Rebalance Hot & Spicy achivement - protect Tabasco [Montezuma's Company, 3rd mission]

[Andy_Steelrail]

Good day.

This was already a difficult achievement. People were recording videos. I found about 5 such videos, but the methods outlined there do not work now (Dec.2023).

After improving the AI, the achievement needs to be rebalanced. Now the AI is sending everything it has to destroy the city center of Tabasco. In particular, 4 cannon galleons. Previously, these ships simply scouted the map and did not participate in the attack.
4 ships simply destroy the city center with a couple of salvos. All you can do is bring 1 monk or ship, but they will not become a problem for the AI.

Other troops: conquistadors, rams, infantry, knights can be destroyed.
It is impossible to destroy 4 cannon galleons, which are sailing primarily to destroy the city center. There's just nothing.

These ships should not participate in the first attack!

[Boshiken]

interresting - got the achievment
1. all there is - destroy - 1 ram and some cannon gallons with you start units
2. building 1st castle

[Andy_Steelrail]

Originally posted by Boshiken:

interresting - got the achievment
1. all there is - destroy - 1 ram and some cannon gallons with you start units
2. building 1st castle

Cool. How to destroy them?

One starting eagle-warrior?
All you can bring is 5 eagle-warriors or a monk or a ship. Which of these will allow you to sink 4 Galleons that are ignoring you and demolishing the city center?

AI was upvoted. That's the problem. All video guides are recorded with fundamentally different AI behavior.

[Devang]

Is this a problem at lowest difficulty?

[BirbNotBird]

Ai in that map is very unpredictable, even for each cannon galleon. I recommend standard playthrough for achievement.

Perhaps make cannon focus on one unit as bait? Not sure how AI work recently.

[ktadema]

Glad to see I'm not the only one struggling with this. I also see double ram and 4x cannon galleon on the Tabasco TC almost immediately, on Standard difficulty. I don't see how this is achievement is completable.

[Andy_Steelrail]

Originally posted by Devang:

Is this a problem at lowest difficulty?

Friends, seriously.
I wouldn't write about a minor issue. It would be good if there was hope with 10, 20, 50 attempts to get a solution. Here you can clearly see that any actions have a negligible effect on the result.
There is no feeling that you are about to solve the problem.

But here you really feel that you are no closer to a solution if you change your tactics. Galleons focus the city center.

For example, you can have time to build one fire ship. But at the sight of him, the Galleons swim in different directions and almost instantly destroy him. AI cannot be fooled in the usual way.
And these are Spanish Galleons, with a high rate of fire. Microcontrolling is almost impossible.

[RePence]

Ah, that one. So far I've been doing every achievement on Hard and relying on save points, but this one was enough of a pain for me that I decided to leave this one for a later time on an easier difficulty. Might try it on Standard later.

I would imagine dropping a few towers along the coast and making fireships to rush the cannon galleons ought to do the trick.

Just quick-tested on each difficulty, same results. You're right, just a month or two ago when I did the level the cannon galleons didn't attack instantly. When I completed the level before they only sent a few horsemen initially and you had a little time to build up before the galleons came out. Now they're on it barely 10 seconds after your first unit can make the journey there.

Right, managed to beat them off. You want to immediately send every villager you have to Tabasco's center and build a tower by the coastline. The galleons will focus in on that, and then the next closest buildings after that rather than the center. This gives you an opening to take them out with eagle scout warriors you'll have queued while they make the journey. I may have got lucky, there was one left in the end which I chased off with eagle scouts, but it stopped attacking and just patrols back and forth.

[Boshiken]

Originally posted by RePence:

Ah, that one. So far I've been doing every achievement on Hard and relying on save points, but this one was enough of a pain for me that I decided to leave this one for a later time on an easier difficulty. Might try it on Standard later.

I would imagine dropping a few towers along the coast and making fireships to rush the cannon galleons ought to do the trick.

Just quick-tested on each difficulty, same results. You're right, just a month or two ago when I did the level the cannon galleons didn't attack instantly. When I completed the level before they only sent a few horsemen initially and you had a little time to build up before the galleons came out. Now they're on it barely 10 seconds after your first unit can make the journey there.

relying on save points - but this one was enough of a pain for you
seems - you did not get my - simple walkthrough

[RePence]

Originally posted by Boshiken:

Doesn't apply anymore. Your starting units are 1 scout and 5 villagers, not enough to take out 4 galleons, 2 rams and a few land units immediately zoning in on the center. That's why you need a tower.

[Andy_Steelrail]

Originally posted by RePence:

Ah, that one. So far I've been doing every achievement on Hard and relying on save points, but this one was enough of a pain for me that I decided to leave this one for a later time on an easier difficulty. Might try it on Standard later.

I would imagine dropping a few towers along the coast and making fireships to rush the cannon galleons ought to do the trick.

Just quick-tested on each difficulty, same results. You're right, just a month or two ago when I did the level the cannon galleons didn't attack instantly. When I completed the level before they only sent a few horsemen initially and you had a little time to build up before the galleons came out. Now they're on it barely 10 seconds after your first unit can make the journey there.

Right, managed to beat them off. You want to immediately send every villager you have to Tabasco's center and build a tower by the coastline. The galleons will focus in on that, and then the next closest buildings after that rather than the center. This gives you an opening to take them out with eagle scout warriors you'll have queued while they make the journey. I may have got lucky, there was one left in the end which I chased off with eagle scouts, but it stopped attacking and just patrols back and forth.

O Greatman!

It seems like a simple thing and was in the guides, but sending all the residents (necessarily all!) to the tower helped.
We make +4 eagle warrior.

Then a little microcontrolling, a couple of save loads and I managed to knock down the bot's orders for the galleons. They began to swim randomly.

1 ship sank from a tower with peasants. I squeezed 2 more ships by peasants in shallow water.

This is a success!
I'm ashamed that I chickened out and came here. But others may get help from this thread. Thanks again!

But getting an achievement should not be based on such shaky ground as AI errors (which do not always happen).

[Boshiken]

Originally posted by Сырник:

Originally posted by RePence:

Ah, that one. So far I've been doing every achievement on Hard and relying on save points, but this one was enough of a pain for me that I decided to leave this one for a later time on an easier difficulty. Might try it on Standard later.

I would imagine dropping a few towers along the coast and making fireships to rush the cannon galleons ought to do the trick.

Just quick-tested on each difficulty, same results. You're right, just a month or two ago when I did the level the cannon galleons didn't attack instantly. When I completed the level before they only sent a few horsemen initially and you had a little time to build up before the galleons came out. Now they're on it barely 10 seconds after your first unit can make the journey there.

Right, managed to beat them off. You want to immediately send every villager you have to Tabasco's center and build a tower by the coastline. The galleons will focus in on that, and then the next closest buildings after that rather than the center. This gives you an opening to take them out with eagle scout warriors you'll have queued while they make the journey. I may have got lucky, there was one left in the end which I chased off with eagle scouts, but it stopped attacking and just patrols back and forth.

O Greatman!

It seems like a simple thing and was in the guides, but sending all the residents (necessarily all!) to the tower helped.
We make +4 eagle warrior.

Then a little microcontrolling, a couple of save loads and I managed to knock down the bot's orders for the galleons. They began to swim randomly.

1 ship sank from a tower with peasants. I squeezed 2 more ships by peasants in shallow water.

This is a success!
I'm ashamed that I chickened out and came here. But others may get help from this thread. Thanks again!

But getting an achievement should not be based on such shaky ground as AI errors (which do not always happen).

i remember - building a castle at the crossing - and lure them in
testing - it seems - they keep on buildings - not changing to attack units anymore

[SpoOkyMagician]

Originally posted by Devang:

Is this a problem at lowest difficulty?

Yes.

I complained about this to the devs during QA/Development and I never got a reply/fix for it. (I recently just tried to get it just now.) I cannot even do it on standard difficulty. You have exactly 4 minutes (in game time.) to save them. It is destroyed afterwords. I also tried to "capture the horses" (Heard this gets it because of incorrect text.) and even that did not get the achievement. (After his town was destroyed of course.)

I did manage it on a previous version/patch but, I didn't even get it when I complete it... So, I kinda just gave up on this one. Honestly, this "achievement" is a joke.

[Demon Lord]

After spending countless hours and attempts, I managed to get this achievement. The town centre was being destroyed at around 3:30 every time. I'm not sure if it was luck, but I managed to basically bug the cannon galleons into not attacking. I did this by blocking the river with two docks above middle passage. I had to send all 5 villagers up and train 4 extra eagles, as well as selling my stone to buy wood. After the ships stopped attacking I worked around their TC and deposited resources into it by garrisoning and re-boomed at my base.

I might have been able to do it easier if I hadn't accidentally sold the rest of my food too... Also training fire ships at the two docks helps. They didn't get attacked by the galleons for me. Using only petards I managed to kill Tlaxcala by sending them directly to his TCs.

Played on standard difficulty. Had to get horses for achievement.
(I'm sleep deprived so sorry for any errors)

[PaganFears]

There's a nice recent reddit thread on this achievement with a strategy by Shranar that works reliably well even on Hard difficulty: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/18sw9jy/this_achievement_is_truly_hot_and_spicy/

Basically you send forward all villagers, your starter Eagle Scout and two more Eagle Scouts you train at the start. The main trick is closing the river with two opposite docks and killing the cannon galleons which get stuck on the docks. You can find two youtube videos in his post. It's rather gimmicky but it works.

@SpoOkyMagician The bug is the other way around. Capturing the horses doesn't give you the achievement. You have to save Tabasco AND win by capturing the horses to get the achievement. If you fully defeat Cortez instead the achievement doesn't trigger even if Tabasco is alive.


Other achievements that in my opinion need reworking:
Chasing the Crown from the 1st Bayinnaung mission. This used to be doable by simply destroying the enemy king's castle within 5 minutes. But they updated the map and massively reduced the amount of gaia units hanging around. So I couldn't get enough of an army to destroy the castle in time no matter how much I tried. The achievement is still obtainable with what I'd consider an exploit: the king doesn't flee to his castle from villagers so you can lure his army out with villagers and then box him in with palisade walls.

The Wonder, the Wonder achievement from the Noryang Point (1598) historical battle is also much harder than it used to be. The Korean tower range bonus got moved to a unique tech that you don't have researched. Which resulted in more of the towers being out of range of the enemy cannon galleons surrounding your wonder. And those ships start to fire on the wonder instantly instead of the towers. It's barely possible to save the wonder if you rush everything you have forward as efficiently as possible (with constant pausing to issue orders). It's a very hard to get achievement now in an otherwise very easy scenario which is a bad pairing in my opinion.

[SpoOkyMagician]

Thanks for clarification on that. (I think I saved him in the 'older attempt' but not the horses part since too many horses died. >_< ) I might try it again some day but still, I don't like this achievement so, it's unlikely I ever will bother getting it.