I’ve been playing through the campaign on hard difficulty, and while there have been some challenging moments, or spots where I restart a mission because I stuffed up a bit, the difficulty has been pretty good.
Level 18: ‘A Long Way From Home’ has been so damn difficult. I have tried many times and just keep failing. Is this just me or is the balance of this level really off?
I haven’t tried chopping the tree yet, as I want to destroy the two side bases to minimise the attacks, but I can never build up a strong enough force before the attacks become too difficult. Should I leave the side bases and go straight for the tree? Would that solve some of my issues?
Yep, same. Completed all on Titan until this one. The AI spam is crazy! The first 2-3 waves are OK since you can fend it off using your TC and towers but the he throws wave after wave of elephants and scarabs at you. Im bumping down to hard or moderate for this one and will redo it when they nerf it.
Difficulty spikes are unfortunately a huge issue with RTS campaigns. And since missions are relatively long and early mistakes can cascade down you often have to replay a relatively much each time you try again.
Missions that are noticeably different can also be a massive difficulty spike like no built missions.
Strangers is so much more easy then the one Underworld past of Good Advice.
In Strangers you just need your heroes since every enemy unit is a myth unit and you can easily do it without using any other unit or any god power.
In Good Advice you need to exactly know when which enemy units spawn and very carefully micro your units out of the way.
Nah, it was not this hard in the original. The main difference is god power and defensive building have been downgraded, and myth unit has been power-up significantly,
I was able to clear #1 to #15 without any preparation, just use my usual build order, to age up to Age II in 3 minutes, and Age I to Age III in 7 minutes.
In the original AoM, for example #16 and #18, myth units are powerful, but they are not a huge threat to large numbers of human unit, since you can overpower them by human unit numbers, and the God Power by Zeus are powerful. The situation has changed completely in AoM:RE.
In AoM:RE #16, the second stage, powerful myth units cause your non-upgraded human unit will not stand a chance against a few myth units even in a scatter formation, and you have to pray for the lighting storm can clear the last wave of myth units. The third stage is easy, since you have massive defensive force and two town centers to begin with.
In AoM:RE #18, you must use your starting units with some priests to destroy two mummy camps, and immediately age-up to Age III, and build at least three monuments. In the meantime, you must have more than 40 villagers to bloom your economy, 50 if possible. Otherwise, priests will not have power to counter later stage myth units, and heavy units and myth units are necessary to counter large numbers of champion unit and myth unit.
(Correction: you also need to build up a trade route as soon as possible, because only one gold mine is actually safe at the early stage.)
All and all, it is because human units become too weak to stand against myth units.
I have seen comments on steam and it seems that many agree with this. The truth is that I haven’t reached that mission yet, I’m on “Isis hears my prayer” and it seems like a considerable leap.
I know you can use Amanra’s special ability to jump over the wall and avoid problems, but I want to try to have a good time. It seems that some adjustments to the difficulty are needed, although I enjoy the challenge of playing on Titan, it seems that the AI just crushes you in seconds.
In short, during Egypt campaign, barrack units and camels are useless when facing war elephants and myth units, and war elephant is the only unit that able withstand myth units while having defence against priests.
You must rely on myth units and protect them to deal with enemy waves.
Just finished #18 by loading gamesave 4 times to roll back from failing points, and it was just Hard difficulty…
I had to cheese that mission (max difficulty) by taking out Temples (to get Gold and make sure no Mummy Attacks come) with starting Troops before taking command of the Town Center allowing me to quickly get into Age 3 (Sobek for Roc to safely transport units when needed) with some market buying of food and then build a little in multiple area so when getting attacked in 1 place I still had some safe areas to gather from for a while. When going into Age 4 when Osiris.
I’m at Mission 18 too now.
Not sure how to do it.
Walling of 2 paths makes all the enemies attack from the same side which makes it easier to defend but I can barely fight them back ever time. And eventually they will age up and come with elephants and stuff while I just barely survive.
You also essentially have a timer how long you can stay in Classical Age because there are very little gold mines which are far apart and you can’t train caravans in Classical Age.
Maybe going for the second TC early is a bad idea? Not sure.
Playing on Hard.
Some missions are super easy while others like this are annoyingly hard.
I assume I’m not the only one that absolutely hates the idea of lowering the difficulty for one mission.
Take down two mummy camps at the south and east first after you reach the resistance camp, try to have Chiron to tank mummy and scarab, then you have resource for Age III and a safe gold mine, and a location for a safe trade route.
Mission 18 is very demoralizing to say the least. I couldn’t do it on Titan and restarted several times. I have completed every mission on Titan difficulty leading to mission 18. I’m not a good player but I have seen great players failing many times. That should really tell you that something is really off.
I get that Titan should be difficult but whenever the majority can’t do it then I think it’s time to adjust the difficulty and bring it down so its actually beatable.
There will be less hair pulling if that happens. Hopefully it gets patched.
I just did 18 and it wasnt as bad for me as 15 was, even managed it on the first try. I realised a couple of things
for the 1st tomb chiron is enough to kill the mummies and if they trigger ancestors i can just run away and w8 for it to pass and then use the human units to turbo it down, when the scarab spawn run away (cause those death bombs are scary ## ##### after the 1st tomb is clear you can send vils to the gold mine to the right
obelisks are cheap since you get a bunch of gold at the start basically u can get free map vision and never get caught out
abuse the heck out of Ra’s monument bonus, surround the base with migdols and as long as have a defensive unit comp like priest + ele or something u cant be breached.
aging up with scarab means you just need chiron and the scarab to take out the second tomb, chiron clears the first mummies and the scarab handles the tomb easily
for mythic i went with son of osiris abuse, 3 son of osiris (place a momument to the gods in the middle of other monuments for super favour generation to get the power faster) with elephant shields means you basically never lose.
the way the attack wave pathing works, a market route between your main base and where the 2nd tomb was is basically never attacked, so you have pretty safe gold
I have completed the whole main campaign on TITAN and I must say - vast majority of the missions starting with “Isis, hear my plea” are extremely super hard and the AI spam is really just insane and stupid. I was forced to win several missions by cheesing some features or not doing the objectives ASAP so the AI wouldn’t activate yet.
The TITAN difficulty of Retold is nowhere near to the original AoM TITAN difficulty and should be lowered. I would accept higher difficulty if the AI would have an upper hand by using some tactics, but I don’t consider OK at all when higher difficulty means only that the AI spams the very large armies endlessly over and over and over and in many cases not even destroying its houses makes the incoming armies any smaller either. It’s plain stupid tbh.
Not to mention that the AI now considers walls like normal buildings and always wants to destroy every single piece of them which renders them completely useless - unlike in original AoM.
Also, when talking about the mission 18: Far from home - the AI destroyed me completely, but I managed to save my laborers with roks and build a village center, farms and rebuild all my stuff in the bottom map corner. It eventually found me (but took it long enough for me to upgrade everything and make some catapults and sons of ossiris) and for the rest of the round I was playing hide and seek with the AI. I won the way that I had 3 sons of ossiris and 8 catapults and I was moving them with roks from one place to another to destroy the enemy buldings one by one - hit & run tactics.
When all gone, I destroyed the AI scouts, rebuilt my stuff and destroyed the enemy armies also with the sons of ossiris. If there wasn’t added the “Village center” in Retold, I would have been defeated. Because this new thing allowed me to rebuild my laborers and some economy (farms+market) without the need of the standard town center.
Did they patch the AI so it attacks walls now when there is a path around?
Because in Mission 18 I was able to get the AI to always attack though the same path by blocking the others but today the kept attacking my walls.
Yes they did, and it’s stupid. The AI now wants to destroy every single piece of wall we build, no matter if it blocks them from passing through or not. The walls became totally useless in Retold, at least against the AI.
Especially hard along with how much the difficulty went up in the campaign missions, it’s way stupid, absurd and insane imo.
I am in New Atlantis campaign mission where there in Egypt is that temple of Kronos we are not able to timeshift and need to defend it. Making walls - totally useless, the AI destroys it all if I won’t get out and try to kill them. No way to make funnels anymore. Now, Imagine being constantly attacked by 3 AI players with upgraded iron stuff +myth units in that mission while they also attack the part of the map behind the river where we usually have the economy. +they attack from the water. All while we are restricted to only age III and have only bronze and no gold on the temple’s side of the river. I tried a few times now to fulfil that mission on titan, but it seems like not possible and the player needs an extreme amount of luck to get through it.
The AI behavior and overall difficulty in Retold is … absurd. I have no other words for it.
It seems that instead of the former freedom of choice, the campaign missions are now supposed to be won only by 1 specific way, specific to each mission and once we deviate from that predetermined path even a little bit, we lose. Zero breathing room. For that sole fact it receives a great thumbs down from me.
I think it’s ok if the hardest difficulty is hard in general but it has to be balanced between the missions.
Or maybe we need another difficulty that is actually ridiculously hard on purpose while Titan becomes more manageable.
I’m pretty sure they were not aware how their AI fix would impact the campaign playability.
They likely tested all missions with the balance from before the 2 betas and now the new changes make them too hard or too easy.
More likely to hard since the AI got improved.
Some missions get super easy because Roc spawn was turned on again.
I think they underestimate how important a polished campaign is on release.
A large portion of players will play the campaign on release, even people that mostly play multiplayer. The campaign has to be good now.
People expect multiplayer to be patched over time and they expect it to not be super balanced on release.
I wouldn’t call the endless spam of the large armies on the AI’s part an improvement at all. Nor the fact it destroys every piece of wall we build even if it doesn’t block its path at all.