still a good final scenario, and marks the end of a great campaign. Tough, but interesting. I used to be a lot more indifferent to Barbarossa when I was younger, but now I think it might be my favorite of the original Age of Kings campaigns. Extra Slides Mission 6 - Intro Slide 1 Mission 6 - Intro Slide 2 Mission 6 - Intro Slide 3 Mission 6 - Intro Slide 4 Mission 6 - End Slide 1 Mission 6 - End Slide 2 Mission 6 - End Slide 3 Mission 6 - End Slide 4 Mission 6 - End Slide 5 Jossar fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
Campaign Vote #5 A. El Cid - Spanish/Saracens B. Montezuma - Aztecs C. Battles of the Conquerors - Franks/Vikings/Turks/Britons/Spanish/Japanese/Koreans D. Vlad Dracula - Turks/Magyars/Slavs E. Bari - Byzantines F. Pachacuti - Incas G. Prithviraj - Gurjaras Voting lasts for 24 Hours from the time of this post. In the event of a tie, I will act as the tiebreaking vote between the two tied options. Please bold your vote in order for it to be counted, as well as noting if you are changing your vote from something else. You may notice that there are a number of things that have changed with the voting pool. As I mentioned in a post in-between updates, with Return of Rome bringing a new Roman civilization to AoEII, I thought it would be better to save the campaigns that directly dealt with the Western Roman Empire for after that release. Combined with completing the Age of Kings campaigns, I felt it was appropriate to add some campaigns in from the pool of the next expansion, The Forgotten. As has been stated, The Forgotten was kind of a weird expansion pack, originally being more of a glorified set of fan mods that got official recognition. So when Definitive Edition came around they all got overhauled even harder than the rest of the other campaigns. I will be playing the scenarios as-is in the Definitive Edition, which also means that unless specifically requested, I will not be doing El Dorado, the campaign that was discarded in the overhaul.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 04:06
|
|
|
I'm Pickle FredeRick!!! As for campaigns, El Cid please! I always liked the Spanish in AoC for some reason. C-Euro fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 04:19
|
|
|
Also, as a fun little compare and contrast, here are the two Jerusalems we've seen, side by side.  Not exactly the same, especially with the different civilization building types, but it seems consistent enough.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 04:36
|
|
|
Worth noting, that "German Goats" Saladin line was in the original, but it was simply subtitled as "Saracens" instead. I suppose they wanted him to be a silent protagonist like most of the Age of Kings Campaign Main Characters (Genghis Khan was the only one with any spoken lines), but speaking campaign protagonists became a thing later, so I guess they went "screw it". As a note, Richard the Lionheart got a huge upgrade in Definitive Edition. In the original game, he was just a Trebuchet, some Longbowmen, and a few cavalry units (and I think an actual Richard the Lionhearted hero unit, but I may be wrong), but he had no base, and thus just threw himself uselessly at a wall and castle and died horribly. Now he has a full-on base and is helpful, and even makes a market for you to trade with. Saladin isn't really aggressive, but he does rather aggressively defend his area; he's just generally kept busy by Richard now. As for Jerusalem, they didn't originally have ANY units, just the structures and some towers. Jerusalem will now actually resist your attempts to move in, now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 05:13
|
|
|
Let's go with Battle of the Conquerors since those mostly deal with civs from the base game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 06:20
|
|
|
Battle of the Conquerors Because it's a bunch of real weird gimmick maps but they're all really memorable. Conqueror's in general is a big step up from AoK Last Khans and Forgotten are more scattershot (my last campaign in DE's base Europe set is Ivalyo, which sucks), but the rest are all cool. Rody One Half fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 08:09
|
|
|
Let's do the oddballs first Battle of the Conquerors The final Barbarossa mission is, historically speaking, entirely fictional. The larger part of the german crusaders returned home after Barbarossas Death (whether he drowned because he was swimming in his armor is also a question that even contemporaries who saw it happen didn't agree on), although his son might have intended to take Barbarossas bones to Jerusalem to bury them there. The relationship between Henry the Lion and Barbarossa was also very different from the purely contentious, outright rivalry that the game portrays it as, but it makes for a good framing device. Cythereal posted:Competitive Multiplayer Overview: The Huns There was of course a time, about 15 or so years ago, where what competitive scene was left at the time consisted almost entirely of Hun mirrormatches, as they were considered the most powerful by a wide margin, essentially in a tier of their own. This was also the time when people only spammed trash units in Feudal Age, to save gold for later. Both of these ideas were spectacularly wrong, as evidenced by the Huns fall in competitive ratings, despite never getting a nerf, while other civs from the same time are now considered more powerful despite receiving no changes. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 09:08
|
|
|
It's wild how much all of the campaign maps were based on real world locations that I just never realised. I worked it out with some of the Conquerors maps but I never just clicked that it applied to the rest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 11:37
|
|
|
Battles of the Conquerors
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 11:55
|
|
|
I always liked the little touch that our narrator was Henry the Lion all along. Anyhow, Conquerors. I remember those being pretty cool.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 11:59
|
|
|
Battles of the Conquerers
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 12:08
|
|
|
MORTAL CONQUERORS! (BotC)
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 12:20
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:I always liked the little touch that our narrator was Henry the Lion all along. There isn't a lot of spaces for characterization in these games so it's nice to see how they manage to give a smidge of personality to each campaign's narrator. The Scottish guy is a firm believer in the cause who gradually gets more optimistic, Guy Josselyne is a jaded commander who looks up to Joan of Arc with the faith of the convert, the guy from the Saladin campaign falls in love with Arabic culture and comes to identify more with his captors than his original allies, the Mongol guy is a professional author of an epic cheerfully describing horrible deeds while also highlighting the brutal simplicity of the underlying logic, and the Barbarossa narrator is someone you initially believe to be a simple admirer before the twist gives a new perspective on his attitude.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 12:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 06:14 |
|
|
cncgnxcg posted:There was of course a time, about 15 or so years ago, where what competitive scene was left at the time consisted almost entirely of Hun mirrormatches, as they were considered the most powerful by a wide margin, essentially in a tier of their own. This was also the time when people only spammed trash units in Feudal Age, to save gold for later. Both of these ideas were spectacularly wrong, as evidenced by the Huns fall in competitive ratings, despite never getting a nerf, while other civs from the same time are now considered more powerful despite receiving no changes. As best I can tell, mainly this is the result of a shift in the competitive scene towards early aggression and map control. Making an investment early on gold units and techs can help create an early lead that turns into a bigger advantage later. The Huns are just one of many civs with a very powerful late game if they can manage it, but their advantages are significantly less in the early game. The top-tier civs nowadays have both powerful late game setups, and some kind of early economic bonus that helps them get that early advantage and develop quickly enough to turn an early advantage into a game-winning lead.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 13:11
|
|