Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/Reign of Blood

Objectives

 * 1) Capture the 4 shrines (Monasteries) sacred to Quetzacoalt.
 * 2) Place a sacred Relic in each of the 4 shrines (Monasteries).

Map
Available on the Steam website.

Long solution
This scenario can be pretty easy. You start in an equal position to the 3 hostile towns you will face (you all start in the feudal age, with a couple of villagers and some defenses). Despite this being 3 on 1 the AI are rather incompetent, (they each develop rather slowly and seem rather limited with how they can fight militarily).

To most intents and purposes this scenario plays a lot like a (scripted) standard map. As such, the easiest way to win this scenario is to quickly build up and crush those in your path, since the AI are fairly easy and they usually lie in the way to your objectives.

To start with you should want to grow as fast as possible. So obviously you should focus on food and growing your workforce of villagers. You start with an abundance of resources nearby: berries, fish, turkeys, Javelina (boar), wood, gold and stone. With these resources and fairly good defenses to start with you should take this opportunity to snowball your economy as fast as possible (so focus on getting economic upgrades like wheelbarrow and double-bit axe) (note: you are restricted to just the castle age on this level).

Very early on you will hear "I hear the growl of the jaguar. Is this a bad omen?". This will trigger 4 jaguar to walk from the north east to a spot just above your town center. You can beat this 'threat' pretty easily, the jaguars can't fight whilst they have to walk to the scripted point, so tell your towers & eagle warriors to attack the jaguars on route. If the Eagle Warriors get hurt you can just garrison them in the towers for healing (there's no need to disrupt your villagers or economic growth!).

Once the Jaguars have been dispatched you should send your eagle warriors scouting. If you follow the road north you'll find the walls of the Tepanaca (orange), making it an effective dead end. If you follow the road to the south west you'll find some more turkeys and eventually a river with a watchtower of the Tlatiluco (red) overlooking the entrance to their town. There's several paths that lead up from this road, that will lead you to another road that connects the Tepanaca (in the East) and the Xochimilco (purple) (in the West).

(One funny little exploit to mention is that sometimes the other 2 towns steal Tepanaca's turkeys with their scouts. If you station an eagle warrior on the road between Tempaca and Xochimilco, you can intercept said turkeys on their way to their new home.)

Several minutes into the game you will start getting occasional raids from your opponents. Tepanaca will attack from the north, they only build archers and skirmishers, they aren't much of a threat early on because they usually just get themselves killed by the two towers you start with. Tlatiluco will attack via the south road, they only use infantry and they will be stuck with militia for a while, early on they will struggle against your eagle warriors and towers (you start with murder holes). Xochimilco seem much more flexible with where they attack, they will try to attack targets of opportunity (like unprotected monastery's or the weaker side of your base), their forces are a mix of archers and infantry (and eventually Scorpions), they are the ones you need to be most worried about.

Generally speaking, archers seem to be the best force to use for this mission, since gold and wood is plentiful, food is generally needed for villagers and upgrades, and without cavalry or Mangonels good use of archery can easily cream the AI. Also, upgrades like fetching or ballistics have the additional benefit of buffing your existing towers and archers can hide, heal and still shoot from said towers. Roughly speaking you should aim to have around 5 archers minimum and at least 10 before you reach the Castle Age. You have a strong defensive position, so the early raids shouldn't really be a problem and the AI will take a long while before they ever try to attack any monastery.

Rushing and defeating Tlatiluco should be an easy first objective. If you are fast enough they will probably still only have vanilla militia when you meet them in battle. To attack them you should have around 10-15 crossbowmen (with ballistics and bodkin arrows), a couple of monks (for heals/conversions) and a ram filled with 4 infantry (probably the 3 eagle warriors and 1 extra) and possibly 1 villager (for repairs). Destroy the watch tower using the ram and then immediately pull the ram back. Tlatiluco just leaves all its militia milling around the barracks at the bottom corner of the map. When it tries to respond, they are to far away to save the tower and they all come one by one across the narrow ford, which creates a great shooting gallery for the crossbowmen. It's then just a matter of mopping them up, take out the barracks to stop the infantry harass or just take out the town center and the villagers to force them to resign. (A fun challenge/option would be to try to convert most of their buildings and villagers. It creates a 'dummy' base that you don't mind if it gets attacked. (In fact all of the AI can be defeated this way))

With Tlatiluco down, build your forces in preparation to take on the Xochimilco. Their base is just above the Tlatiluco and it seems prudent to take out the strongest opponent before they have really gained enough momentum, compared to the Tepanaca, who aren't much of a threat and who take much longer to gain momentum. To take down Xochimilco you should have around 3 fully stocked rams and around 30 archers with monk support.

The same kind of tactic works against the Xochimilco. Provoke them to respond. Wait for the scrambled army to arrive, then butcher them. This time they won't come piece meal because there is no bottle neck, but at least the archery range is a fair bit behind the barracks, so they come in a staggered formation, a group of infantry then a group of archers. It should be a fairly easy fight and it should mostly be another mop up operation. Take out the production facilities to stop haras (they do rebuild them though) and use the rams to quickly take out the castle and the town center.

With two out of the way, you should have more than enough time, resources and men to take out the Tepanaca. The same tactics will work against them. Provoke, take out the scrambled response, mop everything up.

With all three AI's out of the way. It should be easy to deal with the monasteries. The monastery by the Tepanaca will soon be attacked when you capture it. The monastery on the far left has loads of jaguars milling about, to reach it build a dock and a transport ship, send across enough archers and a monk and just shoot all the jaguars in the way.

If you are struggling with this level then here's a few tips: Stealing the initiative is really vital on this map, if you are attacking you can control the engagement, they will fight and die alone. If you sit back for too long, they will take the fight to you, you won't control the engagement and they will be taking turns to hammer you down. As ever in AoE2 micro is a very important factor to how effectively your units fight, keep your troops on a short leash, archers stand still and shoot, melee units don't wander too far, if your units are attacking nearby buildings more than opposing troops, then just go to diplomacy and make that opponent 'neutral', your units will ignore buildings & villagers and only attack military targets (unless instructed otherwise). If you are going to to take things slow, then consider walling off (palisades will do) the monastery's and one side of your town, that way the AI will take the 'easiest' path and attack the other side of your base without a wall. If you wall off everything though then the AI will try to bust through any of the walls (Xochimilco will attack the 'weakest' place.. most often the monastary's). If attacking Xochimilco is too hard, you can access the river by going through the jungle to the left of the Tlatiluco's base. Similarly the other hard to reach monastery can be reached by going up from below (through the jungle).

Fast solution
In fact, you don't need to fight anyone in this mission, but the troops attacking your village. If they are not killed by your towers, ring the alarm and gather your villagers in your Town Center and they'll quickly kill the opponents (it works also for the 4 Jaguars attacking in the beginning).

You need only to reach the monasteries and put the relics into them. So you'll need to advance to Castle Age to train Monks, it requires 2 Feodal Age buildings, food and gold.

First, send your Villagers fishing, gathering Berries or killing Turkeys (there are two groups of Turkeys in the South-West of your Town Center).

Gather some wood and build as soon as possible a Blacksmith and a Market, then gather food and gold (there are some mines in the South-West of your Town Center, you can also use your market for gold).

While doing this, send your Eagle Warriors to discover the two shrines close to your village, then send an Eagle Warrior with a Villager to the Western shrine (be careful not to be killed, you can send your villager as a scout). The Western shrine is on the other side of a river, so build a port with you villager and build a Transport ship, then send your Eagle Warrior on the other bank of the river and reach the shrine. There are many Jaguars there, but they won't attack your Eagle Warrior.

When you've reached Castle Age and the three shrines, train a Monk in each of them, plus one in the shrine close to your village, and send this Monk to the northern shrine.

When all the monks are near the shrines, pick up the Relics and put them in the shrines to win.

Tips

 * Jaguars do not seem to attack Eagle Warriors.
 * Some troops of Tepanaca (orange) are close to the northern shrine. They will immediatelty attack your Monk if he carries a Relic, or the shrine if any Relic is picked up.