Dihya al-Kahina - The end of the ancient world (647-703)

Age of Empires II: DE Mod Discussion
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I was so naïve! 1111111111
Timurid Siegecraft would have helped a lot indeed.

Purple was already besieging me when I had to expand to get more gold, even before I had army enough to comfortably defend myself, so if more than one attacked before the fall fo Carthage would be waaaaay harder, cause I wouldnt have where to run to. Specially with red’s Saboteur and green’s hero Trebs.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

I was forgetting: in this scenario I had a total of zero crashes!
Was a nice campaign, interesting mechanics and Im glad my feedback was useful.

I bought the map, but I got lost between paying attention to orange gossips and green’s pressure. Maybe a flare signal, instead of getting the cart LOS. Or a timer “in x minutes orange will tell you something”.

I didnt know that :o

Just tried it again and blue doesnt answer to my signals nor taunts

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Thank you, since you beat it quite easily consider trying Constantinople 3 or 8 if you haven’t, I would like to have your opinion since they’re often considered the hardest scenarios I’ve done!

About blue not acting on signals I really don’t know, I can just say it works in mine, they attack with ships, unload in the city etc so let’s see if someone else gives feedback, even then I really don’t know what would cause yours to not trigger (maybe they’re not checked to receive your messages?)

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I was going to let it run again, barely doing anything while I was doing something else, to be sure that when blue appeared the game didnt uncheck it on chat, but the game crashed again. I dont have time today to really try it, but anyways, here is the replay and the save file in case you want to check what might have caused the crash
SP Replay v101.102.39418.0 @2024.03.08 132336.aoe2record (2.7 MB)
-AUTOSAVE-.aoe2spgame (1.6 MB)

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Ok sorry for being late but I had to update other campaigns.
I checked the replay but I can’t watch it cause it says it’s from a different version (?)
As for the autosave isn’t it too early? You can send signals once the blue fleet arrives but it’s 30 minutes too early.

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No worries.
There was an update, you would need to downgrade the game to watch it.
I wasnt send signals yet, the autosave was just in case it could help you identify the cause of crash

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Scenario Five: I’m not sure what you meant about it being easy to load all six transports. In my experience the center gate gets attacked first and purple sends ALL of its units to defend it, leaving the right and left gates exposed, and then the siege rams come and demolish them immediately. Even if I spend all my resources on melee units to kill the siege rams, starting with only Kusaila means they have enough time to knock down the outer gate and get started on the castle/fortress by the time I have units there, and said units gets killed pretty fast by the garrisoned units in the rams and the cavalry escorting them, so I’m then unable to stop the next wave. For some reason even if purple isn’t being attacked in the center it will never move its units to defend the other two gates.

Scenario Six: I found this one problematic because several of the caravanserais are in range of the Allah’s Own Slings…in addition to it just not feeling like I had enough time to prepare. Even if I boom my economy immediately I still don’t have parity with green’s first army when they attack with a bunch of Imperial Age units. For the amount of stuff you need to do to prepare for purple to arrive I feel like the player needs more starting resources or to begin in Imperial Age. The caravanserais closest to Carthage really need to be outside trebuchet range too, because they’re effectively impossible to defend, and it seems like trade units stop getting sent the moment they’re destroyed, so you have a stupidly narrow window to use those ones to convert carts.
That last twist with the scorched earth campaign felt like one objective too many, too. I feel like you tried to do too much in this scenario and by the time that happened I was mentally exhausted in addition to being drained of resources from taking Carthage and my defenses and army all being in the wrong places, so I just spawned a bunch of cobra cars the moment it happened. By the time Carthage fell I was thinking ‘thank god this scenario is over’ and when it wasn’t I did not have the patience or will to fight orange, red, and green all at the same time.
I’m guessing there was some way to nerf the Allah’s Own Slings like there was with the Imams and Nubian Archers but the hints did not mention that some types of cart will not spawn if you destroy or lose too many caravanserais and they also imply that you shouldn’t try to fight red’s response force, as opposed to trying to protect the captured caravanserais. I’d lost three and destroyed two by the time I realized only Supply Carts and Diplomatic Carts were coming to the one I managed to hold. The mention of hit and run attacks was very misleading- I don’t see how hit and runs are very useful when you can’t convert carts unless you capture or destroy caravanserais, but if they’re destroyed, no more carts come. In that case the only truly viable option is to take and hold them.

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I’m gonna make it easier if you say it’s still too much, at least on standard (do you play on standard right?). Like I can take away the green demo ships and give you more resources at the beginning, do you agree? It’s not that essential that you save all 6 transports anyway.
As for purple not defending other gates it’s because that’s supposed to be your job lol although no problem, I can tell him to patrol all 3 gates, just remember that in that case he would need time to go from one to the other, I can’t make him ubiquitous.

This is my favourite one personally but I can see how people would not like it, it’s very damn complex and ambitious. I’m gonna nerf it on standard though (on standard imp is researched at scenario’s begin + more resources and on moderate you only get more resources).
So there’s a lot to unwrap…

I don’t get where you got the notion that you should defend the caravanserais (although I guess it’s more intuitive to think so). You can either destroy them or convert them. Even if you choose to convert them it’s not needed to make them survive, that’s why the hit and run tactics. If you choose to convert, just make sure that one survives long enough so you can research the techs that you get as a bonus.

If you destroy/convert a caravanserai carts don’t stop spawning but just change their route. The weapons one can decide it’s safer to travel on water for example if you destroy the eastern land checkpoints so you need to check the eastern coast (the orange town will advise and flare you when the weapons ship stops at their docks, my advice is to keep a monk there). The diplomatic and supply carts will instead transit to the western orange town if you capture the checkpoints in front of Carthage and again orange will advise you when they’re around it. All carts stop in the city when there’s a sandstorm and if one you converted goes into an enemy caravanserai it gets killed on the spot.

As for green hero units, you can make them normal units depending on which player you choose to ally at the beginning (orange or teal). Unfortunately all the quests are mutually exclusive so if you ally with one you can sabotage their trebs and imams for example and with the other their “paladins” and imperial camels but not both.

I know it’s one hell of a scenario but please don’t be angry at me, I swear I did my best and I’m still trying to reply and fix it asap. There shouldn’t be bugs anymore so it’s just a matter of balance and for a scenario like this it has been one hell of a job, guaranteed ahah.

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I’m gonna make it easier if you say it’s still too much, at least on standard (do you play on standard right?). Like I can take away the green demo ships and give you more resources at the beginning, do you agree? It’s not that essential that you save all 6 transports anyway.
As for purple not defending other gates it’s because that’s supposed to be your job lol although no problem, I can tell him to patrol all 3 gates, just remember that in that case he would need time to go from one to the other, I can’t make him ubiquitous.

I don’t think I did a good job articulating the issue here. The problem with it is that the player starts with no units and purple immediately abandons two out of three gates, so there’s a window at the beginning where the player cannot defend the other gates, and since green has siege rams, they quickly bust their way through the east gate before you can even train units. Then, since you’re in dark age with no blacksmith upgrades, green has a qualitative advantage and quickly wipes out whatever units you send to stop them. The amount of resources the player has is insufficient to then replace those units, so at that point there’s nothing left to throw at the enemy.
There’s probably a lot of solutions there…one is giving the player at least a small group of units from the beginning, another is taking away green’s blacksmith upgrades (and purple’s for balance) until after the siege, and it might be enough to downgrade green’s rams to capped or battering rams. It might take some experimentation to figure out which works best or if a combination of all three is necessary.

I don’t get where you got the notion that you should defend the caravanserais (although I guess it’s more intuitive to think so). You can either destroy them or convert them. Even if you choose to convert them it’s not needed to make them survive, that’s why the hit and run tactics. If you choose to convert, just make sure that one survives long enough so you can research the techs that you get as a bonus.
If you destroy/convert a caravanserai carts don’t stop spawning but just change their route. The weapons one can decide it’s safer to travel on water for example if you destroy the eastern land checkpoints so you need to check the eastern coast (the orange town will advise and flare you when the weapons ship stops at their docks, my advice is to keep a monk there). The diplomatic and supply carts will instead transit to the western orange town if you capture the checkpoints in front of Carthage and again orange will advise you when they’re around it. All carts stop in the city when there’s a sandstorm and if one you converted goes into an enemy caravanserai it gets killed on the spot.

I don’t think this is working as intended, then, at least when siding with orange. When I played it I scattered outposts and missionaries across the map in a line between Carthage and the other two enemy bases, and I managed to hold just the southeast caravanserai, closest to cyan. I never saw a single cart coming from green and red only spawned supply and diplomatic carts. They never sent anything by water or spawned weapon carts, at least not after the point where I had map control.

I got the impression you’re meant to hold them because I never saw any cart go on any path except directly to the caravanserai I controlled at that point, even though I had vision across every path they could have taken, and because it seemed like once the other five were gone weapon carts and trade cogs never spawned. Orange definitely never sent me any flares about weapon ships.

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For scenario 5 roger, the player will get more resources and some troops, at least on standard and moderate. And purple will patrol all the gates.

For scenario 6 I don’t know man, I tried it recently and the weapons were transported on boat once you destroy the two caravanserais in the east, close to red base and to the eastern orange city. Never occurred to me the opposite, nor I got feedback about it before, it still could be the case but it’s hard to trace the origin of the problem without more feedback.
I’ll play it again to check though.
As for orange not flaring it should always happen if you bought their map for 500 gold if I’m not mistaken but that occurs if you choose to ally with cyan instead of them.
I could draw a sketch of the carts routes before and after you destroy their checkpoints, that’s the best I can do.
If you feel like being nice you can record your playthrough so I can take a look at what may be wrong, that’s really the only way to judge unless the bug is very specific and the scenario not so complex.
But in my usual test even the other two carts keep spawning in red base, reach green city and head to Carthage if the caravanserais in front of it are still standing or else the diplomatic one stop to the western orange city before heading again to Carthage while the supplies one tries to run directly to it.
The weapons cart spawns as a Junk in red docks if the caravanserai on the east are destroyed.
Putting a monk or missionary in each orange city and one in front of Carthage’s central caravanserai was enough for me to catch them all.
If I find any bug while replaying it I’m gonna fix it in the upcoming patch.

Ps: did you delete the kreposts guarding the caravanserais you converted? Because those will attack and kill the carts if not, specially in the southeast one you told me you occupied.

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I’m not sure purple patrolling will help since it might leave them out of position as you said, but it’s hard to say until it’s tried. The starting army and extra resources might be enough.

I went back and checked the replay and you’re right, I just didn’t have LoS on the ships like I thought I would. It was my mistake; I shouldn’t have assumed they would travel close enough to land for an outpost to spot them, which led to several misunderstandings in regards to this level. Sorry, just forget anything I said about the caravanserais and carts.

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I tried it just now with the changes and to me it seems ok with troops and more resources. Although I’m not sure if you noticed you can send the carts that spawn in the market to your castle and you instantly get some resources as said in the hints.
I’m not sure purple patrolling made much of a difference but it didn’t seem worse neither.

Ok thanks, this spare me another test of that loooong scenario ahah so I can focus on finishing the new campaign and fix/balance the rest of Dihya.

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I tried it just now with the changes and to me it seems ok with troops and more resources. Although I’m not sure if you noticed you can send the carts that spawn in the market to your castle and you instantly get some resources as said in the hints.
I’m not sure purple patrolling made much of a difference but it didn’t seem worse neither.

It was a problem of how long it took for the first cart to appear and how much resources it gave. By the time I was getting it the east gate was a lost cause.

That scenario looks good now, haven’t had time to test the next one. No more balancing issues I think, just a minor bug where green’s Imams spawn on top of the monastery and can’t move.

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Shame for that imam, when I’ll collect enough fixes it will be in the next patch.
You only have one more scenario, the 7th, but I strongly suggest you to play on standard, at least for the first time or it could give you ptsd.
You can technically win with the wonder in Carthage but you’ll miss the final sequence so I suggest to delete it at a certain point (plot wise is a decoy) and go for a total victory, although it can be intense.
At the end let me have an overall opinion!

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Okay, I have more feedback on scenario 6: I think the green base in the center needs to not count as a checkpoint for the purposes of spotting spies, and cyan needs to be prevented from killing the carts somehow. I checked the editor and saw they’re neutral to red, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping them. The problem I encountered when I sided with cyan was that if I didn’t immediately convert carts when they left red’s base in the east then cyan killed them, and if I converted them, they went to green’s base and got executed. I couldn’t get any carts to infiltrate because once I controlled the eastern caravanserais, every cart went through Kairouan, and cyan always seemed to have units right on the path they went through. I only saw a red cart make it all the way to orange’s western city once, and a passing cyan raid killed it before I could convert it.

Maybe just have cyan defend the player from green like they do if you side with orange? As it is right now they’re more of a nuisance than a help. Either way I think converted carts should be allowed to pass through Kairouan since the player isn’t given any way to stop them from getting caught there and every single cart goes through there once you control certain caravanserais. If there wasn’t a time limit I would suggest an objective that stops them being caught but there’s already so much to do in so little time that I think it would make things worse.

The trade boats had a separate problem in that it was just really annoying to convert them because they like to immediately sail right back out to sea where my monks can’t reach them, and sometimes they just keep going right past orange’s city if you start the conversion after they dock. I managed to convert only one, and it got stuck there for at least five minutes before it moved on to Carthage.

EDIT: Right off the bat I see a problem with scenario 7. The entire mechanic where the enemy factions are supposed to focus on Carthage until you kill their units is ruined by the fact that they’re set to neutral and attack moving past your base, so they will literally just pass by your base and see the player’s units and attack, at which point you have to either let them kill you or fight back and have them turn on you before you’re ready, which is hard to avoid because of the extensive line of sight on missionaries and trebs. Not sure what the best solution here is given they’re supposed to be betraying you, so it doesn’t necessarily make sense for them to have you allied or something, but it’s a problem, especially since as a side effect the player can’t build castles or towers to prepare since they’ll aggro or kill neutral units. That’s a particularly bad problem if you go east since you’re expected to fight red while almost guaranteed to inadvertently pick a fight with orange.

The relics are also all behind their lines, defeating one of the supposed benefits of choosing the western base because purple, blue, and orange will all kill your monks if you try to retrieve them. Ironically it’s easier to get a relic by choosing the eastern base since there’s an unprotected one right across the water. Two relics are even so close to green they’re effectively impossible to retrieve without fighting green first since they have a constant stream of units past the only route there from the west.

In the end it feels like the player doesn’t have any actual advantages and the hints are misleading them into stepping into a trap.

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Scenario 6: yes my concern is that there’s really no point in converting carts from south of Kairouan (if not to convert the caravanserai which I guess it’s still enough of a motivation for the camel UT) because they have to pass to Kairouan anyway. Still it’s only one place, once you know they can’t pass through there you should rather wait for them between Carthage and Kairouan.
As for the boat, it was waiting in orange docks probably cause there was a sandstorm going on. All carts behave like that, maybe I could make the sandstorm slow them rather than them being smart enough to stop in a city? This way will really synergize well with the ability of being immune to sandstorms you get by allying with Cyan and converting would be overall easier since they would be too slow to escape monks.
As for cyan and red killing carts, mmm red shouldn’t since carts are either grey or red or orange and I think all of these are allies to red. If I haven’t put cyan neutral to red I should, do units normally attack carts when neutral? It shouldn’t be the case but I may be wrong. The issue can be when you forgot to delete kreposts or whatever tower inadvertently shooting at carts.
The time limit you have is not much if you want to do all the quests in Carthage but that’s on purpose, you’re not meant to complete all of them unless you’re very good, it’s a gold achievement.

Scenario 7: I can just change the hints, you can tell me what I should write since I really don’t know lol. For me personally the western camp may be a little easier although you need to fight purple who has a huge base and green who has the strongest army, probably blue too. In the eastern camp you have red very close, even on water, but only him and orange to fight and maybe blue. Not sure, it actually feel quite balanced as a choice.
And yeah it’s on purpose that you will fight more than one enemy at a time, two at least, no matter what side you choose. You can handle red and orange although it’s hard for sure. It’s not better against purple and green.
The trick is to study the better moment to turn to enemy against them. Of course you must put your army where they cannot inadvertently attack which it’s harder to do in the eastern camp cause you have less space but you can if you pay attention to their ships from time to time.
When you collected enough stone and feel overall ready with techs and upgrades build two castles in front of red/purple while you send an imp army of gbetos, camels, and genitours (even a navy garrisoned in your docks if you can). In my case it works perfectly. Just do not build castles and towers randomly because of course they may trigger enemies. You must act very quickly and decisively once you take the decision to rebel. Also using monks to convert annoying red catapult ships won’t turn them to enemy.
You can manage to take out red while you defend from orange, otherwise try the western base where maybe you can focus more on purple alone. If you hide your army you can just boom in their face until you won’t feel ready to go all out against them in one go. If you manage to build the wonder yourself the techs you can research in there will make your army unstoppable, given Carthage stands long enough.
Alternatively I could make they’re your allies and turn to enemy only when you either get close to their base or you finish the wonder? It would make it easier I guess.

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Still it’s only one place, once you know they can’t pass through there you should rather wait for them between Carthage and Kairouan.

My point being that I cannot do that because cyan (not red) kills them if I try. I checked and cyan is already neutral to red, but I saw them killing the carts between red’s base and Kairouan. The kreposts and such actually weren’t an issue because red was for some reason going around the base instead of through it. I did delete the krepost on the east side of that camp, but the carts weren’t going near them anyway.
And yeah, I’m not saying there’s necessarily an issue with the time limit, just that adding an additional objective to stop Kairouan from detecting spies would be problematic under the time limit.

The trick is to study the better moment to turn to enemy against them.

Right, but they’re already neutral to you and have a tendency to attack you early. Not sure exactly how it should be reworded but at the moment it makes it sound like you’re safe until you choose to attack them when in reality you’re kind of at the mercy of the AI’s pathing in that regard.
Unless you’re willing to move one or two relics closer though, I’d just cut the mention of relics as a deciding factor entirely because there’s absolutely no advantage to choosing the western base over the eastern one in terms of relics when they’re still on the other side of enemy bases.

EDIT: I tried seven again, but I just couldn’t build up enough to fight all six enemies before Carthage fell, especially with the enemy wonders to deal with. Gonna be honest, and everything after this is purely my personal opinion, NOT meant as a legitimate critique that you should take to heart, but I hate this type of thing. This is my least favorite aspect of that one Atilla campaign level and this time it’s without the benefit of Atheism and with far stronger enemies that I’m assuming have infinite units like in most of your campaigns, as opposed to having to rely on resources.

I was able to destroy Blue’s wonder, which was finished first, but lost most of my army in the process. I only had enough resources left to build one more army, and at that point Carthage fell and I was going to have to deal with everyone attacking me all at once, so I noped out.

Normally I would come at it from a balance perspective but I just do not like the way this level is set up. I hate the counter-wonders, I hate the number of enemies, I hate the amount of siege they have. I feel like I’m playing some unholy mix of the final Saladin and Attila levels. You can’t set up proper defenses because you don’t get walls and building castles is a quick way to make enemies. Every enemy has a sprawling and heavily fortified base that takes an age and a half to fight through, all while trying to defend against five other enemies at the same time in a base with no walls stretched out across whatever space you can find along the coast to stay out of the way. Any castles you build get trebbed down so you can’t set up static defenses to hold back the other enemies while you’re busy, and even without the trebs they still have rams. A lot of the resources are in the path of green and red so even while everyone is focusing on Carthage you can’t really claim them because trying to defend your villagers probably gets your troops attacked by everyone else on the way there. You can’t target the enemy economy because all their units are free on top of their eco being fortified. Every single enemy faction has a balanced army with monks and heavy siege which just makes them even harder to fight. And half of them have a navy.

I don’t ever want to play this level again. I’m not even sure I can give valid, unbiased criticism on it, because it ticks so many of my rage buttons on level design that I can’t tell where my opinion ends and my actual suggestions begin. I don’t know how the heck Darkillermon did it, especially with no Wonder techs.

I had to rant just to calm down after playing it but honestly, feel free to ignore literally everything I had to say about it. I’m sorry for being so harsh, I just dislike this scenario on a fundamental level. Anything I say about it is liable to lean towards removing or changing things I simply don’t like, because I dislike so much about it, and that’s not constructive, just personal preference of a single person.

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Don’t worry, I totally understand, it’s a very hard level, I just hope you played it on standard because there are some big differences (mostly you have more resources, start in feudal and your enemies won’t train hero units like saboteurs and Allah’s own slings… Yeah I understand if you hate me for that ahah).
It’s crazy for me too how darkillermon won without the wonder techs, they’re just very good at the game I guess. Me too I have an intense two hours session whenever I test this but I can beat it with difficulty eventually.
And when darkillermon beat it, it was even harder cause I gave more time to destroy the wonders after a player’s feedback (who beat it after many attempts).

When Carthage falls you’re done unless you already defeated at least 3 of your enemies because as you said they all come after you.
I think that maybe making the enemies turn against you only after you get close to their base might help. You won’t have to worry about spamming castles or armies until you stay out of their gates.
It’s just that hard, I wanted to make the final hardest challenge for a campaign that was made hard on purpose from the beginning but of course I can see why most players wouldn’t like it so no problem if you need to rant. I swear my upcoming one is different.

As for scenario 6 you’re right, even on neutral cyan attack red carts which I find counterintuitive (aren’t they civilian units like trade carts?) so I guess I either leave it like that or I make cyan simply defend you, like you suggested, without attacking Carthage (which is pointless after all since they don’t have siege weapons).