Return of Rome is way too hard

Yep except they’re only really useful at raiding and vs scout cav. For Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry in Bronze and Iron Age, you need Academy units.

Having now played the new DLC I want to second the mayority of the opinions here.
The AI is definitely harder and you’re not allowed to boom, because it simply produces so many units, that it becomes an excessively long grind to defeat them.
Most of us here are likely to still beat it, most even relatively comfortably, however keep in mind, that we on these forums are the people that play lots of AoE and like the game to such a degree that we care to discuss it on these forums, but there are lots of people out there, some may have never played AoE but want to play this. I assume the general skill level of users of these forums is on average higher than the general playerbase, so if most of these forums agree that it is too hard for what its supposed to be, its likely way worse for random newcomers.
Also newer people tends to boom and turtle more and against this AI you kind of have to be agressive right from the start.

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True. I tend to start fighting in Tool age to early bronze age. I usually do not struggle much because the AI has a slow start.
But I just tried late game it becomes a real grind. The priest micro is insane as well.

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Yeah, the priest micro was a problem for me as well, especially since I played Carthago vs. Babylon

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I am a casual player, not the competitive style, and it is extremely difficult for me to play AoE RoR, I like to play building my city, taking resources and creating units according to what I am collecting and upgrading. I like to play against 4 AI (moderate), but it’s impossible, because they all attack me at the same time and send thousands of units, it’s impossible to stop them. Even though I have the lowest score, everyone throws against my civ. :laughing::smiling_face_with_tear::neutral_face: The towers are useless, the archers destroy them as if they were made of paper.

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You have to raid them and hurt them, which means being aggressive. That being said, I too like to play some games taking my time building up. I suggested elsewhere that you could use a treaty, or as someone else said, lower the pop to 50 like the old game, so that you would not face so many units at once. You could also try it with an AI ally.

I played moderate one time not attacking at all, and only defending, and got beaten by a large army. I did it again, but built an archery range near their Town Center, and using archers to kill villagers. It really messed up the AI and I easily destroyed the AI.

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As training, try limiting the age to Bronze or Tool age until you’ve got used to the ai - I find on Iron Age the complexity of the game jumps massively as Elephants, heavy cavalry etc come into play.

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Yeah, AoE 1 has that it starts off quiet and then in bronze it turns into crazy units coming and going from your base…the AI destroys you or you beat it back…

Use monk, or better you kill enemy soon with camel, chariot. In a game of AOE 1. Enemy will not let you free boom like AOE 2. Remember this is AOE1. Or you can search/ Chim Sẻ Đi Nắng AOE1 on YouTube. You will learn some( but wall soon defend rush you much learn first

Explorer:)))) AOE1 don’t need the scout. Test just test everything make it like AOE 2 just make waste game. This 1 it call AOE2 a bit it enough. Village can explore all thing the civil need to develop. Just don’t transfer AOE1 to AOE2

I saw a post from one of the developers that the micro AI behavior took them by surprise and they were looking into it.

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Thank for your information, I waiting for change it soon. Because I hate mix archer and lose just because a bug of game

To be honest, the counter-units are just AOE2 thing.
In AOE1 there are pretty few true counter units (slinger-archer, camel-cavalry), and even those are innefective.
The real balance of mechanics in AOE1 is not counter units, it’s fire power and more fire power. Ranged units are absolutely OP, especially if you micromanage them good. I always play ranged in AOE1 and i hate playing ranged in AOE2.

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Yes, AOE 2 melee special knight too op, but for aoe1 same :))) archer not too op

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I totally agree. I literally can’t win this game. I even reduced the difficulty to easiest and the only difference is the players will not initiate attacks. There seems to be something really wrong with the way the AI is paced. It is almost like it has unlimited resources because when I attack I can see that there is still plenty of wood, gold, and stone even though I’ve already collected almost all of my gold and stone resources. The only way that I was able to defeat an enemy was to build a barracks in the Stone Age and create a ton of clubman and then go destroy them at the beginning of the game. The AI is just way too strong and the game is really not fun at all because of this. I still have my old CDs with AOE1 and the rise of Rome expansion. I’m going to try playing it to see if I’m just misremembering how difficult this game was or if there is actually something wrong with this new version.

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You basically used a rush against the AI. Common tactic in PvP

I was holding off 3 AI in skirmish on standard with ballista’s and Centurions as Rome. It happened to be against one of the AI with War Elephants. The rest were sending Chariots. The strat happened by accident after I went and attacked one of them I saw how well the ballistas were doing, then I started being rushed, so I turtled, built walls and keeps, and left an opening so tricked their pathing right towards my ballistas.

But it will work on offensive play as that is how I realized how good they were.

Just an update: The team is currently working on resolving this issue (insufficient difficulty scaling on lower difficulty levels). :slightly_smiling_face:

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