On steam TLC ist almost the worst rated DLC. Looking at the steam reviews, there are almost no complaints about the champi rush or unbalanced things but mainly complaints about the campaigns.
It comes to these 3 main complaints:
AI cheats and uses endless resources
AI spams units without end
No base building only mass Battle.
One could say that they are all related and that players don’t enjoy the massive attacks of the enemies.
I tested some scenarios where I killed all enemy villagers, and the enemy did stagnate after that. So it’s not that the AI cheats but that it is micromanaging on highest level. Only in some scenarios, we have some units spawning separately but that is a different item I think.
What I wonder now: do some players mistake the legendary difficulty for the hard difficulty? Maybe they didn’t realize the new difficulty was introduced. Do we need a warning pop-up for legendary difficulty that makes it obvious for players, that this is a new thing?
I think it depends on the scenario. For example, on Lautaro 5, the Spanish only have 14 farms, but they churn out waves of food-intensive units even on moderate difficulty. There’s no way they could afford them unless they’re receiving bonus resources from triggers or some secret farmer work rate boost.
On the other hand, in the Arariboia campaign all the enemies seem to have genuine economies. (At least in the first three scenarios – I haven’t played beyond that yet.)
I think they must have selected it deliberately (my game keeps defaulting to standard difficulty) so I don’t think this can be it. I haven’t played on legendary difficulty, but maybe the problem is the type of difficulty it provides isn’t what these reviewers consider fun, not that they’re bad players.
I also don’t appreciate the waves of enemies, but the AI ally Mem de Sa in the Arariboia campaign is completely useless on defence. it’s as if the default stance is stand ground. Another thing is the design, particularly 4 & 5.
On Arariboia 4:
Why the hell would you place a Feitoria on a hill in the most exposed and the highest position overlooking your base? It’s a perfect spot to put a castle there instead of just one Guard Tower to defend against a cheating AI spam….
On Arariboia 5:
How come Durand has a whole star fort, yet the Portuguese have an open city for the French to march in on them? Plus the villagers only bother to repair the castle & none of the bombard towers. There should at least be palisade gates if Rio is an established Portuguese city…. The bombard tower on the spit north on the wonder cannot be repaired either, level design much?…
The entire infinite spam idea is horrible. I don’t even mind AI having access to infinite resources, say, give them gold tiles each containing 10k gold. But they need to gather and train units at the same speed as us.
It’s natural you go for the highest difficulty for challenges. But the way it is designed now is just bullshit. It’s not fun when you cannot afford to do all the side quests, because you have to barely survive under nonstop instant spawn waves.
yeah. it feels like a lazy way to increase the difficulty. I’d compare it to Skyrim’s hardest difficulty, which just gives all enemies more health and damage, without actually altering their behaviour
Perhaps, since they historically had to portray Mem de Sa as Arariboia’s ally, they wanted to make him seem as “useless” as possible so that Arariboia could shine during the campaign.
Basically, a disguised form of indigenism.
The problem is, they didn’t do a very good job being subtle:
In his first appearance, he’s overly defensive, even though he could lend you some cannons, which, due to ineptitude and narrative convenience, he always loses them.
There are levels where Mem de Sa dies very quickly and you can´t do nothing to protect him.
You have to constantly defend him, and he only returns, to be more lika a Meat shield tan a useful ally that complment your armies.
That makes the situation sometimes more “annoying” than fun. Perhaps that’s why, even though it’s the most historically accurate of the three campaigns, it remains the most stressful.
Aside from that, it’s a good DLC; I liked the new civs and the campaigns, in part.
Really? I just completed Mapuche and Tupi campaigns in legendary difficulty in one day. It wasn’t that difficult either. Only 1 or 2 missions overall were quite hectic but still not that difficult.
Its possible these players are new to Aoe 2 and don’t know that this is how campaigns have been. If you record and playback the missions even the old ones get a sudden spawn of units out of nowhere, some resources, several siege.
That’s also quite possible. Maybe they’re used to the “hard” difficulty level and this is too much for them.
I do not have the two last DLCs, but how can someone mistake Hard and Legendary? Those words dont even have the same length or similar writing. Also, what about the difficulty shield color? At least in AOMR they have different shield colors.
Based on my experience on AOMR, Legendary isnt really harder, its just more grind-y and no AOMR DLC is being bombed about it. Ok, ok, different playerbases, right? Lets think this is the answer for a while: even though those TLC negative reviews can be seem as “‘his is grind-y must mean played on Legendary”, I didnt see complains about Legendary, but campaign design. Its a bit weird that only people lacking attention and cant see the setting they are playing on have written reviews. Cant be about the playerbase, then.
I think not many play it on Hard, so it would be even less on Legendary. Why? Because completing “The Lion’s Den” gives “King of Africa” achievement, that 5,1% of players have. But, if someone completes it on hard, they will get “Roar Like a Lion” achievement, that only 1,5% players have. So, how many of hard-trying players did buy the DLC, tried Legendary instead of Hard, failed and still wanted to give it a negative review, would exist?
It makes more sense to see it as “people disliked” TLC campaign than “everyone is too dumb to realize they are playing on the wrong difficulty”.
Yes, this is definitely the right interpretation. I’ve now read a good chunk of the negative reviews, and I couldn’t find anyone saying the campaigns were too hard. They say things like the campaigns aren’t fun/enjoyable, they’re boring, they’re grindy/a slog, the enemy and ally behaviour isn’t intelligent, etc. Some also complain about arbitrary tech tree restrictions in the campaigns, e.g. scenarios where you can’t build a town centre or castle, and not being able to use the new catapult galleon at all.
There are also complaints about other things, including the new civs being unbalanced (too powerful in the early game on open maps, but underpowered in every other situation), the new civs having European-looking generic units, the Mapuche campaign being ahistorical, bugged achievements, and the naval rework.
I would say that some missions are quite hard (Last Arariboia mission, first Lautaro mission if you’re trying to keep at least 3 villages by your side on legendary and 2nd El Dorado mission kinda like Duel of the Dukes if you don’t control Iraca’s area fast enough while dealing with swarms of units) but not that obnoxious.
Overall good campaigns but the legendary difficulty should use some tweaks (not only in TLC) if the devs ever wanted to implement it on the pre-3K campaigns.