about Honfoglalas

[Muckelchen]

Has anyone played this on medium difficulty? Because this seems impossible to beat, all enemies spam so much units at you early on. Two (fully upgraded) castles weren't enough to hold. It's obvious they never play tested some of the campaign missions. Look I beat every other campaigns (except some historical missions which I am now playing) on medium and yes there were some other missions I struggled with but not compared to this one. I don't see how to beat it.

[ilam]

boom up to castle age and 4tc built and one castle built to make defense. Keep training hussar and horse archery . also it is better to use archery to make yellow villagers cannot afford to collect resource in early time. i think 100 villagers can support to fight enough

[Muckelchen]

Originally posted by Macil_110304:

boom up to castle age and 4tc built and one castle built to make defense. Keep training hussar and horse archery . also it is better to use archery to make yellow villagers cannot afford to collect resource in early time. i think 100 villagers can support to fight enough

Need more info, do I build tc right away? Do I enemy the bulgarians? I tried that, got 2000 gold but then they also attacked me with big army.
Also who I attack with my starting army first? Yellow or orange?

[moonpig]

I had to restart several times because I would always face the same problem. Great Moravia (Yellow) trashing me over with their siege and swordsmen spam, literally saw lines of their units just constantly rushing over to my base who would go on to overwhelm me. East Francia(Red) and their Paladins and Skirmishers were not helping and because I was desperate for gold I made the Bulgarians(Green) an enemy but I wasn't expecting them to bumrush me right afterwards... so yeah...

Not the best way, I'm sure there's a far better method but anyway what I did was immediately attack Yellow with my starting Light Cav and collect the free Villagers after destroying their outer TC, split up my Cav Archers and camp their gold mines - you're going to want to harass them as much as possible and keep them from teching up but eventually they will manage to advance which during this time I walled off(with a gate) the closest shallow that is near their base but left the southern side unwalled, more on that below. (I even built a Dock in it for some Galleys/Galleons since the AI tends to be generally helpless against those). Also any sheep gathered and stored in the pen for the trickle of food.

The idea I had was to delay building a TC and rely on my starting Villagers to collect what resources I could and utilise the pillaging mechanic. Doing with what I could with Yellow, I turned my attention to the Avars (Orange) for the extra resources (the amount is pretty helpful) so that I could continue to spam Light Cav and eventually transition into Knights so I could tear down their buildings faster. Wiping them out also gives me a free shot into harassing Red's exposed woodline and a portion of their undefended base in the south which also allowed me to pillage them.

More or less after I start raiding Red, Yellow will likely have taken back their gold mines and start hitting your base so I quickly placed down a TC and two Castles by the southern shallow, the reason for that is so that you can funnel their units so your Castles can lure them into a killzone which your Galleys/Galleons would've softened them up beforehand. The AI will not attack your walls/gates if there is an opening elsewhere. If any siege units are nearby, I had a a squad of Magyar Huszar's ready to take care of any Rams and such who would then retreat back to the Castles for healing.

Eventually Red might start attacking almost always your outer exposed buildings such as the initial Archery Range. This is good because this means that they'll likely then charge into the Castles afterwards but for extra protection, I garrisoned a couple of Cav Archers(for some reason you can only train regular Archers) to increase the firepower and ensure that they cannot breach, just need to keep the Huszars on alert for any siege weapons.

It's a slow method for sure which'll likely end up as a slogfest since until you destroy a faction, you can't advance to the next age. It is possible to perhaps destroy the Bulgarians as soon as but the threat of another enemy coming through my exposed side with even more dangerous units was too offputting so I just ignored them completely.

[Muckelchen]

Originally posted by BritishTeapot:

I had to restart several times because I would always face the same problem. Great Moravia (Yellow) trashing me over with their siege and swordsmen spam, literally saw lines of their units just constantly rushing over to my base who would go on to overwhelm me. East Francia(Red) and their Paladins and Skirmishers were not helping and because I was desperate for gold I made the Bulgarians(Green) an enemy but I wasn't expecting them to bumrush me right afterwards... so yeah...

Not the best way, I'm sure there's a far better method but anyway what I did was immediately attack Yellow with my starting Light Cav and collect the free Villagers after destroying their outer TC, split up my Cav Archers and camp their gold mines - you're going to want to harass them as much as possible and keep them from teching up but eventually they will manage to advance which during this time I walled off(with a gate) the closest shallow that is near their base but left the southern side unwalled, more on that below. (I even built a Dock in it for some Galleys/Galleons since the AI tends to be generally helpless against those). Also any sheep gathered and stored in the pen for the trickle of food.

The idea I had was to delay building a TC and rely on my starting Villagers to collect what resources I could and utilise the pillaging mechanic. Doing with what I could with Yellow, I turned my attention to the Avars (Orange) for the extra resources (the amount is pretty helpful) so that I could continue to spam Light Cav and eventually transition into Knights so I could tear down their buildings faster. Wiping them out also gives me a free shot into harassing Red's exposed woodline and a portion of their undefended base in the south which also allowed me to pillage them.

More or less after I start raiding Red, Yellow will likely have taken back their gold mines and start hitting your base so I quickly placed down a TC and two Castles by the southern shallow, the reason for that is so that you can funnel their units so your Castles can lure them into a killzone which your Galleys/Galleons would've softened them up beforehand. The AI will not attack your walls/gates if there is an opening elsewhere. If any siege units are nearby, I had a a squad of Magyar Huszar's ready to take care of any Rams and such who would then retreat back to the Castles for healing.

Eventually Red might start attacking almost always your outer exposed buildings such as the initial Archery Range. This is good because this means that they'll likely then charge into the Castles afterwards but for extra protection, I garrisoned a couple of Cav Archers(for some reason you can only train regular Archers) to increase the firepower and ensure that they cannot breach, just need to keep the Huszars on alert for any siege weapons.

It's a slow method for sure which'll likely end up as a slogfest since until you destroy a faction, you can't advance to the next age. It is possible to perhaps destroy the Bulgarians as soon as but the threat of another enemy coming through my exposed side with even more dangerous units was too offputting so I just ignored them completely.

Thanks, that helped. Actually you can kill yellow with your starting army. So what I did was similar what you did. Don't build tc at the start, wait for it as long as possible, because if you don't build a tc it will take pretty long till red attacks you. At the beginning I collected what I needed (try to find 20 sheep as soon as possible to have a good food eco), mostly food and gold for upgrades and a few light cav, then I collected a lot of stone for the 2 castles.While you do that attack yellow. First kill the outer tc in the south. There shouln't be much vills or soldiers. Then kill the next outer tc of yellow which is southwest of the previous one. Also this isn't much protected. Then go to the right of the base of yellow (avoid the castles) and kill the vills at the gold. Then go the last tc and kill all the vills. If they garisson in a tower or tc, just go away with your army and they will come out again and you can kill them. Then kill the 2 towers and the last tc. If he has no vills or tcs left he will resign soon. And then I pretty much did what you said: walled of the left of your base, then 2 castles to protect your eco. The Rest is easy.
Oh and I never bothered the Bulgarians.

[matt]

Not happening. No way to make it happen!

[Muckelchen]

Just follow what I did. With that strategy its really doable.

[[MadTs] Phyrys]

I ignored the Avars for the first part, going straight on the yellow little scum to take him out of the line asap, then struggled to fend off red while getting my castle age from the Avars cold dead hands. Then I turtled like they're no tomorrow and catched on red tech before streamrolling him.

Just ignore yellow isolated castle, you'll obliterate his three TC sooner than you expected it !

Oh uh... And my food eco was done by exclusively fishing ships until I got my own TC.

[AAOE | Raff0s]

Originally posted by BritishTeapot:

Thanks British Teapot! I´m glad I found this conversation. I was playing this battle for 4 days.
And finally won following this slow but effective strategy. I´m so happy I got the golden medal !!
I did a few things different. Everything was going normal as you explain: killed the 2 yellow´s TC and killed orange after that.

I started collecting stone and I built the 2 castles in the right side of the map, in the rocky mountatins. I created my funel there and use husar magyar to kill mostly red trebuchets. You were wright, I left a little hole on my stone wall and de IA went to the funnel.

After that, with my TC built in the mountains, I built a dock and started transporting petards to yellow bas killing the towers, barracks and the 3rd TC. I decided that tactic because all were on imperial age and my castle age army was not enough for battle.
After most of the important buildings down, I just killed Great Moravia´s villagers with husar Magyar.

The rest was just to start booming and destroy the west Franks. Bulgaria was never my enemy.
At one point, I did not how to win this game. By myself, I reached the part of the two castles. But I never built them in the exact funel position. That "hole" trick was my salvation. I think I played more than 40 times! I don´t know hom many games saved I have lol. Even onece, I killed the Byzantines just to see if Bulgaria would have gave me gold or extra army LMFAO. I was very lost! So, thanks again for this wonderful community and for taking the time to write this beautiful essay.

Regars drom Argentina British Teapot and Muckelchen. You brought the probles and shared the resault. Great job guys!!

[wcbarney]

Finished this successfully a few days ago on "Hard." I put most of my villies on wood, with a couple on stone and eventually a couple on gold. Built a dock on the northern portion of the river and spammed fishing boats. Kept spamming light cavalry and a couple of cavalry archers & took out Yellow -- first their middle TC, then their northern one, and finally their southern one, killing all their villies. As Yellow was resigning I attacked Orange & defeated them in short order. Then finally built a TC and a castle next to the shallows near where the sheep pen was; built another TC a little further north near some gold. Boomed and aged to Imperial, and then went after Red with trebuchets and fully upgraded cavalry, infantry, skirmishers.