I remember playing Atila m1 on Moderate back in HD and never saw any huge problem.
But now, AI rebuilds docks and masses stables around the map as close to you as it can. It once built one next to my second TC and I didn’t notice.
And now, archer micro aside, it uses War Galleys to fend off your attacks, and worse. tries to kill the horses you put in the green area and it may succeed if you don’t keep an eye on them and build a castle or something there.
an unpopular opinion: wouldnt it be better to put this 7 hours learn some build orders instead of replying all the people back to back? Kappa
jokes a side, i really do think they should add a " beginner " difficulty for all campaigns, and remove the archer micro and lower the unit spam of AIs in that difficulty so people who are completely new to the game and the people who are getting back after years can enjoy the stories
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( @ArshiaAghaei dadash vel kon in yaru ro, koskhole bikhiyal nemishe xD alan didi 4ta fohsham baret karda lol )
As for the archer micro: is there a reason why that’s still a thing? I mean they updated the AI, it is smarter now, it plays better so really there should be no reason why stuff like kiting and perfectly reacted dodges should still exist. In the old game I always got the sense that this “cheating” was put in there because Ensemble wanted to make the AI competent even with its shortcomings.
When I heard about DE getting a new AI literally the first thing I thought was “oh cool, guess archers won’t walk away now and onagers could be used against the AI” so I was shocked to see that the same old annoying bs still in the game. Why the new AI then?
I agree in parts. I think that archer micro should still exist at higher dificulties, but it should definitely be removed at the lower ones (same thing for onagers, they’re almost completely useless against AI because of it)
The fourth mission of Barbarossa is easy. Right after getting rid of task box quickly select your archers and get them away from the enemy. HTL only triggers to enemy once TC is destroyed and if you don’t attack anything at the start you can get away with 30 minutes of peace, which is more than enough to get a strong eco and then take Padua.
The rest of the campaigns are still the same difficulty for me though, they aren’t “insanely hard” as you say they are, and i am not one who uses build orders (well i don’t robotically do it, may do it unintentionally) or hotkeys. The Dracula campaign was pretty easy imo; you just need to make some wall and it’ll be fine. About 5th mission of Barbarossa, just don’t go to Gallipoli! Taking Constantinople is easy once the gates are down.
It all comes down to: Yes, the AI is much smarted now, and does a lot of things it never used to do (most new thing i’ve noticed is the use of rams against my siege lol), but it is far from impossible to play against. The only campaign i have had trouble with so far is the last level of ‘Alaric’, which if anyone can help me with it’d be great :
Are you referring to AoE2:DE, or AoE2:HD? I had heard in dev interviews that the AI in AoE2:DE no longer cheats… they have to manually gather their resources… so wanted to make sure. I hope you’re not talking about AoE2:DE
I don’t know what sc1 and sc2 are, and I can’t read the entire thread because I don’t want to read spoilers (I haven’t done the campaigns yet), so I’m sure I’m just confused.
Is there a difficulty setting or two below Medium? I bet they’ve tried to improve this AI and make it more challenging for elite players and such, so maybe Medium has been ratcheted up a notch or two. In such a case, maybe if there is a difficulty or setting below Medium, that might work better for you? Trust me, I’m not downplaying your gameplay. I’m probably going to have to play below Medium, myself, if missions get impossible and easier difficulty levels exist. I don’t like relentless streams of enemies coming at me, if that’s what happens.
No they still have infinite resources in the campaign in DE. It’s just changed so they’re given 500 of a resource when they drop below 1000 of it, instead of just giving them 100k+ of each resource (in HD enemies would often have 40k or even more than a million score in some campaign missions). The campaign enemies often have zero workers total, so if they didn’t cheat resources in the campaign they just wouldn’t do anything at all.
As for the AI’s cheating, the HD and DE Standard mode AI (the mode, not the difficulty) do not cheat resources. But I do believe they always know what your unit count/fish count is at all times (even if they don’t know the exact position). AI making ships only when you fish is kind of annoying, but yeah, not technically cheating in terms of resources. The quote was about campaign, not the regular game.
Last level of Alaric done here:
I just boomed after crossing and left one worker on the starting island to build houses. First attack is about 15 minutes in so you have a ton of time to build.
To take out purple you have to kill Sarus, which I accidentally did easily by running a Scout into his base (triggering a voice line) then his Hero just attack moved into my base. This campaign enemy suiciding their Hero unit’s been reported a couple times in the forums over multiple missions as a bug, so not sure if that’s intentional.
Then just clean everyone else up with Hussars. I think I had 140 workers with 100 on food. You can’t fish or else Red will make a ton of ships. Killing Yellow first gets you access to a ton of Gold. Unfortunately, you can’t make Hand Cannoneers in the Alaric campaign or else this would be so much easier.
My two cents: please do NOT make the campaigns easier. That would ruin the fun for a lot of dedicated players. At least keep the hard difficulty as is. I haven’t really played the easier ones but I doubt standard difficulty would be insurmountable even for players who like the more chill approach.
This is the reason there are levels of difficulty. If you want the feeling of accomplishment for having beaten it on the hardest level (or harder levels) there is some merit to actually having to earn it.
It’s broken, but you can cheese it. The Saracen boats will go crazy as soon as you get a navy, but you can park trebs at the coast to shoot them down. I went through the Byzantine dock.
Who said make the campaigns easier? You fanatics can have your masochistic time sink on hard, I’d just like to see standard / moderate difficulties balanced or new difficulty options added where the game is not miserable to play and the AI doesn’t make me want to kill someone.
Btw. I just checked the global achievement stats on the campaigns in the HD Edition and they are miserable: according to the achievements you get for completing a campaign even the Joan of Arc campaign was only completed by 5% of players and some of later expansions have ridicolously low numbers like 1-2%. And this is the HD Edition, so you know, the one with the “easier” AI.
Well, at least now I know who’s their target audience: absolutely nobody.
bro lots of us are trying to agree on what you are saying, but can you stop insulting everyone? what is wrong with you? people have different favorite games. some people love dota and are playing it since the map came out in warcraft 3 until today with the valve version of it. some people love counter strike and are playing it since the 1.6 until now with the csgo version, same goes with starcraft1/2. and SHOCKINGLY some people love age of empires 2 and kept playing it on and off throughout these years. atleast you as a RTS fan should understand it, because developers stopped making good RTSs simply because the genre is dead, so the old games are what satisfies us. so being interested in playing the game on hard doesnt make anyone fanatic masochist
stop calling us names
Don’t take jokes like that the wrong way, dude, I just wanted to illustrate my perspective. It is very understandable that people who stuck with the game for such a long time want to be challenged, I just don’t understand the reasoning behind the “don’t take my difficuly away” arguments when I never suggested anything like that.
It’s cool that the dedicated segment of the audience is being served to some extent, what’s not cool is that with changes like upping the difficulty even in the old campaigns Age of Empires 2 got transformed into something that it never really supposed to be. I think most people know about Bruce Shelly’s description of the “soul” of Age: “the sun is always shining in Age of Empires.” That basically means that Age is not about frustration but about a bright, optimistic representation of history and as such you can play it in a bunch of different ways. If you want to relax you can do that, if you want to be challenged you can play like that too.
The seemingly complete disregard of the “little people” when it comes to campaign balance shows me the lack of understanding that basic principle and it sends a bad message: “esports”. Like it or not it was the focus on esports that ultimately killed off the RTS genre because when games like this became marketed as competitive games that scared the avarage joes away. You need the casual audience to buy copies, to play the stories, to get invested in the lore etc. = to make any game financially successful.
Now the situation’s even a bit worse with DE because even if you don’t count the general jump in difficulty the new version mixes all the campaigns together: they are no longer numbered so you no longer get that sense of progression that tells you “okay, Joan is 2 so it should be fine but I should be prepared for Barbarossa and play that one for last because that’s the 5th one”. Maybe those swords next to the titles tell you that but that would make no sense because who the ■■■■ would categorize Joan and Barbarossa as being similar in difficulty?
So sure, experienced players have the right to be challenged but the avarage joes have the right to experience the true form of Age of Empires 2 instead of this mutated “hardcore RTS” that only pleases the veterans. The sun should always shine in Age of Empires.
I gotta agree with it, I hate the removal of campaign order in DE. I honestly thought abt checking the order of them in HD so ik what to play next in DE, because I like to do things in order. This was imo one of the most stupid things they did for the campaigns (and not to talk abt El Dorado).
Also I don’t mind seeing the game being played and balanced around competitive, but the game also needs to offer balanced gameplay for the casual players so they can also have fun.
This is one thing I feel like Starcraft 2 did somewhat right, they made awesome campaigns that are perfectly doable for casual players and on top of that made a coop mode so players can enjoy PvE scenarios that they can play with either random people or their friends, and this is something I haven’t seen in any other game (so sad u need to pay to unlock the cooler commanders tho). I feel like if there were proper maps made for multiplayer coop AoE2 would have a whole lot more to offer to casual players.
Watched Viper playing the Joan of Arc one (I’m on the last one from Alaric, I do them in chronological order)and it seems easy as f*** on hardest, almost broken. True some of the new campaigns it seems a little harder but not impossible. I mostly play on moderate and quite frankly for Alaric I prefer the one from HD version in terms of challenge. Will see, but I personally won’t prefer to transform the campaigns in a easy kinda ones, that is just not fun at all. Play on standard, seems easy enough, kinda too easy.
so reading through this I feel like you don’t remember the game years ago…
So in order to do something like cut down 5 ■■■■■■■ archers I’d have to micro my cavalry one by one to individually chase down one archer per unit. ARE YOU INSANE? Did anyone who’s not playing the game for 20 years tested this broken mess?
archers always scattered and ran off in different directions to fire,back up,fire back up. that’s why you use calvery because you can chase them down. you don’t really have to micro one by one just do them together.
You can’t ■■■■■■■ use something like onagers or bombard cannons against ranged units because they just dodge ALL OF YOUR SHOTS
Also the case back then the AI is always better at micro. Bombard cannons aren’t ment to me taking down archers Onagers can do it but if you don’t have a few tossing fire their just going to step away. I was literally just going through the old campaigns in HD and had a bunch of archers and infantry dodging my onagers cause I only had a few and the ai triggers to move most of the time when you trigger an attack.
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In the very first mission you get rushed if you don’t take out one of the weaker AIs instantly and even then it’s a struggle and a chore because now the AI just keeps rebuilding its base to the point that once you defeat one it will just go to its allies base and rebuild there, absolutely robbing you even from small victories.
I just did this one before the launch…and remember this mission from way back win…they 100% rushed you before that’s why walling and towering the shores is so important you start ahead of them. As for rebuilding their base…yeah that’s been the AI if you don’t rush down their villagers with cav or have archers ready. they did it in old Saladin missions too where I had to rush back and forth to keep killing their rebuilt base.
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