The problem is that the lower difficulties also have those massive difficulty spikes.
It just needs some general rebalancing.
Also how about another extra high difficulty where certain exploits are limited like you can’t get Son of Osiris and stuff like that and the campaign heroes are weaker.
Yes, it makes sense… the game was designed with the limitations of the time of a 2002 game… now the improved AI can take advantage of many exploits and a balance of a campaign from that time that can be hard for new players…
Well, it’s a shorter and easier campaign because it’s an expansion, the hard part is killing the Titans…
The trick is to fast mythic and get avengers.
What you do is this:
I think this level is hard because of some bugs in the game:
isis hear my plea is easy once you realize you can have 100% uptime of eclipse. It was so easy I wiped out the entire enemy presence and attacked the enemy fleet with crocs from behind. Funny.
You have to save some shades for the avengers. Avengers are one of those units that have been buffed to ridiculous levels.
Land on the far left side of the island and claim the town center on the far left. it is easier to defend. Spam hoplites + archers as the enemy does not have too many MU.
Don’t bother with water.
I object that. Weaking the player means the player cannot follow his own build order thinking and instinct to play the game, for example, experienced players know how many enemies campaign heroes can hold off, changing the strength of a unit will break our build order we get used to. I will choose to have stronger enemy rather than weaken myself.
The problems of campaign, for example:
#16: At the stage two, it is unreasonable to give us only some weak and non-upgraded units to fight against a bunch of myth units. You need to micro-control all units to avoid getting AoE-attack and lure myth units away from priests, chariots and catapults. It can be done, but it is just luck-based basically, even with micro-control.
#18: I do not oppose the idea of rushing two (three, if you managed) mummy temples at the early stage. Enemy waves, fine, it is a lot, but still possible to defend if you get the build order right and rush to Age III at the beginning. What makes me angry was the enemy wave patrol paths, I walled off all economy area, and the enemy destroyed all wall and walked into economy area and gold mine with tons of siege unit. What the hell? I cannot split up my defence force neither run from west to east, doing so my main base is basically no defence.
#30: I will say it is a reasonable enemy wave setting if they don’t nerf wall, towers and forts in Retold. You need to keep two (three) layers of wall all the time, so class weakness will not be your first consideration when you need have lots of infantry to repair wall and towers, and spamming units to buy time to build new wall.
I like to have more extra events or encounter in campaign, for example:
#20: At the Arkantos’s base, the road ahead is blocked by wall.
#26: Enemy attacks from river, destroying the dock to stop attacks.
The campaign will become bored if there is no solution to stop or reduce the attacks other than attacking the enemy main base to destroy scripted buildings. That is also one of the reason, I think that enemy spawning should connect to economy and have a economy base. Even in skirmish games, what you normally do should be attacking economy base first to weaken your enemy.
The current #30 feels like somebody abuses scripts rather than being intense, and the “large” army you get at the last stage, has little power to help you to reach “Gargarensis”, because all enemy crowds there after Odysseus arrived.
I walled the right side in diagonal to the bottom corner (without buildings and no gate), and the AI never attacked it. All the attacks came from the front or the left side. I spammed fortresses, so it was not too hard to defend if my army was well-positioned. ( I never fully walled the front and left side, so I guess the AI saw it as an easy way)
By the way, in Mission 18, the tree doesn’t have that much HP. I wonder if something has managed to rush the mission on Titan difficulty?
Yes, but trade route is not essentially fast, especially you need to train labours as well. Also, there is a town centre at that side (west), that 30 pops number can give you at least 6 catapults to take down enemy buildings.
If you can clear out the centre guards and have around 10 labours to cut the tree, maybe, but to do so, meaning you must destroy all three mummy temples to stop mummy attacks completely, otherwise you cannot leave your base with little defence for your labours.
Also, that means your guards (for cutting tree) need to withstand attacks from at least two enemy groups at the same time, and well… Lots of line of sight on the map.
just dont bother with walls, spaming obelisks and later lighthouse for near complete map vision is more efficient, you dont need to split your armies when you know exactly when and where they are coming from and they are slow so you will have time to move
Was this on Titan ? At least I think on Titan he has much bigger army supporting him.
Still you can go around with the army and kill the enemy houses and base as they start building it. Then you have 20 minutes to figure out what to do with the Titan. Also you can hit and run with Folstag to freeze him, which is what was intended to do in that mission.
Yeah it was possible also on titan, and even without killing the army. I believe that I waited for the ### only the first time, now I imagine that it’s even easier with the new ranged heroes.
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Was this on Titan ? At least I think on Titan he has much bigger army supporting him.
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yeah it was, the army was decent but it was only medium units so the starting army without folgstag can beat them
The new trick they try to get you with is that the titan does do a mass unit spawn at some point which if you are not careful will kill folstag and then you might lose control but after that its smooth sailing
I wiped him out. He deserved to be eliminated. Nothing survive. No wall, nor farm nor house.
Titan difficulty.
“Neither you, nor your city, nor your son.”
-Gargarensis, right before summoning a bunch of meteors
Anyway, it seems that if you destroy his buildings his attacks will weaken. Tornado is pretty good at doing this ^^
Completed the Atlantis #10 just now. Unlike the Trident campaign, the Altantis campaign is easier if you do it correctly. Of course, I am speaking about Hard difficulty, rather than Titan.
The titans are much more easier than the original AoM as well:
#1 and #5 are more intense than other actually, even #7 is somehow easier. As soon as you begin #2, #3, #4 and #6 later, having access to myth units early with a campaign hero meaning a safe run for you as long as you can protect your myth units.
Due to the new healing and God Power, you can have your campaign heroes to attack titans, and healing a hero when he tanks a titan. In #7, #9 and #10, you can have defeat titans directly with myth units and heroes.
And the campaign heroes are powerful enough to safely wipe out the enemy main force from the beginning when you build your base, in #9 and #10, you can use campaign heroes and God Power to destroy enemy base completely before they build up any force.
Yeah I tried it again and completed the mission quite easily the third time.
The key was really mass archers with poison and with a meatshield of nemen lions or chimeras, depending if you flood gold or food.
Now I’m of course I’m stuck in the mission 18 and saw a citadel going down in about 10 seconds… but I have to stop trying so late in the evening, it affects my performance too much…
Just finished the Atlantean campaign on Titan and boy it was so much easier then EE, so much so that I think they can turn it up a notch especially on the earlier missions
The final mission i have to give credit, you cant cheese it by walling one of the trees with gaia forest anymore, however, you can implosion rush their base and effectively cripple the kronos base, and then by the time kronos comes out and actually threatens you, you can just send the 3 heroes to distract him until gaia comes out. The contarius heroes you get at the start are also fast enough to fetch all the relics on the map immediately.
I have noticed that a lot of the “easy” missions are easy because the enemy tries to start on the lower tech tree and slowly ramps up, arguably to match the player’s progression and not make it overwhelming, but on a lot of these missions you immediately start in heroic or mythic and the campaign heroes or even just convert heroes and a group of myth units can just rush these bases early and completely cripple them or even if you dont cripple them, the AI turns aggressive and I think stops teching up, which means you have a permanent tech advantage.
So what tends to happen is if you are really aggressive early on, you can run away with the game real fast, this is on Titan
So here are a few possible changes to maybe make this for challenging without changing AI behaviour which is harder to implement
Mission 2: the first few greek waves after the scout attacks should be bigger and a bit later, probably trigger after you get to classical, the current ones comes about the time you are aging up, so they are “hard” in the sense that you only have your starting army, the problem is if you clear this with little losses using castor and the 2 behemoths, then you will immediately clear the forward base and then be able to mass Cheiroballista and make the following attacks irrelavent
Mission 3: For some reason the army mass that patrols the plenty vaults are stuck in age 1, their mass is terrifying dont get me wrong but I think as you claim more vaults they should get more techs, and say by the time you claim them all and are about to attack the main base, they should be champion. Also maybe instead of Hyperion as the Heroic god make it Theia cause mass satyrs just shreds everything.
Mission 4: The starting norse base should probably be heavy units, or atleast their infantry should be heavy units, cause mass Cheiroballista + counter cav just murders the base and gives you enough eco for the rest of the game, either that or some way to prevent you from just rushing deconstruction on their starting fortifications and immediately push all the way to the main base.
Mission 5: Either the Egyptian bases need better starting defense that doesnt turn offensive, or they need to either start or age to classical very early cause again a single behemoth and turning your army to heroes loaded into the transport ship is enough to cripple the orange base and get earthquake, which is then enough to cripple red and the dominos will keep on falling.
Mission 7: Fix titan AI lol, and also give him whatever stats he had in the later mission cause this one was too easy.
Mission 9: the starting army of the titan should be heavy, make it their elite guard and a separate faction to prevent the whole base that spawns being overwhelming, a separate group of builders can then come in and setup their base at a slower pace. This increases the difficulty but you can still arguably do the cheese which I think should be kept.
Mission 10: the atlantean base to the north should be better at defending, you can again use a single behemoth + heroes + a few murmillos to rush the base without triggering the massive force that is to the right.
Mission 12: They removed the trees in the Kronos base that prevents god powers from being activated which allowed the implosion cheese, add those back.
Another total wipe, this time for Kemsit. Third time I clear Abydos completely (first in isis hear my plea, then in let’s go and again now), they are pretty good at rebuilding stuff.
This mission is significantly easier than vs original. The tree barrier between Chiron and Amanra is thinner now, so you can link up their bases before the first attack comes in.
The fishing village is now safer and has more spots, and it also guards a tree barrier that opens up to Arkantos.
Spamming Soo makes the assault on the enemy base trivial, the underworld passage spam gets one shot by 4 Soo. Priests + elephants + Soo makes quick work of everything.
Titan difficulty.
I noticed that some people like you suggest even more nerfs for the player for the campaign missions in various threads posts for larger challenge and/or anti-cheese. Nothing bad about it, however…
You/they always look at these missions from the point of view of someone who knows the campaign mission from top to bottom by heart - what’s going to happen, where and what the triggers are, enemy armies sizes and every other detail. But the player who plays the mission for the first one time and even other 1st few times, doesn’t have all this knowledge at all and implementing all the anti-cheesing nerfs could make the missions unplayable for the causals even on the currently lower difficulties. Such casual player won’t know how to cheese it in the first place. Preventing a player from deviating in order to anticheese, may lead to placing the player on the rails even more and removing the joy from the mission as the player won’t have much freedom of choices if he wants to win.
In short - the missions should be winnable on harder difficulties even for the players without the deep knowledge about cheesing and the mission’s trigger development. The legacy AoM titan was such a thing and should be kept that way.
AoM was pretty much always meant to be more of a casual game and all these precautions are overkill imo.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the campaign to be winnable for people who do not master the basic macro , unit counters and timings of all civs on titan difficulty.
Afaik most people even attempting titan difficulty are former original players.
