Hittite campaign mission 2 is basically impossible

Age of Empires: DE Ask for Help
1

You start in tool age with 6 swordsmen and 3 basic chariots. You can get 3 villagers just south of your starting position.

Within 1 minute of beginning the game (you start in the tool age) you’re being hammered by 4 factions, all of whom have tons of priests and catapults. Your starting army will deplete very quickly and the soldiers are crap anyway.

You can use the three villagers to build a town center but it won’t do you much good as you won’t be able to build villagers quick enough to advance to bronze age and begin recruiting decent troops before you get swamped by cavalry, priests and catapults. Those two watchtowers you start with count for nothing, they’re up on hills and don’t hit much (enemy just catapults them anyway).

I tried to cheese it by immediately building a dock and a transport and transporting my three villagers to a tiny island in the west of the map. The island has some wood and gold, I cut/mined all of that and built a town center and more villagers, built as many farms and houses as I could (the island is really, really small) and eventually landed back on the main landmass.

I managed to build 2 tool age buildings and advance to the bronze age, but almost immediately afterwards I was being hit by cavalry, priests and catapults from 3 different civs, and I had nothing to counter.

This mission is basically impossible. I’m sure it can be cheesed somehow (I tried to cheese it by building on the tiny island) but I’m stumped. Too many enemies who are too advanced and have too many troops immediately after you start. The whole map has enemy cities on it (all walled, all with tons of towers) and you don’t have time to collect resources and recruit troops before you get hammered.

2

There are more units on the map you can find. Those come in very handy. But yes, this is one of the better missions.

! 9 cavalry, 2 houses and a stables(so you can bronze as soon as you gather the food) to find on the north-east side of the map

I played this on hardest in the release patch and the following worked for me:
I built my base in the small pathway on the north-east side and used chariot archers/catapults to defend there because there’s plenty of wood(thus plenty of food from farms as well), some gold and stone(for tower spam). I walled in the right entrance to the area with multiple layers of houses and the left entrancy by the shallows I towered up. If you’re having a hard time even after that, you can dock block all the shallows leading to the landmass but I find that a little cheesy as the AI is can be pretty bad with complete wall offs. Of course I ran my army around, killing all the villagers I could find and dragging most of the enemy military units elsewhere in the process. Your biggest problem are those pesky pharaohs, try to stay away from them if at all possible and when you need to take them down, focus them with all your units. Also you’re Hittite, your warships are godlike so building that river full of them and killing everything from the water seems like a solid plan you could use as well. Didn’t do it myself but in hindsight, probably should have.

The north-west side next to the lake also seems like a great spot since you have extra wood and gold on the island, not to mention, a lake full of fish. Of course you’ll have to win the navy to secure that and you’ll be further from your objective. The biggest problem I see with that is that you’re on the wrong side of the river. Both yellow and brown(orange too if you don’t kill him) can attack you easily when you are there. On the east side, only orange is on the same land mass, everyone else has to cross a shallow to get there so there’s less pressure. Still it sounds like it could be interesting, I think I’ll go and try that.

3

Cheers, I’ll give the north-east side of the map a try.

4

Yeah I replayed from the left side and it’s definitely harder from there because of the proximity of yellow and brown but still doable. The biggest bonus to playing from the left is that the pharaohs arrive later and you can boom with fishing ships.

First thing I did was rush my extra unit with two chariots while killing orange base and taking vills with the rest of the troops. Send villagers directly to the shoreline, make TC next to brown granary and a dock. First thing out of the dock is a scout ship because brown has one that will come to kill your stuff. They don’t seem to build anymore navy after that(perhaps bugged) so just spam fishing boats. I built 6 ships anyway because they can kill everything from brown on the shoreline(albeit they take ages to kill buildings.) Then I just used the early troops to defend myself while I bronzed and then just spammed chariot archers for the rest of the game with a few catapults for taking down towers.

Now, there’s two problems you’ll face going west, first is that brown base is right next to you, I dealt with that with the ships and building my barracks in tower range, so the tower gets stuck shooting the barracks, not your villagers when you cut down the forest next to the base before that base is destroyed. The yellow base continues from where the brown base left off, so you just keep going south with your army and taking ground bit by bit. It’s like the western front down there, really annoying. At some point both brown(catapults, camels, chariot achers) and yellow(slingers, catapults, swordsmen) will end up attacking you with their armies at the same time(60+pop army OUCH!) and you’re going to have trouble then. Kite with your chariot archers against the swordsmen and make sure you dodge catapult shots. You’re also going to need a decent amount of production to keep replacing your army in a timely manner. I had six ranges, but that was too little, I recommend ten. Hold with great honour and rebuild your army(and possibly economy.) Then after brown shorebases are dead to your ships, delete all navy aside from two ships, these will be left as coast guard to kill stragglers. After brown has been mostly eliminated(they have some more base inland but all their eco is on the coast) you can easily overwhelm yellow(watch out he likes catapults.)

The other problem is that at some point red is going to have built his eco up and will start attacking you from the top side, in the worst case scenario this times perfectly with a double attack coming from south and uh-oh, not fun. You should definitely try and tower/wall up the top as you keep expanding there. Red mostly comes with swordsmen and priests, but I’ve seen a few stone throwers as well. I didn’t tower up myself so I had to juggle my army back and forth and sometimes pull all my villagers from the top until I had dealt with the attack down south and could spare sending units to the top again. Definitely tower up, it will help you so much, even if just to buy time. Remember to make walls around your towers, this will protect them against the swordsmen. After brown and yellow are dead, you are free to do whatever, red alone isn’t a threat.

As for unit composition, chariot archers are excellent because they are population effective, microable and the upgrades synergize with towers and ships. Some Scythe chariots are a really good addition a little later on if you can spare the resources for their upgrades because they will block the Legions from closing the distance to your chariot archers but don’t do chariots from the start because there is very little space to fight in most places and chariots are big units that need open fields to fight effectively. You’ll need catapults for breaking the bases fast enough as well. All three AI players build priests so don’t make elephants and you don’t have all that much gold so academy/horse units are not that great either.

Remember to send a transport to the island and build extra docks closer to keep your fishing trips from becoming too long. After the island was empty from trees and gold, I used it as my farming area because it’s completely safe, turned out to be a pretty good idea, I never needed more farmers than I could fit on the island. Also get to Iron pretty fast, you’ll need that alchemy and ballistics for your archers.

This should get you through the mission on the left side. If it seems too hard, turn down the game speed and perhaps lower the difficulty as well. This was played on Hardest difficulty and in the current 5172 patch.

I ended up killing everything from the map but it is faster and easier, to just rush from the east side to the artifact with only red in the way. This method was more fun though^^

5

I love to play campaigns without reading hints and it has been a while ago that I have played them. They are very nice and challenging to play on hardest level. So I had quit a few missions where I discovered some things a little bit too late, but you can win in multiple ways. You just need a good start and hold on. Love the hard micro in this game just because of the 50 pop cap limit. I’m not worried at all that I wil forget this spoiler.

6

Thanks for all the tips man. I’m just gonna go with the easy right-side of the map for now, maybe try the harder left-side for a challenge later.

Right now I just want to get this one over with so I can move on and get to the Roman/enemies of Rome campaigns. I have some type of OCD where I have to finish each campaign in order.

7

I found that best place to build a base is in the orange base in the very easternmost corner of the map. There’s no stone there, though, which makes building fortifications harder than in the northeastern corridor, but it’s further away from enemies and entry points are narrower, which allows you to wall them off more easily. Once your position is secured, you should get to bronze as soon as possible. You want to start pumping out chariot archers as soon as possible. Those are basically the only unit that can counter the enemy pharaohs.