according to the game itself just two priests can win over an entire army. Lies huh?
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Covert the first than wall in the priest with a house 
and you be able to get more.
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I did this today and it took me over two and a half hours. Itâs so hard because of the villager aggro change. Itâs much harder than the following missions, and I can see some people like the challenge but itâs really off for an opening mission of a campaign.
In the end I had to try four times, and ended up in some insane situation where I was having towers fights with yellow and blocking red behind a wall. It was a proper touch and go mission for the first hour as I hard to do a one villager start. I think the biggest problem, maybe more than the new aggro, is that red is just insane as an opponent. I was throwing max popcap armies at them and weâd duke it out, then I had so many chariots just pouring in but theyâd have like 20 just show up, and about 5 priests doing snipe converts.
It really wasnât very fun when the last hour was just grinding them down via attrition as they build so many towers and buildings to block movement. This mission really needs a look at for standard difficulty.
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This is a screenshot from a few minutes before finally defeating those Sumerian bastards today. I used no cheats, played mostly at 1.5x speed.
- Built a barrier between the two lands quickly enough after I started gathering some stone.
- I was able to get plenty of wood and food meanwhile, with lots of villagers (to produce enough trash units (archers donât work that well against buildings, so itâs better to just spam fast, melee chariots).
Worked, but was hard with the lack of both stone and gold in the east. Regular chariots may be strong in numbers, but they are not as strong as the scythed ones, so they should be handled with care. Also, the fact that the Babylonians in this scenario can only advance to the Bronze Age, is very limiting. Priests are also not that strong, even when fully upgraded in Bronze Age. Stone throwers arenât that helpful either, as they are slow, weak and do not have that great of a spash damage.
Feels good to FINALLY defeat The holy man without cheats, and destroy those effing Sumerians!
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I have a solution; In game press enter to bring up the chat bar, type âhoyohoyoâ, press enter again. Lol
Using that cheat wonât probably grant you victory either. I tried in the past and failed. Holy Man scenario requires the player to make good choices, follow build orders, take some pain and create lots and lots of units in order to destroy both enemy chariots and priests.
No it doesnât guarantee it, but it solves the issue the subject of this thread is about. As soon as you convert someone the whole base apes you and youâre too slow to get away. With this you get away easy.
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this level is a nightmare and difficulty is not calibrated correctly. i never have a problem on standard difficulty but failed this one many times. i finally managed to complete it as follows:
changed difficulty to easy
save scummed all the way through eg after each villager conversion
convert first villager on red west side
build town centre at original starting location (above the stone and gold), stone is very important.
use houses built west of the town centre as a wall to protect your workers. leave room so you can build towers behind (below or south of) the town/house wall, as you mine stone
converted second and subsequent villagers on east yellow side. be careful approaching villagers, you have to find lone wolf villagers. dont take too many villagers at once or red will attack. if your priest is doomed, lead enemies north then west to take enemies as far away from your town centre as possible and provide breathing time.
food is short at the starting location, so build a dock, this should be located far enough south of river crossing your dock wonât get attacked by enemies on the crossing. clear the fish near river crossing first while enemies are minimal, leave the fish to the south for later.
build eg granary (required for sentry tower) east of your town centre as a wall. research sentry tower asap.
build towers, create a tower defence style chokepoint east of your tower centre to kill off your enemies.
once mining area (which also has plenty of trees) is protected by towers, build towers around river crossing, first on west end, then east end of river crossing (at least 3 on each side)
build galleys to guard / attack the river crossing. MAKE SURE you set diplimoacy to enemy (by default it is neutral) so your ships automatically attack villagers using the river crossing, station your galleys south of the river crossing within range for ranged attack, but not on the river crossing, so they are safe from melee enemies.
wipe out east yellow side enemies first. capture the stone at the top east side.
finally take our west red side, i used towers to turtle closer. use siege workshop to take out enemy towers.
This is a really challenging level even on easy.
I also had a lot of trouble with that mission. They need to fix it. It is the minimal they should do.
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Feels so good to achieve this! 
This time with actual normal difficulty, which appears to be called âEasyâ instead of âModerateâ since devs -according to rumors- messed up with the AI coding.
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I finally managed to win this scenario - Babylon: Holy Man - with not one Photon Man, but two of them!
It was OK to kill all the Akkadians with the first Photon Man, but when I came to the Sumerian town, all soldiers and villagers ganged up on him and killed my super-soldier!
I actually thought I could lose the scenario even with a cheat code used, but thankfully I still had the town center when the second Photon Man was spawned - and this one was succesful against the Sumerian army and population (even if he lost almost half his health).
That was actually funny for me as the Sci-Fi warrior can still be defeated by two dozen villagers from Ancient times 
while the first vill I started converting attacked me, all following ones didnât
I always converted on max range
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And afterwards, did the mission go well for you?
Your village managed to survive the attacks from both the red opponent and the yellow neighbour?
I found very annoying that the yellow faction built a port and started attacking the dock and other buildings with ships - so my fishing income was not safe as I expected it to be.
Just checked the behavior as described in the original post. Didnât finish today as i need to study for an exam. But you should be able to convert all yellow villiagers so the ai never reaches the tool age (2nd age i think)
Than it is possible to survive reds attacks. I donât reccomand building a dock.
So! I just went through hell. Restarted/ Lost the scenario quite a few times! But I did beat it on very hard!
For the initial vill problem! All vills on screen when starting the first conversion will attack you. So if there is only one! you should be able to do it no problem! Additionally I suggest building the TC up where the elefant is. that way you have an early food boost and stone is available. but most importantly! there is a chokepoint where you can tower!
Once yellow doesnât attack you anymore when converting, convert as many as you can! Go for a big overboom with 25-30 vills, itâs important you get to the bronze age asap! Tower will defend you while you age up. You want the attack upgrades, range/lumber upgrades for your towers. as soon as you reach bronze age you need to tech into chariots. I was down to 4 vills when i finally got my first few chariots. Cavalry is also very good as they tank chariots quite well. Have at least 1 priest so you can heal up your units in between the fights. Red will send wave after wave to your town.
These need to be repelled with your towers and your melee chariots. Once you did rebuild your eco you can start regaining your half of the map before attacking reds base straight on.
I spammed chariots out of 3-4 stables and 2 ranges. sniping the monks and killing the temple so no new ones will follow is mandatory to overcomming reds massiv spam.
good lock to everyone! It was a blast and properly the hardest scenario I played on very hard so far.
Canât wait for what ever is coming with the ror dlc for age2
So⊠Holy Man has always been my favourite scenario from the original AoE so I was most disappointed to experience the problems this thread describes, namely the AI, even on Easy, is filled with very unholy aggression and frankly canât be beat. At least, when I access the game via XBox Gamepass on PC.
But I also have the game on Steam. When I access that way,miracle of miracles the AI is back to its old fearful self and I can play the game the way I used to but in dazzling HiRes.
This also explains why the comments are so polarized; half the comments are based on the agressive AI and half on the more passive one.
Can anyone explain this? Both versions, XBox and Steam, are up to date. Both are the PC version of the gameâŠ
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⊠and to avoid misunderstanding, both are the DE version,
Wow, this mission was really challenging. I played on normal difficulty, and after many attempts itâs done, The red opponent is very relentless in rebuilding. By using walls to keep him away while gathering resources and developing, along with numerous chariots, many hoplites, and four catapults, I managed to break him apart. Finally!