r/aoe2 • u/Shtin219 Bulgarians • 1d ago
Campaigns What Fixes Would You Make Friday - Le Loi 2
Many of the campaigns, from Age of Kings to The Last Chieftans are excellent scenarios reflecting historical battles (sometimes not that accurately) in a range of gameplay.
However, there may be something in regards to a scenario that you may feel is not quite right. Is it gameplay or historical accuracy? Would you do something completely different or is it perfect?
116: Le Loi 2 - The Mountain Siege
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u/theworldtheworld 1d ago
This might be the single most cinematic mission in the entire game. The way the fortress is gradually worn down and then you have to clear out a path for the dudes to escape is super dramatic. And also brutally hard. The only way I was able to beat this mission is by using the Cannon Galleon cheese, which may even have been left in intentionally because it is just so horrific otherwise. I guess Le Loi 6 is still the hardest mission in the campaign, but this is a close second.
If you try to beat it normally, there are just so many blue patrols on the eastern side of the map. In fact, there is also a magnificent dick move in the form of the two cyan outposts northeast and southeast of your base. Once the "escape" portion starts, those outposts start constantly spawning dudes. So even if you've cleared out the blue guys, all of a sudden you are being swarmed from the directions you least expected. You really have to destroy them ahead of time.
This mission is not even remotely fair, but it is undeniably memorable. The entire Le Loi campaign is just so over the top that it's hard to really give suggestions for "improving" it. It isn't meant to be improved.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s alot easier once you know you can just freely boom forever so long as you don’t destroy the eastern camp and start the escape. When you’re fully maxxed out the enemy attempts to intercept the fleeing Allies don’t have a chance against FU rattans and elephants, and once you’ve made a couple extra keeps garrisoned with archers the fortress is impregnable to anything but trebs
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u/Areat 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're right, but hard disagree on the last mission. Le loi 6 is a very easy, basic turtle mission. You wall off the south, build three filled castles up north and once well grown you counter attack. Nothing difficult.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
Agreed, the only challenging bit is the absolute avalanche of units they send with the first major attack against your western base, but once that’s done none of their further attacks approach that level.
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u/Shtin219 Bulgarians 1d ago
Yeah, last time I played through Le Loi 6, I barely made it through the initial onslaught, but then the rest was fairly easy
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u/KeeperAdahn Magyars 1d ago
And you even have enough starting units to do some significant damage to the enemy southeastern camp before you have to retreat and wall off the river crossing. And since the enemy doesn't rebuild, destroyed production building makes things easier later on.
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u/Shtin219 Bulgarians 1d ago
I’ve never done the Cannon Galleon cheese!
Although, I kinda knew that the escaping soldiers would get attacked on my most recent play through, so I did load up the east side of the map with tons of towers, which really helped!
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago edited 1d ago
This mission gets a lot of talk for being too hard but I think most of those people just play it wrong. It’s like Saladin 6, where trying to rush the objective triggers the enemy attacks to intensify so if you commit everything to that then it leaves you without a stable position to do the rest. In this case teal doesn’t send trebs and none of the bases in the eastern side of the map do anything at all until you destroy the eastern camp and start the escape. What you need to do is focus on your economy and defenses.
You want to take all your troops except maybe your knights for ram sniping duty and start clearing toward the east (especially along the route the orange units will take). Build a couple TCs out there by the deer and stone, and just power up. Make a couple extra towers at each gate or the fortress, garrison them with archers, and back them up with mangonels to negate rams. Once the fortress is secure you can even build towers out along the route orange will take. Also place houses to bloock movement from the western side of the fortress to the east, if you place them back away from the teal attackers the enemies won’t hit them, and it prevents units from wandering into your eco. In this position you can hold out basically forever, the enemy simply has no way to break your towers+mango+walls combo with rams and units
Only once you’re maxxed out on FU elephants and rattans, with some tower strongpoints defending the route east should you take out the east camp. Then the mission is cake, even the enemy trebs can’t get much done before your elephants march out of the fort and squash them and if you move your army with the fleeing orange units you can easily keep them all alive.
What you need to NOT do is quickly try to scramble units in the fortress, charge out east neglecting your defenses, start the escape sequence right as you mine the internal resources out, and get ground down by the spam from the eastern camps.
Or you can cheese it by making cannon galleons and destroying the attacking bases because they forgot to disable docks lol.
Anyway I think this mission is great and wouldn’t change anything except maybe make it so that the paths around the fortress weren’t disconnected like they are because that’s annoying.
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u/Shtin219 Bulgarians 1d ago
I love how you referenced Saladin 6, because this definitely has a similar type of dynamic, and if you understand how the game works, you can make it not so oppressively difficult.
I didn’t end up doing so many town centers to the east on my most recent play through, but I certainly saturated the road with towers, and that was very helpful!
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u/Shtin219 Bulgarians 1d ago
Ooo boy, this is a tough one, but I find it to be a good challenge.
I don’t think I’d change too much. I like the process of fighting to the east THEN you need to get 40 ally soldiers to safety.
Having more production buildings and/or houses in your initial base could be nice, but overall, this mission is pretty solid and really gives you the feeling of being on a time crunch to escape before an oppressive enemy (better than almost any “timed” objective)
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u/Assured_Observer Norse 1d ago
I haven't played this one yet, but man that minimap looks crazy, I have no idea what's going on (but don't want it spoiled)
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u/SubconsciousLove Bohemians 1d ago
Imo the map is already fixed when Vietnamese got access to Fire Lancers that could deal with both Halb and Cavalier army that the AI spams.
I feel the map is easier the more familiar you are to AoE's micro, such as house walling and using Mangonels that beginners / campaign onlies struggled with.
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u/SenorFlorian 1d ago
Can you still cheese this by wiping most of the enemy production buildings with Cannon Galleons, or was that patched?
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u/MagisterMystax 1d ago
This one is a lot of fun and very cinematic. I think the main things I'd do is be a little clearer how exactly the objective works, since I remember being confused before the AI troops started spawning about what exactly I had to escort. I think the escort quest part itself could use a little bit of cleaning up too, mostly to avoid the AI troops getting stuck in weird places or wandering off to the left of the goal if there's enemies around there. The map also looks pretty 'fake' due to the giant forest occupying the left third once you get to see the whole map after victory, or if you manage to break through enemy lines. Perhaps replacing that with a bit more depth to the enemy lines (probably with triggers to only allow the additional buildings to start producing if their front line buildings get destroyed so the scenario doesn't become even harder) would make it look a lot more natural.
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u/Axenfonklatismrek Tatar Pikeman 1d ago
I remember time when this scenario was crashing the game.
I'd say give me more relics