Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings/An Unlikely Messiah

The Franco-English war has lasted for almost one hundred years. The English kings claim rights to the French thrones, and they have conquered the French territory city by citty with their allies in Burgundy. The heir to the French monarchy is too cowardly to ascend to the throne. The French army is wounded and tired and has given up all hope. But in the darkest hour, a young peasant girl, Joan of Arc, declares that she intends to save France. She said she had a vision from God to save her homeland from English domination.

Historical note: Depending on who you would ask, you would get a different position on who or what France really was. Indeed, this was the reason for the Hundred Years' War, and "England", "France", and "Burgundy" were just factions in a civil war.

For definitions, see the page and the  page.

Joan of Arc 1: An Unlikely Messiah
This scenario is pretty straightforward. The main point is that you have almost no way of healing any damage until you reach Chinon, but by then it won't matter. Therefore, you need to avoid all combat, unless you have no choice, and even then, you need to avoid combat. Unfortunately, depending on the difficulty setting and how aggressive the enemy units are, combat will be forced upon you from time to time. An AoE expert will note that infantry can be healed inside an ally's Tower. The Tower near your starting location may be critical to your survival.

Joan is one of your best scouts, because she has the best sight range. She should be your primary scout. Many special events occur in response to her proximity.

As the scenario starts, you recruit two knights. Many special events occur in response to their proximity (window dressing, mostly), so they should be walking around right behind Joan. Try using the "follow" order. They are also your fastest units, so scout with them as appropriate. As Joan walks around inside the French camp, you recruit 4 archers and 4 men-at-arms.

Your first hostile encounter is with two dire wolves. They are not very dire, because they do very little damage per hit. You could sneak by them, or you could waste them. You could even lure them into the French camp and get your allies to deal with them. This early in the scenario, healing is relatively easy, so you may as well have some fun with them.

Your next encounter is a battle between the British and the forces of France. Just sit back and watch it. Even if you could enter the battle, which is almost impossible until it's over, the only way the British could hurt you is via collateral damage (check the diplomacy screen). After the battle, the British disappear. Feel free to hack down a catapult or something afterwards; it's perfectly safe.

A bit further along the path, you encounter a damaged bridge. Head along the path, and you run into some bandits. Head along the coast, and you run into an enemy warship. You can get your company through between them. Then you reach a big group of deer. This is a safe resting area.

When you try to head along the coast again, you are blocked by an enemy town, including Towers. As you skirt the town, you find that you can just sneak by between the town and the bandits. However, you should probably kill the bandits. You have no idea what lies up ahead, and it is prudent to have the route behind you clear, in case you have to flee back through this area. Use standard damage avoidance techniques, and then go back home for healing. (Then let the game run while you have a coffee or something until your force is back at full strength.) Your knights should sit this one out.

After some R&R, you head out again. This time, you try the path to the right from the bandit camp. You find and kill some wolves, and then you run into another bandit camp. So you go back to the first bandit camp and take the left path again. As you skirt the enemy town, its defenses force you into the sight range of a bandit light cavalry unit. This unit is actually dangerous, and there is no way to avoid it. After killing it, you will need some major healing, so you may as well clear out the rest of the second bandit camp.

After your second round of R&R, you continue down the path and cross the bridge to reach a French town. Here you recruit a battering ram and a bunch of infantry. What do we use Pikemen for?

You find that you have no choice left but to go right through the Burgundian town in the middle of the map. You should go in through the wall where neither Tower can hit you. Note that a wall section is weaker than a gate, although less melee units can attack it at a given time. As your battering ram beats on the wall, some number of enemy units will rush out and beat on your battering ram. A priori, you don't know whether that number depends on exactly where you attack, but you do know whether a Tower will or will not attack you, so you choose to avoid the Towers.

Before the ram goes in, however, attack the target wall section with a mobile unit to provoke the defense reaction. Kill the responding units, and heal your damage again.

After you pass through the Burgundian town and cross the river, you reach another French town, but this one is occupied by enemy soldiers. Moving along the path, you encounter some light cavalry, so you go along the river bank instead. As Joan sneaks in there, she recruits three Transport Ships. There is no need to engage the large enemy force. The transports cannot carry your whole force at once.

The northernmost landing point on the Chinon side of the Loire River is safe, and from there, you are home free. You could continue down the river, but remember that there is an enemy warship there. You could wander around the SW area of the map if you really want to. There you would encounter some enemy soldiers, one last bandit camp, and some more recruits.

Joan of Arc 2: The Maid of Orleans
This scenario is straightforward and reasonably easy. Note that you are restricted to the Castle Age in this scenario. That means that you will need battering rams.

Your first task is to get your initial force to Blois. Just head over there, with the scout in the lead. You do run into some Burgundian rabble on the way, but not enough that you need to avoid them. Just kill them off, although you will need to head back to the monk near Chinon for healing.

In Blois, you recruit a large force. Unfortunately, all of these units are obsolete as soon as you get them, for several reasons. You will be working with these obsolete units for a long time, so offensive operations will be out of the question. Your swordsmen are also basically useless. Your next task is to get everyone to Orleans. There are two basic approaches to this. First, try to run directly to Orleans, and if it starts to look unreasonable, you will need to look for a roundabout route.

As your scout heads off down the road, he starts to run into opposition. The first knight or so are easy to deal with. The monks would ordinarily be problems, but you have a powerful anti-monk weapon. Joan of Arc is on a divine mission, and cannot be converted by some heretical proselytiser. Pretty soon, you find that you are blocked by a large force, plus a Tower. If you divert to the right, you run into two fortified positions. When you divert to the left, you recruit some Transport Ships. Use them to get everyone across the river. You may as well leave the swordsmen in Blois, because they have no real use.

When your first unit approaches Orleans, you get control of the whole city, except the gates. There are ten Towers in Orleans. They are immediately obsolete, albeit very powerful. You will not have the resources to replace them, so you need to work with them as is. You also get three villagers. Collect wood with them for now. When the supplies reach Orleans, you can start a major construction program. With the food allocation, produce a couple more villagers and one scout, and go to the Castle Age right away, because you need monks and castles. Produce a lot more archers right away, and put, say, two in each Tower. (The AoE expert will note with some irritation that your Tower garrison firepower goes down as you upgrade your force. Rearrange your recruited and produced archers to mitigate this.) Two scouts are plenty for this scenario. When more food becomes available, you should quickly work up to about 20 villagers. This may seem like a rather small number, but you will need a lot of ground troops to defend your long perimeter. You also can't enter the Imperial Age, so a lot of expensive research will not be needed.

Very soon, all your enemies will be attacking you viciously, with every type of unit at their disposal, albeit only Castle Age units. You will need a lot of stonework, and this will deal with most of the enemy attacks, except their battering rams. Accordingly, you will need to sally forth frequently, and for this, you will need the heaviest cavalry you can get. Heavy cavalry is also the only reasonable way to deal with the powerful British archers. However, it is vulnerable to monks and spearmen, which the enemy also uses in large numbers.

One question you need to deal with right away is whether you want to protect your dock. It is not important by any means. Right now, it is totally exposed, and it will always be somewhat exposed because it is separated from your main bastion by the river. For an additional challenge, we choose to protect the dock. Note that there is also an important gold deposit in that area. Produce a small fleet to help protect your dock. These ships will have a restricted area of operations, but they will have a powerful influence over some of the most important parts of the map. In fact, by themselves, they might be able to at least cripple all the South British and Burgundian attempts to cross the river.

Rapidly explore as much of the map as you can. Use all assets at your disposal, not just the scouts. You will not be able to explore the north corner or the east quarter of the map at this time. You will find a bunch of free farms west of Orleans. Plan on actually using them; they will need to be walled off. You will find two stone and three gold deposits. Due to the amount of stonework you already have and to your cheap castles, the available stone should be adequate. As always, the gold is more than you will need, and you will never run out of food and wood. First priority for new stonework is a castle and a partial wall north of your farms, then a wall at the north end of the bridge to seal off the west of the map. If you seal off the west part of the map completely, then the enemy battering rams will simply take out the nearest wall they find, and you won't be able to do anything about it, because they will be protected by pikemen and other troops. You need to leave a hole somewhere, preferably in the back, so that you have plenty of time to shoot up their force as it marches toward the hole. Second priority for new stonework is the south area of the map. Be aware of the fact that your allies are also allied to your enemies when you design your wall in the south. When building walls in the west, be aware of hidden paths through the woods. When building walls in the south, be aware that certain trees block wall construction but allow units to walk past them.

Your second castle should be in the south. Your third castle should be at the north end of the bridge. When the third castle is built, about half of the Orleans perimeter is now safe, so you can disband many of your foot archers. As food and gold start to roll in, replace your obsolete knights with new production. Get some cavalry archers, and 5 battering rams as well. When your force is fully upgraded, and your population at maximum, you are ready for some serious offensive action.

In the meantime, Joan of Arc should have been raiding the British monastery at the south end of the bridge. She can keep killing their monks with impunity, which is a big drain on their gold. When you have several rams available, put them in a Transport Ship and land them at the south end of the bridge to take out the Burgundian Tower and the monastery. At some point, the British will start to chop wood in the area, and you know what to do with unprotected enemy villagers.

When you are ready to go on the offensive, there are three main plans available. The most conservative one is to claim the stone and gold deposits NE of Orleans. You hardly need the gold, but the stone is useful. Of course, much of that stone will be needed for defenses in that area, but there should be enough left over for at least one more castle and a bunch of walls. The second plan is to locate and destroy Burgundy. They have lots of spearmen, but hardly anything else. You could build a second dock and some Transport Ships to help in the conquest of Burgundy. The most ambitious plan is to go for the immediate win. You should be totally dominating the map by now, and if you put your entire force against one enemy, you will easily succeed. The weakest enemies are the South British, because they tend to send their villagers out of their bases pretty soon, and you may already have crippled their economy. It is not trivial to attack a castle with only battering rams, so you may want to take the assault in stages, withdrawing and fixing damage after each stage. However, 5 battering rams will always beat a castle, as long as there are no defending melee troops to beat up your rams.

Joan of Arc 3: The Cleansing of the Loire
Note that you are restricted to the Castle Age in this scenario. To win, you will need to assault several castles. These two facts already define to a large extent how the scenario must play out. The only realistic way to attack castles in the Castle Age is with battering rams, and experience tells us that 5 is the optimum number. Less than that, and the attack might fail, but you don't want them to take up too many spots in the population roster. Furthermore, if you plan to recruit over the population limit, then you can't afford to lose any rams, which means that you have to defeat the enemy's mobile force, at least locally, before attacking a castle.

Move the scout towards the flag. You will acquire some Transport Ships. Use them to cross the Loire River, and then move your units to the east, as per the scenario instructions. At the edge of the map, you find some gold and stone, and if you do it properly, 14 sheep. Trees are everywhere, of course. Set up your base there. At this point, you will have explored about 20% of the map.

Take out the two Burgundian Towers in your base area. This can be done without sustaining any damage by dodging the Tower arrows, but if you use only infantry, then any damage can be healed, even before you get monks. Your base area has four natural entry points. Seal them with a gate each immediately, and add a Tower each as soon as you can. You should be safe behind stone walls well before the first attack arrives.

Keep scouting. You should be able to explore the entire map, with the exception of the vicinity of the main British base, the three British fortified outposts, John Fastolf's territory in the NE corner, and the Burgundian base.

You will have noticed that the British have warships wandering around, so your next priority should probably be a fleet. This is primarily a land map, so you don't really want more than 5 War Galleys. Use your fleet to defend your dock area.

As soon as you have monks and cavalry archers available, start raiding Burgundy.

There is a British dock on the Loire River. Destroy this dock as soon as practicable. The British do not rebuild this dock, not that they really could if they wanted to. They do replace it with another dock further inland. After that, their new production warships come wandering down the tributary one by one, and if they get by your main base, what's left of them gets chopped by your fleet. Destroying the British dock on the Loire River gives you complete control of the Loire River. This allows you to fish and transport troops on the river in complete safety.

It is now time to take out Burgundy. You don't have to do this to win the scenario, but if the fact that they are weak is not sufficient reason, then consider the fact that they are consuming resources that would be better used for the glory of France. Burgundy doesn't have much in the way of defenses, only some Towers and some troops. A handful of heavy cavalry and a handful of cavalry archers is all you will need to defeat Burgundy. Of course, you will need to run back to your base for healing from time to time. This is one reason why it is so important to have free rein on the Loire.

While you're heavily engaged with Burgundy, you should build a fortified position, including a castle, on the left side of the map. For one thing, there are important resources over there that you should exploit. For another, having a base over there will allow you to operate more effectively, and its influence actually is felt over the entire map.

After Burgundy is out of the picture, you have to decide what to do about Fastolf's army. If you mostly avoid them, they may not bother you too much, and if they do attack you, they will always be biting on stone. Fastolf's army uses heavy cavalry and maybe some siege equipment, but no heavy artillery. They can't really hurt you. The only question is whether they can interfere with your attacks on the British bases.

For the sake of argument, let's say you decide to take out Fastolf before the bases. It turns out that this is actually very hard. For one thing, his heavy cavalry is better than yours. What can you do about this? Say it: M - O - N - K. That stands for raid - retreat - possess - heal. Repeat as many times as necessary. Eventually, and that means after a long, long time, and having defeated hordes and hordes of enemy units, literally as many as a thousand, considering all enemies, Fastolf runs out of gold, and then you can crush him.

With Fastolf out of the picture, you can take your force of battering rams that has been waiting patiently for the chance against one British castle at a time. Make sure that you have a lot of supporting units, because you don't want to lose any rams, and the British are probably still producing units. Of course, if you can wreck their economy, you should probably do so. Each of the British fortified outposts produces one type of unit in addition to Longbowmen. One produces cavalry, one produces infantry, and one produces siege weapons. The main base produces several types of units. Take this into account in your attack plan.

The best way to attack one of the British castles is to build a small wall compartment onto the outside of the British wall. Then move your assault group into the compartment. This protects them from counterattack. Then breach the enemy wall and rush the castle.

One surprising aspect of playing the scenario as described here is that, after you have wiped out all of Fastolf's army and start to attack a British castle, John Fastolf himself teleports in with a few units and attacks you. By this time, you will be so powerful that this surprise attack is not a problem. The only problem you will have is whether you will be able to convince him to join your side before he commits suicide.

Joan of Arc 4: The Rising
This scenario is straightforward, if not necessarily very easy.

According to the scenario instructions, travel west to the flagged village. Almost immediately, you encounter a small British force. This force is much weaker than yours, primarily because you have monks, so defeating them is really just a warm-up exercise.

You will already have noticed a river crossing. As you scout it, you find that it is walled off, and if you are not careful, the enemy castle will kill your scout.

Continue to move west, scouting aggressively. The enemy is already scouting aggressively. Kill as many enemy scouts as you can now, or they will harass you considerably later.

Quite soon, you contact your village, gaining six villagers and some buildings. Immediately send some villagers to wall off the known river crossing. Your other immediate priorities are gathering food and stone.

Continue to scout aggressively. You find a second river crossing near your village, so that must be walled off ASAP. It is probably best to commit your entire army to defending the eastern crossing until that wall is completed, according to the principle that a village is very strong defensively at this point in the game. As soon as the eastern crossing is sealed off, bring the entire eastern force back to the village. That wall is so far away that you will have plenty of time to respond to an attack there, and anyway, unless they use siege weapons, a stone wall alone is virtually impregnable.

By the time that you have completely explored the south side of the river, the western crossing should be sealed off, probably with a Tower in support, and your production should be ramping up. On your side of the river, there are only a few enemy Towers and a few enemy scouts. You might have had the opportunity to destroy one of the Towers; the remaining ones are not important at this point in time. In any case, they will self-destruct if you can knock out Chalon. You can't do much about the enemy scouts.

You will note that there is not very much stone on your side of the river. Unless you can seize some stone from the enemy, you will not be able to build strong defenses, which you will need because the enemy will attack with siege weapons. Therefore, you should be prepared to build ships to defend the river crossings (as in the wooden walls of Athens), despite what the scenario hints recommend.

Phase one of the scenario is now complete, and you are ready to put in a heavy raid across the western river crossing. The immediate target is Chalon, which is still relatively weak and is consuming resources that would better be used for the glory of France.

Chalon does have a substantial home guard, but you have seven heavy cavalry, operating from a nearby defended wall with monks in support. It takes very little to get the home guard excited, so you invite them over to your wall, and they die there. Then it's just a matter of killing all the Chalon villagers, after which their Town Center is helpless, and it's good-bye Chalon. When they surrender, all of their remaining military buildings and units vanish. When Chalon is defeated, you in principle get access to a bunch of resources, in particular stone, although Troyes and Rheims may still debate the point.

By the time Chalon is defeated, you could have built a castle on the southern riverbank at the western crossing to control both that crossing and the western part of the river, which then becomes your personal playground. Building a castle there seems to be a good idea. Your town should be booming by now, and the Imperial Age is in sight. Neither Troyes nor Rheims will have mounted any sort of attack yet.

Phase two of the scenario is now complete, and you are ready to move on. Your main priorities now are to fortify the eastern river crossing in expectation of a heavy assault, build a navy to control the river and pressure Troyes, and wall off the newly available resources north of the river.

Continue to build up, scout, and raid. You should now be encountering small numbers of enemy villagers outside their bases. You know what to do with those. You will find that Rheims is completely inaccessible behind a defended stone wall, but Troyes is completely exposed, except for the wall across the eastern river crossing. Furthermore, their Town Center is within reach of your War Galleys. Being a clever and ruthless AoE player, you will take advantage of these facts.

About this time, Troyes will be starting to attack you. Their ground troops aren't using heavy weapons yet, so they just bite on stone. Their warships come one by one, and they seem to be more interested in heading west than in fighting, so you can pretty much ignore them and let your castle sink them.

As soon as you have even one Transport Ship available, and especially after your warships dominate the river, your raids against Troyes become much more effective. Complete your conquest of the river area by destroying Troyes' dock. After that, your home areas will be completely safe. Any ground attack coming over the western river crossing has to travel too far to succeed, while any attack coming over the eastern crossing won't make it past your fleet. In any case, Troyes won't be around much longer.

Scouting the eastern part of the map is not particularly easy. Rheims has a strong fort to the north, and they sally forth with Longbowmen. Troyes has a castle to the south, and many military units standing around in this area. But eventually you can sneak a scout in there, and you find a lot of resources and a lot of villagers working hard to collect them. Troyes will not be running out of resources anytime soon.

The easiest way to take out Troyes is with your navy. Five War Galleys are definitely adequate for the purpose. All you have to do is stand there and grind away at their Town Center until it's gone. Troyes doesn't respond at all, which seems a bit unreasonable, especially considering the seriousness of the situation. When they surrender, all of their remaining military buildings and units vanish, and it's actually a lot of them.

Phase three of the scenario is now complete. You can now finish exploring the eastern part of the map. You should be entering the Imperial Age about this time. Knock down the gate across the eastern river crossing and replace it with one of your own.

Rheims is probably starting to mine the gold deposit just outside their west gate. There's not much you can do about this yet, because it is too close to their defended wall. If you have not already done so, and you certainly had more important expenses, you should now produce some cavalry archers to deal with these villagers. Eventually, you will also be able to use heavy cavalry, but they would need to be at least Cavalier quality, and those won't be available for a while.

When your cavalry archers start to shoot at those villagers, Rheims gets really, really upset. Be prepared to deal with a flood of Longbowmen, perhaps as many as 15 in the first wave, and other units as well. After that, there will be a protracted struggle in front of Rheims' western wall, as they try to collect the gold, and you try to prevent it. But in the meantime, you continue to build up and get more powerful, while Rheims is losing military units and villagers, and is running out of gold. It turns out that this gold deposit is crucial to Rheims, so the exact procedure you follow isn't very important. Some useful recommendations are to build a partial wall and a castle where Chalon used to be, to use your Transport Ship to create, effectively, a third river crossing that only you can use, and to upgrade to Cavaliers as soon as practicable. Cavaliers are more powerful than Longbowmen, individually of course, but also in economic terms, especially when you have monks in support.

You are not allowed to research Chemistry. This means that you cannot build Bombard Cannons. Therefore you must be especially careful how you employ your heavy artillery. After you have destroyed Rheims' mobile reserve, your continuing raids induce Rheims to use their new production mobile force piecemeal, and they die piecemeal. Rheims just keeps getting weaker and weaker, and you keep getting stronger and stronger. Soon your trebuchets will be grinding Rheims up Tower by Tower, and then it's just a matter of mopping up.

Summary
Start by grouping your units by type and assigning them hotkeys; for example, assign your Bombard Cannons and Jeanne de Lorraine to [1]. Set your diplomacy with the British to Neutral. This will keep enemy buildings from distracting your units from enemy troops. To destroy a building, select the units you wish to use and then right-click on the building. Use Trebuchets as Scouts, implementing their extremely long sight range. With a Trebuchet, you can uncover any enemy unit without activating it.

After these preparations, you're ready to save the Villagers and liberate Paris. Follow the west edge of the map until you encounter a few Towers and a Castle. Paris's western gate lies northeast. Destroy the Towers and Castle to give yourself breathing room.

Head south to the gold. This activates your reinforcements to the east and British Elite Longbowmen will ambush them immediately. Send your Knights to their aid, followed by the rest of your troops. Use your Cannons to make a hole in the wall next to the gold and leave Paris.

Travel north to the road and follow it south to the fork. Group Joan with the Villagers and save your game. It's very difficult to get Joan and the Villagers through. Engage the Burgundians with your remaining troops. Use Cavalry units to kill all ranged units. Run Joan and the Villagers to the square to end the scenario.

Detailed explanation
In this scenario, you have to make a long journey through hostile territory, with no possibility of healing any of your units. Therefore, you need to avoid all combat, unless you have no choice, and even then, you need to avoid combat. Unfortunately, combat will be forced upon you fairly often.

Your most dangerous opponents in this scenario are fully upgraded Longbowmen. They have a firing range of 11, which is at least comparable to any of your units except the trebuchets and one leader. Their sight range is probably the same, which means that they will detect and attack you as soon as you detect them, unless you explore with trebuchets exclusively. If they attack you, you will be unable to avoid damage, even using the best tactics. Of course, if you use inferior tactics, the Longbowmen will just eat you up.

Your next most dangerous opponents are monks. You can reasonably expect to face about 6. You do have a powerful anti-monk unit. Being on a divine mission, Joan of Arc cannot be converted by some heretical proselytiser. The only complication would be if the monk is not alone.

You do have a large army. You have a decent amount of heavy artillery and heavy cavalry, and a generous number of archers and Pikemen. Therefore you should be able to easily defeat any undefended static defenses, and any attacking melee units as long as there are not too many at once. You should also be able to defeat a certain number of enemy archers.

One thing you don't know is whether the enemy has an economy and can produce new units, thereby putting you under time pressure. You will see British villagers collecting resources, and they have a lot of production buildings, but eventually you will conclude that they probably were not permitted to build new units. This may have something to do with the fact that they start with 110 or so units, and you are unlikely to kill more than 35 of them.

Start by organising your army and sending your trebuchets into the wild black yonder. Among other things, make sure that your troops will not attack anything without your explicit command. Very quickly, you run into a pair of monks. Monks do not respond to wandering trebuchets, but the rest of your army has to keep a healthy distance. You now have to decide to either bear left, moving along the south map edge, or right, moving along the river bank. It seems more reasonable to move along the south map edge, because you then have a secure flank. You can't really go both ways at once.

As you move along the south map edge, you see the walls of Paris over on your right. You need to keep your distance from Paris to avoid triggering the garrison units, but there is a safe path. In the west corner of the map, there is an isolated castle with a bunch of Towers around it. There do not appear to be any mobile units supporting them, but you can never tell. Just before you get to the castle, there is a large empty area where your troops could safely assemble. You now have to decide whether to go all the way back and try the other route, but it seems more reasonable to force your way through here. Take a pot shot at the nearest Tower and stand ready to deal with a response. Nothing happens, so blow the first Tower away. Keep on like this until the fortified outpost in the west map corner has been reduced, but leave the wall alone, in case you might be able to use it. In this scenario, you generally don't want to be blowing stuff up unless you have a good reason. You now have a large sanitized area in the west map corner.

This part of Paris is guarded by a bunch of Longbowmen and other units. You need to lure these units out, one by one if possible, and Ambush them. Do not attack anything that they can see, because then the whole gang attacks you at once. In your present situation, there is exactly one reasonable way of dealing with the Longbowmen. Use a trebuchet to provide detection over the killzone. Prepare an ambush force of about 5 heavy cavalry. Send a bait unit forward, and, when the Longbowman responds, retreat slowly enough that he does not lose interest. Your ambush force should probably move forward toward the victim at some point, but pretend to be disinterested so that the victim does not switch targets. If necessary, use projectile avoidance maneuvers. This procedure minimizes the damage that you take, but it will not be zero.

When all the Longbowmen are dead, you need to deal with a bunch of infantry. Lure them out and Ambush them, but this time, the ambush force is your archers, and, because infantry can't see very far, you may need to attack something in the city to get them to respond. The infantry should not be able to inflict any damage.

After the infantry are dead, you can cut a hole in the wall and press forward. There are several barracks in this area. You should destroy these, because you don't want the British building infantry there and taking you by surprise. You need to move fairly fast about this time, because, while you were scouting this area, you recruited a bunch of villagers (the refugees), and you want to extract them to a safe area before they get attacked. In this area, you should also destroy a British Town Center, castle and trebuchet, because you can't afford to have them menacing your flank. There are a number of ways of dealing with an enemy trebuchet. Dueling trebuchet-on-trebuchet is not one of them.

As you move forward, you will detect an allied Transport Ship. The AoE expert will note that The King's Men have an extremely low score, and will surmise that they can't possibly have a lot of units.

You will now be squeezed between some British warships to the north and other forces to the east. You probably want to bear to the left as much as possible, which means that you will have to fight at least some of the warships. Try using a barrage from your Bombard Cannons; you don't really have a lot of options.

Then you reach the rendezvous with the King's men. Treachery! But what were you expecting? You do know the story of Joan of Arc, right? Don't dismiss these units out of hand. The scout cavalry is actually a useful unit.

As you approach the bridge, you will be attacked by two monks and a Cannon Galleon, maybe even at the same time. Your best option is to use Bombard Cannons against the Cannon Galleon, and Joan against the monks. But be careful! It would be quite embarrassing, and damaging as well, if you were to lose some of your artillery to these monks. After dealing with these units, destroy the monasteries near the bridge, because you can't afford to have enemy monks popping up in your "safe" areas. There are four Towers guarding the bridge area. You already know what happens to those. The same applies to the two catapults on the north side of the bridge. By the time you cross the bridge, your army will be very strung out, because you have only sanitized a narrow path through Paris. Do the best you can to deal with this situation.

After crossing the bridge, the direct line to your destination is NE. However, you have no real expectation that you will be able to go that way, so you consider all the possibilities. If you go to the left, along the river bank, you will be squeezed between some enemy warships and a castle and who knows what else, so this route is very unattractive. If you go to the right, along the river bank, you encounter some infantry. It turns out that this is the easiest route, but you won't know that until much later, so you avoid this route. If you go straight north, you run into a huge force, so you definitely don't go that way. If you bear a bit NE, you run into two monks, and you avoid them as well. Therefore the route to the NE looks safest, and that's the way you go. Save the game.

Surprise! You have just recruited a bunch of militia and a few more capable units. They are immediately attacked by 7 fully upgraded Longbowmen. If you do nothing at all, these Longbowmen, supported by the two monks you are avoiding, will destroy your entire group of 22 new recruits, losing only about half their force in the process. Since your army is so strung out, you will not be able to support the militia group with any of your veterans, not that you would necessarily want to.

An exercise in micromanagement
Even if you did not save the game before the surprise, if you are quick enough with the F3 key, you can stop the action before anything happens, and save the game and so forth.

There is no way that you can save all of your militia, so don't even try. However, these guys are all ready to die for The Cause. But you, being a decent commander, will make their deaths count for something. It is possible that you could sacrifice half the militia and run away with the other units, but there is no guarantee that that would actually work, and at a minimum, it would leave those 7 Longbowmen entirely unscathed and blocking your path. So we are going to attack and kill the Longbowmen, and if any of the supporting units survive, we will consider the engagement to be a success.

Organize your new recruits. Make 4 control groups of 4 militia each, and group the other 6 units by type. Charge forward with the militia, while the other units take evasive action. Pay close attention to which units are taking damage. Any unit that is actually a target must take extreme evasive action to soak up as much enemy fire as possible. The only units you have that can actually hurt the Longbowmen are the Scorpions and the knights. Focus fire on the Longbowmen with these units, while the militia are dancing around and drawing fire. Deal with the monks as best you can.

An expert AoE player will be able to win this engagement, surviving with somewhat less than half of his force, although many of the survivors will be seriously wounded.

To Compiegne
Once the dust clears, nothing remains in this area to prevent you from cutting a hole in the wall and leaving Paris. If you go north, you won't even need to worry about blocking terrain. So you get all your guys out of the city and form up the army again. You can now explore the rest of the map, although you won't find much of interest except for two things. One is that turning right immediately after the bridge would have been the easiest route out of Paris. The other is that all three approaches to Compiegne are blocked.

There is a welcoming committee from Burgundy sitting on the direct route to Compiegne. You do know that Burgundy is your enemy, right? You do know the story of Joan of Arc? Perhaps not. But if you are so naive as to think that these guys are here for any reason but to ambush you, then you deserve to find out the truth the hard way.

The two other approaches to Compiegne are through the forest to the left of the Burgundian army, or all the way around to the east side of the map and through the forest. Too bad that a forest is blocking terrain!

Be aware of the fact that you have 10 villagers. If you are not yet familiar with the Grab-and-Dump Forestry technique, now would be a good time to learn about it. This technique is an important feature of certain AoE scenarios. If you don't want to wait for the villagers to cut the path, be aware that trebuchets can also knock down trees. It just requires direct hits. So, really, you can approach Compiegne from any direction you want. And if you don't like the fact that there is a horde of Burgundian units camped out in front of the gate to Compiegne, be aware of the fact that there are several valid ways of cutting a hole in their wall.

There are actually many ways of getting Joan and the refugees into Compiegne. The only thing you don't want to do is fight Burgundy straight up. You will lose. But you could provoke them to attack one of your units and run away. Then Burgundy will attack Compiegne and destroy the town. When they get bored of this, you could just walk in. Or you could bombard the Burgundian army from the back and accidentally-on purpose kill some of their units. If you are devious enough, you can actually defeat Burgundy without taking any damage. The most amusing thing is perhaps what happens if you lob a rock in their general direction from the front.

Joan of Arc 6
You begin with Guy Josselyn, your narrator, and the Trade Cart holding the French flag. The Trade Cart must survive to plant the French flag on the hill in Castillion. Head southeast and activate the French army awaiting you. Now activate the French cannon troops across the river to the west. Your first goal is to kick the Burgundians out of their walled town and implement it as your economic base.

Rousted from their town, the Burgundians have set up shop to the south. They send a continuous stream of Infantry and Pikemen and are quick to rebuild. Before engaging the British, relieve yourself of this nuisance.Don't destroy the Burgundian Market. This gives you the option of building a Market in Shrewsbury's town and using Trade Carts to supplement your gold supply.

The British are fond of Scorpions and Elite Longbowmen in this scenario. Gunpowder units best for dealing with this rabble. The enemy assails your defenses without letup at the crossing before you're ready to continue. Steadily build your forces and then advance toward the hill, building defenses and military buildings along the way. Once you've arrived at the hill and are certain of the Trade Cart's safe passage, bring up the flag and claim your victory.