how the hell do you beat 30. All is not lost

[CT center]

the difficulty scaling on some of these missions is insane and im only on moderate, by cheesing it slightly you get around 16 minutes max to build up some defences but even with that and the 65 villagers i managed to get out in that time i still couldnt produce enough units to fight the constant horde they send you, and again this is only on moderate, how does someone do this on titan?? surely this cant just be me and im sure it wasnt this hard in the original.

[Poqreslux]

The hardest part of this is the initial wave, which was always difficult in the original, but with the balance changes, such as how buildings (especially norse buildings) melt if a unit sneezes on it and various units being better than they once were makes it a challenge. The extra 5-6ish minutes you can get by cheesing honestly felt invaluable.

Here's what I did. This worked for at least Hard difficulty (not sure about Titan).

1. Immediately head to the mining town. Have the berserks start the TC but don't finish it. Let it get to just short of max health, so as soon as the countdown starts, you can task someone to finish it immediately. Brokk and Eitri immediately go to gold and wood each and build an ox cart for them to share. The gatherers immediately harvest the two bears, then the wolves, then the elk. They'll stay on food for a while.

2. Send heroes to get the relics. There are three near your base and a further two to the north west and north east. You can't garrison them right now but you'll pop them in soon. Berserks build houses to maximum limit. Whichever dwarf is on wood should be able to get the extra wood you'll need for all 15 houses. Once you have 15 houses, send the dwarf onto gold.

3. You should rack up food pretty quick. Once the countdown timer starts, immediately finish the TC and if you have the resources, immediately go to Heroic Age. I chose Bragi but I think the frost giants would be more helpful in hindsight. The gatherers now go on wood. Dwarves stay on gold. We want to get second TC up asap.

4. Once you have two TCs and are Age 3, you can start pumping out Gatherers on Food and Dwarves on Gold from the north TC and gatherers on wood from the second TC (forest is right next to it). Start building farms to the south near your second TC, using strategically placed ox carts as your drop off points in your fields. Once the waves start, all your gatherers and dwarves will retreat here.

5. Get key upgrades. You really have to choose what your strat is. I went infantry so I prioritized medium and heavy infantry, armor and shield, and infantry upgrades. I feel like now that Jarls are anti-human instead of anti-myth units, they might really shine here, but I went Hersirs, Berserks, Godi, and Throwing Axemen. Build extra buildings. As much as you can. And start pumping out units.

6. If you can reach Mythic before the timer expires, great! If not, save the resources so you can quickly replace loses. You should still have some time left, and hopefully you have lots of gold from all your dwarves mining away. So build walls. Wall off your southern TC to protect your farmers. When the waves come abandon hunting and bring all the dwarves to mine the southern gold mine. Save favor (you'll have lots of it), as you'll continuously replace this mine with a new dwarven gold mine. All your hunters should now be farming.

7. Wall off eastern most passage with several layers of walls and make sure to get stone walls. You won't be defending these walls. The only purpose they have is to severely slow down purple. Every single resource now should be going into popping out as many units as you can. You cannot defend everywhere, which is why we retreated as many eco units to one location as possible. Whatever units you decided to go with, make sure you have tons of them. You probably won't be pop capped by the time the waves come, but hopefully you can keep pumping units and your economy at the southern TC should be strong. I had about 20 on each resource. Keep building farms too. You'll get more room as you clear more forests.

8. When the waves come, use all of your units together. Don't try to be multiple places at once. You're going to lose a few buildings. This might sound silly, but I really recommend deleting your ballista you get from the cutscene. It will just slow you down as your rush your ball of soldiers around your base. Hopefully by the time you mop up red and orange's army, purple will have finally breach your last layer of walls and you can finish them off.

9. During the first battle, continuously replace your loses, keep pumping out units and keep resource gathering in the south. That's why its very important to save your favor for additional dwarven gold mines. Spamming towers and hill forts is best to the west and middle area. Purple likes to show up with some heliopolis and gastrophetes which melt towers quickly.

10. The waves become much more manageable now as they don't all show up at once. Keep using your entire army to repel attacks unless you hit pop cap. If you built all 15 houses before finishing the first TC you should be able to get up to 300 pop. Try to preserve as many houses as possible when defending. Don't be afraid to repair buildings either. Don't worry about replacing walls too much.

Good luck. I haven't done 31 and 32 yet, but this is the second hardest mission in this so far, second only to mission 18. While you can't get multiple sons of osiris in this one to melt enemies, you also don't have to deal with elephants and scarabs so it balances out.

[W4RP!G [CZ]]

Hey i have the same problem. I had maybe one bigg-ish army and they come with 3 full armies and units at either heavy or champion state. WTF devs. I think this must be higher difficulties leaking or something.

its just mission 18 and 30 which are straight up broken. Rest could have been done on moderate. but they seriously need to do some major balance pass. its like nobody bothered to play the campaign during the development.

[angelfmf]

Yeah it is absolutely insane, it wasnt like that at all in the original... and its definitely buggy, as soon as the cutscene starts the enemies start sending waves of enemies, and the minimap shows during the scene thats why i know, between trying to finish the armory upgrades and building an army and getting all the resources, it is just completely unfair, its the 3rd time im starting this on moderate, why having difficulty levels if they dont work (on this map at least)?

[Novi]

My guess is (somebody can probably check in the editor) that the AI uses some default skirmish script, which is a lot more difficult than it was in EE/original. If you really can't beat the mission even on low difficulty, you can cheese it by blocking the entrance from the AI's base (north east) with gold mines.

[4KT | Sterling7]

Don't know if you can still do it cause I've done the campaign before the patch but if you place a "little" town center instead of building it at the place intended you got more minutes to prepare.

[ppleec021]

Since you know the cheese. You should build a village center instead, so that you can keep making villagers for around 4 more minutes. I walled off the western and northern side, leaving the opening to the east, where I built a fort and half enclosed it with walls at the lower entrance. I put 4 Godi on stand ground so as to repair the walls or attack myth units when needed. I also put a healing spring close to the fort for healing. Here I find the boar + heroes pretty good at blocking off enemies. Then have some trolls and fire giants for ranged aoe damage.
On the hill I put a fort and 6 ballistas to shoot baddies, the hades archer gas..... in particular as they have long range and does bonus damage against buildings.
Prepare 2 trolls and 2 fire giants by 14th min for the underground passage.
For the eastern wall I just put some infantry + Hersir + Godi on stand ground for defense and repair.
One thing I noticed was that once the western wall broke, build a new one then they would stop going there and all would try going through the east.
Once the timer stops both red and purple will stop attacking, so you can send whatever Odysseus has brought. I called Ragnarok as well to take down orange in 1 swipe.
You only need to "fight" Gargarensis to achieve victory.

[eddyzh]

After a few attempts at this mission and looking at the comments online i ♥♥♥♥ my pants and felt a bit like giving up on keeping the difficulty at hard.

After getting my head straight this is what worked for me:

Background: I am playing the trident Campaign on Hard with my game-pad on my TV on GeForce Now.


Blocking with gold mines did not work for me. Luckily so, since it felt like more cheating than then next 2 items.
I used save scamming. Also to explore the map a bit first. Memorize where stuff is. Then on your real go, save after every minor step and go back if it was not efficient or succesfull.
I used the trick to build a towncenter not on top of the village. To get a couple of minutes extra to recruit workers and assign them.
I used auto worker assignment but especially with a mouse that might make it more worse then better.
Build some houses now, otherwise nothing wil recruit.
Get economy up and running before the timer starts.
Build walls then.
Right side: 3 rows of walls (NO TOWERS), take care not to get your workers stuck since there is not place for gates sometimes.
left 3 rows of walls before each row of towers.
middel make a 3 layer funnel /// \\\ that does start halfway. And points to the open space next to the mines. (basically the middel)
behind the (east) walls of the funnel, place a healing well. Out of the way.
if you have time get the 3 relics that are in the close area.
build all houses.
update the walls
i did not build any towers, and should propbably not have upgraded them.
try to advance the age (flaming swords is usefull)
build (or if you are efficient finish) the normal towncenter just after the cutscene.,
Then the second towncenter on the hill on the right.
Start all productions. Mine the front gold first. but if the enemy breaks through your funnel and reaches the workers there, i reloaded a savegame anyway. There is no room for failure.
Send your towncenter recruits to the right spot.
1 tc to gold with dwarves 1 tc with wood or something
Put relics in temple,
upgrade some stuff if you can, but honestly you should not have any resources left.
Get ready for first wave. It is the biggest. i had my units always around the funnel and sometimes down to get the ranged enemies. then back to the funnel for healing.
Use flamig swords godpower soon and every time the fight is big. (dont spend power on mines before first wave)
I had no attack on the right tripple walls. Probably because no towers.
I had only some counter infantry units on my left walls which i dealt with after many waves with some myth units. they had only broken 1 wall and 1 tower. I wonder if you destroy the towers yoursef if that wil make it better since they might ignore tripple walls but not with towers.
Everything came in the center in my funnel.
Micromanage to kill the myth units fast and first. maybe also to kill the ranged before the rest. and if you can managed with the right units.
Use keyboard/gampad shortcuts all the time.
when hard pressed and possibly at the start of the first wave, and you managed to stockpile some food, then upgrade some workers to berserkers.
Rebuild/repair the funnel when destroyed.
Load the game if they break through.
At some point there wil be a hellgate behind the stonewalled section behind the frozen river/lake in the south south west. I think it was around minute 22. Have something that kills ca 10 humans and the gate (building) very fast there on time. Then its done. Just before the gate i saw a pegasus flying in that direction. i took it down but it spawned anyway. maybe there was another or the ai cheated.
Load a savegame if they manage to break through and start killing a significant amount of workers. There is no time for rebuilding.
The enemy attacks with all kind of units. I did something i had not done before, i set almost every unit in every (non-tc) buiding to autobuild. it seems the effect was when my economy was trickling, then only the cheap units got out. but at least something got out.
Managing my economy correctly was impossible. Way to busy. So it was just chaos. So thats why i used auto gather with some corrections once in a while. I had to use the market to buy food and wood, since gold was going wel. But i did not care since having every building spitting out units all the time is all that matters.
Add some gold mines next to almost depleted ones
advance the age, i chose for ragnarock for the big end fight later.

As soon as they announce Odysseus its almost over. As he comes you can rest. Recruit to max pop and rush the bastard. Regnarock did not seem necessary actually.

[JCountry]

I got through on hard with my first attempt, but I wouldn't call my strat all that clean.
I didn't have a base by the end of the mission

[eddyzh]

Originally posted by JCountry:

I got through on hard with my first attempt, but I wouldn't call my strat all that clean.
I didn't have a base by the end of the mission

Impressive nevertheless.

But I guess if you play multiplayer on some level it should be normal to have a very efficient start.

Did you use walls and how did it go?

[Azor]

get two tcs as soon as possible, spam walls, then ragnarok and fountain when you have 100 villagers, ez win on titan difficulty

[JCountry]

Originally posted by eddyzh:

Originally posted by JCountry:

I got through on hard with my first attempt, but I wouldn't call my strat all that clean.
I didn't have a base by the end of the mission

Impressive nevertheless.

But I guess if you play multiplayer on some level it should be normal to have a very efficient start.

Did you use walls and how did it go?

I did use walls, they didn't help much. It doesn't help that they break almost instantly in this version of the game and no I don't play multiplayer, but I've played every game in the Age of Empires franchise. I've got years of RTS experiance. The fountain was more useful. What I think the walls need is an armor buff, they take too much damage from infantry and siege.

[Xeno]

Did it without cheese and went full berserks. Your prep time is really important to ensure you get good economy going, get both TCs going and just auto queue dwarves forever. I went through as many Gods as I can to upgrade my berserks, heavily walled the left side and right side and left the middle with a fountain.

After every attack, just rebuild, build a bunch of walls, towers, hill forts, whatever you can. They will always destroy your defences so it's mostly there to buy time for you to get ready. Ensure you have like 10+ military building on auto queue as well, heck you can get even more if you have plenty of resources