Well, considering that the first mission starts with just 2 units and you have to conquer 3 fortified cities being a simple village, it’s normal for it to be difficult…Curiously, I was going to start with that one, then with Pyrrhus and finally Trajan…
Yeah, that’s what I plan to do (and I’m in the middle of Pyrrhys at the moment but don’t have much time to play this week xD )
I usually do a dlc’s campaign in chronological order, for some reason.
This is exactly what I did, that’s why I recommend you play them in the exact opposite order. I think it was a mistake to play them chronologically
I usually do that as well. That why I played them in this order. In some DLCs like Dawn of the Dukes is almost mandatory, since the three campaigns are connected
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I do it too (at least since TLOTW)…the Indian dlc I barely go for the Devapala campaign, but it’s because I pass the campaigns in the events xd…now on May 10 I pass the Lord Edward campaign for the coronation of Charles…xd
It would still be chronological, but in reverse xd… from the Roman Empire to the origin of civilization… xd
Of course, in fact it would be “Jogaila and Vytautas the dlc”…both appear in the 3 campaigns…xd
Then in the game only Barbarossa and Saladin, Lord Edward and Wallace and the Dukes of Burgundy and Joan of Arc are interconnected…Genghis Khan, Kotyan, Ivaylo, Tamerlane and Babur would be on the subject of the rise and fall of the Mongol, Timurid and Mughal empires and in the case of Babur it connects with the Indian campaign of AoE 3, since Bahadur Shah II is his descendant (and by extension also of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan)…In short, the British Empire turned out to be better than the Mongol Empire and its successors states (although ironically it now has a prime minister of Indian descent xd)…
Since you haven’t actually played the scenario, and have, by your own admission, seen little of it on YouTube, maybe don’t make claims about its difficulty.
The strategy you suggest would be difficult to pull off (so in no way demonstrates that “it’s not difficult”), and probably wouldn’t work well at all. Neither camels nor elephants counter heavy cavalry effectively, and the towers would just be taken down by catapults. Plus you need to take out the Elamite docks before you have a reasonable source of gold.
I haven’t managed to complete it yet (I’m stubbornly refusing to drop down to moderate difficulty), but I think so too. It’s probably worth running some villagers up to the Hurrians to build academies there, since hoplites are so slow. Alternatively, it might be possible to go entirely for priests (once you’ve got trade going with Nina) and convert an army of heavy cavalry, although Sumerian priests are not that great.
You recognise Charles III as king, but not Edward I?
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Well, I didn’t try doing it on hard, but on easier difficulties my strat worked. I assume when you said going all priests you meant together with catapults, because there are a lot of enemy towers (and gates) in this scenario which need to be taken care of. And as you said, Sumerian don’t have such a good temple (though theocracy does help when you want to mass convert)
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No actually, but that’s probably a good idea! I had in mind just converting as many heavy cavalry as possible and using them against the towers, but I’m not sure how well that would work.
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According to the wiki they are good… but I would have to try it… gold wouldn’t be a problem anyway, because you can exchange food for gold in the meantime…
I recognize them both, that’s why, taking advantage of the coronation of Charles III, I did Lord Edward’s campaign…
It’s impractical, you have to be converting all the time, for that you just create the camels and elephants and you destroy the towers in a quick rush and you heal them with the priests… consider it as if you were playing an Indian campaign in AoE 2…
The exchange rates are terrible – much worse in RoR than AoE2. The scenario is deliberately designed so that obtaining gold is hard until you’ve destroyed the enemy docks – then you can trade with Nina.
My point was that you keep calling Edward Longshanks “Lord Edward”. A Lord is not the same as the King.
Boy, are you in for a shock when you play this scenario. You can’t rush with elephants because (a) you start on the Bronze Age, (b) you start with a very limited supply of gold, (c) they’re slow. Sumerian camels are better against towers than most (+1 pierce armour) but alone will not be enough to defeat the enemy in a “quick rush”, especially when you and your allies are being frequently attacked by enemy cavalry.
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I said the same in the meanwhile…obviously at some point the inflation in the market forces you to trade with your allies…
Because that’s what they call him in the campaign and I like to call him more like that than “Longshanks” which is what the Scots called him in the Wallace campaign…
And if you advance to iron age as soon as the scenario starts?.. the other thing you can do is create chariots to destroy the catapults of the northern yellow base (your base is relatively defensible, the important and urgent thing is to get rid of the yellow base in the north)…
You can’t. You don’t have enough food or enough gold, you don’t have any Bronze Age buildings, and you don’t have enough wood for the requisite two Bronze Age buildings.
I don’t understand why you are so determined to convince me that this scenario, which you haven’t played, in a game which you also haven’t played, is “not difficult”. It’s obvious that you’re just guessing at this point.
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I think Pyrrhus has my vote for favorite campaign. The missions kept me engaged, the narration actually made me chuckle, and overall I felt a balanced sense of challenge throughout each scenario without being overwhelmed.
Trajan… it was fun, what with all the no base scenarios (which are my favorite type of scenario) but too easy once I learned the ideal Roman comp. Not much to say elsewise for me, other than no wonder people call Roman ballistae OP.
I’m still playing through Sargon, but honestly it’s an absolute slog… I’m only on the 3rd scenario, and holy crap this campaign should’ve been rated 3 swords already. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of absolute spam I have to defend from…
Sargon 4 (hard difficulty):
It also took me 4 tries (mostly on slow speed 11). I put my initial focus on land, going for camel riders and destroying the camp between my two allies. I took several good fights where I was outnumbering the opponents (big group vs split forces) and aggressively targeted enemy reinforcements (in front of their buildings) before they could mass enough to be dangerous. I also created 2-3 forward stone throwers to take down towers but they weren’t as important in the end.
Once I realized my forces were sufficient for that, while they were still destroying the buildings, I focused more on water and started destroying all docks, buying the catapult triremes to clear out the towers while the other boats protected them. This meant I finally acquired the purple ally (allowing me to trade with them and them sending in more cannon fodder for me).
Behind this, while using the land army to protect my allies (often baiting enemy cavalry to my ships, near the bridge/wall southwest of teal’s base and near the north town center of green where I built a dock and towers), I went up to Iron Age and got Centurions. The rest was trivial. 
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I agree, it actually become way easier once you’ve destroyed the two yellow bases between you and your teal ally. Only then did I start taking care of water, and afterward I walled yellow on its side of the map and kept pushing.
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I do like how Trajan’s spirit is the one narrating his own story, and it ends with his soul lamenting if he’s the reason Rome is collapsing before his very eyes. Makes me wish it went straight to an AOE2 roman campaign where he’s watching the tragedy/comedy unfold.
Ah, small detail… then it only occurs to me to spam camels and catapults like crazy…
Well, don’t judge me, I’m just proposing strategies based on what I played from AoE 1, I really would like to play the dlc, but I have to wait until July to play the dlc…
That campaign is going to be super depressing, more than Moctezuma’s one…
Now I’ve completed all three campaigns on Hard difficulty and obtained all campaign related achievements.
I shall say I like Pyrrhus’s campaign most, and Trajan’s campaign least, that Sargon in between.
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Map. Personally, I like the map built geographically related, and in detail. Pyrrhus achieves it that I can distinguish Magna Graeca and Sicilia easily. However for Trajan’s campaign, I don’t have the feeling that Trajan crossed Danube to strike deep into Dacian land. Where is the Danube? Where are the Carpathian Mountains? The same for the later Parthian missions. Trajan may start from shore of Black Sea, but what’s the place Hadrain stands, in the wild openess? Only the last mission is kind of related that we can see Euphrates and Tigrates, and Charax by the Persian Gulf. Sargon is sort ok for its little geographic maneuver.
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The plot and scene. This is used a lot in Pyrrhus campaign. From the first mission we see the hoplites clash between two Diadochi. Later we have to rescue Tarentum and Heraclea. That is to say, these missions let us feel we have to achieve something besides simply kill all enemy’s villagers, armies and destroy their bases. Campaigns do need to distinguish themselves from Skirmishers.
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The scale of army. In AOE 1 certainly the scale is small. The population cap usually is quite low. But now it is imported into AOE2, right? We don’t need to stick to the old rules. Why not give each missions high population and large army? (Yes, I am referring to Trajan’s campaign). Although we have tech to half the population cost for barrack’s unit in AOE 1, at least we should have pop cap like 100, not 75. In Pyrrhus campaign, one starts with small pop cap and have to liberate Greek villages to increase the cap. It’s a good mechanism that reward the players more than resource tribute.
PS. I am quite pleased to see the third and fifth missions from Pyrrhus campaign that I found the city Heraclea that was rescued was reduced to ruins and the ruin of the previous Roman camp outside the city can still be seen. Plus Asculum, the purple base in mission three is still there in mission five. Although we can say that the map is simply reused, I prefer the visual connection between the missions among the campaign.
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man in the mission 4 your allies are so weak and loses so fast… if they lose you lose
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Perhaps it was because they did Trajan’s first and they weren’t too concerned with the maps or being geophragically exact… then Sargon’s and finally Pyrrhus of Epirus, or the other way around because time was short and they did Trajan’s in the end, we also remember that the campaigns are made by different devs…
When you beat Sargon’s campaign…
When you beat the Pyrrhus campaign…
When you beat Trajan’s campaign…
That’s true…at least in history and narration they are good…
Yes, I really hated that about Trajan’s campaign… Just 50 pop? What is this, 1997? We are the Roman Empire in all its glory…it would have to be a 200 pop campaign…I guess I’ll have to settle for the Roman AoEO campaign…at least Sargon’s campaign is 75 pop as a classic Age of Kings campaign…
Yes, I consider leaving your base by walling it off and leaving some troops to destroy the catapults and focus on sending as many troops as you can to your allies’ bases…
Phyrrhus was easily my favorite, the most balanced difficulty out of the 3, and a lot going on in its scenarios. Loved Phyrrhus 2 were you start with a sneak attack, choose who to make an alliance with (or not) and then get betrayed, all under a timer of an incoming enemy army.
Sargon in second, hardest of the 3 with the last 2 scenarios feeling grindy, still fun, enjoyed turning cities to your cause.
Trajan in third by a small margin, all the scenarios were fun but way to easy, ballistas + centurions or legionaries wrecks the ai, feels like a coop campaign with Hadrian helping you in all the scenarios save the first.
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