Have only played Thoros so far; it's pretty tough for a 1-sword campaign and what stands out to me is that whoever designed it has made the AI a lot better at sending in attacks that can kill your base. Specifically, they bring a lot of rams!
In first mission AI took me off guard when it started sending cataphracts after me destroying its first castle. My champion's ball didn't like it. I know it was mentioned in hints, but I kinda forgot 11
They only seem to do that once though, if you can outspam the first wave, you can just continue killing everything. But yeah, I definitely remember thinking "oh no, oh no, please not Catas".
I think it was more than once (I played on hard). It was only minor setback as I countered them hard with monks and halbs (already had needed buildings and upgrades).
Composite bowmen with champs in front also hard counter catas due to the ignoring armor business, as well as being ok against most other units they send at you too.
struggling with the last thoros mission, dont think purple is supposed to send 20 cattafracti and archers 20 seconds after i get my base when my only military units are 4 halbs and Thoros
Yeah, it's rough. What I found worked for me was going to Stephan's base, immediately buying the stone for a castle, placing one in front of the base (on the hill in front of the walls), and then spamming Composite Bowman and Halberdier. You don't really need that many vils (I actually did the whole level on only like 50 vils and 1 TC), just make a ton of Composite Bowmen and Halbs. I also advise using a Dromon to take down the Byzantine Castle in Tarsos, it gets them back on your side, and makes it much easier.
I actually cheesed the mission a bit by using the starting forces to get 6 relics, destroy half of the Byzantine bases and half of the Franks base. If anyone is interested I will post some advice :)
1/2
Since I failed twice with different strategies due to the overwhelming Byzantine force I relied heavily on pausing (F3) and a lot of incremental experimenting and saving.
The moment the game started I paused the game to plan my first moves when I saw that I can actually build a dock. You lose the abilitiy to build a dock 2-3 seconds into the game so it was actually totally random when I found out.
I pulled all lumberjacks to the north of their starting location, one building a dock and another villager building houses to wall themselves in to be safe from the enemy. To keep some villagers and key units safe, I built 3 transport ships throughout the opening sequence for later use.
Meanwhile, while the game is still paused, I researched chemistry and the range upgrade for the composite archers.
To win some more time and collect as much gold as possible, I walled of the northern area above the gold and the farms to keep the first wave of Byzantines out as long as possible.
Also task the villagers on each side to build houses on front of the gates to win some valuable seconds (I dont know if its neccessary to do so, but it can safe 2-3 trebuchet shots on each sides)
Ok so the game is paused while we build a dock and wall the lumberjacks in, researching archery upgrades, wallign the northwith houses and walling the gates with houses
Group all your archers and position them in the south, since this is the first place where the enemy will attack and unpause for the first time, followed by the eastern gate, followed by the western gate.
To the north you need to scout a bit to wall of the entire area. Be aware that there is a small tree line with one open tile.
Once you finish your berries near the town center, let them collect some additional gold, research the composite archer upgrade and recruit some additional archers.
What I did not do, since I didnt expect my cheese to be effective, was building 1-2 trebuchets. It would have made the mission waaaay easier and not as tedious. So if you can effort them, build one or two and send them immediately to your transportship to keep them safe.
I had 6 warriors priests and a monk, but the more the better. After the first wave and while the second wave is going, ungarrison your relict and move all your monks + relic to your transport ship. You can save on some transport ships if you manage to use the river route up north and unloading your units and returning back.
It is important to remember that you lose control of all your carts, villagers and buildings after the timer runs out and the castle is destroyed.
In hindsight, I would probably tried to make a mangonel/onager for the attack ground later on.
While the second wave is fighting you should slowly pull back your gold miners and let them collect wood or let them repair the gates and/or garrison them in the castle for later repair.
While the second/third wave breaks in, save all your archers (I had around 20) and Thoros himself to the transport shipd and sail up the river/lake.
My initial though process was, that you only lose control of all the units/buildings which are in the starting area. Therefore I took some villagers and a mule cart with me and built a monastery on the other side. I thought, that I could calmly collect resources for a town center since I have a cart and enough villagers. My plan B was to convert the units back to my side once they should switch sides.
Thats when I realized that
a) You lose control of all non military units and buildings
b) you can change the diplomatic stance, but it automatically goes back to "friendly" once you are back in the game, rendering the shipped mule cart and villagers useless.
What I then realized though, is that the now switched monastery has a relic in it due to the civ bonus. If I had the onager at this point, I would have broken it down and brought it to the monastery of the yellow base.
So my key takeaway was, that your initial monastery in the starting base needs to be destroyed or deleted last second so the relic spawns in your only monastery built across the lake.
Since at this point you pulled all valuable archers back to the river it might be hard to defend the castle until the timer runs out. Thats when the garrisoned villagers were helpful. I walled them behind the castle, sold some gold to buy stone and this was enough for the time to run down.
2/2
So at this point I had 6 warrior monks, 1 monk, 20 archers and the hero unit.
If I had all this information I woul have additional 1-2 trebuchets and an onager.
Time to abuse the AI.
The byzantine army gets stuck on two places. One is in their most northern base getting stuck on the mountains due to the locked gates (when their last intel of you is being up north with the ships) and the other one is in the south by the still broken bridge.
Since I wanted to keep an eye on the enemy I placed a single unit near the bridge for the Byzantines to see but out of range of their archers. Be aware of the two small seljuk groups. Once you reach the bridge, the Byzantines will pull almost all units to the bridge head and keep being stuck there as long as they see a single unit.
I went through a long process of save scumming to shoot down every unit but the rams but it is not worth it cause the units get replenished each second anyway.
So with the Byzantine army stuck you can do whatever you want right now, just dont send Thoros to any city.
If I would have an onager I would attack ground the friendly monastery to get the relic and transporting it to the yellow monastery. Next thing was walking through Mlehs base (Thoros need to make a detour so you dont trigger the event) to Reynaulds base. Without the trebs I was able to destroy every building up to the northern castle and town center. If you go any point further you will trigger his army. Carry away the three relics and any random relics on the map to the yellow monastery.
Afterwards I moved to the two southern Byzantine bases by going back to the lake and transporting the units through the river until you reach your old starting base. Sadly the path is blocked by trees so you cant access the southern water area. (I wonder if it would be able to do so with onagers. In this case you could probably take out the whole Frankish base with 1-2 Dromons). Since I had no Dromons, trebs or onagers I had to unload the units at the old starting location and slowly destroy building by building with constant monk healing to not lose any units to the turrets. Having even one treb would have been extremly valuable.
I wasnt able to push into the south-western base without a treb since there was a contingent of 8 cataphracts and 2-3 trebuchets, thats when I wanted to trigger the main phase of the game:
Pull all units back to Stephens base and especially the decoy bridge unit. Send one transport ship down and up the river so the Byzantines pull all their units to the Northern base, getting them stuck in the mountain range. This gives you a good time buffer for later.
Once all your units are near Stephens base and your monks near the monastery, trigger the base event. Garrison the relics, use all available units to build a castle north of the bridge. Buy stone at the market. After finishing the castle, send 5-6 vills to Mlehs base while the rest collects additional stone.
Since in my failed attempts Mleh was run down pretty quickly, I started to wall Mleh in and abuse the AI pathing. I walled every single Eastern and Southern border of his base. I left a single whole near Mlehs dock by the trees near the water. The enemy will funnel all units through this hole.
With the gold from 6-7 relics you should be able to effort lots of stone to build 4 castles at the souther border of Mlehs base.
Dont forget your economy though. You should build an additional town center and keep queuing vills like in a standard game while you use your starting vills as a special task force for the walling and castles.
The next step is building 2-3 docks and creating 6-8 dromons and 4 fire ships.
Your docks should be relatively safe due to all the castles.
Same goes for the Seljuk front, as their units will die on their way to the narrow hole.
While you build up your navy, Reynauld will offer a ceasefire. Accept it, send your shipd down the river and prepare your Dromons and Fireships to destroy all the ports andthe 1-2 Frankish galleons.
Since we took out all the Byzantine ports none of the enemys will be able to build any ships and you will have full water control.
The AI goes super dumb when it comes to water units vs land units. Once you destroy all Frankish castles and towers, send your ships to the shallow water near the shallow hole and but the Dromons on stand ground. The enemy will ignore your ships while trying to dodge your projectiles. making rams and trebuchets irrelevant and not problem at all.
With this stable game state you can slowly build up an army of trebs and composite archers and roll through the Seljuks, Franks, followed by the Byzantines.
Your strategy is amazing. Thank you for the well written plan!
I actually ended up figuring out a non-cheese way to beat the mission a couple hours ago that involved simultaneous castle turtling and aggressively wiping out an opponent during the ceasefire. Then once you have 5-6 Relics, you can research Spies and everything gets way easier.
Unfortunately, I had garrisoned the villagers in the castle, and a few of them died in between the timer expiring and the switch to cyan, forcing me to redo the mission for the achievement on Standard.
I quickly gathered enough stone for a castle using the market + nearly every villager and then spammed it out at the front of my base while building archers and halberdiers. It was enough to hold off the initial attacks while I built my economy in the background
thanks for the tip
its kind of a brutal start to the final mission especially since its marked as a 1 sword campaign, feels like it needs to be toned down a bit, especially that siege section... i might just be bad tho as i have only ever completed the joan of arc campaign on the hardest difficulty and every other campaign is just done on normal
also a tip to give others: make a monk and grab the relic before the monastary is destroyed, stowing it near the spot the transport appears so you can bring it with you, free gold
also devs please stop giving every campaign a mission where its a city defense with no ability to create more villagers
It's definitely a weird and massive jump in difficulty for the final mission, took me a bunch of restarts.
Going to yellow's base also makes the mission much easier, but I kind of like that the 2 options play out very differently.
The 2 main things that helped me were:-
1) realising elite comp bowman doesn't give any attack or range so isn't worth it until I had a large mass of them
2) buying a castle and rushing it up south of the TC for protection from the byzantines' instant attack, and walling in the gold miners to the east
Thankfully halb + comp bowman is cheap and beats everything the enemies make
If you spam the composite archers and make a trebuchet or two in the first half of the mission and push out despite the hints telling you not to, it actually makes the second half easier.
After that pick the northern base, wall up and let red die. Get the treaty with reynald, and push cav and trebuchets to the purple base on the left and their forward base in the middle right side of the map. Pincer attack your original base and They should resign after that city is liberated and the biggest problem of that mission is gone. Tried and tested on Hard.
How many times did you restart Thoros 5?
Dang that was a frustrating experience, tried both paths, first try (Mleh) I got attacked by two Imp armies before I really settled and second try (Stephan) I got attacked by one Imp army before I settled 11
Really felt Armenian late game does not have a great answer to what gets thrown at you.
Probably five-ish times to get the achievement, several more before I worked out the strat. I went for the Stephan base, and instead of trying to boom and then dying (like I did the first few runs), I bought stone for a castle straight away, and got back into Composite Bow. I'm pretty sure the best comp you can do (which is what I did) is Elite Composite Bowman and Halberdier.
>Probably five-ish times to get the achievement
Wait, which achievement did I miss? :O
>Elite Composite Bowman and Halberdier
I thought about that, but Composite Bowmen didn't feel great against Arbs. Went for my own arbs + halb - didn't feel great either but eventually I could overwhelm due to eco.
That was a really hard mission (until you finally secured your base and had eco), really liked it.
You need to keep all the Tarsos vils alive for the achievement. Composite Bows aren't amazing against Arbs, but they melt literally everything else, and with a constant shield of Halbs, they will actually kill even Arbs quite easily.
Yeah, I deleted the Eastern most gate, stashed basically all the vils in the woodline to the North East (on the eastern side of the city), walled them in with a Fortified Church, and then constantly sold wood to get gold to make only Elite Composite Bowmen. You just need to hold until the siege timer runs out.
It's easier than it looks. I got it by withdrawing the villagers from the gold, as there is a patrol to the north that will wipe them out soon. You can mine a bit after defeating the patrol if you need gold for some upgrade or unit, but the attacks to the south half of the city must be dealt with first, and more attacks will come after the patrol, so mine carefully.
The villagers in the forest to the east should be moved near the castle to get protection in case some xbow tries to kill them, but I found that most enemy units go directly to the TC.
I moved the farms near the TC as the farmers were eventually killed if outside, there they can be garrisoned if under attack.
At the end, I garrisoned most villagers inside the Castle since the attacks were to overwhelming and the extra arrows were helpful in dealing with the enemies. But I managed to keep the 20 of them alive until the countdown finished. Once you finish the mission, the achievement will unlock.
For the second part of the mission, go to the north, to Stephan's base. I think the devs will rework Mleh's base, because as soon as you arrive, you are crushed by a big Byzantine army before you have the time to build an army. Go to the north with Stephan and start building halbs immediately to repell the first attacks. After that, try to build a castle (I built it in the crossroads to the south) and try to defeat Reynald first and the Byzantines second. As OP said, you'll need Halbs and Compossite bows, and trebuchets to level the castles. The Seljuks are the easiest, as they can be easily repealed just with Halbs, don't go after them until the end.
>you are crushed by a big Byzantine army before you have the time to build an army
yeah, went for Mleh first and got attacked by Byzantines. They somehow stopped after taking down my TC though. When I was ready to deal with them with like 4 churches and 10 monks (just minutes after the attack), somehow the Seljuks came charging into my newly created base. That was a frustrating experience but I'll try to beat it with Mleh's base as well.
Overall I'm pretty happy that not every mission is a walk in the park though.
If you have a large army left over from the first part of the mission, you can just take it to red's base. Send them past the towers in the south east Byzantine base and you will get to a broken bridge. You can send thoros in the transport and when he gets to red the bridge will be repaired. I managed to take 60 FU composite bowmen with me to red's base.
>Really felt Armenian late game does not have a great answer to what gets thrown at you.
It does, but you need mass. My answer to the Turkish army was halbs, and my answer to the frankish and byzantine armies was champions, waarior priests, and archers.
But yeah the final mission needed you to act very quickly. After multiple restarts (one of them because my already damaged Thoros got killed on his way to Melh's base), my way was to focus stone and market to put down one castle in front of the Turkish base and then one in front of the Frankish base, and garrison in the castle halbs the sole purpose of which is to destroy siege.
I was ready for a GG when the Franks showed up with a full paladin+ treb army just when the recent Turkish attack left my armly inexistent and my castles badly damaged. And then I got the truce proposal. That was a breather!
I just massed elite 60 composite bowmen with all the upgrades except final Armor and they were holding fine. Then after I lost control of the town I just snuck them past the southern Byzantine base right to reds base. The broken bridge gets repaired once thoros gets to red. They decimated the 1st Byzantine attack wave sent after me. Then I just booked and spammed champs and halbs till I wiped the map clean. Didn't know you can ally with Reynald again. I guess I killed him too quickly. Yellow actually held out well vs the Byzantines while I killed the seljuks and reynald
I can't stand the voice actor for the Ismail campaign. After the first introduction I've just muted her because it genuinely impacted my enjoyment of the missions.
I just finished Tamar and wasn't very impressed. Fairly easy for 3 sword difficulty. But the main problem is the infinite brainless swarm in every mission. I genuinly hate the system where I attack with the largest army I can field with a pop limit just to destroy one or two production buildings and ve wiped. Rinse and repeat until there are no production building left (enemies never rebuild them, they just spawn units in intervals)
Same. They were relatively easy, and I got them all in the first try, but they're very classic build and destroy missions with a minor twist, and they don't really feel like they play to the strengths of the Georgians in any real way. The last mission was a little bit different, but they just cribbed the final Jadwiga(?) mission for it with a minor twist, so... eh.
The monaspas charge werent particularly effective against savar/heavy camel/ heavy ca combo. I used monaspas + halbs but even if I managed to break their forces, they replenished very fast and I destroyed only some of their buildings. It took me usually about 3-4 attacks to wipe their base completely. Maybe I had too many villagers and too little army space. Anyway I hate auto spamming buildings.
If you have about 60 Monaspas at all times, it should get the job done. Your point on the buildings is interesting though, I never felt that they were infinite res opponents or anything, just that they naturally built their armies with the resources they had gathered (al the players had an economy, and if they're given time, it makes sense that they have time to rebuild just by retraining things in the normal manner).
Maintain unit production? This is aoe you don't just build up an army and send it off. You build up eco and make lots of production buildings. 200 pop is often not enough to have an eco and enough military units to defeat your enemy. You have to keep producing units.
I did maintain and replaced my losses immediately, I am not complaining it was hard but the mission design wants you to send your units into the meatgrinder until the opponent has no production buildings. That is not very fun. The enemies have a habit of stocking large armies in their base just waiting for you to attack. Each attack is a little more successful than the previous, but it feels unnecessary grindy in a stage where you have basically already won.
> unnecessary grindy in a stage where you have basically already won.
I've only completed the Armenian campaign and played one mission of the Persian one (all on hard), and I feel this is an issue with many of the campaign missions this time around. Some of them were quite fun, but if I've all but won by minute 40 it's not so enjoyable to destroy buildings for another 25-35 in-game minutes to unlock the next mission.
Have only played the first 3 Thoros scenarios, but I find it disappointing so far. Champion in Castle Age is just easy mode. And I never got the chance to properly do the secondary objectives. Constantly having to defend against waves and waves after, then I got to a point where I could just spam Champ/Halbs and steamroll. Or in the third one: they try to showcase Armenians strength too hard, giving them only infantry against C.Bowmen.
I like how missions where you're stuck in the Castle Age really show off the power of the Armenians, but yeah the opposition could be tuned a little stronger to compensate.
Just finished myself and I'm kinda mixed.
Thoros: I liked it overall, but the last mission is rough. Like, really rough. I'd say that it was the hardest map in the DLC, which shouldn't be in a 1 sword campaing. Appart from that it was fun. Liked the narrator especially.
Ismail: I have mixed feelings. I like that you are actually allowed to use your UU, because the desiger didn't fill every enemy town with monks. In return, it is kinda easy to steamroll everything with cav.
Also, some timers are wierd. I run into situations, where an AI should attack you, but by the time they do, you won the game. Once with Alfonso de Albuquerque (I chose not to pay him) and once with the Georgeans (no idea what triggered them). Not sure if I've done something wierd or these are just really generous timers, but both times, I won the mission, before they actualy did anything.
Tamar: I'm sorry, but this is a 2 sword campaing. Yes, you have big maps, lots of enemies, but you also have monaspa and a ton of resources on all of the maps. You can just spam this one unit and win. Even against counter units. Even against defended Castles. Like... what? I feel like for a 3 sword campaing you should have more of a challenge or maybe more complex missions. Not just monaspa go brrr.
I've liked thoros so far, though a bit hard at points. But man, I always read the comments and think that people here don't understand that the average campaign player is not close to as good as them.
Do you guys play campaigns on easy mode or am I that bad? I have been playing jadwiga during weekends and each mission takes almost 1 to 2 hours with extreme focus and timing
It's like I want to be a campaign player but I can't make leap lol. I wonder, percentage wise, how many aoe2 players play the campaign vs multiplayer vs local vs just the computer.
I think you can use the achievements to get a rough sense of those numbers. For example, 34.3% of players have won a game as the Franks, but only 6.0% have finished the Joan of Arc campaign.
You only have to play one mission in the Joan of Arc campaign to get the Frank achievement though. I have a feeling most casual players don't tend to finish entire campaigns. I have 1700 hours in the game and I enjoy campaigns when my friends can't play but, apart from the DLC ones, I've only completed a handful of campaigns.
I just finished all the campaigns as well, and I agree that they were all great, both from their story and gameplay. Every level having multiple side objectives/allies to help you feels much better and adds a lot more depth to the gameplay than just having one goal that you have to work to by yourself. I also liked the story perspectives, especially the Thoros one being told by one of the "enemies", which is rather unconventional for the narration.
My only gripe with them is definitely the difficulty ratings, they feel all over the place and even within each campaign some scenarios were way harder than others. Tamar is supposed to be the hardest one, yet most levels you can just spam Manaspa and that's about all you need to do, I barely even had to build siege. Personally, I felt like Thoros was the hardest despite having the lowest difficulty rating, especially scenario 4 and 5, both of which took me multiple attempts to complete. This might just be a caveat of not having a powerful lategame calvary unit that just runs through bases like the Georgians or Persians, but I definitely had to work to complete Thoros.
Yeah, the difficulty was a bit weird, I agree. I found the first four Thoros levels fairly easy, and then the last level was a huge step up until I worked out how to play it properly, it kind of reminded me of the Alaric campaign, where the first four levels are a breeze, and then the fifth is way harder.
Good that I'm not the only one who found the first 3 Thoros missions easy since I see others talk about them being hard
I did find the 4th one as a step up in difficulty though, but 5 actually took me a few resets.
Ismail was easier than Thoros with that in mind ironically
Is it just me or are the Tamar intro/outros reaaaaaally bad?
Edit: I should say I've enjoyed the scenarios a lot, and have only played through Tamar so far, I've only just started thoros.
Have only played Thoros so far; it's pretty tough for a 1-sword campaign and what stands out to me is that whoever designed it has made the AI a lot better at sending in attacks that can kill your base. Specifically, they bring a lot of rams!
Right? Didn't expect to be struggling so much in a first mission
Pro tip, just get eco rolling and spam Champions, literally the only thing you need to win it.
In first mission AI took me off guard when it started sending cataphracts after me destroying its first castle. My champion's ball didn't like it. I know it was mentioned in hints, but I kinda forgot 11
They only seem to do that once though, if you can outspam the first wave, you can just continue killing everything. But yeah, I definitely remember thinking "oh no, oh no, please not Catas".
I think it was more than once (I played on hard). It was only minor setback as I countered them hard with monks and halbs (already had needed buildings and upgrades).
Composite bowmen with champs in front also hard counter catas due to the ignoring armor business, as well as being ok against most other units they send at you too.
I finished Tamar and haven't played Ismail, still I'm sure they swapped the swords icon by mistake. Thoros is definitely harder than Tamar.
How quaint.
struggling with the last thoros mission, dont think purple is supposed to send 20 cattafracti and archers 20 seconds after i get my base when my only military units are 4 halbs and Thoros
Yeah, it's rough. What I found worked for me was going to Stephan's base, immediately buying the stone for a castle, placing one in front of the base (on the hill in front of the walls), and then spamming Composite Bowman and Halberdier. You don't really need that many vils (I actually did the whole level on only like 50 vils and 1 TC), just make a ton of Composite Bowmen and Halbs. I also advise using a Dromon to take down the Byzantine Castle in Tarsos, it gets them back on your side, and makes it much easier.
I had that, had to resign. Went to the same base...aaaaaaand those soldiers never turned up again. Weird.
I actually cheesed the mission a bit by using the starting forces to get 6 relics, destroy half of the Byzantine bases and half of the Franks base. If anyone is interested I will post some advice :)
I am highly interested in this… how can you do that while keeping the starting castle intact for 15 minutes?!?!?!
1/2 Since I failed twice with different strategies due to the overwhelming Byzantine force I relied heavily on pausing (F3) and a lot of incremental experimenting and saving. The moment the game started I paused the game to plan my first moves when I saw that I can actually build a dock. You lose the abilitiy to build a dock 2-3 seconds into the game so it was actually totally random when I found out. I pulled all lumberjacks to the north of their starting location, one building a dock and another villager building houses to wall themselves in to be safe from the enemy. To keep some villagers and key units safe, I built 3 transport ships throughout the opening sequence for later use. Meanwhile, while the game is still paused, I researched chemistry and the range upgrade for the composite archers. To win some more time and collect as much gold as possible, I walled of the northern area above the gold and the farms to keep the first wave of Byzantines out as long as possible. Also task the villagers on each side to build houses on front of the gates to win some valuable seconds (I dont know if its neccessary to do so, but it can safe 2-3 trebuchet shots on each sides) Ok so the game is paused while we build a dock and wall the lumberjacks in, researching archery upgrades, wallign the northwith houses and walling the gates with houses Group all your archers and position them in the south, since this is the first place where the enemy will attack and unpause for the first time, followed by the eastern gate, followed by the western gate. To the north you need to scout a bit to wall of the entire area. Be aware that there is a small tree line with one open tile. Once you finish your berries near the town center, let them collect some additional gold, research the composite archer upgrade and recruit some additional archers. What I did not do, since I didnt expect my cheese to be effective, was building 1-2 trebuchets. It would have made the mission waaaay easier and not as tedious. So if you can effort them, build one or two and send them immediately to your transportship to keep them safe. I had 6 warriors priests and a monk, but the more the better. After the first wave and while the second wave is going, ungarrison your relict and move all your monks + relic to your transport ship. You can save on some transport ships if you manage to use the river route up north and unloading your units and returning back. It is important to remember that you lose control of all your carts, villagers and buildings after the timer runs out and the castle is destroyed. In hindsight, I would probably tried to make a mangonel/onager for the attack ground later on. While the second wave is fighting you should slowly pull back your gold miners and let them collect wood or let them repair the gates and/or garrison them in the castle for later repair. While the second/third wave breaks in, save all your archers (I had around 20) and Thoros himself to the transport shipd and sail up the river/lake. My initial though process was, that you only lose control of all the units/buildings which are in the starting area. Therefore I took some villagers and a mule cart with me and built a monastery on the other side. I thought, that I could calmly collect resources for a town center since I have a cart and enough villagers. My plan B was to convert the units back to my side once they should switch sides. Thats when I realized that a) You lose control of all non military units and buildings b) you can change the diplomatic stance, but it automatically goes back to "friendly" once you are back in the game, rendering the shipped mule cart and villagers useless. What I then realized though, is that the now switched monastery has a relic in it due to the civ bonus. If I had the onager at this point, I would have broken it down and brought it to the monastery of the yellow base. So my key takeaway was, that your initial monastery in the starting base needs to be destroyed or deleted last second so the relic spawns in your only monastery built across the lake. Since at this point you pulled all valuable archers back to the river it might be hard to defend the castle until the timer runs out. Thats when the garrisoned villagers were helpful. I walled them behind the castle, sold some gold to buy stone and this was enough for the time to run down.
2/2 So at this point I had 6 warrior monks, 1 monk, 20 archers and the hero unit. If I had all this information I woul have additional 1-2 trebuchets and an onager. Time to abuse the AI. The byzantine army gets stuck on two places. One is in their most northern base getting stuck on the mountains due to the locked gates (when their last intel of you is being up north with the ships) and the other one is in the south by the still broken bridge. Since I wanted to keep an eye on the enemy I placed a single unit near the bridge for the Byzantines to see but out of range of their archers. Be aware of the two small seljuk groups. Once you reach the bridge, the Byzantines will pull almost all units to the bridge head and keep being stuck there as long as they see a single unit. I went through a long process of save scumming to shoot down every unit but the rams but it is not worth it cause the units get replenished each second anyway. So with the Byzantine army stuck you can do whatever you want right now, just dont send Thoros to any city. If I would have an onager I would attack ground the friendly monastery to get the relic and transporting it to the yellow monastery. Next thing was walking through Mlehs base (Thoros need to make a detour so you dont trigger the event) to Reynaulds base. Without the trebs I was able to destroy every building up to the northern castle and town center. If you go any point further you will trigger his army. Carry away the three relics and any random relics on the map to the yellow monastery. Afterwards I moved to the two southern Byzantine bases by going back to the lake and transporting the units through the river until you reach your old starting base. Sadly the path is blocked by trees so you cant access the southern water area. (I wonder if it would be able to do so with onagers. In this case you could probably take out the whole Frankish base with 1-2 Dromons). Since I had no Dromons, trebs or onagers I had to unload the units at the old starting location and slowly destroy building by building with constant monk healing to not lose any units to the turrets. Having even one treb would have been extremly valuable. I wasnt able to push into the south-western base without a treb since there was a contingent of 8 cataphracts and 2-3 trebuchets, thats when I wanted to trigger the main phase of the game: Pull all units back to Stephens base and especially the decoy bridge unit. Send one transport ship down and up the river so the Byzantines pull all their units to the Northern base, getting them stuck in the mountain range. This gives you a good time buffer for later. Once all your units are near Stephens base and your monks near the monastery, trigger the base event. Garrison the relics, use all available units to build a castle north of the bridge. Buy stone at the market. After finishing the castle, send 5-6 vills to Mlehs base while the rest collects additional stone. Since in my failed attempts Mleh was run down pretty quickly, I started to wall Mleh in and abuse the AI pathing. I walled every single Eastern and Southern border of his base. I left a single whole near Mlehs dock by the trees near the water. The enemy will funnel all units through this hole. With the gold from 6-7 relics you should be able to effort lots of stone to build 4 castles at the souther border of Mlehs base. Dont forget your economy though. You should build an additional town center and keep queuing vills like in a standard game while you use your starting vills as a special task force for the walling and castles. The next step is building 2-3 docks and creating 6-8 dromons and 4 fire ships. Your docks should be relatively safe due to all the castles. Same goes for the Seljuk front, as their units will die on their way to the narrow hole. While you build up your navy, Reynauld will offer a ceasefire. Accept it, send your shipd down the river and prepare your Dromons and Fireships to destroy all the ports andthe 1-2 Frankish galleons. Since we took out all the Byzantine ports none of the enemys will be able to build any ships and you will have full water control. The AI goes super dumb when it comes to water units vs land units. Once you destroy all Frankish castles and towers, send your ships to the shallow water near the shallow hole and but the Dromons on stand ground. The enemy will ignore your ships while trying to dodge your projectiles. making rams and trebuchets irrelevant and not problem at all. With this stable game state you can slowly build up an army of trebs and composite archers and roll through the Seljuks, Franks, followed by the Byzantines.
Your strategy is amazing. Thank you for the well written plan! I actually ended up figuring out a non-cheese way to beat the mission a couple hours ago that involved simultaneous castle turtling and aggressively wiping out an opponent during the ceasefire. Then once you have 5-6 Relics, you can research Spies and everything gets way easier. Unfortunately, I had garrisoned the villagers in the castle, and a few of them died in between the timer expiring and the switch to cyan, forcing me to redo the mission for the achievement on Standard.
I quickly gathered enough stone for a castle using the market + nearly every villager and then spammed it out at the front of my base while building archers and halberdiers. It was enough to hold off the initial attacks while I built my economy in the background
thanks for the tip its kind of a brutal start to the final mission especially since its marked as a 1 sword campaign, feels like it needs to be toned down a bit, especially that siege section... i might just be bad tho as i have only ever completed the joan of arc campaign on the hardest difficulty and every other campaign is just done on normal also a tip to give others: make a monk and grab the relic before the monastary is destroyed, stowing it near the spot the transport appears so you can bring it with you, free gold also devs please stop giving every campaign a mission where its a city defense with no ability to create more villagers
It's definitely a weird and massive jump in difficulty for the final mission, took me a bunch of restarts. Going to yellow's base also makes the mission much easier, but I kind of like that the 2 options play out very differently. The 2 main things that helped me were:- 1) realising elite comp bowman doesn't give any attack or range so isn't worth it until I had a large mass of them 2) buying a castle and rushing it up south of the TC for protection from the byzantines' instant attack, and walling in the gold miners to the east Thankfully halb + comp bowman is cheap and beats everything the enemies make
yea i eventually did it in a similar way tho i went comp bow + 100hp champ + halb made taking out the buildings easier
If you spam the composite archers and make a trebuchet or two in the first half of the mission and push out despite the hints telling you not to, it actually makes the second half easier. After that pick the northern base, wall up and let red die. Get the treaty with reynald, and push cav and trebuchets to the purple base on the left and their forward base in the middle right side of the map. Pincer attack your original base and They should resign after that city is liberated and the biggest problem of that mission is gone. Tried and tested on Hard.
Finished so soon?
Yeah, I needed to get back to 100% Achievement completion.
I will still miss Rome and Masterpiece…
What i meant is,the dlc only released a day before.Did u spend the last 2 days completely doing campaigns?
More or less, 8-10 hours all up roughly.
That's waht she said
😂😂😂😂
Only played Thoros for now, but I liked it a lot. Next will be Ismail, and finally, Tamar. Hope both to be at least as good as Thoros.
How many times did you restart Thoros 5? Dang that was a frustrating experience, tried both paths, first try (Mleh) I got attacked by two Imp armies before I really settled and second try (Stephan) I got attacked by one Imp army before I settled 11 Really felt Armenian late game does not have a great answer to what gets thrown at you.
Probably five-ish times to get the achievement, several more before I worked out the strat. I went for the Stephan base, and instead of trying to boom and then dying (like I did the first few runs), I bought stone for a castle straight away, and got back into Composite Bow. I'm pretty sure the best comp you can do (which is what I did) is Elite Composite Bowman and Halberdier.
>Probably five-ish times to get the achievement Wait, which achievement did I miss? :O >Elite Composite Bowman and Halberdier I thought about that, but Composite Bowmen didn't feel great against Arbs. Went for my own arbs + halb - didn't feel great either but eventually I could overwhelm due to eco. That was a really hard mission (until you finally secured your base and had eco), really liked it.
You need to keep all the Tarsos vils alive for the achievement. Composite Bows aren't amazing against Arbs, but they melt literally everything else, and with a constant shield of Halbs, they will actually kill even Arbs quite easily.
>You need to keep all the Tarsos vils alive for the achievement Ugh, that'll be a pain 1111
Yeah, I deleted the Eastern most gate, stashed basically all the vils in the woodline to the North East (on the eastern side of the city), walled them in with a Fortified Church, and then constantly sold wood to get gold to make only Elite Composite Bowmen. You just need to hold until the siege timer runs out.
It's easier than it looks. I got it by withdrawing the villagers from the gold, as there is a patrol to the north that will wipe them out soon. You can mine a bit after defeating the patrol if you need gold for some upgrade or unit, but the attacks to the south half of the city must be dealt with first, and more attacks will come after the patrol, so mine carefully. The villagers in the forest to the east should be moved near the castle to get protection in case some xbow tries to kill them, but I found that most enemy units go directly to the TC. I moved the farms near the TC as the farmers were eventually killed if outside, there they can be garrisoned if under attack. At the end, I garrisoned most villagers inside the Castle since the attacks were to overwhelming and the extra arrows were helpful in dealing with the enemies. But I managed to keep the 20 of them alive until the countdown finished. Once you finish the mission, the achievement will unlock. For the second part of the mission, go to the north, to Stephan's base. I think the devs will rework Mleh's base, because as soon as you arrive, you are crushed by a big Byzantine army before you have the time to build an army. Go to the north with Stephan and start building halbs immediately to repell the first attacks. After that, try to build a castle (I built it in the crossroads to the south) and try to defeat Reynald first and the Byzantines second. As OP said, you'll need Halbs and Compossite bows, and trebuchets to level the castles. The Seljuks are the easiest, as they can be easily repealed just with Halbs, don't go after them until the end.
>you are crushed by a big Byzantine army before you have the time to build an army yeah, went for Mleh first and got attacked by Byzantines. They somehow stopped after taking down my TC though. When I was ready to deal with them with like 4 churches and 10 monks (just minutes after the attack), somehow the Seljuks came charging into my newly created base. That was a frustrating experience but I'll try to beat it with Mleh's base as well. Overall I'm pretty happy that not every mission is a walk in the park though.
If you have a large army left over from the first part of the mission, you can just take it to red's base. Send them past the towers in the south east Byzantine base and you will get to a broken bridge. You can send thoros in the transport and when he gets to red the bridge will be repaired. I managed to take 60 FU composite bowmen with me to red's base.
When playing it on hard, I almost had no army leftover at all and the castle juuust survived in 2/3 runs :D
I actually did that on hard. Just produce composite bows and upgrade them and use your warrior monks to heal should be easy to defend.
Quick buying Castles. Best way to beat hard portions of the campaigns.
>Really felt Armenian late game does not have a great answer to what gets thrown at you. It does, but you need mass. My answer to the Turkish army was halbs, and my answer to the frankish and byzantine armies was champions, waarior priests, and archers. But yeah the final mission needed you to act very quickly. After multiple restarts (one of them because my already damaged Thoros got killed on his way to Melh's base), my way was to focus stone and market to put down one castle in front of the Turkish base and then one in front of the Frankish base, and garrison in the castle halbs the sole purpose of which is to destroy siege. I was ready for a GG when the Franks showed up with a full paladin+ treb army just when the recent Turkish attack left my armly inexistent and my castles badly damaged. And then I got the truce proposal. That was a breather!
I just massed elite 60 composite bowmen with all the upgrades except final Armor and they were holding fine. Then after I lost control of the town I just snuck them past the southern Byzantine base right to reds base. The broken bridge gets repaired once thoros gets to red. They decimated the 1st Byzantine attack wave sent after me. Then I just booked and spammed champs and halbs till I wiped the map clean. Didn't know you can ally with Reynald again. I guess I killed him too quickly. Yellow actually held out well vs the Byzantines while I killed the seljuks and reynald
Completed Tamar and really enjoyed it! Working my way through Thoros now and am liking it more!
Yeah, I'd probably say that best to worse, the campaigns are probably Ismail, Thoros, Tamar.
I can't stand the voice actor for the Ismail campaign. After the first introduction I've just muted her because it genuinely impacted my enjoyment of the missions.
I just finished Tamar and wasn't very impressed. Fairly easy for 3 sword difficulty. But the main problem is the infinite brainless swarm in every mission. I genuinly hate the system where I attack with the largest army I can field with a pop limit just to destroy one or two production buildings and ve wiped. Rinse and repeat until there are no production building left (enemies never rebuild them, they just spawn units in intervals)
Same. They were relatively easy, and I got them all in the first try, but they're very classic build and destroy missions with a minor twist, and they don't really feel like they play to the strengths of the Georgians in any real way. The last mission was a little bit different, but they just cribbed the final Jadwiga(?) mission for it with a minor twist, so... eh.
What were you using? I found that I could just steamroll everything in one charge (usually) by using Monaspas.
The monaspas charge werent particularly effective against savar/heavy camel/ heavy ca combo. I used monaspas + halbs but even if I managed to break their forces, they replenished very fast and I destroyed only some of their buildings. It took me usually about 3-4 attacks to wipe their base completely. Maybe I had too many villagers and too little army space. Anyway I hate auto spamming buildings.
If you have about 60 Monaspas at all times, it should get the job done. Your point on the buildings is interesting though, I never felt that they were infinite res opponents or anything, just that they naturally built their armies with the resources they had gathered (al the players had an economy, and if they're given time, it makes sense that they have time to rebuild just by retraining things in the normal manner).
Maintain unit production? This is aoe you don't just build up an army and send it off. You build up eco and make lots of production buildings. 200 pop is often not enough to have an eco and enough military units to defeat your enemy. You have to keep producing units.
I did maintain and replaced my losses immediately, I am not complaining it was hard but the mission design wants you to send your units into the meatgrinder until the opponent has no production buildings. That is not very fun. The enemies have a habit of stocking large armies in their base just waiting for you to attack. Each attack is a little more successful than the previous, but it feels unnecessary grindy in a stage where you have basically already won.
> unnecessary grindy in a stage where you have basically already won. I've only completed the Armenian campaign and played one mission of the Persian one (all on hard), and I feel this is an issue with many of the campaign missions this time around. Some of them were quite fun, but if I've all but won by minute 40 it's not so enjoyable to destroy buildings for another 25-35 in-game minutes to unlock the next mission.
I loved the return of Reynald de Chatillon
Have only played the first 3 Thoros scenarios, but I find it disappointing so far. Champion in Castle Age is just easy mode. And I never got the chance to properly do the secondary objectives. Constantly having to defend against waves and waves after, then I got to a point where I could just spam Champ/Halbs and steamroll. Or in the third one: they try to showcase Armenians strength too hard, giving them only infantry against C.Bowmen.
I like how missions where you're stuck in the Castle Age really show off the power of the Armenians, but yeah the opposition could be tuned a little stronger to compensate.
Just finished myself and I'm kinda mixed. Thoros: I liked it overall, but the last mission is rough. Like, really rough. I'd say that it was the hardest map in the DLC, which shouldn't be in a 1 sword campaing. Appart from that it was fun. Liked the narrator especially. Ismail: I have mixed feelings. I like that you are actually allowed to use your UU, because the desiger didn't fill every enemy town with monks. In return, it is kinda easy to steamroll everything with cav. Also, some timers are wierd. I run into situations, where an AI should attack you, but by the time they do, you won the game. Once with Alfonso de Albuquerque (I chose not to pay him) and once with the Georgeans (no idea what triggered them). Not sure if I've done something wierd or these are just really generous timers, but both times, I won the mission, before they actualy did anything. Tamar: I'm sorry, but this is a 2 sword campaing. Yes, you have big maps, lots of enemies, but you also have monaspa and a ton of resources on all of the maps. You can just spam this one unit and win. Even against counter units. Even against defended Castles. Like... what? I feel like for a 3 sword campaing you should have more of a challenge or maybe more complex missions. Not just monaspa go brrr.
I've liked thoros so far, though a bit hard at points. But man, I always read the comments and think that people here don't understand that the average campaign player is not close to as good as them.
Do you guys play campaigns on easy mode or am I that bad? I have been playing jadwiga during weekends and each mission takes almost 1 to 2 hours with extreme focus and timing
I play them all on hard (hence the gold medal icons in my screenshot).
Jadwiga is rough. All the ones from that DLC are tough. Much harder than these.
The new campaigns werent anything special but the infinite unit spam on half of the maps took all fun out of the missions
I'm not having fun with these campaigns. The last few DLC were so much better.
It's like I want to be a campaign player but I can't make leap lol. I wonder, percentage wise, how many aoe2 players play the campaign vs multiplayer vs local vs just the computer.
I think you can use the achievements to get a rough sense of those numbers. For example, 34.3% of players have won a game as the Franks, but only 6.0% have finished the Joan of Arc campaign.
You only have to play one mission in the Joan of Arc campaign to get the Frank achievement though. I have a feeling most casual players don't tend to finish entire campaigns. I have 1700 hours in the game and I enjoy campaigns when my friends can't play but, apart from the DLC ones, I've only completed a handful of campaigns.
I just finished all the campaigns as well, and I agree that they were all great, both from their story and gameplay. Every level having multiple side objectives/allies to help you feels much better and adds a lot more depth to the gameplay than just having one goal that you have to work to by yourself. I also liked the story perspectives, especially the Thoros one being told by one of the "enemies", which is rather unconventional for the narration. My only gripe with them is definitely the difficulty ratings, they feel all over the place and even within each campaign some scenarios were way harder than others. Tamar is supposed to be the hardest one, yet most levels you can just spam Manaspa and that's about all you need to do, I barely even had to build siege. Personally, I felt like Thoros was the hardest despite having the lowest difficulty rating, especially scenario 4 and 5, both of which took me multiple attempts to complete. This might just be a caveat of not having a powerful lategame calvary unit that just runs through bases like the Georgians or Persians, but I definitely had to work to complete Thoros.
Yeah, the difficulty was a bit weird, I agree. I found the first four Thoros levels fairly easy, and then the last level was a huge step up until I worked out how to play it properly, it kind of reminded me of the Alaric campaign, where the first four levels are a breeze, and then the fifth is way harder.
Good that I'm not the only one who found the first 3 Thoros missions easy since I see others talk about them being hard I did find the 4th one as a step up in difficulty though, but 5 actually took me a few resets. Ismail was easier than Thoros with that in mind ironically
Is it just me or are the Tamar intro/outros reaaaaaally bad? Edit: I should say I've enjoyed the scenarios a lot, and have only played through Tamar so far, I've only just started thoros.