Posting this here instead of leaving a review because the AoE website refuses to recognize I own the game on Steam 
Anyway, I had a lot of fun playing this campaign. Each level was unique and different from the others. I even enjoyed the naval level, honestly. The only problem I found, and I’m not sure if that’s the right word as it didn’t make it harder to finish the level, exactly, was that in the final level it felt like the diplomacy was broken.
Maybe that was the point? But at one point around the time when I hit Imperial Age and got the tech for free tribute I sent the Burgundians 1000 wood since I was trading with them and didn’t want them to become enemies and I gained a whole 2 points with them. I didn’t experiment further because I couldn’t afford to waste resources just to check if gold or stone would increase it more, but when I started a new game and sent 100 of all four resources I got a grand total of 2 points as well, which feels…very unbalanced. I do understand that higher Imperium is supposed to make increasing relations harder, but resources are scarce in the beginning, and by the time you can afford to use any on diplomacy, it’s already so expensive as to be unviable.
Supposedly killing their enemy’s units was meant to improve relations as well, but in my experience I didn’t notice any change. Even early on when I was allied with the Suebi from the start and got a little too close to the Visigoths while clearing Ricimer’s camps, the dozens of units I killed before they left me alone didn’t appear to have any effect on my relations with the Suebi.
Honestly, it kind of felt like going neutral was a trap. It seemed to me that the only workable strategy was to pick an ally for their unique unit and plan to defeat the other three as quickly as possible before your “ally” inevitably turns on you anyway down the road, because there was no world in which you could actually scrape together enough resources to hit 200 relations with any of them.
That’s not to say I didn’t have fun with the level, of course. Completing the other objectives was enough to make things interesting, and I ended up both meeting the Imperium goal and then defeating all opponents just for fun. The diplomacy aspect could just use some work, is all.
Hello, glad you enjoyed the campaign, and I’d much rather people posted here on the forum than reviews I can’t respond to.
Generally I agree with your assessment on the diplomacy, I think it is balanced but only if you play in a very specific playstyle of maintaining relations with some of them with castles & trade and Tributing them a bit (mostly yellow because it’s super effective) to keep them off your back until later.
Though generally yeah this is a “specific strategy that works” which means that there are a lot of “wrong ways to play it” which is something that I try to avoid, I do want it to be a sandbox where you can try lot’s of things rather than finding a pure sweet spot that works.
In the current state it was released I had already tested the whole thing 5 times and Imperium was something you got much slower. In general I didn’t enjoy making this campaign and for the last scenario maybe I should not have made something so ambitious I couldn’t balance all the mechanics properly and also without any playtesters other than myself, but at that point I really could not bear to play it again.
So I guess the state it is in is that “it works” but only if you play it in a specific way but it requires a good knowledge of the way the scenario and a.i scripts are set up.
I am going to make some changes to the campaign though eventually, though not now since I am sick of this project. I will make some of the changes to diplomacy in the last mission for sure.
Though generally yeah this is a “specific strategy that works” which means that there are a lot of “wrong ways to play it” which is something that I try to avoid, I do want it to be a sandbox where you can try lot’s of things rather than finding a pure sweet spot that works.
I think the biggest issue here is that you don’t get a unique unit unless you ally with someone or pick Aegidius, with the Woad Raider kind of being on the weak end of unique units and not a super great substitute for either the militia line or any other unique units you could have instead. The Steppe Lancer isn’t a great matchup against Frankish and Burgundian cavalry, either. The end result is that if you want to go all in on cavalry you need to ally with the Burgundians for Coustillier or Suebi for Teutonic Knight if you prefer infantry; your initial alliance becomes a matter of picking your preferred unit rather than being a bonus.
All the civilizations you’re fighting are cavalry or infantry based, so the Huskarls aren’t very helpful, and in my opinion Throwing Axemen are just a mediocre unit, so you’re better off picking Burgundians and defeating the Franks to get Chivalry or picking Suebi and defeating the Visigoths for Perfusion. There’s not much benefit to allying with either of them, and going neutral only gives you a bit longer before everyone turns on you. Maybe this is a strange take, but what if instead of getting their unique units, the Franks gave you early access to the Knight (or just Paladin if that’s all that was locked; I went all in on infantry and never checked) line and the Visigoths did the same for the militia line? Though, the latter might need to be paired with limited access to Centurions to be worthwhile. I dunno. Just spitballing.
It would also help if starting off neutral gave you a unit of some kind, but I don’t have any idea what would be fitting for that. That said, if you rebalance the diplomacy down the line to where actually achieving alliances later on is doable, that might not be necessary. Maybe having it so that sending tributes to someone reduces relations with their enemy in exchange for having a greater effect, allowing a neutral player to potentially get two allies in exchange for not starting with a UU?
At any rate, it sucks that you didn’t have much fun making this scenario, and I understand why you wouldn’t be looking to make any changes right away, so I’m just talking for the sake of talking. I do wish you luck with whatever you do next, and I hope you’ll have a better time with it 
Don’t worry, I’m not offended at all and as I said I already agree with your opinion.
That being said, it’s not just this mission but for most of the campaign In general I didn’t enjoy making but this one was probably the most difficult to force myself to finish. This campaign in general I would have given up making a while ago but I forced myself to finish. That being said, i’m not saying this as an excuse or to guilt trip anyone, really just saying the reality.
On the side of unit balance… yeah it sucks about how all the civs are infantry and cav based, I thought it was actually pretty crazy how none of the civs used (except Byzantines for the player) don’t have thumbing or Arbalester, making the enemies much more boring in my opinion since they are pretty similiar, but since i am a fan of keeping enemy civs “vanilla” for the sake of player clarity it is a bit of a bad situation. Anyways not sure if you noticed but there are custom techs at the wonder, one of which unlocks Champions and Paladins, so I am not gonna make them available by allying with the Franks for this reason. The custom techs are currently very expensive, one of the changes I will make is make them cheaper.
As for the diplomacy system, I will keep it very much similiar but just make it was initially intended let’s say. I’ll make it so forging an alliance only requires 100 relations, Imperium affects their relations much less and i’ll buff the other modifiers that increase relations also. I’ll also possibly consider making it so when you forge an alliance with a faction they will be less negatively affected by Imperium (or possibly not affected at all).
One other balance change is increasing the Initial population by 25, so you start with 150 pop and then your final max pop limit will be 225.
That being said… these changes are not gonna happen for some time though. Not sure if you noticed but there is another version of the mod where you play as Byzantines as well for non RoR owners to play. That means double the work when updating the mod… so it makes me less likely to update which already is an extremely frustrating process. Again, not saying this as an excuse but in general i’m sure it makes a lot of creators less likely to update their work for the reason it is actually quite an annoying process.