Replayable campaign missions?

[Silver]

Do you like the concept? I dont. I prefer it when mission objectives have you explore most of the map rather than winning in 1 of 2 ways that leave you only with 60% of the map explored.

Latest example for me: Mission 3 in Tamerlane campaign. Huge map, many cities from Ryazan over Astrakhan to Toktamish's camp and Genoese merchants, as well as two golden horde camps on the opposite corners of the map waiting to help you out if you send an envoy to them and fulfill their demands, but you win by destroying 2 cities and dont even have to do any of the secondary objectives and yup, classic "i'll start building a wonder to speed up the gameplay" AI mechanic to make you boom your economy and break a sweat due to the timer. So I went to Astrakhan and destroyed the city along with the wonder and Toktamish's camp wasnt too far away so I did that and already won, having had no chance to take on Ryazan or even figure out where the Genoese were on the map.

[BirbNotBird]

Best alternative was to cheese the enemy by keeping their vital building alive (TCs, or different in some cases)

I dislike the nature of those map, at least I would prefer a "you want to win now by click something?" over defeats 2 of 3 of your enemies.

[Flakstruk]

Not a fan of the capture the town to get tribute maps myself.
However, you need variation with so many scenarios overall

[James3157]

The most obvious example of campaigns (and not just missions) not seeming like they are replayable are William Wallace tutorial campaign (because it is too easy even on hard and only the last mission in the slightest might have replayability despite even the last mission being easy on hard difficulty) and unfortunately the newest campaign additions to RoR dlc as well. Only the last missions from First Punic War and Ascent of Egypt might have occasional (but not frequent similar to the last William Wallace mission) replayability if set to hard difficulty.

[BirbNotBird]

Honest I have to disagree somewhat with you James. There a few worth replaying in the new additions of ROR campaign, but most of them all fall under way too late to be interesting into the campaign and have early missions be really boring, especially Phyrrus.

Notably to say there are far worse campaigns to replay in base game AOE2 imo, because how mechanical bad it is and it makes me wish for a better rework.

Tariq ibn Ziyad: Decent narrative, but campaign dumbs down to you fighting a horde of infinite resources spam. Could be fun, but it takes away the narrative since you aware they are all spawn from military buildings to destroy. Or if you want a no build, they throws you into one of the objectively worst map in the category. No heal, units will likely off like 30 to 70% health by the time you get to the last group of enemy.

Gajah Mada: Having worst two missions of the base game AOE2. One of which includes you babysitting some AIs that won't build colonies unless you fickle around with it. And the last is the worst timed mission when you have to deal with infinite pirate camp spawning and fog of war complex city layout, while having to play an Zerg + Elephant civ against a heavily fortified base in every turn. With Dynasty of India patch, the last map even becomes worse since side objective can be a huge time sink to invest for main purpose.

I have to list those two out because:
1. Confused navigating. You have no clue where to progress. Boring and pretty frustrated to play fair.
2. Immersion broken. It way too clear that you realize how the map works and even to the point why the AI works that way, sometimes not as intended.

I do hope for your reply about opinions on the three campaigns of ROR, I want to understand your perspective on it. Having viewed on how campaign of Age of mythology designed, I would say ROR get a 3.5/5 in map design, objectives are too fixed in some specific ways to play in some maps and they have huge diversity in the latter, but still constrained to specific build meta of civs.

[James3157]

Originally posted by BirbNotBird:

I do hope for your reply about opinions on the three campaigns of ROR, I want to understand your perspective on it. Having viewed on how campaign of Age of mythology designed, I would say ROR get a 3.5/5 in map design, objectives are too fixed in some specific ways to play in some maps and they have huge diversity in the latter, but still constrained to specific build meta of civs.

I have only completed the one sword difficulty campaign from RoR, but only on standard difficulty where overall I enjoy the story content and narratives, but at least on standard difficulty I think that the missions from the one sword difficulty is challenging enough to be kept interesting for potential replay ability in the future including for harder difficulties than standard. Campaigns I have never played before contrary to the campaigns I have had previous experience with from the original Age of Empires II game (such as Age of Conquerors expansion and Age of Kings, but with one exception being Saladin since it is two sword difficulty and I struggled with moderate even from the first mission) I have a tendency to start with standard difficulty instead of moderate or hard difficulty. I do agree that the Tariq campaign seems to be overall easy and perhaps easier than it should be, but due to my lack of experience in playing this game from HD (since I never played it contrary to the original) I only played on standard difficulty first. As for Gajah Madah if I were to be honest if I have not played that campaign yet, but I probably will play it eventually.

[James3157]

Also worth mentioning with the fourth Tariq mission. There is an easy way to win this, but it will take longer to win this way. You do this by getting armory bonuses from both directions and you have to primarily focus on your hero unit for taking out units to make it easier for your other units to pass through the mountains, but you only need to do this from one direction. The fourth Tariq mission I think is not hard, but just annoying and might require some micro as well with your hero unit.

[BirbNotBird]

Originally posted by James3157:

Also worth mentioning with the fourth Tariq mission. There is an easy way to win this, but it will take longer to win this way. You do this by getting armory bonuses from both directions and you have to primarily focus on your hero unit for taking out units to make it easier for your other units to pass through the mountains, but you only need to do this from one direction. The fourth Tariq mission I think is not hard, but just annoying and might require some micro as well with your hero unit.

Tariq and Gajah Mada on easy seem to be fit with their sword, enough challenging but not too hard on standard.

But playing with Hard mode and you can pretty much see how the difficulty are tailored around "expect you to know how it's work".

Tariq is alright, except no build part. But thank to Tariq I learnt about tunneling, which is a pretty "cheese" strategy. Enemy with throw with the ratio of 5:1 you most of latter campaign nonstop. Playing fair means good luck as they will knock on every single side of your base.

Tariq 4 suck, really suck. By the design of map, I expect it would be a multiple choice. But like you said, cheese strategy.

Gajh Mada is just badly triggers/bad rework. It was built around an idea that you expect to know the layout to play it, and it's suck that they have good potential. I spent ages trying to kill my allies just to force them to build some colonies, and ages navigating my troops through multiple paths in last mission. They expect you to go to route B, but they throw more A C D in and wirh heavy fortified army that deter your Malays in every corner.

Ar least Le Loi, which has same design as Tariq's inhuman wave, was enough interesting that they aren't go with insane ratio, though still creates an interesting experience.

[hankshandy]

for replayability, i strongly recommend filthydelphia's Three Kingdoms 1, 2 and 3 custom campaigns. only 3 scenarios, but can be replayed from different selectable factions at the start. the first has six available factions, the second has 8 and the last one has 12, all with different bonuses, objectives and units, covering all types of mission aoe2 has to offer. not only does that mean a minimum of 26 possible replay perspectives, but some of them can be won in different ways and are worth replaying in their own right. its like a DLC in its own right and it's free.

[Boshiken]

i played this mission just once - a long time ago
so what is the problem exactly?
can you not play this mission like you want to - do all quests and map?
as i remember - only thing was the timing - you had to attack a city very early

[Crossil]

Very hard to do a genocide route when the game boots you out after a time period or after completing only one particular objective.

For instance, York. The whole of the British Isles to sack and an upper limit on how many players you're allowed to kill before bring thrown out of the scenario.

At least I got to butcher the whole of the Middle East in Tamerlane 5.

There should be mods for such scenarios that let you kill everything.

[Boshiken]

Originally posted by Crossil:

Very hard to do a genocide route when the game boots you out after a time period or after completing only one particular objective.

For instance, York. The whole of the British Isles to sack and an upper limit on how many players you're allowed to kill before bring thrown out of the scenario.

At least I got to butcher the whole of the Middle East in Tamerlane 5.

There should be mods for such scenarios that let you kill everything.

still don't understand your problem
York - you can do whatever you want - even win with all options by timing

[Crossil]

Originally posted by Boshiken:

Originally posted by Crossil:

Very hard to do a genocide route when the game boots you out after a time period or after completing only one particular objective.

For instance, York. The whole of the British Isles to sack and an upper limit on how many players you're allowed to kill before bring thrown out of the scenario.

At least I got to butcher the whole of the Middle East in Tamerlane 5.

There should be mods for such scenarios that let you kill everything.

still don't understand your problem
York - you can do whatever you want - even win with all options by timing

Aight, sure, maybe you can in this one, but needing to tiptoe around victory objectives is annoying. And in some cases it's not even possible because you're limited in how much destruction you can inflict on certain players. And then there's AI allies that can complicate things. I just can't get into a proper war criminal mindset if I have to keep enemies alive.

What about Pachacuti 3? I've been able to break up red's bases, but killing off purple on a timer is very difficult if not impossible.

What about Vlad 4? Again, I can destroy a couple of bases within the timer, but how exactly due you crack open the Ottoman camp in a timely manner without siege?

Gajah Mada 5 would also be doable if not for infinity spam and the timer.

Edward Longshanks 2 also puts you on a timer against an enemy that has two big cities with multiple Castles as well.

Grand Dukes 2 might be doable with a proper route? Still, a timer.

Tbf, I've found exploits in several scenarios that allowed me to go for genocide routes (like Lake Poyang where you're facing an enemy with supertowers, or Kotyan 3 with infinite Mongol spam, or Bari 1 with the normally unreachable Saracen Castle inside Bari), but these timer based scenarios give you very few tools against heavily fortified enemies in defense scenarios. There are simply no sequence breaks for some of these scenarios that give enough time to commit atrocities I'm intent on committing.

[Boshiken]

Originally posted by Crossil:

Originally posted by Boshiken:

still don't understand your problem
York - you can do whatever you want - even win with all options by timing

Aight, sure, maybe you can in this one, but needing to tiptoe around victory objectives is annoying. And in some cases it's not even possible because you're limited in how much destruction you can inflict on certain players. And then there's AI allies that can complicate things. I just can't get into a proper war criminal mindset if I have to keep enemies alive.

What about Pachacuti 3? I've been able to break up red's bases, but killing off purple on a timer is very difficult if not impossible.

What about Vlad 4? Again, I can destroy a couple of bases within the timer, but how exactly due you crack open the Ottoman camp in a timely manner without siege?

Gajah Mada 5 would also be doable if not for infinity spam and the timer.

Edward Longshanks 2 also puts you on a timer against an enemy that has two big cities with multiple Castles as well.

Grand Dukes 2 might be doable with a proper route? Still, a timer.

Tbf, I've found exploits in several scenarios that allowed me to go for genocide routes (like Lake Poyang where you're facing an enemy with supertowers, or Kotyan 3 with infinite Mongol spam, or Bari 1 with the normally unreachable Saracen Castle inside Bari), but these timer based scenarios give you very few tools against heavily fortified enemies in defense scenarios. There are simply no sequence breaks for some of these scenarios that give enough time to commit atrocities I'm intent on committing.

so far these Missions are not that hard even with timers
you can use the strategy on fandom or make a better one of your own
or just copy a youtube video
thought there is even a way to destroy the supertowers
usually there is a historical background and best way - like in York
so i also wondered - why there are so many other winning conditions

[Silver]

Just experienced Prithviraj 3. Same BS scenario. 45 minutes in-game timer (just 30 real world minutes at 1.5 speed), get from one end of the map to another to grab the princess and get her to the wonder.

3 main routes - a winding mountain route on the left, a central one through the jungle, and a coastal one on the right where you have to fight a bunch of crocodiles. You can only experience one in a single playthrough.

[James3157]

Originally posted by Silver:

Just experienced Prithviraj 3. Same BS scenario. 45 minutes in-game timer (just 30 real world minutes at 1.5 speed), get from one end of the map to another to grab the princess and get her to the wonder.

3 main routes - a winding mountain route on the left, a central one through the jungle, and a coastal one on the right where you have to fight a bunch of crocodiles. You can only experience one in a single playthrough.

At least on standard difficulty this mission is not hard at all and just simply need to be familiar with the map. Missions I think that have the least amount of replay ability are the ones that are either annoying, way too hard (especially for anyone who is not a pro at AoE II: DE that are having difficulty in dealing with civilizations spamming attacks constantly), or too easy.