Hautevilles 4 - win by defeating every single enemy unit

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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There are many players attempting the so called “genocide” playthrough → kill every single enemy unit and destroy every single enemy production building. Except for some missions where you physically cannot kill every single enemy unit (such as Hautevilles 3, where 1 enemy villager cannot be reached by any means) due to the map having a secluded enemy in an unreachable corner, there are a few missions deemed “impossible” to win the “genodice” way.

Those missions include Kotyan 2, Hautevilles 4 and Edward Longshanks 2.

So far, i have made a guide 2 years ago on how to beat Pachacuti 2 while letting Cuzco build the wonder, a few days later i managed to beat Kotyan 2 (which was easy, and the description is on Ornlu’s video “revisiting Kalka river”), and a few hours ago, i learned to exploit the hussar in Dracula 4 (which i thought was also “impossible”) by kiting him with a boyar continuously being healed by a monk.

Hautevilles 4 was a mission i’ve always feared was possible but extremely difficult, and thus i avoided to play it for 2 years. Today, however, i managed to win it → By 35th minute mark, only kerbogha remained on the map, with all enemy spawn points walled in (except for the 2 treb one-time spawn).

It was enormously difficult and i had to extremely abuse the slow speed, pauses and save-loads.

The trick is to bait enemies at the southernmost southwestern entrance to the towers, and kite all enemy untis next to 4 other spawn points to the northeastern entrance, where they will get stuck → this will let you build on the 5 spawn points with no issues, and prepare for the attack from the 6th spawnpoint, which is right behind the trigger zone that makes the enemies stuck. Then, i built a few donjons full of arbs right infront of the 6th spawn in order to kill hundreds of enemy units, and i walled it in sometime during the first attack phase. Clearing out the remainder of the map was very easy.

This makes the “Edward Longshanks 2” as the only scenario, not counting unreachable enemies, that i couldn’t yet win the “genocide” style, along with not losing a single hero unit/building, protecting all allies (including their heroes) that are not triggered to die, and completing all side objectives (except for prithviraj 3, where the timer just does not allow it on hard). So for those “not even bothering to try the impossible scenarios” → you can do it! I could, you can too!

I’ve also made several “backup” saves before every significant phase, so you can check out the progress yourself!:

BACKUP10-BEFORE_THIRD_ATTACK.aoe2spgame (1.8 MB)
BACKUP-READY_TO_REPEL.aoe2spgame (1.4 MB)
BACKUP2-_AMOST_KITED.aoe2spgame (1.3 MB)
BACKUP5-FIRST_ATTACK.aoe2spgame (1.5 MB)
BACKUP8-BEFORE_SECOND_WAVE.aoe2spgame (1.7 MB)

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I tried Longhsanks too, the best Ive managed is wiping teal except the castles and destroying the stray bases of green.

On easy it is trivial btw because you outrange everything

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That is correct, on easy, you can do it pretty easly. I think it’s very much possible on hard, too, but you need to ignore teal completely and go straight for green once you clear out the rest of the map (those stray bases from other players), and just kite the enemy castles’ fire with some soldiers (several kites at ones), while using the rest to literally tear the castles down, and converting the enemy soldiers. I think I might give it a try in the near future, we’ll see;)

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Can you provide a link that guide?, I’m curious to know how that is possible, that scenario seems pretty overwhelming to complete by killing the enemy within the tight time limit.

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I’d probably fare a lot better now, taking out Ancu Hualloc’s tc fairly quickly with a hero jebait while petards would walk in there, taking it and the castles out. Micro, slow speed and the abundance of saves are your friend.

EDIT: can’t give you a heart to your question, i’m outta likes for a few more hours.

1 Like