Please post your entries below. Note that this thread will lock at 11:59 PM PDT on July 26, 2017.
The full blog post, with a link to the official rules, can be found here.
###DISCLAIMER: THIS IS AN ILLEGITIMATE SUBMISSION SINCE I WON THE PREVIOUS CONTEST.
So although I won the previous contest and canât join this one until the four months cooldown period ends, I am just participating because the topic is too interesting and I do have somethingâŚ
"THE BATTLE OF JANIDURI"
(image is recreated based on memory and might not be 100% correct)
This was played on the original Age of Empires II: The Conquerors years before the HD Edition even came out.
Around 2009-2010, I played a normal game of Age of Empires II as one of my favourite civilisation, the Turks. Alongside me I have a Saracen, a Persian, and a Spanish ally, and against me was the Huns, the Chinese, Japanese and the Vikings. I was not expecting anything abnormal from this game. It was a really hard match, my Spanish ally was eliminated early in the game somewhere around Feudal Age. And in the middle of the great battle after the Vikings and the Chinese were defeated the Saracens were defeated too. Now the only players left were the Persian, the Japanese, the Hun, and I. The Huns were already weak, itâs just a matter of time before they are defeated too. The Persians were being attacked by the Japanese, and seeing this I stopped attacking the Huns and went to my Persian ally to help. It was a very long standoff at a shallow bridge. I remember only using Elite Jannisaries, and my enemy used mostly Heavy Cavalry Archers. Samurais and Halberdiers came in after a while, and the War Elephants also joined the battle soon. But we stayed there for a very long time. I sent hundreds and hundreds of Jannisaries to the bridge to keep my army alive. The battle lasted for around five hours (I know itâs not long but it was very long for me at that time). I finally defeated the Japanese after breaking through their tough wall of army with the help from some Trebuchets which cleared out many defensive buildings. The Huns were defeated by the Persians somewhere in the middle of the battle. I called the battle The Battle of Janiduri because I used Jannisarries and the Japanese used archers which reminds me of thorns and in Malay the word âthornâ is âduriâ. So by mixing the two words I get Janiduri. If I can somehow go through the files of my old computer, I might be able to find the saved game. But for now, I canât look for it yet because itâs deep in the storage room after a renovation.
There is another longer battle I had last month which was really memorable, but I think thatâs not as historic as this one so I guess this deserves to be here more than that one.
Again, I am aware that this submission cannot win, itâs just submitted for fun because when I read the post, this was the first battle that came into my mind.
(Image recreated in HD)
"Pope and the Antipope"
I remember playing, back in 2007, the 3rd mission of Barbarossa campaign and thinking, âAm I supposed to win with just some monks?â I didnât think about converting green villagers and I set sail straight to Milan. Through some clever micro I managed to get into the city and win in just a few minutes. Then I heard that it was supposed to be harder, doing all building-converting-from-green stuff.
@jennywaboom does the image have to be a screenshot or can I do an illustration?
Havenât entered before but is there any rule that says people can only win for one month or is that guy above just being really nice with not wanting to be eligible?
@Emberguard Havenât entered before but is there any rule that says people can only win for one month or is that guy above just being really nice with not wanting to be eligible
Here is an extract from the official rules about winners that will answer your question.
@jennywaboom
WINNER DETERMINATION AND PRIZES
Within 7 days following the end of each Monthly Prize Period, winners will either be selected based on the stated judging criteria (for example, âsubmit the most useful Age of Empires tipâ), or will be randomly selected from among all eligible entries received, to win a prize. The total number of prizewinners and actual prizes will vary by week, but will include items such as copies of Age of Empires games, Xbox avatar codes, clothing and decorations. Prizes will have a fair market value of at least $10. The total number of prizes will be announced each Monthly Prize Period. Limit one prize per person within four Monthly Prize Periods. If you are a potential winner, we will notify you by sending you a direct message on forums.
@âElite Cataphractâ said:
Here is an extract from the official rules about winners that will answer your question.
.
Limit one prize per person within four Monthly Prize Periods.
ah, thankyou @âElite Cataphractâ. I missed that sentence when I read the terms.
@âAhmad Ali Karimâ said:
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS AN ILLEGITIMATE SUBMISSION SINCE I WON THE PREVIOUS CONTEST.So although I won the previous contest and canât join this one until the four months cooldown period ends, I am just participating because the topic is too interesting and I do have somethingâŚ
I had gotten several of my high school friends together on GameRanger to try out the latest version of my Age of The Ring mod. This would be the last big game before I finished working on the modâ all the known bugs had been fixed.
We played on the âMap of the Worldâ with resources, and started in random spots. Two players accidentally picked the same player number, so they both played the same civilization which started in Africa. It worked out though, since one of them was a noob who kept doing stupid stuff, so the other guy would be like âWhy are all the villagers on this transport boat?!â when a naval attack was underway.
Anyway, the game progressed and I gained the upper hand. I played as Mordor based in North America. I had time to tech all the way up, build a big Navy, and start assembling masses of Olifaunts.
For those who havenât played AoTR, Olifaunts are an upgraded version of the Elephant Archer which are larger (both visually and mechanically, traffic jams can be bad). They fire arrows a lot faster since they have multiple archers on top, and have much more HP and armor since theyâre so much tougher than normal elephants.
Theyâre very expensive, but I was building up a bunch to wipe out the world.
Then, one of my friends started building a Wonder. I was very confident, but I had to accelerate things to wipe it out.
The Wonder was in China.
I would not be able to build up a base there since I had no idea what was there, plus I was close to the pop limit. The only choice was to send my existing army, and it had to be done in one wave because time was short.
I started the process of maneuvering all my Olifaunts onto heavy transports, and was so frantic that I sent some villagers along on one by accident.
The player put a bunch of villagers on the wonder, and it got completed very quickly. The countdown began, and I was still putting together a navy to escort my transports.
There were some war galleys from Africa trying to stop me, some naval skirmishes took place. The timer counted down. The other humans were allied against me at this point.
The map was big, so just getting there took a lot longer than I expected. Time was short so I sent my transports around the cape of good hope, relying on their speed to keep them alive. They kept going and made their way up past India to China. I entered a bay near the wonder with about 200 years remaining.
I unloaded all my Olifaunts to meet a small army on shore, as well as some tower defenses. I started attacking the small army⌠100 yearsâŚ
I shrugged off the army and charged straight at the Wonder, wondering if I could get it down in time! I could overwhelm every force that anyone else had, there were literally seconds left in the game. Then I got in range and started firing.
The Wonderâs health dropped like a rock! Iâve never seen a buildingâs health go down so fast. Everything about the Olifaunts was fully upgraded, and there were 20 years leftâŚ
The health kept dropping, halfway, 120 HP, and then âYOU HAVE BEEN DEFEATEDâ by a Wonder seconds away from its destruction.
My favorite recent memory is one of my villagers randomly catching fire for a short time when playing a quest in Age of Empires Online. The screenshot below was borrowed from @MuhsinTpd. Other players had villagers which went up in purple smoke and some buildings in our capital cities would randomly be on fire. It was something special which occurred at random and you really needed to look closely to catch it when it happened to you. That is part of the reason I fondly remember Age of Empires Online.
One of my favourite memories from Age of Empires was way back in 2004 when my sister created this âenemy converting machineâ, which I later tweaked to suit my game-play. To use it, one must lure a troop of an enemyâs army into the gated compound where the monks can safely convert the enemy troops, giving you free armies! Bear in mind that bloodshed may occur between the converted and unconverted units, though.
Iâd usually place these âmachinesâ in front of my town/ as my front gate in the âArenaâ map. It was super cool when I was six years old and I used them all the time. However, I stopped using them as much when I grow older due to impracticality and it being unsuitable with my game-play.
(The above image is a recreation. I didnât screenshot things when I was six, unfortunately.)
One of my favourite memories from Age of Empires were the big battles vs Hard AI at 3v3 matches. I donât have any screenshot of those battles since I forgot them in my old computer but recently I played the Dracula campaign and there was a big battle that resembles pretty much what I like of AI: They donât stop figthing until the very end and have smart army compositions.
Everytime I tried to counter their army composition while the other AI players were figthing at the oposite side of map (usually black forest map) they come and destroy pretty much of my army with a non-stopping wave of units that keep countering my own army composition. No matter what I go, they always find a way to counter pikeman with archers, archers with skirmisher and a lot of cavalry. At the heat of battle, I went into trash army with lot of buildings (10 barracks, 12 archery range) to stop them and push with some few trebuchet into enemy castles in a attmept to snipe the king (yes, Regicide) but ended in a terrible loss since my AI partners got owned at the time I was holding against the others AI.
Pretty much what Dracula campaign is all about, fighting until the end (but this time I won Muahahaha!)
@Emberguard said:
@jennywaboom does the image have to be a screenshot or can I do an illustration?Havenât entered before but is there any rule that says people can only win for one month or is that guy above just being really nice with not wanting to be eligible?
Hey @Emberguard, sorry I didnât see this until like 12 hours before the contest will be closed, but yes you are more than welcome to do an illustration! As long as your entry includes an image/ drawing / screenshot that is Age of Empires related:)
We used to play AoEII over the LAN, and I had the reputation to resurrect after being almost killed. Usually they came hunting for me by sending some scouts and keeping an eye on the minimap.
So I chose blue, which goes great with the water. When I noticed the 2 other remaining players fighting I quickly built a bunch of barracks and started making champions. When only 1 enemy was left I had a massive army, so cursing followed 
.