@“Ruin of Palmira” said:
I’ve played the original campaigns for countless hours. I can somewhat live with some very slight changes. But hopefully they haven’t changed the most EPIC campaign scenario in any RTS game (and I played soooo many) I’ve ever played.
I mean one where you start with a monk and had to recover an artifact through multiple dangers --lions, enemies, and the catapult part was very tricky. But that scenario holds a special place in my videogaming heart.
I can’t tell exactly what mission you are talking about, but it sounds like Xenophon’s March. That one has been mostly unchanged.
I agree with the comments on Tigris Valley. That is definitely one that stuck in the mind for how hard it was on hardest back in the day. Walling and towering up for a really long battle of attrition was just par for the course on scenarios like that and Holy Man. When you felt -so- on the back foot was when the game was memorable. Mountain Temple was another like that, where i recall taking out those last towers with mass bowmen because that was all I could afford. Now the map is quite different, and while I’ve not tried, I’m guessing plays quite differently at difficulty.
I remember that transition between AoE and AoK, and the idea that they didn’t want us completely depleting resources on maps, but it was such an important part of the AoE campaigns, and the only way we ever won some of them, like Lord of the Euphrates.
Interesting points about the Hittite campaign. I understood the removal of those early scenarios, and never realised the other maps were reused. Interesting how that can go unnoticed, just based on using them so differently. I’d also favour the originals being available in some form, alongside the demo’s Bronze Age Art of War showcase :).