Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/Montezuma

Mission 1
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).

Mission 4: La Noche Triste
Here you will have no villagers for quite some time, and you are playing against time because the enemy starts building a wonder. Time should just be sufficient, but remember save often and use the pause key to give you time to think.

The map is a big lake with an island in the middle and some land on the edges of the map.

Start by walking with your only unit, an upgraded strengthened Jaguar Warrior (assign a hotkey number to this unit), towards the lower right. You will find a few units and two houses. Then walk to the lower left. Avoid the enemy Jaguar Warriors in the north, kill the three Eagle Warriors, and board the ships. You will have more than 20 units, but don't lose time by sailing back and forth. Instead, delete some units (you will have to do so later anyways to stay under the population limit): the pikemen are relatively useless, you can also delete some Eagle Warriors.

Sail further towards the upper left, save your game, and land your troops. Convert one of the Conquistadors with your monk and kill the other one. Delete the two transport ships, as they are completely useless from now on and only occupy two precious population slots.

Avoid the bridge, where some enemies will wait that are too strong to fight against, rather keep to the edge of the map, until you reach a fenced area where it is suggested that you deleted part of the fence to release the beasts. You could do that, they will kill the monk and then be deleted automatically, however you can use your monk to convert the enemy monk, which then can heal your monk (who is probably more than half dead after the encounter with the Conquistador). As soon as you converted the second monk, you will have control over a Onager, immediately pause the game, or it will start attacking a few Jaguar Warriors and be destroyed. Pull up your units, especially the skirmishers and the conquistador, who make it easy to get rid of the Jaguar Warriors.

Quickly walk toward the upper right until you reach the Tlaxcaltecan village. Save your game. Don't start attacking anything. Instead, convert at least two villagers, better three, and convert a few buildings like the barracks and a few houses, not necessarily the blacksmith (avoid wasting time!). You can send your special unit towards the tower to take the arrows while your monk walks past him and converts the tower (which has no Murder Holes), the other monk can convert the mill. As soon as you have the tower, delete it instantly before it fires a single arrow, otherwise it will attack the enemy houses and thus trigger a constant stream of enemies, this trouble is really not needed at all! When you have the mill, you can put one or (if you managed to convert three) two villagers on the fields to harvest food, but at least one villager needs to be moved along with your army, and be guarded as good as the monks (i.e. if you lose it, reload a save game).

Move further, towards the prisoner area, but save your game before you reach it and the prisoners are activated. While your soldiers attack a few enemy units, crack open the wooden wall with your catapult, then keep moving toward the right as quick as possible. Your monks and the villagers need to be kept healthy in this brawl, all other units are basically expendable. Use your Conquistador to ride quickly over the bridge towards the harbor, where it discovers a bunch of ships. Steer the transport ships toward the beginning of the bridge to load the bulk of our army, and use the fire ships as escort (they won't survive long, rather use them to lure away attacking enemy ships from your transport ships). When you have loaded the villager and the monks and as many units as you could save into the transport ships (if you have more than 50 units still, sacrifice a few Eagle Warriors, keep the conquistador and the skirmishers), sail towards the upper right and then in a wide curve further right, then lower right around the whole map.

When you have reached the land on the lower right edge of the map, save your game, disembark, move the villager and the monk away from the coast, discover the monastery village and a bit to the upper right find the berry bushes. Build a towncenter here and churn out villagers. send your army units towards the bridge which is left of the village and the only way enemies might come to you. However don't build any walls, tower or similar at the bridge head, that will attract a bunch of ships. Just hold the bridge with your skirmishers. If you run into the population limit, don't stop building villagers, rather kill your soldiers, just keep the skirmishers, a bunch of jaguar warriors and two transport ships.

Now collect resources. 150 stone are enough, so you can build a castle (you might be tempted to build it near the bridge as guard, but don't put it to too close to it, as that would trigger ship attacks, including war galleons with superior range), and then use it to create 5 trebuchets (i.e. 1000 wood and 1000 gold). Don't waste ressources on any research or building other units or buildings, and reassign villagers to another resource if you have just enough of one. Remember, time is of the essence.

Don't even bother fighting your way over the bridge through several castles, coming under attack from all sides by land and sea units. Such an endeavour would certainly be possible with some effort, but takes way too long. The wonder is nearing completion, and you only have 300 years after that until you lose. So the winning strategy is a different one.

When you have the 5 trebuchets, load them into the transport ship (just one is enough but doesn't harm if you have two still), add a few good units into it (like maybe the skirmishers, the Conquistador and Jaguar Warriors) and save your game before you start your Kamikaze attack. Then try to be lucky and find your way over the ocean to the harbor where you found the transport ships without encountering enemy ships that might sink you (i.e. if you loose the ship with the trebuchets, reload). Disembark, use your soldiers to distract enemy units from your trebuchets, while they move down towards the wonder and attack it. They will be attacked by a catapult that might destroy one or two trebuchets, but your forces should last just long enough to bring down the wonder. They will inevitably perish afterwards, but just a few seconds later, Cortez will give up and you have won.