Age Of Empires 2 Speed Run

2010-06-19 11:29:50 am

Standard = Easy. They change the wording from Age of Kings to Conquerors.

Actually, my videos were on Moderate, but I have since redone them on hard. The last 3 levels are the only ones that make a real difference with the difficulty. Wallace 6 is the only one I've been able to beat (or tie) suga on so far.

Stupid

2010-06-19 12:24:16 pm

defying gravity

Well, sugas runs look awesome, so unless you want every record you can just do the other maps and submit together with him. For the levels where difficulty matters there could also be seperate categories.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-06-19 03:11:15 pm

Quote from Stupid:

Well, sugas runs look awesome, so unless you want every record you can just do the other maps and submit together with him.

Nope, different difficulties (Gombill is playing on Hard).

Stupid

2010-06-20 02:24:39 am

defying gravity

He said in most of these the difficulty doesnt matter. Not that I care though.

Gombill

2010-06-20 08:14:03 pm

Progress:

I believe Joan 6 may be possible to do as low as 6 game minutes just by storming the red british base, but it's ridiculously difficult to keep the trade cart and enough siege units alive through the ordeal. No completed runs of this yet.

I've trimmed Genghis Khan 5 down to 27:18 from 29:55, but I'm not satisfied with it yet. Sub-20 seems a little overly optimistic now, I think the finished time will be closer to 22 or 23.

I've also started on Genghis Khan 4. The yellow persians are allies with you for the first 30 minutes, so it seems you can use the trick of turning them to neutral and killing their stuff. Unfortunately, if you near their town with military units they turn to enemies. I found out that the "turn to enemies" trigger doesn't extend through their whole town, though, and in particular their town center and most of their gather zones aren't touched by it. So I build a monastery inside their town and convert my army from inside. The war elephants alone are enough to decimate the other enemy on the map (red) after yellow has resigned. This mission should be under 30 game minutes total when I've finished it.

Anyone else is welcome to help me run all the missions and submit together, just let me know which levels you're attempting. It is a bit daunting thinking about running 58 missions myself.

Progress:

I believe Joan 6 may be possible to do as low as 6 game minutes just by storming the red british base, but it's ridiculously difficult to keep the trade cart and enough siege units alive through the ordeal.  No completed runs of this yet.

I've trimmed Genghis Khan 5 down to 27:18 from 29:55, but I'm not satisfied with it yet.  Sub-20 seems a little overly optimistic now, I think the finished time will be closer to 22 or 23.

I've also started on Genghis Khan 4.  The yellow persians are allies with you for the first 30 minutes, so it seems you can use the trick of turning them to neutral and killing their stuff.  Unfortunately, if you near their town with military units they turn to enemies.  I found out that the "turn to enemies" trigger doesn't extend through their whole town, though, and in particular their town center and most of their gather zones aren't touched by it.  So I build a monastery inside their town and convert my army from inside.  The war elephants alone are enough to decimate the other enemy on the map (red) after yellow has resigned.  This mission should be under 30 game minutes total when I've finished it.

Anyone else is welcome to help me run all the missions and submit together, just let me know which levels you're attempting.  It is a bit daunting thinking about running 58 missions myself.

Gombill

2010-06-21 12:15:05 am

Genghis Khan 4 in 30:01 (game time)

For some reason it's not letting me attach the video file, so no video of that yet. (It says "upload folder full")

I think I could get the run under 25 minutes if I use help from rams to destroy some of the yellow buildings and allow the converted elephants to harass red a bit sooner.

I think I will try to finish off the Genghis Khan campaign so I at least have one of them done entirely (I already have runs of 1, 2, 4, and 5)

bmn

2010-06-21 05:36:42 am

Forum accounts likely have a limit to how much you can upload in total. You could try a site like FileDropper, there's a list on http://speeddemosarchive.com/kb/Video_hosting_services

ridd3r.

2010-06-21 11:20:40 am

we have lift off

Yeah just upload anywhere; Dropbox is a free site which gives you 2gig storage and it's basically an online hard drive for your computer. Filefront is free and easy too.

Gombill

2010-06-21 02:18:12 pm

OK, here's the Genghis Khan 4 video (30:01) from Filefront:

http://www.filefront.com/16822459/GK4_3001.mp4

Some explanations for the video:

Yellow will surrender when he loses all villagers, his town center, his two castles, and his wonder. There is a trigger box running diagonally through about where the upper tip of the yellow town center is, extending all the way to the lower right end of the map, and if any military unit of mine goes through that strip yellow declares me an enemy and suddenly starts producing military units. The run needs to be restarted at that point. Villagers, monks, and trade carts are the only units that won't set this trigger off.

Fortunately, the converted war elephants can destroy most of the above mentioned things, and trebuchets can finish off the other castle (which is inside the trigger strip). The only hitch is that yellow will attempt to build his town center back. If I kill the villager making the town center, he will demolish it and attempt to build it elsewhere. However, as I do in the run, if you destroy a building that is in progress (not attacking the villager) the AI will never again attempt to build it for the remainder of the game. That is why I waste all that time destroying the town center in progress, so he can't build it somewhere else that would kill the run.

OK, here's the Genghis Khan 4 video (30:01) from Filefront:

[url=http://www.filefront.com/16822459/GK4_3001.mp4]http://www.filefront.com/16822459/GK4_3001.mp4[/url]

Some explanations for the video:

Yellow will surrender when he loses all villagers, his town center, his two castles, and his wonder.  There is a trigger box running diagonally through about where the upper tip of the yellow town center is, extending all the way to the lower right end of the map, and if any military unit of mine goes through that strip yellow declares me an enemy and suddenly starts producing military units.  The run needs to be restarted at that point.  Villagers, monks, and trade carts are the only units that won't set this trigger off.

Fortunately, the converted war elephants can destroy most of the above mentioned things, and trebuchets can finish off the other castle (which is inside the trigger strip).  The only hitch is that yellow will attempt to build his town center back.  If I kill the villager making the town center, he will demolish it and attempt to build it elsewhere.  However, as I do in the run, if you destroy a building that is in progress (not attacking the villager) the AI will never again attempt to build it for the remainder of the game.  That is why I waste all that time destroying the town center in progress, so he can't build it somewhere else that would kill the run.

ridd3r.

2010-06-21 04:00:01 pm

we have lift off

One question about the speed you are playing the game on. I'm assuming the in-game timer will be used for timing this run so why not play it on normal? That way you will be able to better optimise your actions. I don't know how the speed affects the AI etc. but just a thought.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-06-21 05:23:22 pm

Normal would be really, really boring to watch. I support playing on Fast. Not sure whether timing will be real time or in-game timer though, probably real time since the in-game timer runs at twice real time. In that case it may be significant on some levels that time spent in pause menus (i.e. for diplomacy and tribute) is counted, especially if you come up with any strats involving tribute (which seems loosely theoretically plausible but quite unlikely). May need to get a ruling from Mike on this at some point.

As for GK4, thoughts:

Firstly, I'm pretty sure that taking the trade carts to the Shah changes your diplomacy to the Persians to Enemy WITHOUT making them turn Enemy to you. They only change their diplomacy to you once the Shah dies. A couple of free champions is probably worth having to shave a second or two off building destruction whatever method you use. Also, this'll save a second of going into the menu if real time is used.

Secondly, your approach to this level just feels very slow to me. I haven't tried running it so perhaps I'm wrong on a lot of these points, but I'll just throw out suggestions and you can make of them what you will:

* Red begins with 7 villagers and is placed very close to your NW base, which starts with a decent force of cavalry archers. I figure you could probably hunt down all red's villagers at the start and camp his town centre killing any fresh ones he makes. You could probably also use luring techniques like those you've used on other levels to get his army out of the way.
* Surely advancing to the Imperial Age just for the sake of trebs for one castle in the trigger zone isn't necessary? I would've thought a big force of rams would survive easily long enough to take it down, especially if you had some villagers use your starting stone to build some walls and gates in advance to trap enemy forces and stop them counterattacking.
* With this in mind, can't you just focus all your resource collection on wood and gold, use your starting troops to clear out the red base, have villagers build siege workshops in both enemy bases plus an archery range in the bottom base, spam rams to destroy all the necessary buildings and build a few cavalry archers to kill yellow's villagers? As long as it's possible to lure away red's forces, you're basically up against a helpless enemy with the sole objective of destroying buildings, and I would've thought rams would always be the quickest method to do that.

Normal would be really, really boring to watch. I support playing on Fast. Not sure whether timing will be real time or in-game timer though, probably real time since the in-game timer runs at twice real time. In that case it may be significant on some levels that time spent in pause menus (i.e. for diplomacy and tribute) is counted, especially if you come up with any strats involving tribute (which seems loosely theoretically plausible but quite unlikely). May need to get a ruling from Mike on this at some point.

As for GK4, thoughts:

Firstly, I'm pretty sure that taking the trade carts to the Shah changes your diplomacy to the Persians to Enemy WITHOUT making them turn Enemy to you. They only change their diplomacy to you once the Shah dies. A couple of free champions is probably worth having to shave a second or two off building destruction whatever method you use. Also, this'll save a second of going into the menu if real time is used.

Secondly, your approach to this level just feels very slow to me. I haven't tried running it so perhaps I'm wrong on a lot of these points, but I'll just throw out suggestions and you can make of them what you will:

* Red begins with 7 villagers and is placed very close to your NW base, which starts with a decent force of cavalry archers. I figure you could probably hunt down all red's villagers at the start and camp his town centre killing any fresh ones he makes. You could probably also use luring techniques like those you've used on other levels to get his army out of the way.
* Surely advancing to the Imperial Age just for the sake of trebs for one castle in the trigger zone isn't necessary? I would've thought a big force of rams would survive easily long enough to take it down, especially if you had some villagers use your starting stone to build some walls and gates in advance to trap enemy forces and stop them counterattacking.
* With this in mind, can't you just focus all your resource collection on wood and gold, use your starting troops to clear out the red base, have villagers build siege workshops in both enemy bases plus an archery range in the bottom base, spam rams to destroy all the necessary buildings and build a few cavalry archers to kill yellow's villagers? As long as it's possible to lure away red's forces, you're basically up against a helpless enemy with the sole objective of destroying buildings, and I would've thought rams would always be the quickest method to do that.

Gombill

2010-06-21 05:42:28 pm

I had already been planning another run with rams and no imperial age, I'll see how that goes.

As for killing red's villagers, it might be doable but difficult for the reason that they start with a decent army of huskarls and knights, both of which would pound cavalry archers. They train more villagers as the mission progresses so it wouldn't always be 7. I think the luring trick might not work with an enemy that has a base/town center.

I believe I could kill red relatively quickly using what you've said, but using some pretty heavy micro to the point of ignoring everything else. We'll see.

Gombill

2010-06-21 07:04:44 pm

The rams and lack of imperial age speed things up significantly. As a nice side effect there isn't nearly as much villager management. It turns out the yellow castle I thought was in the trigger zone is actually just barely out of it, so it can be destroyed with rams.

My new goal is 18 game minutes. I just got 24:15 on a kind of lousy practice run.

The red army does indeed return to their town no matter how far they are led away, but it's possible to lead them all the way across the map and then attack their town, having about 2 minutes of free attacking time. The army could actually be killed as well by leading back to my own town and town-belling.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-06-23 12:47:46 pm

2010-06-22 06:43:47 pm

I'll be taking a few days of break from running to catch up on some work I should have been doing.

Yesterday I was experimenting with Joan 4 and I think I can do it pretty quickly with basically what I start with. The town immediately across the river from your starting town needs only 1 ram to destroy if you lead most of their troops away. The next town is extremely weak but has a castle within attacking range of the town center; it's best to have 3 rams or so for that one. Maybe even a mangonel or two would be better to stay out of castle range. Then yellow can be killed with as few as 4 rams from some early testing I've done. The villagers you start with plus training 4 more are more than enough to build these 4 rams.

EDIT: I emailed Mike asking for rulings about timing, patches, and categories for runs. I'll update this post when he replies.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-06-24 11:36:55 pm

2010-06-24 07:14:30 pm

Updates (all mentioned times are game time):

I have Joan 4 in 14:49 but I think I can get it down to at least 13:30 if things go my way. I basically just did what I said in the previous post. The key to a great time is getting the rams through yellow's gate using his own men so you don't have to destroy a wall piece. The timing is pretty tricky.

Barbarossa 5 ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be. I managed to put together a 16:04 but I think it can be improved using the same strategy by about 2 minutes. As far as I've been able to tell, using blue's transports is mandatory (the other rescuable transports are too exposed). Also getting a treb or onager across is mandatory in order to use the shortcut through the trees and bypass all fighting. So to me it seems the main time saver would be disposing quickly of blue's defenses. I see it as near impossible to do it without destroying blue's wall and some towers to thin out the defenses.

I believe I can get Barbarossa 4 in about 20 minutes. I transport the troops over to yellow's town and build the wonder there almost immediately. The only hitch is that green might end up sending an attack on that position. I had a promising run fail at 16:00 with the wonder at 78% because some green cavaliers showed up and I was out of troops.

Also I have been attempting to beat Genghis Khan 4 without going to the imperial age. The only problem is green's flag, of course. My idea is to squeeze a villager or two past the rush of enemy units that go out the gate and somehow get one of them inside and past the bombard towers. Then I would build a siege workshop and archery range there, use mangonels for the final wall, and get a cavalry archer to the flag. If this whole plan worked I would estimate about 16 minutes for the final time. If it doesn't work and imperial age is necessary, the time will be closer to 22 minutes.

If anyone would like to see videos of anything I've said here, I can post them up.

Oh, and ExplodingCabbage, you mentioned being able to beat Barbarossa 2 before Henry betrays you. How did you pull this off? From when I've tried it so far, he betrays me after I destroy the first polish castle, and there are 3 of them.

Updates (all mentioned times are game time):

I have Joan 4 in 14:49 but I think I can get it down to at least 13:30 if things go my way.  I basically just did what I said in the previous post.  The key to a great time is getting the rams through yellow's gate using his own men so you don't have to destroy a wall piece.  The timing is pretty tricky.

Barbarossa 5 ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be.  I managed to put together a 16:04 but I think it can be improved using the same strategy by about 2 minutes.  As far as I've been able to tell, using blue's transports is mandatory (the other rescuable transports are too exposed).  Also getting a treb or onager across is mandatory in order to use the shortcut through the trees and bypass all fighting.  So to me it seems the main time saver would be disposing quickly of blue's defenses.  I see it as near impossible to do it without destroying blue's wall and some towers to thin out the defenses.

I believe I can get Barbarossa 4 in about 20 minutes.  I transport the troops over to yellow's town and build the wonder there almost immediately.  The only hitch is that green might end up sending an attack on that position.  I had a promising run fail at 16:00 with the wonder at 78% because some green cavaliers showed up and I was out of troops.

Also I have been attempting to beat Genghis Khan 4 without going to the imperial age.  The only problem is green's flag, of course.  My idea is to squeeze a villager or two past the rush of enemy units that go out the gate and somehow get one of them inside and past the bombard towers.  Then I would build a siege workshop and archery range there, use mangonels for the final wall, and get a cavalry archer to the flag.  If this whole plan worked I would estimate about 16 minutes for the final time.  If it doesn't work and imperial age is necessary, the time will be closer to 22 minutes.

If anyone would like to see videos of anything I've said here, I can post them up.

Oh, and ExplodingCabbage, you mentioned being able to beat Barbarossa 2 before Henry betrays you.  How did you pull this off?  From when I've tried it so far, he betrays me after I destroy the first polish castle, and there are 3 of them.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-06-25 01:00:12 am

Quote from Gombill:

Oh, and ExplodingCabbage, you mentioned being able to beat Barbarossa 2 before Henry betrays you. How did you pull this off? From when I've tried it so far, he betrays me after I destroy the first polish castle, and there are 3 of them.

I have no idea. I wasn't actively attempting to do this, Poland just suddenly unexpectedly resigned after I'd gone on a fairly weak offensive and I won. Can't remember whether or not I destroyed a castle. Sorry not to be much use on this, literally all I can confirm is that it is somehow possible to do but I have no idea how or why.

I also have a vague memory of having a strategy gudie for this game back when I was about 10, and that guide mentioning this same bug in the walkthrough section and making some further comment on it, possibly that it was removed in a patch. Long time ago though so I don't really remember. When I go home on Saturday I'll try to find out if the guide is still in my house somewhere and if so try to find out whether it offers any useful insight.

Is it possible to open the campaign levels in the level editor to take a look at the scripts and find out what makes Poland resign?

[quote="Gombill"]Oh, and ExplodingCabbage, you mentioned being able to beat Barbarossa 2 before Henry betrays you.  How did you pull this off?  From when I've tried it so far, he betrays me after I destroy the first polish castle, and there are 3 of them.[/quote]

I have no idea. I wasn't actively attempting to do this, Poland just suddenly unexpectedly resigned after I'd gone on a fairly weak offensive and I won. Can't remember whether or not I destroyed a castle. Sorry not to be much use on this, literally all I can confirm is that it is somehow possible to do but I have no idea how or why.

I also have a vague memory of having a strategy gudie for this game back when I was about 10, and that guide mentioning this same bug in the walkthrough section and making some further comment on it, possibly that it was removed in a patch. Long time ago though so I don't really remember. When I go home on Saturday I'll try to find out if the guide is still in my house somewhere and if so try to find out whether it offers any useful insight.

Is it possible to open the campaign levels in the level editor to take a look at the scripts and find out what makes Poland resign?

Gombill

2010-06-25 12:02:44 pm

I got a response from Mike. Here is exactly what he sent to me:

______________________________________________________________
Timing: Wow, that's kind of odd. I can do one of two things:

1. Still use in-game time, but force runners to use only one speed setting
(either normal or fast I guess).

2. Time using real-time.

I'd rather go with option 1 because it saves me a lot of timing work, but if
there's some reason I shouldn't go with that option, just tell me.

Expansion: You can run these later. You only have to run every level that
came with the original release.

Patches: Since Age of Empires 2 won't be getting any patches anytime soon,
just use whatever version is fastest.
____________________________________________________________________

ExplodingCabbage: Were you maybe playing Barbarossa 2 on Standard difficulty when you got the polish to resign? I know that in some levels the computers give up more easily on lower difficulty settings.

I forgot to mention in my last update I've gotten Genghis Khan 4 down to 21:44 (game time) now, but 2 minutes of that was hunting down the last red villager who decided to take a random pilgrimage across the map and abandon his town. I still believe 18 minutes should be entirely possible. Working both sides separately I've been able to kill all of red's villagers in 12 minutes, and all of yellow's in about 15. Red in particular requires a lot of micro though.

I got a response from Mike.  Here is exactly what he sent to me:

______________________________________________________________
Timing: Wow, that's kind of odd. I can do one of two things: 
 
1. Still use in-game time, but force runners to use only one speed setting 
(either normal or fast I guess). 
 
2. Time using real-time. 
 
I'd rather go with option 1 because it saves me a lot of timing work, but if 
there's some reason I shouldn't go with that option, just tell me. 
 
Expansion: You can run these later. You only have to run every level that 
came with the original release. 
 
Patches: Since Age of Empires 2 won't be getting any patches anytime soon, 
just use whatever version is fastest. 
____________________________________________________________________

ExplodingCabbage:  Were you maybe playing Barbarossa 2 on Standard difficulty when you got the polish to resign?  I know that in some levels the computers give up more easily on lower difficulty settings.

I forgot to mention in my last update I've gotten Genghis Khan 4 down to 21:44 (game time) now, but 2 minutes of that was hunting down the last red villager who decided to take a random pilgrimage across the map and abandon his town.  I still believe 18 minutes should be entirely possible.  Working both sides separately I've been able to kill all of red's villagers in 12 minutes, and all of yellow's in about 15.  Red in particular requires a lot of micro though.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-06-25 07:41:52 pm

Quote from Gombill:

ExplodingCabbage: Were you maybe playing Barbarossa 2 on Standard difficulty when you got the polish to resign? I know that in some levels the computers give up more easily on lower difficulty settings.

Ah, this I do remember - I was definitely playing on Very Hard. So that's not the explanation.

Unrelated: was reading on some forum that lots of good multiplayer AoE2 players make plenty of use of the patrol command, partly to save on micro by not needing to manually order units to attack enemies they encounter while moving, and partly because there is apparently, if I was understanding correctly, some engine weirdness which causes units attacking automatically while patrolling to group together more closely than they would in other circumstances which for hand-to-hand units means you can concentrate more units on attacking a single target at a time and therefore will have a substantial advantage in an even battle against an opponent with the same troops who doesn't use patrol. Not sure how accurately I understood the thread though. May or may not be helpful for you at some point.

[quote="Gombill"]ExplodingCabbage:  Were you maybe playing Barbarossa 2 on Standard difficulty when you got the polish to resign?  I know that in some levels the computers give up more easily on lower difficulty settings.[/quote]

Ah, this I [i]do[/i] remember - I was definitely playing on Very Hard. So that's not the explanation.

Unrelated: was reading on some forum that lots of good multiplayer AoE2 players make plenty of use of the patrol command, partly to save on micro by not needing to manually order units to attack enemies they encounter while moving, and partly because there is apparently, if I was understanding correctly, some engine weirdness which causes units attacking automatically while patrolling to group together more closely than they would in other circumstances which for hand-to-hand units means you can concentrate more units on attacking a single target at a time and therefore will have a substantial advantage in an even battle against an opponent with the same troops who doesn't use patrol. Not sure how accurately I understood the thread though. May or may not be helpful for you at some point.

Gombill

2010-06-26 12:27:53 am

No matter what I try I can't get the Polish to resign without destroying their 3 castles. I was able to discover a number of different things which trigger Henry's betrayal. There's two trigger boxes on the map which will cause betrayal. One of them is near the top of the map around one of the siege workshops. If you bring at least 3 people to this trigger box it will activate and Henry will betray you. The other trigger box is around the right-most castle and covers a rather large area all the way down to the shallows south of the castle. I think you only need to bring 1 unit to this one to cause betrayal. Also destroying any castle is betrayal. I believe there may be another trigger based on poland's military size, but it was hard to test this one.

Although it seems to me betrayal is inevitable, at least in a reasonable amount of time, in a quick practice run the polish finished off henry for me in just over 17 minutes so perhaps his betrayal isn't such a bad thing. I think the trick will be to get as many polish castles and workshops as possible down to about 10 health left, post a knight near each one, and as soon as poland kills henry for me (or I'm in a position to do it myself) I can finish everything off in about 10 seconds. I tested that poland will resign if they lose all their unit production structures, even if they have a substantial army at the time.

Here's a link to Barbarossa 4, which I finally had a completed run for. The time is 20:40 right now, but I think it may be improvable by about 2 minutes with better execution. Suggestions are welcome.

Also I improved my strategy for Barbarossa 5, the time is now 11:14. I already realize I should have kept the men in the transport ship until the far right portion of the landing zone to save walking distance, this oversight alone is about 15 seconds. Otherwise just minor tweaks and it should be good to go. There were some misclicks with trebuchets and forgetting to set constantinople to neutral.

http://www.filefront.com/16869257/BARB5-1114.mp4/

http://www.filefront.com/16869307/BARB4_2040.mp4

No matter what I try I can't get the Polish to resign without destroying their 3 castles.  I was able to discover a number of different things which trigger Henry's betrayal.  There's two trigger boxes on the map which will cause betrayal.  One of them is near the top of the map around one of the siege workshops.  If you bring at least 3 people to this trigger box it will activate and Henry will betray you.  The other trigger box is around the right-most castle and covers a rather large area all the way down to the shallows south of the castle.  I think you only need to bring 1 unit to this one to cause betrayal.  Also destroying any castle is betrayal.  I believe there may be another trigger based on poland's military size, but it was hard to test this one.

Although it seems to me betrayal is inevitable, at least in a reasonable amount of time, in a quick practice run the polish finished off henry for me in just over 17 minutes so perhaps his betrayal isn't such a bad thing.  I think the trick will be to get as many polish castles and workshops as possible down to about 10 health left, post a knight near each one, and as soon as poland kills henry for me (or I'm in a position to do it myself) I can finish everything off in about 10 seconds.  I tested that poland will resign if they lose all their unit production structures, even if they have a substantial army at the time.

Here's a link to Barbarossa 4, which I finally had a completed run for.  The time is 20:40 right now, but I think it may be improvable by about 2 minutes with better execution.  Suggestions are welcome.

Also I improved my strategy for Barbarossa 5, the time is now 11:14.  I already realize I should have kept the men in the transport ship until the far right portion of the landing zone to save walking distance, this oversight alone is about 15 seconds.  Otherwise just minor tweaks and it should be good to go.  There were some misclicks with trebuchets and forgetting to set constantinople to neutral.

[url=http://www.filefront.com/16869257/BARB5-1114.mp4/]http://www.filefront.com/16869257/BARB5-1114.mp4/[/url]

[url=http://www.filefront.com/16869307/BARB4_2040.mp4]http://www.filefront.com/16869307/BARB4_2040.mp4[/url]

ExplodingCabbage

2010-06-26 03:50:27 am

Quote from Gombill:

I tested that poland will resign if they lose all their unit production structures, even if they have a substantial army at the time.

I definitely hadn't destroyed all their unit production structures. I don't think I'd even destroyed a castle.

I'll play the level a few times when I'm back home and see what happens, maybe even record the attempts. I think it's very likely that the mission was fixed in a patch and that this patch is included in Conquerors.

Stupid

2010-06-26 04:18:22 am

defying gravity

About timing: Why not just use the ingame timer and divide the result by the speed factor used? (of course only faster makes sense, unless in the very unlikely case that you would shortly have to switch to a slower speed in a micro intensive situation)
Faster is 1.5 I think.
When pause screens like the diplomacy interface are frequently used, changing to real time would be better I guess though.

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

Quote from Gombill:

I tested that poland will resign if they lose all their unit production structures, even if they have a substantial army at the time.

I definitely hadn't destroyed all their unit production structures. I don't think I'd even destroyed a castle.

I'll play the level a few times when I'm back home and see what happens, maybe even record the attempts. I think it's very likely that the mission was fixed in a patch and that this patch is included in Conquerors.

Now that you say it, I think I remember about one mission being considered "broken" in the initial release version, but probably fixed in later patches.

About timing: Why not just use the ingame timer and divide the result by the speed factor used? (of course only faster makes sense, unless in the very unlikely case that you would shortly have to switch to a slower speed in a micro intensive situation)
Faster is 1.5 I think.
When pause screens like the diplomacy interface are frequently used, changing to real time would be better I guess though.

[quote="ExplodingCabbage"]
[quote="Gombill"]I tested that poland will resign if they lose all their unit production structures, even if they have a substantial army at the time.[/quote]

I definitely hadn't destroyed all their unit production structures. I don't think I'd even destroyed a castle.

I'll play the level a few times when I'm back home and see what happens, maybe even record the attempts. I think it's very likely that the mission was fixed in a patch and that this patch is included in Conquerors.
[/quote]Now that you say it, I think I remember about one mission being considered "broken" in the initial release version, but probably fixed in later patches.

Gombill

2010-06-26 01:45:28 pm

Just wanted to post a summary board for all the Age of Kings levels right now. These are the best times from everyone (in game time), who did it, and most levels have a time in parenthesis afterwards - this is my current goal for the level. Levels without a goal are either not in my interest at the moment or are already pretty optimal. I will update it if anyone has times to post. 10 levels to go!
WW
1: 2:13 suga
2: 3:12 suga
3: 1:34 suga
4: 3:38 suga
5: 5:14 suga
6: 3:52 Gombill (3:40)
7: 4:46 suga
JOA
1: 5:01 Gombill
2: 5:25 suga
3:
4: 14:49 Gombill (13:30)
5: (15:00)
6: 7:21 Gombill (6:00)
Saladin
1: 8:28 Gombill (7:20)
2:
3: 7:16 Gombill
4:
5:
6: (40:00)
Genghis Khan
1: 11:30 Gombill
2: 3:02 Gombill
3:
4: 21:44 Gombill (18:00)
5: 27:18 Gombill (22:00)
6:
Barbarossa
1:
2:
3: 4:29 Gombill (4:10)
4: 20:40 Gombill (18:00)
5: 11:14 Gombill (10:30)
6: 9:05 Gombill (9:00)

Hugo123

Edit history:

Hugo123: 2010-06-26 05:34:18 pm

2010-06-26 03:56:37 pm

I just read in my old GameStar about the walkthrough and in fact there was a bug that caused mission 2 Barbarossa to make Poland surrender if you don't do nothing for 5 minutes. This was written December 1999.
So if you are allowed to change the version and if you think it's ok to use that bug you may want to switch to one of the earliest versions of the game. Smiley

The bug was fixed pretty fast. GameStar 01/00 already had the walkthrough for the fixed mission. (The magazine released fairly early so 12/99 was proably November and 01/00 was December.)

AoE2 is one of my favorite games (I was pretty young back then and rather bad so I can't help you out at all *g*) so please keep doing this. Cheesy

EDIT:

Barbarossa 4: Can't you get the last builder to the wonder as well after he built the marketplace? Will there be units from the bridge if you don't build that wall? (Obviously yes. ;))

Gombill

2010-06-27 10:08:59 pm

Barbarossa 4 is now at 16:28.

I came up with a new strat building the wonder on the opposite side of the river inside yellow's town and getting 10 villagers working on it (including the one that made the market). Green attacks at around 16 1/2 to 17 minutes with a substantial army, so the wall was necessary before but now it is not. The run above still had a few mistakes - the market villager died on his way there and I lost too many men in the fighting in yellow's town, so ended up using some time getting my villagers to fend off attacks from yellow's villagers.

I think 15:00 will be about the limit.

I found out that building speed is proportional to the square of the number of villagers working on it - so 4 villagers are needed to build twice as fast, 9 to build 3 times as fast, and so on.

Other updates:
Barbarossa 5 in 10:43. This was a pretty good run.
Joan of Arc 4 in 13:45. Not much room for improvement here either.

In Saladin 6 you just have to build a wonder and defend it for 300 years (about 25 game minutes). You start with enough resources to make it, so the speed running question is of course whether you can start it right away with as many villagers as possible and still defend successfully. And of course, if this proves too difficult, how many villagers should be allowed to gather?

I had a preliminary practice run go pretty well for me. If you delete a wall piece the enemy will ignore your towers for the most part and head for the hole in the wall, so a lot of this may come down to choosing a good wall piece. The enemies become wise to this after about 10 to 15 minutes and start attacking towers intelligently, but this is enough time to finish the wonder and start preparing a proper defense. In the practice run I had the initial 9 villagers build the wonder and additional trained ones mined gold. I lasted until 26 minutes with 125 defense years to go, but the failure of my defense was due in large part to some paladins sneaking past unnoticed and killing my entire villager population while I was concentrating on something else.

Barbarossa 4 is now at 16:28.

I came up with a new strat building the wonder on the opposite side of the river inside yellow's town and getting 10 villagers working on it (including the one that made the market).  Green attacks at around 16 1/2 to 17 minutes with a substantial army, so the wall was necessary before but now it is not.  The run above still had a few mistakes - the market villager died on his way there and I lost too many men in the fighting in yellow's town, so ended up using some time getting my villagers to fend off attacks from yellow's villagers.

I think 15:00 will be about the limit.

I found out that building speed is proportional to the square of the number of villagers working on it - so 4 villagers are needed to build twice as fast, 9 to build 3 times as fast, and so on.

Other updates:
Barbarossa 5 in 10:43.  This was a pretty good run.
Joan of Arc 4 in 13:45.  Not much room for improvement here either.

In Saladin 6 you just have to build a wonder and defend it for 300 years (about 25 game minutes).  You start with enough resources to make it, so the speed running question is of course whether you can start it right away with as many villagers as possible and still defend successfully.  And of course, if this proves too difficult, how many villagers should be allowed to gather?

I had a preliminary practice run go pretty well for me.  If you delete a wall piece the enemy will ignore your towers for the most part and head for the hole in the wall, so a lot of this may come down to choosing a good wall piece.  The enemies become wise to this after about 10 to 15 minutes and start attacking towers intelligently, but this is enough time to finish the wonder and start preparing a proper defense.  In the practice run I had the initial 9 villagers build the wonder and additional trained ones mined gold.  I lasted until 26 minutes with 125 defense years to go, but the failure of my defense was due in large part to some paladins sneaking past unnoticed and killing my entire villager population while I was concentrating on something else.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-06-28 02:08:35 pm

2010-06-28 12:33:54 pm

Messed around some more with Saladin 6, got a practice run with sending every trained villager to the wonder end with only 35 wonder defense years (about 3 game minutes). Once again some paladins made it through and killed most of my villagers at some point, so if I can just prevent this I'll have a great chance. I calculated that the total mission time would have been 35 minutes if I had succeeded in defending, so this will be my goal. The wall piece I destroyed was one near my central town castle. The enemies are pretty consistent with when they smarten up to the wall thing, it kicks in at about 12 game minutes. But for the first 12 minutes it should in principle be possible to not lose a single unit.

I also started looking at Saladin 2. I can get Reynald's Raiders to resign within 8 minutes almost every time by sneaking some troops and a villager inside the wall. They resign if they lose all their villagers. There are some annoying villagers that stick close to the town center and farm, but that's what my villager is for. I build a tower inside his town and it invokes a villager response to try to knock it down. This lures them far enough away from the town center to kill them all. I wonder if this strategy could possibly be used in other missions to kill off villager populations - the only problem is they respond with their military too, so you need to have superior forces anyways.

The Pirates are a little more difficult, I think they resign when they lose all villagers and all ships. They also build plenty of knights and have a castle. I think it's possible to beat this level without wasting time going to the castle age, but it will be difficult. I think the key is getting a navy as quickly as possible and camping them near the Pirates' gold mine so they can't do anything productive. It might be good too to ferry a villager over and build a tower close enough so my ships can attack combative villagers and knights.

EDIT: Had a completed run of Saladin 2 that beat my initial goal by 2 minutes.

Saladin 2 in 22:37: http://www.filefront.com/16896797/SAL2_2237.mp4

This was my fastest destruction of the Raiders ever. The pirates could have gone a little better, their villagers were a bit reluctant to walk out to their death as compared to some other practice runs. The faster I can kill all the villagers, the faster my ships can all attack the town center at once. The last 35 seconds of the game after the Pirates say their words at me are just waiting for them to sacrifice all their own buildings. This may look slow but there's really no avoiding it.

Messed around some more with Saladin 6, got a practice run with sending every trained villager to the wonder end with only 35 wonder defense years (about 3 game minutes).  Once again some paladins made it through and killed most of my villagers at some point, so if I can just prevent this I'll have a great chance.  I calculated that the total mission time would have been 35 minutes if I had succeeded in defending, so this will be my goal.  The wall piece I destroyed was one near my central town castle.  The enemies are pretty consistent with when they smarten up to the wall thing, it kicks in at about 12 game minutes.  But for the first 12 minutes it should in principle be possible to not lose a single unit.

I also started looking at Saladin 2.  I can get Reynald's Raiders to resign within 8 minutes almost every time by sneaking some troops and a villager inside the wall.  They resign if they lose all their villagers.  There are some annoying villagers that stick close to the town center and farm, but that's what my villager is for.  I build a tower inside his town and it invokes a villager response to try to knock it down.  This lures them far enough away from the town center to kill them all.  I wonder if this strategy could possibly be used in other missions to kill off villager populations - the only problem is they respond with their military too, so you need to have superior forces anyways.

The Pirates are a little more difficult, I think they resign when they lose all villagers and all ships.  They also build plenty of knights and have a castle.  I think it's possible to beat this level without wasting time going to the castle age, but it will be difficult.  I think the key is getting a navy as quickly as possible and camping them near the Pirates' gold mine so they can't do anything productive.  It might be good too to ferry a villager over and build a tower close enough so my ships can attack combative villagers and knights.

EDIT:  Had a completed run of Saladin 2 that beat my initial goal by 2 minutes.

Saladin 2 in 22:37:  [url=http://www.filefront.com/16896797/SAL2_2237.mp4]http://www.filefront.com/16896797/SAL2_2237.mp4[/url]

This was my fastest destruction of the Raiders ever.  The pirates could have gone a little better, their villagers were a bit reluctant to walk out to their death as compared to some other practice runs.  The faster I can kill all the villagers, the faster my ships can all attack the town center at once.  The last 35 seconds of the game after the Pirates say their words at me are just waiting for them to sacrifice all their own buildings.  This may look slow but there's really no avoiding it.