I’ve heard that this mission was bugged due to hyper-aggressive AI, and that it was apparently fixed…yet still, even trying to play it on Easiest, I just get swarmed by all the AI and can’t do anything. Even if I use the cheese island strat, I still can’t do anything because I can’t get anything set up back on the shore. No matter where I land, all of the enemy teams swarm to my position with Priests and Legions and Cavalry and Catapults and I can’t do anything.
I’ve tried watching videos and doing what they do, but it just doesn’t seem to work. No matter what strategy I try, I get completely overrun by the enemy from all directions.
You can beat this mission in 2 minutes by using a rushing strategy. Otherwise you could wall yourself in at the start. I have beaten it this way on hardest. Though considering I am an expert player this might not be the best advice.
I tried walling, multiple times, but then they’d just start attacking the walls and it would just delay me getting overrun.
Seriously, I’ve been searching through google and youtube, tried at least 8 different strats now, every single time results in me just getting overrun by all 3 enemy teams constantly sending military units at me. I’ve tried island strat, I’ve tried walling, I’ve tried taking out yellow immediately, I’ve tried building in the east at the orange town, nothing works. No matter where I go, the enemies home in on me and trample me to death.
The best I ever did was building up at the far-east orange base, but I ran out of gold (since there’s only 3 nodes there) and when I took down the wall and went to move out, all 3 enemy teams were there with 10+ units each.
This just seems utterly impossible unless you’re godlike at AoE. Why is this one mission so ball-bustingly hard, after all the previous missions before it were so easy?
And what “rushing strat” ? If I get all the gaia cavalry and rush in, I just die.
You take all the Gaia Cavalry and rush in. I did it in a particular way, not sure anymore exactly. Anyway, here is how I did it: Take your initial army, take out orange’s villagers/army asap. Use one of your chariots to get the gaia cavalry. Build a town center next to the trees/berries on the left side. At the same time, wall off the shallows on the east. Try to wall as far away as possible so you can make more than 1 layer of wall. Make sure to get your gaia cavalry inside, before the wall is finished. You can also use your cavalry to fend off any incoming red army while your villagers are building the wall. In the mean time, make sure to make villagers and collect resources. If this is difficult, play at the slowest speed. Once your army is inside your wall and the wall is completed, move your army south. Kill the tower that is standing on the hill. Move your cavalry to where browns granary is. You do not want to enter browns town, because there are too many towers. Your goal here is to kill as many villagers as possible. Brown will have a lot of villagers foraging so you should be able to kill them and cripple browns economy so badly that he won’t be much of a threat, at least for a while.
Meanwhile, on the other side, red will be attacking your wall. If your wall is in danger, try to make a second layer of wall. If you see that red will get inside your wall, you can move your economy southwards to where brown’s granary is. You can steal his berries (you always should). There is also some shorefish near to where those berries are. Make a storage pit next to this fish and make sure to fish it. Shore fishing is the fastest way to get food. Also, make sure to wall off the small corridors to prevent red from getting to you. Build up your economy and when you are ready, push back red, make a dock in the small river and make galleys in it.
Yeah, I tried that, walling off the right side and then keeping pressure on brown over by the shore there, but yellow kept sending endless Slingers at me and brown kept sending endless bowmen/camels and they whittled down my cavalry pretty quickly.
Just tried it again, and like last time, brown/yellow just keep endlessly assaulting me with endless slingers/bowmen, ignoring my military units and going straight for my villagers.
■■■■ this AI, man. Wasn’t this specifically patched out months ago, the hyper-aggressive AI issue?
Get the villagers south to your starting position.
Right after getting the villagers run to the eastern corner of the map where there is a small orange base. You’ll find some cavalry along the way.
Build a TC and a granary in the middle of that enemy base, research small wall and wall off the entrance with several layers.
Get food by farming and get to the bronze age, then go for chariot archers. The enemy may breach your walls before you get there, but your starting army should be enough to beat the first wave. Just rewall and you should get CAs out before the enemy breaches in again.
Once you have a decent number of CAs the rest of the mission should be relatively straightforward.
Yeah, I tried that. Multiple times. I could build up lots of chariots, but there would always be 30+ fully upgraded enemy units waiting right outside the wall and I’d get wrecked. I tried both chariots and chariot archers, and neither one could put a dent in the enemy units.
The rest of the campaigns I’ve been playing on Very Hard and breezing through them. This one though, you’re starting from scratch in tool age against 3 already well built-up enemies. It’s insanely unfair from the start.
I just played it. You need those Gaia cavalry in the east. I took them using chariots while ruining oranges west side base with swordsmen, then walled the river. Start TC near berries at top and expand south west to more berries and fish lake. Hassle west orange, kill their towers and vills. Hunt for stray vills of brown and yellow, try to kill buildings where possible. Red was too busy getting stuck on the opposite river. Try to not let cavalry die until you have a decent army - they’ll hold off brown’s annoying bowmen.
Later on, yellow will be building up legions and mining gold in the south. Kill vills to minimise the trouble they’ll cause later on. Watch their priests, you may want to keep chariot archers handy.
I didn’t try the east side, but it may be easier to hole up, with downsides of conversions through the trees. I prefer the resources in the west. You can also stick near the shore and defend an area using war galleys with their long range.
I followed the approach of @Penelinfi and @AKC_HellStriker when approaching this on hardest. I stayed in the top left before expanding south. I can’t see the benefit of going to the east as further to walk, no fishing, no small island to retreat to and enemy priests can convert over the trees. Given that Hitiite war galleys are epic I can see that putting them in the ford would be worthwhile near your starting location but I haven’t/didn’t personally.
Like others mentioned I used the starting Chariots to grab the gaia cavalry and then used the Chariots out front with their resistance to conversion to draw conversion attempts from the 150 hit point red pharaoh priests before swooping in with the cav to gang kill them. if left alone I can see those Pharaoh’s being a nightmare and rage inducing particularly as they can heal each other. I wonder if some of the players who have a problem with this scenario haven’t realised they are not dealing with normal priests, even I was like ‘why is he not dying’ when I first played it.
I also slowed the speed down at the start and only speeded up when aging to help me keep track at the start and locate the conversion attempts from the fog of war.
The AI is just as stupid as in the original so even though I was eventually removed from my base to the small island I just relanded to the south and had scythes hang around the gold mines in the desert to slowly bleed yellows villagers. Similarly I started to wall gold and left CA’s on the route between Red and the gold mines to the east. The AI still sends streams of villagers like ants to their doom.
I’ve not completed it yet but I’m at the point where I think it’s just a matter of time as have infinite sycthes.
As I hate the scenario narrators voice I skipped the instructions but assume I just need to sink the wonder in reds base so will get some cats.
I have recorded my game on shadowplay, not that exciting and doesn’t show off any particular skills but happy to share if helpful.
As in the original when dealing with hardest AI I just don’t get too attached to my base.
You need to bring the artifact to the flags in top. If you perservere, you can rush red and somehow steal the artifact without building a town. Idk how well it works given all those towers and priests, but someone’s done it.
I tried a second time and this time red came through my wall with those “rage inducing” priests. Made things a bit more difficult. I quit after a while because it was going to take ages (see that?)
Got there in the end though took me 2hrs 15 at mainly 1.5 speed.
After I won I went back to my last save and did reveal map and I reckon that you could rush the artifact and get it back provided you killed the pharaohs in the manner I described above. I wonder whether transporting in and then the artifact out via river could work as well.
I also think war galleys in the Ford could have been the key to a quicker finish
on reflection as they would wreck reds farms to the southwest of the city.
@Erethzium said:
Yep, I can’t beat this without cheating. Good game design, DE Devs.
No, you just need to work to become a better player, don’t blame the Devs because of your lack of skill. Change your point of view and view it as a challenge instead. It took me a few goes at first but I worked it out too. I am not an expert player.
I realised the key is to draw as little attention to your units as possible. The second time I did it, I switched the diplomacy to neutral so that my units didn’t attack needlessly.
Forget setting up a base. After the first few goes, I realised it was pointless, focus on the objective. don’t get the villagers at the start, it just draws attention to your units.
Start - immediately shift all units to east to pick up 2 groups of cavalry. wait a few moments. pharaohs and catapults move north away from entrance to wonder.
Send in charitots to kill the first priest, and grab artifact. If they are killed, send in one or two cavalry to retrieve.
Rush artifact back to base same way you came with all units. yes it does take a fair bit of micro-management. the last go I just had to prove to myself I could do it again, I lost every unit but the artifact just made it back.
I just grabbed the villagers with my last cavalry unit right at the end to make it across the line.
10 Minutes on Very Fast Hardest.
I would post a screenshot but forum won’t let me coz I haven’t been on here long enough.
As I hate the scenario narrators voice I skipped the instructions but assume I just need to sink the wonder in reds base so will get some cats.
There is a stop button at the bottom of the instructions to stop the narration.
Also, in game, the objective is usually listed in the top right corner of screen. It can be toggled on and off using the red button with yellow tick in it in the same location. The scenario Instructions can also be accessed in game by selecting the game menu (top right again) and selecting the ‘scenario instructions’ button
The best thing to do, with challenging missions like this, is to focus on your objective(s) for the biggest part first but you don’t have to finish it immediately of course.
You can almost like rush in and get the war chest with the Gaia cavalry after slaughtering the priests and catapults in the west bank. I say almost, because you’ll have to draw out some military inside first and fight them out of the tower defense range. In the meanwhile you can attack brown on multiple fronts and wipe him out completely. It doesn’t matter too much where you start your base. After keeping the war chest safe at a base, you can try to defeat all the other players. At least you can finish the mission at any time.
Very nice mission and they should not change anything about this one.
(warning, spoilers if you want to figure it out yourself!)