Feedback on the Yodit Campaign so far

[Sids]

Just finished the 3rd mission of the Ethiopian Campaign and noticed a few things:

Mission 1 took a long (looong) time. The forces you have access to are not cut out for direct assault on walled bases. Basically it amounts to sending wave after wave of scouts, spears and skirmishers (not a lot of gold) until the buildings go down. Enemies don't rely on villagers so raiding is impossible.

As for why there's little gold, the attacks come constantly from the start from all sides. You'll need a good number of archers to survive, and they need to constantly be replaced. Theres no monks, so the only way to heal is through garrisoning, and since there is literally no stone, you only have the TC for that. Only way i was able to survive was buying stone at the market and building a few towers and walls. That way the defenders can persevere. There is a much easier option to finish, but it is easily missed if you dont insist on searching everywhere. I would suggest a hint be added that there is a friendly dock on the map. With that, the rest of the difficulties would just make for a tough but exciting mission. If you don't know it's there you can be in for many hours of frustration.

Mission 2 was a bit of contrast. After the difficulty of the first, this one was rather too easy. The seas can be won with just 7 fire ships and the initial forces. A small band of crossbows, skirmishers, and pikes can sweep the land with a couple of monks. I rarely if ever got attacked. Cool mission design and concept, but the enemies could do with a buff.

Mission 3 was really cool. Only problem here was a bug at the end. After an initial big confrontation with Dagnajan, I just left the Orange base to die while I prepared my defences, expecting the forces to come through my base next. Once they destroyed the orange, they walked to the edge of the map and the objective of preventing him from getting through the pass was crossed out. That was me messing up there. Problem is, the mission didn't end in failure. instead he just stopped and waited for me to come by at my leisure to kill him, which won the mission.

[Freeman1302]

Hey thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. I think the reason why the first scenario is so hard is to push players to get to the end objectives as soon as possible. You can actually finish this mission in under 5 minutes but that's of course not as fun. Either way the goal is not to destroy red, it's to get Yodit to one of the three exits and the longer you wait the harder it will get.

For the second scenario, I'll pass it on. What difficulty did you play on?

And for the third scenario, that's clearly a bug which will be fixed. Dagnajan will never come through your base as the western pass is in Orange's base. I'll see if I can make it more clear.

[Bertie]

Here's my view on mission 1...

I basically wooden walled all the way around my base but left one path through the wall (like the sort of queue you'd get at a theme park) with some towers around it. Due to the way the AI works it saw that there was a free path into my base and tried to go down it every time, when actually the much better solution for them would have been to ignore that path and knock down some of the other walls which I'd just left undefended!

I kept my gold mining parties surrounded by around 30 skirmishers to keep them safe then spammed men at arms to get through the enemy base at the north. I did purchase the siege weapons and they helped speed things up a bit, but not vastly.

[Sids]

Originally posted by AoF_1302:

You can actually finish this mission in under 5 minutes but that's of course not as fun. Either way the goal is not to destroy red, it's to get Yodit to one of the three exits and the longer you wait the harder it will get.

I'm guessing you mean by the docks, in which case, you're right. The problem is that they're very easy to miss if you dont walk past the enemy base into a completely empty dead end corner of the map. That's why I thought a note in the 'scouts' or 'hints' section saying there's a "friendly fishing community in the area" or a mention when you pass through their siege town might be appropriate. It completely changes everything. If you didn't mean the docks, then I'll probably do the mission again, and look for another way :)

Originally posted by AoF_1302:

For the second scenario, I'll pass it on. What difficulty did you play on?

I was on moderate difficulty. Usually that's enough to push me to my limit.

[Freeman1302]

There are actually three exit points in Yodit 1 all marked by flags and each time with a different enemy defending it. It might be worth it to try all three for them if you like the scenario.

[Sids]

Probably will go back and give it another go eventually.

Finished mission 4 now, and the balance seems to be about right. Only thing there is that the hints say that controling the stelae is a good source of early income. I took that to mean they acted like a relic or feitoria, but didn't seem to have any effect at all. If it just meant because you'll then be expanding forward, there aren't any resources forward that arent abundant close to your base - no gold or stone outside your base.

Edit: There's alos a typo in the first hint.

[Freeman1302]

The stelae actually work like relics and feitoria but you need to keep control over them. If the flag changes color again, it means you're no longer getting the resources.

We will fix the hints. Thanks for reporting it.

[Sids]

They must be bugged then. I held two throughout the whole mission (military units next to them, flag in my colour), and my stone never increased after the initial mine ran out, gold only went up from the monastaries. At the end I captured them all and left all of my villagers idle. No resources came in.

[Avyctes]

I noticed that raiding enemy bases is kind of pointless in these new campaigns. Like in the first mission of the Berber campaign the enemies have no villagers at all and just a handful of trade carts (killing them does basically nothing). Yet they all send constant attacks at me, that while not very dangerous can only be stopped by destroying the buildings they come from. Would have liked the option of economic warfare as well.

[Freeman1302]

@Sides
That's weird because it worked earlier. I'll have a look at it.

@Avyctes
Yeah when making the previous AoF campaigns we decided it would be better for the AIs to cheat in scenarios because they couldn't match the economic skills of advanced players and often were in locations unsuitable for building up a good economy. Especially the Berber campaign now relies mostly on cheating but others like the Malian and some Ethiopian will still have both. Maybe I can try to improve the economic dependency for easier difficulties in the scenarios I made.

[Sids]

The last mission unfortunately seemed to have more than its share of issues:

• Possibly intentional, but the mobile town centre, not only looks like a trebuchet, but also unpacks and attacks like one.
  
• Some time after I captured my base, my "General" changed his name to "Go to Dock".
  
• Similarly, the palace I was meant to destroy was named "Go to Siege Workshop".
  
• When I had the 35 units, the voiceover implied that I was being given a petard. Instead, a monk appeared.
  
• While the AoE1 priest was a nice touch, for some reason it was untargettable and when it finished converting me the game crashed (tried that a couple of times).
  
• The hints say that you'll be able to trade after you capture the blue point inside the city. This is true, but initially, the market in the south is orange (also an ally), and completely unguarded (it later becomes blue). You can just build your own market and trade with it from the start.
  
• The palace can be easily destroyed from several areas prior by using a bombard cannon from a forest area.
  
• When I approach blue units before they join my team, they attack me (and then join).

While at first it looked like the mission was supposed to be showcasing the petard (trebuchet were blocked and rams are very ineffective against Ethiopian castles due to instant spawning melee units). this potential was kind of ruined by allowing bombard cannons (easy substitute for trebs) and only having the one castle at the end (the towers could have been castles).

While the emphasis is put on moving quickly, there wasnt really any reason to. The enemy never attacks and doesn't go beyond castle age, while you're free to build up.

The randomly spawning enemies seemed pretty dodgy. A few times, I would walk my squad of arbalests into an empty area, only to have a bunch of shotels and war elephants suddenly appear in melee range. Or walk into an area of military buildings that appear to be spawning units, until half the buildings are destroyed, and scorpions continue to spawn where the siege workshop used to be, and camels where the stables once were. Only stopping when all of the buildings are destroyed.

Edit: And there's a typo in the achievement text, "You have successfully completed all of the Todit campaign scenarios."

[WW]

I'll say it again here, Mission 5 is bugged. You do not receive the elite petards, which you really need because these fence barricades have insane hp. This mission is truly unplayable.

Multiple attempts at this, I set up camp, make 35 units as stated, then I get a message "use these elite petards to knock down their fortifications" or something like that, then the game scrolls to the entry point on the map and nothing happens, I scout over there and there are no units. Very frustrating as I enjoyed this campaign up to this point.

[Sids]

Originally posted by Streetlamp:

I'll say it again here, Mission 5 is bugged. You do not receive the elite petards, which you really need because these fence barricades have insane hp. This mission is truly unplayable.

Multiple attempts at this, I set up camp, make 35 units as stated, then I get a message "use these elite petards to knock down their fortifications" or something like that, then the game scrolls to the entry point on the map and nothing happens, I scout over there and there are no units. Very frustrating as I enjoyed this campaign up to this point.

Eventually you do. The first one that you describe, I got a monk instead. After that you get the petards every few minutes.If that doesn't work just get 5 or so bombards, it doesn't take so long for them to clear one. I mostly ignored the petards.

[Avyctes]

Originally posted by AoF_1302:

@Avyctes
Yeah when making the previous AoF campaigns we decided it would be better for the AIs to cheat in scenarios because they couldn't match the economic skills of advanced players and often were in locations unsuitable for building up a good economy. Especially the Berber campaign now relies mostly on cheating but others like the Malian and some Ethiopian will still have both. Maybe I can try to improve the economic dependency for easier difficulties in the scenarios I made.

This may be needed for the elite players, but I'm not one of those. Cheating AI bore me to death, it's the reason I never touched Rise of Nations again after I found the AI there does nothing but cheat even though I liked that game a lot. What I would prefer is increasing the difficulty in other ways. There's no reason why you can't give the AI massive piles of gold, twenty relics, a much higher population cap than the player and start them two ages ahead.

[Freeman1302]

We'll have to see what's still possible. A total overhaul of the AIs and the scenarios isn't very plausible atm but for some scenarios the reliance on economy can be made bigger.

For Yodit 5, it seems there's been a mixup with the latest versions and that's why there are so many bugs here. We'll make sure these bugs get fixed.

[Casju]

I'm playing on hard and found the first mission quite challenging, but not impossible. I did wall off using my TC as a choke point in order to quickly garrison villagers and get extra firing power so I barely lost any of the starting 7-11 military. This was really hard and took me a few tries. Once you're able to sustain production of skirmishers and spearmen from one building each, defending becomes a piece of cake. Later on, when you have 40+ vil, you've already won basically.

The 2nd one was really dissapointing. The AI that's supposed to be attacking you (the grey raiders) do nothing. They spawn after several minutes (min 5 I think?) and do not move from their spawn place. This made the mission boring and have no difficulty at all, which, compared to the fun and excitement of the first one, made it a bit dissapointing.

I'll start the 3rd one soon and tell you guys how it goes!