Kotyan Khan 5 is pretty hard

[Silver]

I have no idea what the devs were thinking when they designed this mission. You have two choices, either stay in Hungary or go to Bulgaria. Both can become insanely tough if you do not follow a strict build order in the first 30 mins of the game.

If you stay in hungary, you eek an existence near your hungarian ally, building stuff around the ruins of a collapsed wonder surrounded by cliffs. Not much space to build a lot of stuff, and while your ally is initially powerful, he soon gets SWARMED by the austrian player who spams fully upgraded elite teutonic knights and paladins, both pretty immune to arrow fire, as well as trebuchets that can take down castles and towers from afar, and a sea of pikemen just in case you try getting clever by sallying out with your cavalry and destroying their siege. With faith and heresy researched, basically an invincible army.

If you choose to move to Bulgaria, you initially have a bit of an upper hand because the bulgarian player, while incapable of doing anything himself, periodically gifts you 10 konniks. However, you have a small time window to eliminate the yellow player because if you take your sweet time, he'll build a wonder with a countdown timer, AND the byzantines will also turn hostile and they are much closer to your base in the south. Thus you will be left facing two large cities that flank your base and therefore even your initial resource advantage wont last you for long.

I might retry the bulgarian route, but seriously, this scenario is not relaxing at all and you have to do the usual crap involving 35+ villager boom and flood the battlefield with your own units.

[[T.R.] James]

I have an idea. What about improving your skill instead of crying?

[Silver]

Originally posted by cM´ | Er Kamayú Andalú:

I have an idea. What about improving your skill instead of crying?

i have a better idea. learn the map layout, cleverly build walls and cripple the predictable AI. way easier and no skill needed.

[Daruwind]

Wut? It was pretty easy, hungarian part at least. You get big enough army, conquer at least two camps while booming with two TCs. First wave of red might be issue but nothing you cannot manage....rest is easy.

[Silver]

managed to beat it on 2nd try in bulgaria. key was to take your starting army back up north the moment you've freed the villagers and then rendezvous with the 1st batch of 10 konniks while you build a siege workshop and castle ASAP and train some capped rams that you send north and upgrade them to siege rams while they're on their way. Dont wait for infantry to man them, the konniks, once they start dying, will spawn dismounted konniks you can put into your rams to increase their speed. Key is to start bashing in those gates as early as possible and then use your trebs to take out towers and your rams to seek out military buildings, while your main army, now reinforced by the 2nd and 3rd free spawn of konniks, keeps the enemy army distracted. I think yellow player surrenders once his castles are down or you destroy his wonder.

After that the byzantine player is annoying, but defeatable. He'll build a castle and some towers north of your location, so you can get rid of that once you order your army back to base on their way back south. Then use trebs to take out his river fortification and all that remains is his base. I would invest in some paladins over hussars tho, as his elite cataphracts and halberdiers can otherwise make short work of your army.

[CrazyRabidWolf]

I did it my first try going to Bulgaria on hard.

[Bad Name]

It's not that difficult. Kotyan 2 is the brutal one.

[Flakstruk]

The point is to be fun. Theres no reason you have to do thungs on hard setting if thats what youre doing.

From memory i leaned pretty hard on trade and trash unit spam to keep the ai occupied

[BirbNotBird]

In Hungarian, you focus on pumping your army fast enough and vital to raid and harass.

Keep aiming for production building of red.