Le Loi tips

[Mr.America]

I just finished the Le Loi campaign on hard and would like to share some hints for this rather difficult campaign, on par with the Alaric and Tariq campaigns as well as some others.

Mission 1: DO NOT ENGAGE THE MING ARMY / BLUE. They have neigh inpenetrable fortresses with only castle age tech. The win condition is simply to liberate all villages, which is far simpler. Get a few monks a good army of your rattan archerss, a couple rams and enough spears to fill em for faster movement. Put Castles into your allies bases and scout out where the patrols are moving along, then use your archers to lure them one by one if you can (hit the final element of their patrol group).

Mission 2:The starting units are enough to clear the path ahead. Gather a bit of stone until you have 250 (two towers) and carefully move east and destroy the camp. Meanwhile use your villagers to get your archer upgrades and then just get wood and gold for more rattan archers. As soon as you have the camp destroyed rush all your units back to the northern gate and destroy the tower in the path. Defend the central plaza and this should be doable.

Mission 3: Blue will only start doing stuff as soon as you attack their central base OR you meet the mountain rebels. Carefully move your injured units to safety and keep them there as you proceed to get the turtle monk. You can move him and a villager next to the turtle tower (eastern side) with a transport ship and it counts for the subquest. If it doesn't trigger fell a few trees and move him closer. As soon as you have everything ready start your base and send your meele unit to destroy some of his docks (you'll most likely only get one) then go for demo ships and cannon galleons. Do not bother with castles, just put up towers and fences to slow down his eventual tide.As soon as you have heavy demo ships (rush that) destroy his docks, then build cannon galleons in the central river (watch out for monks) and on the open sea. As soon as you have destryoed everything you can from the shore, move a few villagers via transport ships to the bottom half of blue's base, build a dock at the river and produce a few more galleons. Having two separate bases helps alot in this mission.

Mission 4: The start is brutal, do not bother freeing the village for now. Go for imperial skirmishers and halberdiers both FU, then get 2-3 trebs (the gold in your base is just barely enoug hfor that), Aim for 30 villagers the rest army, Aim for 60 skirms (can oneshot their annoying knights). Liberate the village (tower will switch to alliy, no need to destroy it, just kill the units), get the relic, Carefully Kill green, as soon as his castle is gone blue and cyan will both attack your units AND your base, so be prepared for that. You will need something to destroy trebs (halbs will do). After that it's an easy ride, I recommend a second unit producing base and a castle near the final fortress.

Mission 5: Get the buffalos, produce villagers up to 80 and initially fully concentrate on destroying the transports. Go for imperial skirmishers and Trebs (4 is good). Build two castles in your eastern base. Divide your economy thus: Eastern base is for wood and unit production, western base is for food and central camp only produces skirmishers (Go for about 15 at a time to kill the cart. If you're careful you won't aggro the cavalry and the other units are usually halbs/archers and can be killed reasonably well with skirmishers. Get a 60 skirm 4 treb deathball going from the eastern base and start moving them to the northern towers and take out everything along the way. As soon as you have that destroyed be prepared for an onslaught of purple and Cyan (mostly Cyan). If you have your castles on purples side they can easily kill his units (granted he had no carts reach him). Cyan is trickier: Go for a mixture of light cav, halbs and skirms and just patrol them right into their forward base, keep producing and sending them in, you need to keep him away. Meanwhile attack the central bae with your previous deathball, or else they'll decimate your western ricefields. Destroy the North-Eastern purple base with the same deathball and then proceed to destroy cyan. I am not sure what actually triggers the win, maybe you just need to get all the Ming army in the city, But I had to destroy half of it on the way..

Mission 6: Another brutal one. Immidiatly research chemistry and make a few cannons. Try to get stone ASAP and build two castles in the western base, try to close of the section on the right that allows blue and cyan to get into your base, also, don't forget the two easy relics on your side (your monk might be killed, give him a halb as protection). The first rush will come almost immidiatly (10 minutes in or sth) and you need to somehow kill of their trebs and a proportionally huge army of archers and knights. Use rattan archers and elephants on the eastern base in combination with the cannons and take out that base piece by piece. Blue and Cyan only attack the western base in my game, so you should be safe to move all your units there (risky tho) then proceed to do the same thing with the western vanguard base. It will be harder, as that base will field loads of troops AND will be aided by the main army as well. Once they're dead, build up some more production buildings and crush the central fortress. There is a lot of gold and stone on the map, do not worry about gold intensive units, your real enemy is time, as you will almost never have enough time to do anything. Liberatly garrison your injured units in your western castles.

Good luck :)

[Thor II]

Mission 1:

The problem is that it seems that the Handicap of this first mission has been modified, it seems that everything we do is slower, more ineffective than the enemy or than in other campaigns.

The only (and gigantic) problem is to prevent the allies from dying, the rest is simple. The obvious solution is to build a castle (and new walls) at the base of each ally, but the speed with which everything happens makes it very difficult.

There are many, many problems. The stones are not easy to reach, you need to spend time mining while going to Castle Age, then you have to take your villagers to the allied base avoiding the patrols and then you have to repeat all this to the second ally.

When you reach the first ally, both are already practically dead, and then you have to protect your castle at the base of the first ally (And the Chinese are more than capable of destroying your castle and that of your ally) while finding and mining more stone, and to reach this stone you need to free one of the villages and then avoid patrols to take your villagers to the second ally's base and build the castle.

It just happens too fast for all this to be done.It's possible, of course, but it's a work of millimetric precision, it would take so long, so many attempts, that all the fun would have ended when it was done.

[Mr.America]

Originally posted by Thor II:

Mission 1:

The problem is that it seems that the Handicap of this first mission has been modified, it seems that everything we do is slower, more ineffective than the enemy or than in other campaigns.

The only (and gigantic) problem is to prevent the allies from dying, the rest is simple. The obvious solution is to build a castle (and new walls) at the base of each ally, but the speed with which everything happens makes it very difficult.

There are many, many problems. The stones are not easy to reach, you need to spend time mining while going to Castle Age, then you have to take your villagers to the allied base avoiding the patrols and then you have to repeat all this to the second ally.

When you reach the first ally, both are already practically dead, and then you have to protect your castle at the base of the first ally (And the Chinese are more than capable of destroying your castle and that of your ally) while finding and mining more stone, and to reach this stone you need to free one of the villages and then avoid patrols to take your villagers to the second ally's base and build the castle.

It just happens too fast for all this to be done.It's possible, of course, but it's a work of millimetric precision, it would take so long, so many attempts, that all the fun would have ended when it was done.

Yes. But standard difficulty is for fun, hard difficulty... is for hard difficulty's sake :/

[Novi]

Nah, this mission isn't nearly as tight as Thor makes it sound. I think I did it second try on hard. Add some archers/spears to your starting army and you can get access to stone easily. No need to run past patrols with vills either. I simply cleared the way with army (you do not need a big one).

Don't defend with just castles. Castles (and walls) are the basis for defense of course, but you can play to your civ's strengths and use the incredibly tanky Rattan archers who counter almost everything that the Chinese send at your allies. In both bases, I made a group of 10 rattan archers + 1 or 2 monks, set them to stand ground stance and patrol behind the walls. Your ally will counter what you can't (mainly just the rams).

Don't underestimate slinging. Your allies can build decent armies, but they simply do not get enough resources. Send them your spare food (you will likely have much since you'll go for archers/rams yourself anyway) and gold.

Your own base will not get attacked, so you don't need to waste resources on protecting it.

The second mission on the other hand was one of the hardest in the game. It was a real test of endurance. I don't know if you can rush it somehow, but that would probably be the best strat.

[Mr.America]

Originally posted by Novi:

Nah, this mission isn't nearly as tight as Thor makes it sound. I think I did it second try on hard. Add some archers/spears to your starting army and you can get access to stone easily. No need to run past patrols with vills either. I simply cleared the way with army (you do not need a big one).

Don't defend with just castles. Castles (and walls) are the basis for defense of course, but you can play to your civ's strengths and use the incredibly tanky Rattan archers who counter almost everything that the Chinese send at your allies. In both bases, I made a group of 10 rattan archers + 1 or 2 monks, set them to stand ground stance and patrol behind the walls. Your ally will counter what you can't (mainly just the rams).

Don't underestimate slinging. Your allies can build decent armies, but they simply do not get enough resources. Send them your spare food (you will likely have much since you'll go for archers/rams yourself anyway) and gold.

Your own base will not get attacked, so you don't need to waste resources on protecting it.

The second mission on the other hand was one of the hardest in the game. It was a real test of endurance. I don't know if you can rush it somehow, but that would probably be the best strat.

I "rushed" it in the best way possible I think. You can soley concentrate on upgrading your units as they're marching east, then build 2 defensive towers along the way at choke points (one on the maps border on a cliff, one near the camp and funnel enemy units towards it carefully, hence why I recommend gathering 250 stone for 2 towers. As soon as you have that camp destroyed you should concentrate on getting more rattan archers (only rattan archers) and maybe also use one monk for the relic and some knight conversions to hold off rams/trebs in the main fortress.

The only issue with rushing it, is, that your ally will not produce a constant stream of escaping units, but will only send them out in groups of ten and they can get stuck and killed if their path is occupied with enemies. So you need to crush the camp ASAP and then throw everything else at a mad defense of the main plaza or you'll never win.

[Thor II]

Originally posted by Mr.America:

Yes. But standard difficulty is for fun, hard difficulty... is for hard difficulty's sake :/

Yes, but in this mission standard is hard, and hard is the extreme. You can't tell the difference between hard and moderate. It's complicated note difference even between the hard and the standard.

Originally posted by Novi:

Nah, this mission isn't nearly as tight as Thor makes it sound. I think I did it second try on hard. Add some archers/spears to your starting army and you can get access to stone easily. No need to run past patrols with vills either. I simply cleared the way with army (you do not need a big one).

I repeat everything I said above, when we arrived at Castle Age, the allies are already practically dead, the patrols are nothing small, we have to release one of the villages to have access to the stone to a second castle, and after that we will have to do micro of 2 different armies so as not to be caught by the mangonels, while we release the villages with a third. It's a matter of millimetric accuracy, an error, 30 seconds delay, and we lose.

I must admit, I've never been trying to send resources to the allies. Mainly because it seems that the collection of resources is more ineffective than in other missions and because I think they are just useless allies themselves to make the mission even more difficult. Is it that hard to garnish some archers in the castle instead of watching them die again with each new wave? If we were to be attacked, this mission would be easy.

[Gorilianul]

I actually eliminated blue/teal on the first mission with: rattan archers, the monks I got from the quest, light cav (4-5 to destroy the mangos), the hero unit to kill the swordsmen and lots and lots of rams, it wasn't easy, I had to build a castle in his towers to be able to keep the siege. Hard ofc. I garrisoned most towers with crossbows in the allies bases to kill of the infantry/swordsmen and kept some knights to destroy the rams. That was all the defense I needed in their towns. Build some palisade, a row, in front of their walls so the rams will have to tear down my palisade first, time in which I would destroy the rams. The hard part was killing the endless unit spam, even with a castle filled with 20 rattan archers blue somehow manged to surround it with chukonus/light cav/swordsmen/rams and I could barely hold any units outside. But once I killed off his waves + reinforcements he would just suicide whatever unit got instantly produced, no more reserves to make unit spam. Then I just sent about 20 rams and destroyed all of his production buildings/castles.

First I destroyed his southwestern little base that kept attacking orange, then destroyed the base below red, then destroyed the castle in the middle, then the eastern base and finally the northwestern base which took me about an hour, I had to also make unit spam to counter his unit spam with rattans and light cav. I had 3 relics, that meant 1 gold per second also a lot of gold miners, had thousands in gold.
Anyway in case you didn't notice Rattans>Chukonus. They take them out everytime even at a ration of 2 chukos per 1 rats.