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GAME BUILD #: (#75350)0
GAME PLATFORM: PC XBox Ultimate
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
ISSUE EXPERIENCED
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I’m not sure this is a bug because in the skirmish menu there is the option to choose ;easy; but in campaign mode only standard or above AI is available and I can’t get past destroying 2 fortresses in the African campaign - Francisco de Almeida.
I’m using the single player campaigns to learn before I try multiplayer mode. I did this with Red Alert as I found an old man like myself is too useless otherwise…
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
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100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)
REPRODUCTION STEPS
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Just play a campaign I don’t think it’s a bug just an over sight not to include an easy mode in the campaigns please.
EXPECTED RESULT
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IMAGE
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GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)
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If thats what you want, play the Art of War scenarios, the rest of the campaigns has next to nothing to do with multiplayer matches.
Also note that the difficulty of the campaigns varies a lot from campaign to campaign; as a rule of thumb, the older ones are easier. The oldest campaigns were Gehngis Khan, Barbarossa, Joan of Arc, Saladin; imho all of those are fairly easy.
This is definitely deliberate – in AoK, you could play campaigns on all five difficulty levels (there was no extreme difficulty then), but in The Conquerors it was changed to just three.
You might have noticed on the campaign menu each campaign has an icon with one, two or three swords on it. Broadly speaking, one sword campaigns are the easiest and three swords campaigns are the hardest.
You probably know that William Wallace is a tutorial campaign – that’s the easiest. After that, I’d say El Cid, Montezuma and Tamerlane are probably the easiest. (I also found the Hautevilles very easy, but it’s rated three swords so I think I must be unusual there.)
The Art of War is definitely best for learning multiplayer though. Most of the campaigns are not very similar to multiplayer.
El Cid 5 is super hard starting on moderate
I only eventually completed that scenario on that difficulty because on one attempt I got lucky(?) and after killing all my units besides the must-survive one and destroying all my other buildings, the enemy AI decided to focus on my walls instead of the wonder.
Everything else on that scenario was easy enough on moderate tho.
hm really? Been a while since i played them, but arnt they all just “build up and smash enemy”, because the opponent never really builds a threatening army and attacks pretty late? Only one i remember beeing somewhat of a challenge is 4, where you have lots of enemies and need to take one out early.
Interesting, I don’t remember having a problem with it. I think I generally find defence easier than offence, though, and I definitely did when I was less good at the game.
I was also going to suggest Joan of Arc, but I think the final scenario can be quite hard.
One thing to bear in mind is that (in my opinion, at least) AoE2 campaigns are generally harder than campaigns in other RTS games, e.g. StarCraft. Also, the difficulty level of scenarios within a campaign can be more variable, and doesn’t necessarily increase as the campaign progresses.
I wouldn’t call the overall difficulty high in aoe2 campaigns; compared to Starcraft, most are very easy because of infinte ressources. You can just boom and win with better numbers. However, Aoe2 surely has more variability both in the difficulty and also in the approaches needed; on some, you can boom, on some, you can rush down an enemy with your starting army.
The difficulty rating can’t always be trusted. Prithviraj is officially two swords, but some of its missions are more difficult than anything you find on most three swords campaigns.
Interesting. I’ve been playing StarCraft recently and I find the campaigns much easier than the AoE2 ones (for many reasons that I won’t go into here).
Agreed, and I think the variation in approaches is a large part of what makes it difficult (when it is difficult).
That’s why I said “broadly speaking”, but I guess I wasn’t clear enough about that.
I haven’t played Prithviraj since it was redone with Gurjaras, but I only remember one of the scenarios being particularly tough (the second last one).
My recommendation to OP is start by playing skirmish on easiest and work your way up from there. If you can beat it on ‘moderate’ you should have no problems with ‘standard’ campaigns.
(In my opinion, campaigns are harder than skirmish, which is why I don’t recommend ‘standard’ campaign if you can only beat standard skirmish AI.)
As for getting better, as others suggested, the art of war tutorials are a good place to start. Particularly, the land battles mission (teaching unit counters) and the fast castle/ booming ones. Though, I think they are all informative. Don’t worry about getting gold medals or anything like that, just listening to the narration and reading the hints given at the start is already valuable.
Hauteville is not very easy to say… you have very few troops and enemies very close, not to mention the mission of Bohemond and the Emperor that you have to defeat the Byzantines without fighting against them directly since they have units immune to damage…
I actually think Bohemond and the Emperor is the easiest scenario in the Hautevilles, and perhaps in any campaign except William Wallace. It’s potentially time-consuming, but you have an infinite supply of gold from relics and can only fail by deleting your own base. The invincible Byzantines can be killed by Monks (they have Heresy so can’t be converted) and at least one group can be baited into a position where they can’t fight back.
It’s such a weird scenario. Giving the enemy an invincible army had to be balanced by making that army passive and predictable and making the scenario unloseable. The result is that playing it properly is grindy and tedious, and using the various obvious exploits is much more fun.
Of course, once you know how the scenario works and how the Byzantine troops move, you have an easy time, but since you don’t expect to see invincible troops the first time, you suffer a lot for not losing too many troops and more if you want to help to your allies in the northeast of the map…
GAME INFORMATION
These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.