After trying to play the campaigns on the highest difficulty, I can say that winning is impossible due to the meager resources provided at the start of each mission. This issue becomes particularly severe starting with the “Ice” campaign; all subsequent campaigns are practically impossible to beat without using cheats.The first mission where this becomes evident is “The Rescue,” where you basically start with nothing, and the enemy attacks within five minutes with a large force of archers, musketeers, and cannons; essentially, you have just twelve Iroquois warriors and a hero unit.
After that, the difficulty of all other missions increases enormously. Basically, what happens is this: the AI will always have more resources and train units as quickly as possible—showing a strong preference for mercenaries if a tavern is available.What I mean is that the developers didn’t test the difficulty level for the second part of the Ice and Steel campaign; as for the Fire and Shadow campaign, most missions are impossible to beat without using cheats, and the same applies to the Asian Dynasties campaign. Believe me, I’ve played all those campaigns countless times in the past on the highest difficulty, but unfortunately, the new difficulty is impossible to play without cheats.
I will post the missions where it’s impossible to win without using cheats, and I recommend you test them to see for yourselves. Ludicrous difficulty
Not to brag, but I—GoldenArmorX—have beaten the first 5 campaigns on Ludicrous mode without cheats.
It’s tough, but most scenarios are manageable if your micromanagement skills are up to par and you know how to use counter-units… and—crucially—if you use plenty of strategic pauses to improve your micro.
The scenario that gave me the most trouble was the seventh one in the Fire Act (the fourth campaign, The Warchiefs). I even make a Thread to complain aggainst its difficulty, " FIRE-7 campaign Problem: Ludicrous Difficulty and Level design Changes IMPOSSIBLE", but at the end, i beat that horrible level, YEIH!!!
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Sorry, but I don’t believe a word you say, because the game doesn’t detect when you use cheats; there’s no way to beat “The Rescue” mission without using cheats or bugs. I also have a screenshot of winning the game even while using cheats.
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As I’ve said, I’ve played these campaigns—not just once, twice, or three times, but six or seven times—across both the Definitive Edition and the Legacy version. I’m telling you, the Chinese campaign is almost impossible to beat.
I did it.
It feels daunting to say, but this is the reason why AoE4 forbids the use of cheats during campaigns: So that only skilled players complete them and can show off the achievement, without any ambiguity about whether cheats were used.
Also, you can use cheats in AoE2, but a message appears stating, “The achievement will not be considered complete because you used cheats.”
I think this is something they should fix, and I find it odd that they didn’t have a message if somebody do it in AoE3:DE, given that—as I mentioned—AoE2 and AoE4 already have this feature.
Anyway, the thing is, if you want—and just to show off—I could record my playthrough where I beat it without cheats and then upload it. Wait, can I upload it to YouTube or Twitch? Never did it before.
Well, the thing is, there’s already another player who did it and recorded it:
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The guy in the video really pulled off quite a feat, because I tried to get past that part of the campaign several times and couldn’t do it—though that doesn’t change the fact that many missions are broken.
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Dude…
Beating the rescue 101:
(Yes, without cheats)
- When the army pushes north, you just need to engage the falconets separately by retreating the army a bit after they enter bombard mode.
- If the north gets too bad you have to push the south, the army always retreats since that’s their defensive focus, after that, it’s all about micro and economy.
- Remember you can send shipments from the northern outpost if you need more military there, and Nonahkee’s ability recharges fast, so use it.
- It can be done without grinding for the shipment tree, but if you need a buff, you can grind older levels and unlock better cards.
- Another thing you can try to stall, is shooting settlers on the south-west corner of the enemy’s base, there is a mill with settlers too close to the edge, easy raiding.
Don’t remember more, good luck
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If it wasn’t difficult it wouldn’t be called Ludicrous :v
“Ludicrous”, not “impossible”
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ok ok ok e possível ! agora tente vencer as dinastias asiáticas, eu ja sabia quando fiz o post que ia aparecer alguem que venceu mais não tira o ponto que os DEVS não testaram essa dificuldade
In AoE4 you can also just do the campaign on Easy and get the achievements.
The Haudenosaunee under attack is one of the easiest mission in the game to cheese since the AI will stop attacking the other side if they are under any kind of pressure
all you need is to have even 1 hero aggro their walls and they will pull the entire force
and they will disengage the moment they dont have vision so just pull back the moment you see a gate open since you have vision of it and snipe anything that tries to come out
do that like 3 times and they run out of units
If you want to be super extra about it there is a spot on the left side of the walls that has trees and has no towers so you can snipe their vils unimpeeded, they will have to take the long route so you can harrass them even more
to be extra extra while their units are pulling back you can take the manlet on the other side and attack
Playing through the campaign besides the fact that they gave them extra stats, i couldnt even tell most of the time how its different tbh
When the north gets attacked use the 4 Jaegers with your two heroes to attack from the south. As soon as the army turns around to head south, disengage! At some point use the 5 Uhlan shipment to kill the falc. Make sure to try to snipe units as often as possible with John and his obscenely long ranged friend. Whenever possible (in the campaigns more broadly) after gaining a significant advantage save for Mercantilism. The extra XP will give you more cards over time (making future levels easier).
While I have yet to finish Ice, I have yet to use a cheat code on Ludicrous, but I have absolutely cheesed the AI.
For reference, I’m a former 1700-1800ish elo in team (currently unranked sitting near 1500), so I’m rusty, maybe really rusty, but I was decent once.
I actually very much appreciate the attempt to make a difficult level. I think there’s kinda been a mix of ones I found easy and hard. I had to restart that the Rescue a few times (though one was due to a bug).
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I did this and succeeded, but the other Asian Dynasties missions are really broken
It doesn’t surprise me that the Asian missions are harder. Those were harder to begin with, though whether they are broken is a matter of opinion. Imo “Ludicrous” difficulty shouldn’t be beatable by a sizable percentage of the player base. A long while back I remember having serious issues with one of the later Indian levels. It’ll be interesting to see if I’ll have what it takes when I eventually make it there.
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Any tip on “the rescue”, second mission of Fire campaign?
Should I rescue all villagers? Rushing doesnt work either for me
It’s not really easy to rush them without risking it, but you can harass their economy wasting them a lot of valuable time, giving you the chance to mass and push.
So they dont have unlimited resources?
I can’t think of any level where that’s the case.
I don’t know what level you may be, but try to remember the counter system (like “rock, paper, scissors”).
Something else might be troubling you…
