|
A bit late, butJossar posted:La Hire's appearance here is notable for being the only time any hero except Joan appears multiple times in this campaign. It's also notable that this is either a zombie or an impostor, as the actual La Hire has been dead for about a decade in 1453, when this mission takes place. 
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2023 15:08
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:17 |
|
|
The Archers of the Eye having 100% accuracy is a lot less special now that thumb ring exists, but I guess it's nice.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2023 10:14
|
|
|
VostokProgram posted:I could have sworn the Byzantines had a castle that had square towers and sand colored walls, but I can't find any evidence that a castle like that was ever in the game. Which is weird because I can picture it pretty clearly. You're probably thinking of the Middle Eastern Castle, though that one has round towers. Byzantines only adopted the Mediterranean architecture set in DE. Cythereal posted:Are you thinking of this, perhaps? That's the eastern european castle, which the Byzantines never had afaik.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2023 18:12
|
|
|
I think you can still technically beat the scenario without monks by de-allying and killing the Ungirrads, but I'm too lazy to check. :vCythereal posted:Ah, the Mongols. From the game's original launch to today, consistently one of the top-tier multiplayer civilizations. The Celts and the Franks hover around the second tier of competitive civilizations (Celts are 2nd/3rd imo), and the Saracens are usually considered average to below average with the occasional high-end player really enjoying what they can do in the right hands, but the Mongols have always been a powerhouse. Yeah, Mongols are very strong. They have a great boost to their early economy (faster working hunters) and Mangudai deathballs are very difficult to stop. A lot of players would put Mangudai at the top spot, in terms of Unique Units, or at least in the top 3. The rest of their bonuses/tech tree isn't super exciting, apart from their siege weapons, but they have enough to transition to castle/mangudai consistently and that's really all it takes.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2023 15:09
|
|
|
Killing Kushluk early for the achievement can be done in several ways, the most reliable I found is to grab the village, get to feudal and produce a dozen or so extra scouts. Use one as a sacrifice to draw out the enemy army (the AI is very one-track minded and will throw its entire army at enemy attacks, and will happily chase a single unit over the entire map) while the rest of your army breaks through all three palisade lines from the south; this avoids the trigger that makes Kushluk run away long enough that you can damage him before he flees and once he takes damage he will stand and fight. This is also possible with just your starting units, but extremely luck dependent.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2023 13:34
|
|
|
So this mission also has an achievement, for defeating the Jin before they begin building the wonder. This isn't too difficult, just boom immediately (you can fish on the right side of the map, making this very smooth); I then went crossbows (easier to mass) + siege and crippled them enough around 30 minutes that there was only cleanup left. It's also interesting that the Jin seem to have a unique setup for their wonder that isn't replicated in any other mission to my knowledge. By revealing the map at the start via cheats, you can spot a 3x3 grid of blacksmiths in the middle of the Jin base. This is where they later built their wonder, the blacksmiths are presumably there to make sure the space doesn't get blocked by anything else. Then shortly before 40 minutes, a script triggers and deletes the blacksmiths and only then will the Jin built the wonder. Cythereal posted:The Franks are an easy to learn civ for players who like brute force, who are so good at what they do that they remain a perennial sight in the competitive scene even if not always in the highest tier. What really catapulted Franks up from "good" to "really good" was the change to +20%HP for all cavalry. Originally the buff only applied to the Knight-line, but giving it to all cavalry is a tremendous boon to their early game. Their scouts are still at a disadvantage compared to civs that have Bloodlines (flat +20HP to all cav), but the Frank bonus is free and their scouts are at least competitive now. Franks should also strive for an early victory on maps with a significant water/navy component - the lack of Bracer (final damage/range upgrade for archers/ships) puts them at a severe disadvantage. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Apr 18, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2023 11:44
|
|
|
This scenario is kinda interesting in DE for some of the new additions. You can grab some free units in the western part of the map, in AoK these were just monks (I think? not quite sure) [Edit: It's a monk and 8 Elite Huscarls in AoK], in DE it's one monk and some fully upgraded Leitis (Lithuanian UU, cav unit that ignores enemy armor). The Bohemians were originally Teutons, now they are "proper" Bohemians. Their army composition didn't change though, which means they attack with mostly units that they shouldn't be able to have; only the champions and trebuchets could actually be built by a Bohemian player. The Polish were originally Goths, then became Slavs in DE and after the Dawn of the Dukes DLC became "proper" Polish. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Apr 20, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2023 08:02
|
|
|
I actually think that the Conquerors campaigns are a lot better than the base game, so let's get Barbarossa out of the way and then do the good stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2023 09:36
|
|
|
Yeah teutons are pretty bad, so of course 10 year old me loving loved them. I mean HOLY poo poo free murder holes, aka the most important tech in the game? As to the achievement in this mission, after weathering the initial storm, it's not very hard, just kind of annoying. The AI in this mission just doesn't want to resign, so you will have to hunt down everything they have.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2023 14:55
|
|
|
Cremona (formerly known as Carcano, no idea why this was changed) apparently tributes you a large amount of ressources when they are close to being defeated, but I have personally never seen this. The achievement is one of the more difficult ones; the most promising approach seems to be to just beeline for the cathedral immediately. You can get into Milan either by hitting one of the gates and then using a unit to keep it open when enemies open it for you, or by sneaking in via the eastern gate, which has a regular stream of trade carts flowing through. In theory you could also just keep converting military units to get an edge, but I always ended up getting overwhelmed by sheer quantity when trying this.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2023 20:20
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
Abd ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi is a Genitour, the Berbers semi-unique unit; it's a mounted skirmisher that can be trained by the Berbers and anyone allied with them. He appears on the players side in the Tariq ibn Ziyad campaign and was added to the Tours scenario in DE, as he was historically present (and killed) at the battle. The Berbers player in this scenario was originally playing as Turks. Also, if you lose any part of the baggage train, the objective changes to having to defeat all enemies. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Apr 29, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2023 08:58
|
|
|
So let's talk about Vikings and the possibly unfixable water meta of competitive. In AoC, Vikings were the undisputed kings of any water map; they had even cheaper docks (-25%) and their discount on warships was a flat -20% instead of the scaling -10/15/20%, these bonuses were nerfed in the Forgotten, but this nerf is really secondary to why Vikings are today much less attractive on water maps, and to understand why we need to look at the water meta-game. The way naval combat is supposed to work (spoilers: it never worked out this way and probably never will) is a rock-paper-scissors system: galleys are countered by fire ships are countered by demolition ships are countered by galleys. BUT: in AoC, fire/demolition ships only become available in Castle Age, which completely fucks any potential balancing and makes the galley line the only potentially viable naval unit. This is because fire ships have very little range, while galleys have a lot of range. Once you have enough galleys, they can kite and focus down fire ships easily, thus beating their ostensible counter. Since you can build nothing but galleys in the Feudal Age, players will naturally spam the one warship they have to gain map control, and once fire ships arrive, they are already obsolete. The water-meta in AoC was stale and extremely boring; just Vikings endlessly spamming one type of ship at each other. Then the African Kingdoms DLC comes along and shakes this up completely, with a simple but genius change: you now have Feudal Age versions of the fire/demolition ship, which at least temporarily makes the counter system work, kind off. In low numbers, fire ships reliably beat galleys since can actually close the range without sinking. Demo ships are still rarely seen, as a unit that kills itself to do anything has some inherent problems, and you need to always hit multiple ships with the explosion, otherwise they're strictly inefficient. Anyway, the meta now revolves around early fire ships, transitioning to galleys later. This is a massive problem for the Vikings however, as they don't have fire ships at all, because their longboats are supposed to fill a similar role as the counter to galleys. Longboats only arrive in Castle Age, so Vikings are stuck with galleys, making their water game very inflexible; you have to spam galleys from the start and probably relegate yourself to defensive play for a good while, which can work but is entirely predictable. Coupled with nerfs to Viking dock/ship cost and the arrival of several new powerful naval civs with access to fire ships (Italians, Portugese, Malay), Vikings are now a second rate pick for water maps at best, outside of team games where their downsides are less pronounced or drafts where you eventually run out of better water civs. The core problem is of course that the rock-paper-scissors system of naval combat doesn't work, because sufficient amounts of rock start beating paper and turning the entire thing on its head. TL;DR: Water combat is broken. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Apr 30, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2023 11:41
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Competitive Multiplayer Overview: The Spanish Well, they actually got nerfed in the most recent patch. The buildspeed no longer applies to the first town center you build, and that's what made the Spanish so good on Nomad. YaketySass posted:They've added so much content over the years that the absence of new models for monks (outside of American civs) keeps surprising me. I guess it could get a bit culturally dicey though, or represent a lot of work if you get sufficiently granular like this concept page does. Fun fact: The mesoamerican civs only have a special monk sprite because during the development of Conquerors, one artist decided to make the sprite in his free time, otherwise they would have been stuck with the same bald man as everyone else.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2023 15:14
|
|
|
B.MontezumaJossar posted:In truth, you get this message a lot earlier in the scenario, but I just did not have the time to undertake it until now. The game wants you to go and contact Admiral Yi in order to get access to one of the Koreans' Unique Units, the Turtle Ship (population-heavy, but powerful short-ranged gunpowder warship). What exactly do you mean by this? I don't think there are any units that take more than 1 population point (there's a very small number that take less).
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2023 08:52
|
|
|
I must have played this mission a bajillion times over the past 2 decades and I never knew about the free houses. You can still get the relic after Alfonso allies you, by using a Mangonel to "attack ground" on the monastery and exploiting its friendly fire. I think you can also just change your stance back to enemy, but I'm not sure if this would have any repercussions in this particular case.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2023 17:44
|
|
|
The Alaric campaign originated in the Forgotten mod and has been heavily altered for DE. The original only had 4 missions instead of 5, and of those 4, only the fourth scenario has been adapted for DE (it's still the fourth mission, funnily enough). It's quite possible that Perfusion doesn't work for the extra barracks you get, because AoEII has always been weird about units/buildings that are given to you after already being controlled by another player, and these issues have never been fixed. If you play a mission where you are given units from the neutral "Gaia" player (the type that switches to your control once you see them), you will notice that these units are completely unaffected by any upgrades you research. This has been in the game since release. If you have ever wondered why some missions will start with units pouring in from off-map while the "unit created" sound plays, it's because the scenario designer was aware of this issue and uses a "create unit" trigger to bypass it, since units created this way act the exact same way as those the player would create in a building.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2023 07:30
|
|
|
Sally posted:maaan i started up the Alaric campaign to start playing along with the LP but i relented and got Return of Rome instead. p fun so far but the pathfinding of units seems worse than base AoE2. my boneheaded swordsmen and legionaries keep letting other swordsmen walk by them and destroy my ballistas. i have never had this problem in ApE2 before... its been a dogs age since I played AoE1... is this just true to the OG gameplay? I feel like pathfinding in general is worse than before, I've had lots of units getting stuck or pathing weirdly since the patch. Also, monks seems really reluctant to heal units now, unless you give them a manual order. Mazerunner posted:completing this mission in half an hour was one of the most difficult imo It's probably the hardest achievement in the game, imo. Even on standard and with a good strategy, the timing is really, really tight. The addition of the Romans likely increases the difficulty further; Legionaries were already a problem for the Goth swarm, and now Centurions will buff them further.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2023 09:38
|
|
|
In the non-DE/HD ersion of this map, the Scythians will give you extra mangudai every x-minutes, so essentially infinite ones if you're patient enough. Also, in The Conquerors, and unpatched DE, it's possible to lure Bleda to the bridge across the river, and if you get him to move across the bridge as the event giving you the villagers triggers, Bleda will be converted to your control aswell. Bleda also isn't a Hero unit in The Conquerors, which means you can convert him with monks. Neither of these achieve anything, it's just funny.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
I'm not sure if this was fixed or not, but there is an exploit to skip the fight against the romans; before defeating Orleans, you block of their spawn location with buildings, which means they can't appear and will resign almost immediately. A more time consuming approach to get basically the same thing is chopping/sieging through the woods north of the Metz towards the top of the map, where you will find the Romans "placeholder" unit (just there so they aren't defeated at the start due to having no units), a samurai. Kill the samurai and the Romans will be defeated prematurely and the map will end upon destroying Orleans TC.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2023 19:06
|
|
|
I really like that Catalaunian Fields is a deathmatch-esque scenario, since the Huns are still a toptier pick in that specific mode (no houses and access to fully upgraded paladins is very good in deathmatch). The achievement is quite tough, especially if you're bad at multitasking, as the most reliable way to win under 30 minutes is to begin harassing all three opponents from the start to disrupt their base building as much as possible. Still a bit of a cakewalk compared to the Sack of Rome, imo. The achievement in the final mission is very easy though, since you can snipe all the wonders from outside the city walls with trebs, meaning you can delay finishing off enemies until you have the time. Also, Montezuma cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 14:22 on May 27, 2023 |
|
#
¿
May 27, 2023 12:16
|
|
|
Eagles also have higher pierce armor, not as ridiculous as huskarls, but enough to counter archers. They also have conversion resistance, so they're essentially light cav without a horse. The mesoamerican civs also have unique techs that boost them in different ways. Also, I believe the ambush at the Tepanaca monastery doesn't happen if Tepanaca has been defeated already. And wild animals/wolves/jaguars generally seem to ignore everything that isn't a villager, unless specifically scripted to attack something. Which makes it kinda weird that alot of scenarios have relics guarded by animals, which will just ignore the monk coming to pick up the relic. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 07:23 on May 28, 2023 |
|
#
¿
May 28, 2023 07:20
|
|
|
B because I have complaints about that campaign
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2023 19:59
|
|
|
You can also find a demolition ship by weaving through the mountains in the middle of the map, which will one-shot the tower unless you're playing on hard.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2023 18:24
|
|
|
So you encountered the same bug I wanted to complain about; for me, it blew up ALL the neutral buildings I had captured, which meant roughly half the map was now empty. It's not the most broken mission in the game right now, but probably takes second place.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2023 17:08
|
|
|
Transports controlled by your allies seem to have a lot of issues with actually doing what they're supposed to do, I can think of atleast two more missions where this crops up.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2023 11:57
|
|
|
The indian civs were originally just one civ, called the Indians. They had no knights, and instead had improved camels (extra pierce armor, access to the Imperial camel upgrade, which is now exclusive to the Hindustanis). Siege Elephants didn't exist yet, and the Elephant Archer was their unique unit, instead of being a cavalry archer replacement at the Archery Range. Some other interesting things about Siege elephants: unlike rams, they get a single upgrade to armored Elephants, which is slightly cheaper than the Siege Ram upgrade. You can't garrison units in the elephant, naturally, and they take bonus damage from pikes and camels like cavalry units. They are slightly less sturdy than rams in general, but like them are basically immune to archers. They are also the only unit produced from the siege workshop that can be healed by monks. The gurjaras also have a damage bonus for mounted units, which applies to Siege Elephants as well. They also cost food instead of wood. cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jun 25, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2023 15:38
|
|
|
There's also a way to kind of cheese this mission: you can build a wonder, and for whatever reason, wonder victory isn't disabled in this mission. So you build your wonder, destroy a monastery afterwards, and then you just have to wait for the timer to run out. By building the wonder on the eastern side of the river, you are basically guaranteed to win.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2023 06:06
|
|
|
This mission had a lot of RPG-esque side content in the Forgotten, like a trader who will give you gold for bringing him turkeys and some other stuff. This was removed in Definitive Edition, which is probably for the better, it wasn't really a good addition in the first place. There is also a hilarious way to cheese this mission: at the start, send all your eagles straight to Tikals wonder. Set Tikal to Enemy, and destroy the wonder (Tikal will not set you to Enemy at this stage of the mission, so all their units will just stare at you menacingly), advance to Castle Age, ally Calakmul, and you win immediately as Tikals wonder is already destroyed.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2023 17:29
|
|
|
York is an absolute slog at the best of times. The Forgotten version was even worse, mostly because it featured much more aggressive unit spamming by all enemy players. That one is honestly my biggest gripe with most of the Forgotten scenarios/campaigns, there are lots of situations where you fight uphill against enemies that have literally infinite ressources to spam units with.
cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jul 6, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2023 05:46
|
|
|
The Catalans always arrive once you destroy the first byzantine castle, and take over one the remaining bases. The Gazi Warrior reinforcements are time-based. Also, on standard difficulty, not choosing an ally gives you Elite Jannisary as well as the other techs. Also, I don't know if they ever actually fixed Karesi giving you useless naval techs but not having access to docks. The first version of the scenario in Definitive Edition did have docks available from the start, which were removed at some point, for reasons presumably involving demolition ships and the shoals around your base. Except they didn't bother to change Karesis bonus techs after removing docks. The original version had a much slower start (in Feudal Age, instead of Castle Age), where you fight nomads and ally one of the turkish players via marriage. Then you have to destroy all the byzantine castles and kill the two remaining turkish players.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2023 18:07
|
|
|
The scenario is still a massive improvement over the original Forgotten version, which was just another "run around the map and do random quests". The entire Sforza campaign has an unusual amount of storytelling in missions, which I found quite refreshing. Edit: update on the previous page
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2023 11:44
|
|
|
Just for reference, building the towers like Malatesta asks will make the Venetians 'activate', i.e. actually do stuff instead of just sitting around. However, even with the towers, they are likely to be defeated by the Savoyards if you just wait long enough. The betrayal will still trigger, but they immediately resign if their castle is already destroyed. A
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2023 17:00
|
|
|
I missed commenting at the time (kinda busy with moving to a different city right now), but the win condition in the second Portugese mission is hillariously badly programmed. The game only ever checks if the final condition (destroying the emirs castle) is fulfilled before awarding the victory, so you can ally the emir, then send mangonels to destroy the castle via attack ground, and win that way.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2023 17:18
|
|
|
The key to killing Takayupti early (and easily) is squeezing your arambai between the forest and the palisades, go towards they exit of the camp and break through the walls there. This allows you to pass off Takayupti as he starts fleeing, and arambai do enough damage to kill him as he runs past.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
The mountain fortress missiion is an absolute nightmare pre Definitive Edition. Also, I've been playing the AoE1 campaigns that were ported over by the devs, and now I understand why they initially didn't want to do this: all these campaigns loving suck lmao.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2023 06:53
|
|
|
I guess we'll learn whether the first Ivaylo mission is still completely broken; when I played it, it was technically beatable without cheats, you have to divine what to do though.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:17 |
|
|
The mission just stops giving you new objectives after you reach the first village. So I did some testing, and this apparently only happens on Standard difficulty (and still does, at least for me), while the higher difficulties seem fine.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2023 16:14
|
|