Hardest AOE2 campaign - Ghengis Khan

[Throwback to depression]

The 75 pop cap, the non stop spam of units coming at you, lack of halberdiers and paladins, 2-3 scenarios you had to control 2 TC's each on another part of the map. And that last mission against hungary. Anyone else agree?

[Shalashaska]

just mass mangudai.

[Saeva Veritas]

Which scenarios is the basis of your claim that Genghis Khan is the hardest? Only the fourth scenario has two TCs on opposite sides of the map. If don't like that then delete one of the TCs and focus on one side. You have thirty minutes to deliver the trade carts, use some of that time to build up. The Russians are restricted to the Castle Age; you only need to destroy their castle and they resign. They won't pose a threat to imperial Mongols.

The last mission you can buy yourself time by blocking the bridge with the saboteurs if you are getting overrun. Saboteurs are classified as ships and won't be attacked by land units.

[conqueror060]

Mongols don't have to get access to halbs and paladins. They have other very important strenghts. If you mass mangudai and camels you can walkthrough this campaign on hard easily.

The only challenging scenarios are the third "Into China" because you have to be fast and build sufficient force on land and sea, in order to destroy the wonder one of the enemies starts to build.
And of course the last scenario against Poland is tricky but not hard if you use a good strategy (for example you can attack the enemy from the south if you cut the forest with siege onagers.

[talgaby]

That campaign has mangudais. Therefore, it is actually one of the easiest, especially since on classic ruleset, they are one of the most stupidly power units in the entire game. Also, they have siege rams with speeds rivalling a medieval Ferrari.

[hbarudi]

I do agree that newer players are going to have difficulty in this campaign, back in the day I retried so many times each scenario other than the first until I was able to beat each one. Look at youtube walkthroughs to see how you can play those scenarios. Yes the population limit 75 is restrictive given the large size maps you have to gain control of. GK=Ghenghis Khan

Walkthrough:
GK#1: This scenario should not be too difficult:
Start by going around, but avoid any red you see with light cavalry until you get to the blue allies, they will heal you and their objective is to bring 20 sheep that are scattered on the map to them.
The gray will want a relic, but you need to get some army before you can get the relic.
The cyan will ask you to defeat ornulu the wolf (400hp attack 20 moves slower than cav archer)
The purple will ask you to defeat the green and the opposite the green will ask you to defeat the purple. Once you do the first visit to all five of them, start by collecting sheep and use your light cav to defeat red cav archers that are next to towers or are alone but do not try to kill their buildings. Go to blue for healing and avoid losing any units. Avoid the red monastery as this area has an enemy monk and a mangonel which will let let you leave without losing units.
If you are good at moving your units, you can think of attacking ornulu at the beginning of the game. Begin by defeating their wolves other than ornulu use the cav archers against the reular wolves and light cavalry against the dire wolves. once ornulu remains alone, move the light cavalry away from him and just hit and run him with the cav archers until you defeat all 400 of his hit points. This will take some time, but you can get those camels and they will research you the chemistry tech for appearance purposes. Then you can get the 20 sheep for the blue by defeating red units on the open land. Then once you get the blue, you should have an army and some monks, use the monks to wololo the green light cavalry and defeat every building they have. then go to purple to claim their units. Then take your army to assult the red monastery and defeat that difficult area to get the relic from the enemy. Then bring the relic to the grey to get their units and win the map.

GK#2:
You start with some units.You need to reach and defeat five yellow cav archers to get the yellow buildings and villagers. once you get those villagers, the scenario begins. the red palisade walls will separate the green enemies from the red, but the red attacks with a lot of units from all 3 of barracks (no pikemen), archery ranges, and stable (no knights). You can use knights to fight them well, but first about your economy: once you get the villagers and town center, put villagers on any deer laying on the ground and losing food. Prefer 4 villagers to a deer to minimize food loss and pay attention to the deer villagers. Consume all your starting food making more villagers. Advanced players can sneak onto their forage bushes and stone mines since they are far from their tower or town center. Use your light cavary to scout the area for wood and mining. you are still not well defended. The ai will target your yurts aggressively, let them fight that stuff, but be sure to build houses which are stronger and to prevent losing population. continue strenthening your economy and advance to the feudal age and then the castle age without researching any feudal age techs. Then once you get to castle age, get enough stone to build a castle near your town center for better defending your area. Now that you have better defense, research all the feudal and castle age techs and do mass knight and mangudai attack to defeat them, the green cavary units will move toward their town center. Now that the red is defeated, do not destroy any of the palisades between cliffs that blockade the green, but you can destroy the red palisades on the side. Then begin by building a gate in fron of the part where you want to destroy a palisade wall so you can access the other area. After you destroy a palisade wall, go inside and build a castle near those flags so they can't get their light cavalry past the red wall and explore your territory. Then the enemy will have a castle and you need 20+ knights to defeat it. Once you built the castle where your flags are, you will need to fight the green a lot they have armies everywhere. You can also build a dock and use war galleys to fight stuff. Once you destroy all their scorpions and towers, defeat their castle. Once the castle is down, destroy their town center. Then you can destroy their hero to win.

GK#3: This one is a difficult scenario you start with no villagers and town center while the enemy starts with villagers and town center and get an economy advantage. Begin by going down the map toward the transport ship. Then transport your units across the water to the other island. defeat the blue army. Get those gaia villagers and set the siege to no attack stance so they don't go and attack random stuff. Send the ram to attack the tower and the mangonel to attack the town center. Once the tower dies, bring the transport ship over to the other side so you can begin moving over to the yellow enemies island. Defeat the blue villagers and they will resign. transport a light cavalry past the great wall of china to go get those bombard cannons (if you don't know where they are use the marco polo cheats in the beginning then restart the scenario to do it without cheats do this before starting the scenario and moving any cav archer or light cavalry). Once the light cavalry reaches the bombard cannon, be sure to bring them to transport them in two trips with transport ship to your island. At this point, you should have built a gate next to the gates of the great wall, this is important as the ai will endlessly try to walk past the gate and probably attack it on hard, but if you are dying you should play on easy or standard. Then you should begin your attack on the yellow but make sure you have pikeman and elite skirmishers (pikemen for their cavaliers and elite skirmishers for their cho ku no). At this point you should have a town center on thier island and a castle on their island do not build anything near the blue your life should be on the yellow island. At this point you are about to conquer about half of the map. Prevent the bombard cannons from dying, but begin the assult on the yellow fortifications. If you are doing well, you could catch them and take out their town center before they advance to the imperial age and ruin their economy so much that they will fail to build the wonder. But if you are slow, you can use the bombard cannons to demolish their wonder at the cost of losing them for the rest of the entire GG campaign. Once the wonder is gone, continue to defeat the yellow enemy so you can take advantage of the water and fish and to attack the others with ships. Once the yellow is defeated, you reach the point where you can breathe easy and boom your economy to get to post imperial age and research all the imperial age technologies except the spies/treason. Begin your attack on the red and green enemies. Begin the fight by sacrificing 5 trebuchets on the green castle make sure it dies (ai does not rebuild castles). You can wall off their towns with a few gates and destroy everything they have outside of such walls and gates. Then you destroy everything they have inside your built walls and gates. This will leave the cyan enemy the last and they only make monks, barracks, archery range, and scout units, but they do build towers which are just annoying as they do sink your ships and their monks wololo your cannon galleons, but once you defeat the cyan, you will finish the scenario.

GK#4: This time you start with 2 towns and need to control them both. The town that starts with the trade carts is important since there is a lot of mining that yellow villagers will otherwise claim to make themselves a very difficult enemy to defeat. The other town with the subotai hero is a hero that must survive or you lose the scenario. So that means you need to ensure that both towns survive and your priority should be in getting a castle up in both sides this means getting 1600 stone for two castles and the murder holes tech and some gates. Begin by spending half of your starting food on making villagers from each town center. Trade carts should move closer to the enemy, do not try to get the green stuff very early in the game until you secure the other side with a castle. You may get attacked on the other side so make sure there is some attention there, in those campaigns pausing and giving orders to your units is very important. That town center on the side that does not have the hero is important to survive since its loss will unlock the yellow gates to unleash their attacks on the other side.
Once you get a gate built next to their gate and a gate built next to some mining located near that cliff opening, go send the trade carts to do that objective before the it time expires. This will keep your town center relatively safe from yellow attacks, but you will need to mine that gold and stone you saw there and build a castle to defeat their units. You will need monks on both sides to wololo some strong units to your side. Now to focus on the upper area that we are barely defending against the red attacks. You will need to attack the red enemy and destroy everything except their market please don't kill their market for trading purposes. Then research to post imperial age so you can get ready to fight the yellow. Fight the yellow from that side until you reach and destroy a castle and be able to mine the stone in the bottom corner of the map. Then you can also build a castle and fight to prevent some more gold from being mined by the yellow as they flood out of those gates in large numbers. Then begin reducing that map area the yellow walks on until you can be able to defeat them. Then finish the yellow enemy to win the scenario.

GK#5:
This scenario is an interesting scenario especially with some unusual things happening. Especially those things that involve cliffs. First of all, you do not want to walk up that route around your town when a scout is created for you and you have to build 3 castles objective get revealed or your life will become miserable in this map. Begin by building 2 gates to stop any possible attacks by the red enemies. Begin by moving your villagers from the default things to get all 4 of them on a single deer and begin by growing your economy. Then you need to defend against a lot of knights and mangonels from the blue by building a castle and some gates. Also build a monastery and monk to go get that nice relic. You should try to defeat the blue as early as possible, but try not to get their flag by simply not walking over it or near it. Get their flag at the end of the scenario or alternatively you can get their flag since the green flag is the one you will get last. Once the blue are defeated hopefully early enough to get some of that gold and stone next to their watch tower, you can also leave their market alive for trading purposes. Once the blue are defeated, the next enemy will be the red. You should have those gates locked, but begin by collecting trees next to the cliff between your town center and the area you fought the blue. Get the wood there but beware of their crossbowmen killing your villagers on wood until you get villagers to cross the cliffs and continue to build a gate there and another gate down the road and possibly a town center to get over the cliff. You will find the area that you would have gotten the objective to build 3 castles, but you avoid that area by building some palisade walls after destroying their castle. you can use be sure no red units have walked in that area where you get the objective or instead of palisade walls, just build and locka gate. Begin by building military buildings and one of the 3 castles and fight the red enemies and defeat them entirely. Very important to defeat those red and blue before obtaining any objective to build 3 castles to defeand against the green. Then before getting the objective, build a line of gates all around the flags to make a lot of fortified walls and build plenty of towers next to the green flags. At this point you should have gotten to post imperial age and researched everything. If you got all the wood near the relic and all the wood over those cliffs, you can then bring some trebuchets to attack their stuff. You can use the trebuchet to destroy a couple of champions and maybe a siege unit. eventually they will bring their trebuchets there and unpack them. take advantage of fighting their trebuchets there so you don't have to deal with them later. Once you destroy everything that your trebuchets can reach, pack them up and move them to use them against other things. Then go get the objective scout, he will have whatever upgrades since he is created by the triggers and the green flags become yours. Build the third caslte inside and this will make them move all ther units out of their gates towards your castles. Lots of siege, paladins, and champions.fight until you defeat all their units. Then you will need to trebuchet their bombard towers. and defeat their siege onagers stuck over cliffs while you sacrifice a lot of mangudai deaing with them and then you can siege down their outer fortifications. Then you go inside and destroy their buildings until you reach the inner fortifications that involve a castle guarded by 3 monks and 3 siege onagers. continue to sacrifice mangudai until all 6 of those units are dead. Then finish by demolishing that castle to win the scenario.

GK#6:
Here you start in imperial age. Begin by blockading that bridge with gates. Get you economy going. The starting sobateurs purpose is to stop them from building a wonder. But it is difficult to get them over there. Start by once those gates are getting built, use your units as sacrifices, keep only few light cav for scouting purposes. The other units are sacrifices until you get and place a couple of sobateurs under their town center. This is very important as they are needed to stop them from building a wonder by using a sobateur to make the ai lose 1000 wood, 1000 gold, and 1000 stone. There is a lot of mining on this map enough for you to reach post imperial age. At about 40 minutes of in game time, now you should see a demolition ship spawned next to the bridge. The triggers will kill that and remove the bridge next to it and make the other bridge portions next to it broken and you can't walk through the bridge anymore. Now the fortification you built to defend yourself if they reach them with their trebs on the other side of the river it is ok to lose those. Go to find a snowy ice water crossing to the other side at the end of the map and build fortifications next to the trees and you also have some mining in that area as well. You will also get more sobateurs and be able to use siege onagers to break down trees to reach the enemy. Fight them until you reach them, they might have multiple wonder attempts so you might not be totally safe if they do a 4th or more wonder attempts due to our inability to rush them. You can only get 3 sobateurs next to their town center until you try to get a 4th there but will be very difficult at the beginning of the scenario. Then continue fighting until you can sucessfully trebuchet down a possible 4th+ wonder or begin to simply continue your attack to defeat them. Once you defeat them you win the scenario and the whole capmaign and get some steam achievements.

[Throwback to depression]

Originally posted by hbarudi:

I do agree that newer players are going to have difficulty in this campaign, back in the day I retried so many times each scenario other than the first until I was able to beat each one. Look at youtube walkthroughs to see how you can play those scenarios. Yes the population limit 75 is restrictive given the large size maps you have to gain control of. GK=Ghenghis Khan

Walkthrough:
GK#1: This scenario should not be too difficult:
Start by going around, but avoid any red you see with light cavalry until you get to the blue allies, they will heal you and their objective is to bring 20 sheep that are scattered on the map to them.
The gray will want a relic, but you need to get some army before you can get the relic.
The cyan will ask you to defeat ornulu the wolf (400hp attack 20 moves slower than cav archer)
The purple will ask you to defeat the green and the opposite the green will ask you to defeat the purple. Once you do the first visit to all five of them, start by collecting sheep and use your light cav to defeat red cav archers that are next to towers or are alone but do not try to kill their buildings. Go to blue for healing and avoid losing any units. Avoid the red monastery as this area has an enemy monk and a mangonel which will let let you leave without losing units.
If you are good at moving your units, you can think of attacking ornulu at the beginning of the game. Begin by defeating their wolves other than ornulu use the cav archers against the reular wolves and light cavalry against the dire wolves. once ornulu remains alone, move the light cavalry away from him and just hit and run him with the cav archers until you defeat all 400 of his hit points. This will take some time, but you can get those camels and they will research you the chemistry tech for appearance purposes. Then you can get the 20 sheep for the blue by defeating red units on the open land. Then once you get the blue, you should have an army and some monks, use the monks to wololo the green light cavalry and defeat every building they have. then go to purple to claim their units. Then take your army to assult the red monastery and defeat that difficult area to get the relic from the enemy. Then bring the relic to the grey to get their units and win the map.

GK#2:
You start with some units.You need to reach and defeat five yellow cav archers to get the yellow buildings and villagers. once you get those villagers, the scenario begins. the red palisade walls will separate the green enemies from the red, but the red attacks with a lot of units from all 3 of barracks (no pikemen), archery ranges, and stable (no knights). You can use knights to fight them well, but first about your economy: once you get the villagers and town center, put villagers on any deer laying on the ground and losing food. Prefer 4 villagers to a deer to minimize food loss and pay attention to the deer villagers. Consume all your starting food making more villagers. Advanced players can sneak onto their forage bushes and stone mines since they are far from their tower or town center. Use your light cavary to scout the area for wood and mining. you are still not well defended. The ai will target your yurts aggressively, let them fight that stuff, but be sure to build houses which are stronger and to prevent losing population. continue strenthening your economy and advance to the feudal age and then the castle age without researching any feudal age techs. Then once you get to castle age, get enough stone to build a castle near your town center for better defending your area. Now that you have better defense, research all the feudal and castle age techs and do mass knight and mangudai attack to defeat them, the green cavary units will move toward their town center. Now that the red is defeated, do not destroy any of the palisades between cliffs that blockade the green, but you can destroy the red palisades on the side. Then begin by building a gate in fron of the part where you want to destroy a palisade wall so you can access the other area. After you destroy a palisade wall, go inside and build a castle near those flags so they can't get their light cavalry past the red wall and explore your territory. Then the enemy will have a castle and you need 20+ knights to defeat it. Once you built the castle where your flags are, you will need to fight the green a lot they have armies everywhere. You can also build a dock and use war galleys to fight stuff. Once you destroy all their scorpions and towers, defeat their castle. Once the castle is down, destroy their town center. Then you can destroy their hero to win.

GK#3: This one is a difficult scenario you start with no villagers and town center while the enemy starts with villagers and town center and get an economy advantage. Begin by going down the map toward the transport ship. Then transport your units across the water to the other island. defeat the blue army. Get those gaia villagers and set the siege to no attack stance so they don't go and attack random stuff. Send the ram to attack the tower and the mangonel to attack the town center. Once the tower dies, bring the transport ship over to the other side so you can begin moving over to the yellow enemies island. Defeat the blue villagers and they will resign. transport a light cavalry past the great wall of china to go get those bombard cannons (if you don't know where they are use the marco polo cheats in the beginning then restart the scenario to do it without cheats do this before starting the scenario and moving any cav archer or light cavalry). Once the light cavalry reaches the bombard cannon, be sure to bring them to transport them in two trips with transport ship to your island. At this point, you should have built a gate next to the gates of the great wall, this is important as the ai will endlessly try to walk past the gate and probably attack it on hard, but if you are dying you should play on easy or standard. Then you should begin your attack on the yellow but make sure you have pikeman and elite skirmishers (pikemen for their cavaliers and elite skirmishers for their cho ku no). At this point you should have a town center on thier island and a castle on their island do not build anything near the blue your life should be on the yellow island. At this point you are about to conquer about half of the map. Prevent the bombard cannons from dying, but begin the assult on the yellow fortifications. If you are doing well, you could catch them and take out their town center before they advance to the imperial age and ruin their economy so much that they will fail to build the wonder. But if you are slow, you can use the bombard cannons to demolish their wonder at the cost of losing them for the rest of the entire GG campaign. Once the wonder is gone, continue to defeat the yellow enemy so you can take advantage of the water and fish and to attack the others with ships. Once the yellow is defeated, you reach the point where you can breathe easy and boom your economy to get to post imperial age and research all the imperial age technologies except the spies/treason. Begin your attack on the red and green enemies. Begin the fight by sacrificing 5 trebuchets on the green castle make sure it dies (ai does not rebuild castles). You can wall off their towns with a few gates and destroy everything they have outside of such walls and gates. Then you destroy everything they have inside your built walls and gates. This will leave the cyan enemy the last and they only make monks, barracks, archery range, and scout units, but they do build towers which are just annoying as they do sink your ships and their monks wololo your cannon galleons, but once you defeat the cyan, you will finish the scenario.

GK#4: This time you start with 2 towns and need to control them both. The town that starts with the trade carts is important since there is a lot of mining that yellow villagers will otherwise claim to make themselves a very difficult enemy to defeat. The other town with the subotai hero is a hero that must survive or you lose the scenario. So that means you need to ensure that both towns survive and your priority should be in getting a castle up in both sides this means getting 1600 stone for two castles and the murder holes tech and some gates. Begin by spending half of your starting food on making villagers from each town center. Trade carts should move closer to the enemy, do not try to get the green stuff very early in the game until you secure the other side with a castle. You may get attacked on the other side so make sure there is some attention there, in those campaigns pausing and giving orders to your units is very important. That town center on the side that does not have the hero is important to survive since its loss will unlock the yellow gates to unleash their attacks on the other side.
Once you get a gate built next to their gate and a gate built next to some mining located near that cliff opening, go send the trade carts to do that objective before the it time expires. This will keep your town center relatively safe from yellow attacks, but you will need to mine that gold and stone you saw there and build a castle to defeat their units. You will need monks on both sides to wololo some strong units to your side. Now to focus on the upper area that we are barely defending against the red attacks. You will need to attack the red enemy and destroy everything except their market please don't kill their market for trading purposes. Then research to post imperial age so you can get ready to fight the yellow. Fight the yellow from that side until you reach and destroy a castle and be able to mine the stone in the bottom corner of the map. Then you can also build a castle and fight to prevent some more gold from being mined by the yellow as they flood out of those gates in large numbers. Then begin reducing that map area the yellow walks on until you can be able to defeat them. Then finish the yellow enemy to win the scenario.

GK#5:
This scenario is an interesting scenario especially with some unusual things happening. Especially those things that involve cliffs. First of all, you do not want to walk up that route around your town when a scout is created for you and you have to build 3 castles objective get revealed or your life will become miserable in this map. Begin by building 2 gates to stop any possible attacks by the red enemies. Begin by moving your villagers from the default things to get all 4 of them on a single deer and begin by growing your economy. Then you need to defend against a lot of knights and mangonels from the blue by building a castle and some gates. Also build a monastery and monk to go get that nice relic. You should try to defeat the blue as early as possible, but try not to get their flag by simply not walking over it or near it. Get their flag at the end of the scenario or alternatively you can get their flag since the green flag is the one you will get last. Once the blue are defeated hopefully early enough to get some of that gold and stone next to their watch tower, you can also leave their market alive for trading purposes. Once the blue are defeated, the next enemy will be the red. You should have those gates locked, but begin by collecting trees next to the cliff between your town center and the area you fought the blue. Get the wood there but beware of their crossbowmen killing your villagers on wood until you get villagers to cross the cliffs and continue to build a gate there and another gate down the road and possibly a town center to get over the cliff. You will find the area that you would have gotten the objective to build 3 castles, but you avoid that area by building some palisade walls after destroying their castle. you can use be sure no red units have walked in that area where you get the objective or instead of palisade walls, just build and locka gate. Begin by building military buildings and one of the 3 castles and fight the red enemies and defeat them entirely. Very important to defeat those red and blue before obtaining any objective to build 3 castles to defeand against the green. Then before getting the objective, build a line of gates all around the flags to make a lot of fortified walls and build plenty of towers next to the green flags. At this point you should have gotten to post imperial age and researched everything. If you got all the wood near the relic and all the wood over those cliffs, you can then bring some trebuchets to attack their stuff. You can use the trebuchet to destroy a couple of champions and maybe a siege unit. eventually they will bring their trebuchets there and unpack them. take advantage of fighting their trebuchets there so you don't have to deal with them later. Once you destroy everything that your trebuchets can reach, pack them up and move them to use them against other things. Then go get the objective scout, he will have whatever upgrades since he is created by the triggers and the green flags become yours. Build the third caslte inside and this will make them move all ther units out of their gates towards your castles. Lots of siege, paladins, and champions.fight until you defeat all their units. Then you will need to trebuchet their bombard towers. and defeat their siege onagers stuck over cliffs while you sacrifice a lot of mangudai deaing with them and then you can siege down their outer fortifications. Then you go inside and destroy their buildings until you reach the inner fortifications that involve a castle guarded by 3 monks and 3 siege onagers. continue to sacrifice mangudai until all 6 of those units are dead. Then finish by demolishing that castle to win the scenario.

GK#6:
Here you start in imperial age. Begin by blockading that bridge with gates. Get you economy going. The starting sobateurs purpose is to stop them from building a wonder. But it is difficult to get them over there. Start by once those gates are getting built, use your units as sacrifices, keep only few light cav for scouting purposes. The other units are sacrifices until you get and place a couple of sobateurs under their town center. This is very important as they are needed to stop them from building a wonder by using a sobateur to make the ai lose 1000 wood, 1000 gold, and 1000 stone. There is a lot of mining on this map enough for you to reach post imperial age. At about 40 minutes of in game time, now you should see a demolition ship spawned next to the bridge. The triggers will kill that and remove the bridge next to it and make the other bridge portions next to it broken and you can't walk through the bridge anymore. Now the fortification you built to defend yourself if they reach them with their trebs on the other side of the river it is ok to lose those. Go to find a snowy ice water crossing to the other side at the end of the map and build fortifications next to the trees and you also have some mining in that area as well. You will also get more sobateurs and be able to use siege onagers to break down trees to reach the enemy. Fight them until you reach them, they might have multiple wonder attempts so you might not be totally safe if they do a 4th or more wonder attempts due to our inability to rush them. You can only get 3 sobateurs next to their town center until you try to get a 4th there but will be very difficult at the beginning of the scenario. Then continue fighting until you can sucessfully trebuchet down a possible 4th+ wonder or begin to simply continue your attack to defeat them. Once you defeat them you win the scenario and the whole capmaign and get some steam achievements.

Holy crap! Thanks for all the advice, but I only created this discussion after I had finished all of the campaigns of the original, and wanted to get some opinions about it . AAA effort on the advice, You should make that a guide on AOE!

[Nialinius]

Into China you really gotta rush when Yellow start building a Wonder, especially as they're well defended