Arariboia 2P Co-op Campaign

Age of Empires II: DE Mod Discussion
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Discuss Arariboia 2P Co-op Campaign

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@nightware Thanks for the reply. I usually check what’s already been done in the community before starting a conversion myself. Those campaigns have already been converted, so I’m focusing on other campaigns for now.

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@ts00136983 Thanks for the feedback. There are two main points for the early game (assuming no walling or villager harassment):

  1. Build a Castle on the hill near the gold mine as soon as possible and research Murder Holes.
  2. Use inexpensive units such as Slingers to lure Blue’s Hand Cannoneers into the Castle’s range.

Blue’s Rams were indeed a bit of a wildcard, so I’ve toned them down in this update.

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Hi @ChocoCornet5041,

Thank you for your suggestions on scenario 3. We held on in the early game, but the main problem was that there were just too many blue Bombard Cannons—around eight of them appeared. Furthermore, there were too many ranged soldiers, making it impossible to know how to deal with them. Even if the castle wiped out all the ranged soldiers, the castle would be almost destroyed by then.The above is my gaming experience. Hope this helps.

By the way, I’m curious—after making these changes to the scenarios, have you personally played through and completed them on the hardest difficulty?

Since I’m from the Chinese-speaking community, I’m not very familiar with English wording. If anything I’ve said comes across awkwardly or causes any discomfort, I apologize and ask for your understanding.

Best Regards, Hubert

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The Heavy Crossbowman and Bombard Cannon are indeed very frustrating units. My friend and I struggled with them quite a bit during testing as well. Early on, it often feels like a Castle is the only reliable way to deal with Heavy Crossbowmen.

My friend and I tested the co-op campaigns on the hardest difficulty, without raiding the AI’s economy or relying on fully enclosed walls. If a scenario could not be completed under those conditions, we reduced its difficulty. The only exception was the second scenario, when choosing the northeastern landing site. That position is a bit unusual, and I could not come up with a good way to handle it other than completely walling it off, so I ended up leaving it as it was. So the initial release version was indeed successfully completed once on the hardest difficulty.

My original idea was to make the difficulty range wider so that players at different skill levels could all find a setting that suited them. However, judging from the feedback so far, the changes may have been a bit too drastic. I probably won’t make changes this drastic in future co-op conversions.

The initial release was also meant to gather player feedback. I generally make further adjustments based on feedback and improve situations that are a bit too demanding, such as the ones you mentioned earlier. The issue of there being too many Bombard Cannons has also been addressed in this update.

Thank you again for your feedback. I do not receive much feedback on these campaigns, so most of my understanding of them comes from testing with my friend. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about other campaigns, feel free to share them as well.