I have played through all campaigns on hardest. I do agree that some missions were way too easy, but there was no mission that I found impossibly difficult. The Pyrrhus mission can be beaten by making multiple layers of wall starting at smaller choke points so he can’t get to your base.
@superninja418 said:
@SvelterPenny568 said:
The Rise of Rome campaign mission 2 is the worst one I’ve encountered so far. The one where your objective is to “destroy the army of Pyrrhus”. Either they attack you in the first 3 minutes and wipe you out with their catapult triremes and elephants (while you have only tool age archers and axemen) or they don’t attack for 30 minutes, giving you ample time to collect tons of resources and build up.But even when you collect tons of resources and build up, the rest of the campaign is still brutal. You send wave after wave of swordsmen, improved bowmen and catapults, and they all get destroyed over and over again because Army of Pyrrhus has infinite resources to recruit elephants, elephant archers, helepolis, cataphracts, and they can micromanage every single one of their units to avoid your arrows.
You try to use catapults to take out their elephants but your catapults end up getting stuck on trees, then they decide to shoot randomly and wipe out your entire army (seriously, I’ve given up using catapults in this game, they kill more of my own guys than the enemy, they’re just not worth it).
And it’s not difficult because you already have tons of resources built up, it’s just a brutal slog of sending wave after wave at the enemy until eventually you overwhelm them after 3 hours of playing the campaign.
I dunno, I’m just not enjoying the campaigns at all. This game shouldn’t have been a straight up remaster of the original. The bugs really needed to be fixed. The campaigns could’ve been improved 1000% if pathfinding was just fixed and my units didn’t get stuck inside each other.
It’s great in custom games, but in campaigns only 10% of my army can fight at the same time because the other 90% are stuck inside each other and/or getting massacred by my own catapults.
Agreed. Also on top of that, their ships and tower fire in front of the unit. I’m very sure the player’s don’t. Even on easy it is so hard because the Devs made it even easier for you to get killed by the AI
Firing in front of the unit is due to “Balistics”, an Iron Age tech in the government centre, which most civs get.
I’ll try the rise of Rome campaign again soon. The first one is just as annoying with all the enemies swarming me with units after 2 minutes!
@superninja418 said:
@SvelterPenny568 said:
The Rise of Rome campaign mission 2 is the worst one I’ve encountered so far. The one where your objective is to “destroy the army of Pyrrhus”. Either they attack you in the first 3 minutes and wipe you out with their catapult triremes and elephants (while you have only tool age archers and axemen) or they don’t attack for 30 minutes, giving you ample time to collect tons of resources and build up.But even when you collect tons of resources and build up, the rest of the campaign is still brutal. You send wave after wave of swordsmen, improved bowmen and catapults, and they all get destroyed over and over again because Army of Pyrrhus has infinite resources to recruit elephants, elephant archers, helepolis, cataphracts, and they can micromanage every single one of their units to avoid your arrows.
You try to use catapults to take out their elephants but your catapults end up getting stuck on trees, then they decide to shoot randomly and wipe out your entire army (seriously, I’ve given up using catapults in this game, they kill more of my own guys than the enemy, they’re just not worth it).
And it’s not difficult because you already have tons of resources built up, it’s just a brutal slog of sending wave after wave at the enemy until eventually you overwhelm them after 3 hours of playing the campaign.
I dunno, I’m just not enjoying the campaigns at all. This game shouldn’t have been a straight up remaster of the original. The bugs really needed to be fixed. The campaigns could’ve been improved 1000% if pathfinding was just fixed and my units didn’t get stuck inside each other.
It’s great in custom games, but in campaigns only 10% of my army can fight at the same time because the other 90% are stuck inside each other and/or getting massacred by my own catapults.
Agreed. Also on top of that, their ships and tower fire in front of the unit. I’m very sure the player’s don’t. Even on easy it is so hard because the Devs made it even easier for you to get killed by the AI
Firing in front of the unit is due to “Balistics”, an Iron Age tech in the government centre, which most civs get.
I’ll try the rise of Rome campaign again soon. The first one is just as annoying with all the enemies swarming me with units after 2 minutes!
Edit: Finished the first mission, it’s OK if you spread a few swordsmen around, as the enemy doesn’t seem to upgrade well.
I remember the Phyrrus one now. Last time it involved Scout ship micro along with keeping the shore safe, and focusing on the island. You’re allowed to lose one town centre. The island is easier to defend since you can use boats too, but lack of wood means you’ll want to probably secure the bigger area and leave the island as resource gather only. Build fast and upgrade. Use the stone to put towers and walls everywhere. I’ll try it out later, hopefully I don’t get the passive AI 
I tried that mission, and I actually stayed on the land mass, as they swarmed with boats. I did build a 4 layer gap wall on their bridge. They’ll send a transport, but you can usually have enough swordsmen by then. Build towers everywhere, it slows them down.
I think the variability is what annoys people. One minute the AI knows all the right spots to attack, or it will sit around and never attack, or it will initially attack and then get stuck in a jam waiting for units in transport boats or just clusters.
This is why I don’t play the campaigns. They are trash. They’re all just random map play, but with different units or buildings to start with. They’re not rewarding at all. Nearly every scenario is just build an army and destroy everything.
It’s trite, repetitive, monotonous and boring.
This is why I only play the custom campaigns people made for this game, like those from Ingo, Andrea Rosa etc. Their campaigns are much more rewarding than the crap campaigns that came along with this game… even in the original. Plus you get that satisfaction when you finish them.
And what exactly were the devs thinking when they “tweaked” some of these campaigns a little bit?? Whatever tweaks they made, in the end it’s still the same boring thing: “build an army and destroy whatever’s in your way”…
Put in something fresh, ffs… something original and creative (and making them unbalanced just because you felt like it is NOT what I call “creative”). Otherwise, there’s no point in tweaking these so-called “campaigns” in the first place.
■■■■, this game shouldn’t even be a remaster for a 2018 RTS game… and the bad pathfinding wasn’t even fixed properly in the end… ■■■■, there were so many things to even improve in this game other than just graphics, pathfinding and rally points… 
I sadly have to agree with the overall sentiment of this thread that the Definitive Edition campaigns could use some work…some are too easy, other missions don’t appear to work (GamerZakh noticed enemy villagers would cut wood WAY FAR AWAY from their base and barely gather resources as a result). Others are really different from the original missions for mysterious reasons. I do really like the new historical narration for the Yamato campaign though, and the idea to voiceover mission text is nice (though I miss the old Age of Empires maps on the mission screen, which were visceral in a way the Definitive Edition mission maps are not). I think for gameplay, the original Age campaigns were overall more interesting gameplay wise though. Compare “Assassins” in the original Age of Empires with the new one for instance–while on the surface they are quite similar, the challenge level is lower in the Definitive Edition version.
And what’s up with the final mission not having voiceover victory text? 
@LegoVogel Sorry for answering so late! I didn’t visit the forums for a long time. But Ingo has already done the job for me! Thank you 