Hi Mods,
I am an old player who has been playing the game since the HD edition and have recently bought the Age of empires 2 DE edition few months ago. While I do enjoy most of the features (I play mostly campaign as I do not want to deal with lag and the frustration of PVP) of your games but lately the game updates have given me more frustrations than enjoyment (campaigns).
To give you a background I can clear most of the campaign hard mode with 1 to 2 tries (older campaigns) but the Rise of Raja campaigns has been a pain to me where you are expected to grind and survive with limited resource while fighting several AI that seems to be able to have free access to resources while pushing you very early on. I hate the raja mada campaign as there is almost no strategy involved but to build eco as fast as possible, spam and hope you can get a upper hand over your enemies (several of them). This is especially evident in Gajah Mada campaign 3 where the enemies just relentlessly attack you from both sea and land. The starting resources in the island wasn’t great and the enemies are always ahead of you in terms of tech.
It is just not fun having 20-30 galleons/cannon galleons/demolisher ships rushing your base while you are still struggling to build your eco at castle age (not one but two imperial age oppoents). Yellow opponent is not really an issue in this map but when you get attacked by (in turns) by green and blue from sea…I don’t see how you can survive(you can’t expand due to constant harrassment from the more superior navy forces of AI and have no choice but to turtle in your base and you do not have resource to out last your opponents) without resorting to cheats.
Now while I know some people will argue that if you can’t beat hard just play moderate/standard. My counter argument to that is if a certain campaign need to resort to exploit (AI) or cheats that takes a lot of fun from the game. I am a paying player hence I hope my plea will be hear. Yes, I know some pro-players can beat this but I do not think it is fair to take away this feature (hard mode) of the game from the average players and the campaign need not be designed so that it is frustrating for average players.
I was quite excited about Lords of the West expansion but after experiencing such frustrations in the latest campaigns I am now having a second thought whether I should be spending on something that brings mostly frustrations.
Hope my voice can be hear. Thank you and Merry Christmas
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The campaigns are designed with cheating in mind. The AI doesn’t start from humble beginnings like in normal games and as such it’s there to provide a unique situation not possible in a random map game. Starting with an advantageous position as the AI in one of these campaigns is part and parcel of how the campaigns create the difficulty.
If you can’t beat it, change tactic. If you can’t find a tactic that works, you aren’t up to the task of beating it. I understand your wishes to be able to clear it at the hardest difficulty, but why would they deprive those who are more skilled of a more challenging option by making it worse?
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I know some can be frustrating, but turtle-ing and then wrecking the opponent is just how some campaigns are meant to be played, some encourage rushing, some don’t, and that’s ok, it’s good for diversity.
Making them easier would just make it more easy to exploit, just look at how easy moderate and standard can be.
Edit: Merry Christmas to you too!
i think the hardest campaign mission to me is the last burmese one.
That one is pain lol, barely managed to complete it by distracting the navy with a single fire ship and destroying the last Malay castle with 2 cannon galleons, It’s easier if you realize enemies resign after you kill all their castles (also the wonder for the Portuguese I think)
Hi all,
Thanks for your comments and help. Just an update from my side, after doing another 4-5 tries, I have finally managed to complete “The Oath to Unify Nusantara” in hard mode. It is not a satisfying win to be honest, because I beat the level due to the AI was “behaving” strangely not because I played well. The blue enemy with cannon galleons seems to be distracted by the north Broneo and Sulawesi settlers which temporarily draw fires away from my base. This allows me to have a bit of extra time to build my navy. It is different from the previous attempts where the blue enemy will just attack your base from the very start. A small fleet of blue navy did come and attacked my base but the majority of the navy went to harrass the settlers and “stucked” there.
I am not looking forward to the last 2 stages of Gajah Mada as I heard they are worse than campaign 3 of Gajah Mada. It is just not fun having to play through campaigns like this that mentally wears you down. I am not sure if this should be the norm for every new campaigns they are going to introduce from this point forward. Perhaps it is just me who is having a problem with this game.
I will take a break from this game and hope I will come back to complete the campaign in the future. Currently, I feel extremely annoyed by the way the campaign is designed
Anyway. Hope every one of you have fun during the Christmas celebration.
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Man, if you are not having fun, just lower the difficulty, no one will judge you for it, also try watching some guides on how to complete them, I recommend Ornlu’s and TWest’s Youtube channels, I thought some scenarios were impossible and then I watch the videos to realize I was doing something very wrong
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