posted 01-22-22 03:06 PM
CT (US)
1065 / 1068
Played a lot of stuff.
1) Played scenarios 1-4 in "Edward Longshanks". Struggled with Scenario 1 for most of the evening, because I was going for the achievement and didn't realize I only need to defeat Simon the Younger's army , not the Barons as a faction. I also didn't realize that there were TWO consecutive timers and was trying to blitz 3 bases (2 of them with towers!) in under 20 mins, which wasn't very smart.
Aside from that, nothing particularly remarkable. Scenario 2 was neat, because my allies did most of the heavy lifting- I just massed knights to raid neutral cities, and eventually wiped out the Saracen docks using a bunch of Mangonels to take care of the towers. Once that was done, and Aleppo focused on the Ilkhanate, it was smooth sailing. Both Wales and Scottish scenarios were pretty formulaic- defend, tech up, and then Cavaliers, Longbows & trebs deathball.
2) I finished "Golden Horde" by bassi- scenario 3 got a tad tricky, because Ilkhanate has a tough base. I hoped to wipe them off before going for Sartak after killing his brother, but they've got tough defenses- thankfully, I was able to salvage my Bombard cannons, wipe out Sartak and then come back to finish the job. I did like how we get to try all the Steppe civs in this campaign, not just the Mongols- I'll try to write a review this weekend.
3) I went back to The Crusades for a bit, and aside from Saladin and Barbarossa leftovers, there are 2 custom campaigns from Neky set in that time period- Manuel Komemnos, and Philip II Augustus of France.
- I finished Manuel Komemnos campaign. It's quite good, with decent variety, pitting you against Turks, the Normans in South Italy and the Hungarians in the Balkans. Mostly B&D, but one scenario is FF trudging through Anatolian mountain passes. I probably enjoyed Scenario 2 (Southern Italy) the most, because after you land in Bari with a ton of resources in Castle Age, you need to take 5 Norman fortresses- and you can either destroy each base's Castle, or bribe the faction with 5k gold, and then clicking on a castle gives you control over the buildings (but not the units stationed there)- so it's an interesting tradeoff. There are 2 other enemy cities (one is Italians, the other is Normans) and you can bribe one of them for 10k- or you can ignore them and just defend. It's nothing crazy, but I did find the idea to be pretty neat. The last scenario has you trying to fight off a Turkish counter-attack after your disastrous march on Konya, and you have a map that's sparse on resources, so you need to destroy the buildings of the "Turkish plunderers" to gain resources- while fighting against a Turk and Tatar cities. Breaching each city and building a Castle turns the city over to you, and there's also options to win via Wonder or Relic (if you build a Dock to collect the one sole relic on a small island in the middle of the map), so there are some interesting options there as well. Overall, a pretty fun campaign, not too difficult, but you still need to watch for enemy siege that can destroy you.
- I tried Scen 1 of the Philip Augustus campaign, and it's basically "Lion and the Demon", but you playing as the Franks besieging the city. Saladin starts building the Wonder in Acre, but there's also a base in the Eastern portion of the map. I'm allied with the Templars (Teutons), Richard the Lionheart (complete with the hero and his 2 hero trebs), and the Genoese navy. And I needed to keep all 3 alive. I was doing all right, using my starter bombards to wipe the Saracen camp in the East, (drawing defenders into Richard's base), and started on the Turk force that blocked the approaches to the city- but Saladin snuck a treb that destroyed the Templar TC, and they resigned. The one issue with Neky's scenarios is that the English translations are often not ideal- and in this case, the Templars' warning about being under attack was "We aren't ready yet"- which I ignored and didn't chek that their base was getting wrecked, which was unfortunate.
-I also beat scenario 1 in Hammister's "Dandolo". This one was annoying in the beginning, because right next to my nook in the city where I'm trying to defend against the angry mobs are a Trade Workshop and a Feitoria that belong to my rivals, the Genoese. So naturally, ny defenders are constantly aggroed and keep trying to destroy them- putting them in range of enemy towers. This made trying to survive way more tedious than it should have, since I was basically fighting against my own units of of the time.
Once you get out of the city (the easiest way is to fight your way to the Castle at the eastern edge of the city and wait for transports, the goal switches to destroying the Genoese Castle. There's a Gaia Cannon Galleon that can be parked outside the range of their fortifications, so that part can be cheesed, but even if it wasn't, the base you get in the East is fairly easy to defend and prevent enemy landings, so it'd just be a matter of time if I wanted to play it "properly"