Ivaylo mission 3 for us non-immortals

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Someone want to tell me how it is that I am meant to survive the first two minutes of this mission after reaching the city? Just reaching the city is an impossible task that only works by knowing about that stupid boat. I am playing on moderate, and no matter what I try, I cannot get past the first assault. No research or combination of units works when I am in base-castle age with a few dozen twits, and the enemy hits me with a post-imperial horde twice the size of my own.
You can’t fight them, you can’t wait them out while you upgrade and reinforce; they come through the walls any way you try it, and it is immediately over.
I tried looking up what others have done, which led me to try sending my whole starting military to take out the red khans, but that did not work, because red has a billion troops to start with, and my guys barely take out the first khan before they just die. Of course, I cannot go for a second attempt, because using my whole starting military means that by the time they are all dead, my city is already half destroyed by the previously mentioned post-imperial horde.

I was annoyed in the last mission, because I was winning (after cheesing the crap out of it) and the stupid wonder self-destructs immediately if I do not hold it when I take out green - and yes, this is after the supposed update to keep that from happening. But mission 3 is no bug; it is a feature that you are destroyed in the first two minutes of the siege. I get the idea of having a harder mission, but I should be able to survive the first blasted wave.

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I did it in Hard building Krepost and updating everything.

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As soon as you reach the city, pause the game (F3). Research masonry and bodkin. Get one or two monks to heal your army. I walled behind the front gate and built both a krepost behind that wall and also a siege workshop next to the castle for mangonels and scorpions. Unpause. I saved the game right after reaching the city so you can retry and don’t have to do the whole intro again.
Keep your building vill in the krepost. As soon as you get the tributes build another krepost (preferrably in range of the first one) to fortify your city. Get herbal medicine to heal your units between pushes in your kreposts. Your enemy will eventually advance to imp and bring trebs/siege rams so you need stirrups cav to kill the siege. Then it’s just rinse and repeat until you have enough cavalier/konniks to push out. It is pretty doable but it’s one of those grindy missions. Good luck! :slight_smile:

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Just spam krepost inside your base, in a manner that each of them are close, well inside the walls, and that can support each other with the castle. Then keep some light cav or LS inside them to snipe rams and trebs when needed.

At the same time click for imp as soon as you can, but first get bodkin arrows and ballistic, and if possible masonary. Try also to reasarche husbandry and cav archers techs, then mass CA and keep upgrading them, bracer and chemistry have the priority. As soon as you have an even small group, start seaching for the kans and try to bait them, or snipe them with superior number, don’t waste any time fighting any ohter unit, if you don’t find the kans just keep searching and escaping the other units, sometimes you can snipe the kans from outside of the walls of their base.

When the 6 kans are killed, the mongols will start prioritize them over you, that will give you a small time to breathe, but don’t waste any time, start massing trebs and hussars, and with the mass of CA start pushing the mogols right away, slowly but steadly keep destroying their production.

I completed the mission time ago, but I suppose that now is even easier with the balcksmith bonus, and since also siege upgrades are cheaper, siege rams and onagers are viable, so you can try to add them. Also CA are buffed, so they should be stronger.

Note that the market is really useful, but will most likely be destroyed soon, since it’s exposed. Since resources are given to you timely, try to think ahead and start selling/buying resources that you think may need until the next re-supply, like stone at the start for more than one krepost. Don’t try to defend the outer walls at all cost, maybe just the gate to the west. Instead use any building that you use to block some roads inside the town, so that you can channel up the enemies in choke points.

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Thanks, I will try this. I appreciate the help.

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Let me know it it works :wink:

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Thanks a lot! The krepost plan worked beautifully.

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I have solved the mission thrice in hard mode, so I can tell you.

In easy mode: you will always have 3 villagers
I don’t know about moderate mode
In hard mode: you will start with 3 villagers, but will otherwise always have 1 villager, so keeping the three villagers will be important for what that follows

As soon as you reach the base, research imperial age

If you have enough stone, good. If not, buy stone. You cannot survive by a Krepost or even a mere Castle in the Long Term. The Castle which you start with, won’t get range upgrades or Murder Holes. As Bulgarians, you don’t even have Fortified Walls.

You have to build 2 Castles, but build only 1 immediately. You will receive supplies timely and then you could get the 2nd one. I will say, you place the 1st Castle behind the gate near Market. Fill it up with the Crossbowmen already present there and then Cavalry Archers. Get Ballistics, Masonry, Bodkin Arrow. Murder Holes can be delayed since you have walls. As soon as you reach Imperial, research Bracer, then Architecture then Chemistry. (Range is important, then defense, then attack).

These Castles filled with Cavalry Archers can kill hordes of Mongol/Cuman/Tatar units, except for the Trebuchets and Onagers. The Onagers will attack just out of range of Castle destroying the gate. Send in your Cavalry to snipe them and retreat.

When you get time (possibly early, do not wait much), build your konnik numbers (Elite Konniks have more HP and cost slightly less), prioritise defense upgrades at Blacksmith and kill Khans one by one. Prioritise the Cuman one since Cumans are not protected by walls.

Killed him? Good. Now heal your troops. You get 2 monks. You can also use your 2 or 3 castles. Get Herbal Medicine for the latter.

At this point, you can feel the game getting a bit relaxed. Now you know what to do.

About the villagers.

You also have 3 or 4 farms outside your town. You cannot build farms or villagers. But if your villager count reaches 0, you will spawn a new one. You cannot build new farms, but you can reseed them. So this is important. Food and stone are the most important resource here because of the hefty upgrades.

That is why the market is also very important here.

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You don’t need murder holes, multiple castles/kreposts can cover each other bases. As for FW, it’s not either that important, you will build really inside you base, so to have a buffer zone.

I prefer kreposts, because if you lose your first line, or you are about lose it, you have the stone to build more behind.

Isn’t it a bit a wast of time, multiple castle/kreposts already shared everything, and once they start using trebs there is little that you can do.

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Castles though cost double have twice the HP and +1 range. It is Quality not Quantity.

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and despite this kreposts provide better value overall, with more damage per investment. and when you’re talking about fortifying a place, behind a stone wall, that HP doesn’t do that much.

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Range isn’t important, since you either way funnel the enemy into the small street of the city after the gate. So 2 kreposts have more arrows than 1 castle.

As for HP, it’s not important either, if a krepost is destroyed, you just build another one behind. Your priority is to kill the kans, not having a perfect defense.

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  1. Kreposts ASAP.
  2. Do NOT lose your Market.
  3. Kill the Cuman Khans as soon as you have full military upgrades and a decent Konnik force. After that, Nogai and the Tatars will be distracted by the Cumans fighting for you and you’ll be able to snowball to victory.
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From what I have played, Castles or even Kreposts on their own are good against everything the enemy will field except Keshiks and Onagers. The Onagers have enough range to destroy gates without being hit by either of the defensive structure. And that’s when you get in trouble.

And yes, protect your market and farms (if you can).

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I never thought about the kreposts when I did it in hard, just imped, survive the first wave from the Mongols, did armour for cavalry, cavalier and sent light cav to lure the army’s to the other side of the map and sent all the rest of my army to kill the khan’s, after that the rest of the mission is easy

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Onagers dies to castle fire. I didn’t cared about the gates, just used the market once to build more stone. Then builded 4 krepost and funneled all enemies between the castle and kreposts. The only problem was rams and trebs, but those come in later on, by that time I already killed 5 kans.

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Losing your gate isn’t a big deal so long as the Mongol cavalry is forced to bypass a bunch of Kreposts, which will chew them out even after they make it inside.

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Just replayed the mission on moderate. My villager didn’t respawn. I remember all 3 villagers respawned on easy and only 1 respawned on hard. Expected 2 got 0.

Faced some huge bugs. Auto scout doesn’t work. Cavalry stuttured finding way back in my base - unable to find way through open gates, looped to get through the 2nd gate and tried making its way through the dense forests.

Bagain 2HS chew Mongol Hussars raw.

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I don’t know if it was a general bug or related to the scenario only - all my melee units were stutturing. Even the Hound I got from Kasim Beg. It ran 3 tiles and then stopped, when I ordered it to attack Mongol Onager which was still alive.

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Yeah this mission is trash in its current state. The boat really doesn’t work either because it doesn’t even move fast enough. It is possible to walk the whole way but sometimes it will result in you losing instead 11. Great game design…

You don’t need the city to survive. There is only one way to win from my experience. Rush to imperial and state massing cavalier/konniks in the back of the base with the relevant upgrades. Use the other units and perhaps a few walls to buy time. Once you get your cavalary army, head out through the west side of the base and suicide your army if necessary to kill the khan heroes that makes them join you against the mongols.

If you can get them to join you, then you can breathe and the mission is no longer tragically difficult because they will help absorb attacks while you get your crap together and rebuild army + trebs.

I think I ended up beating it on my 4th try. First 2 tries involved me dying on the way to the city. Third try I thought I had to defend the city and lost to attrition because it’s impossible to hold out forever. Then I finally tried the strategy above and barely managed to get the cumans to ally me before my cavalry were finished off.

Really all they need to do to vastly improve this mission is remove the starting part. I have no idea what the point of it is. All it does is make restarts incredibly painful and doesn’t require any skill or anything to walk/sail to the base.