Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/Montezuma

Mission 1
Before you read the actual article, do know that this advice is very general and probably only even vaguely useful on the easiest difficulty setting. So, use this only as a general guide.

These are the Objectives:
 * 1) . Capture the Monasteries near the flags shown on the mini map.
 * 2) . Place the four Relics in the Monasteries.

Your village is in the Eastern corner of the map. You begin on the Feudal Age, with a Town Centre (TC), a Barracks, three houses, three Watch Towers (one next to the houses, one near the Western approach and one near the Northern approach), three Eagle Warriors near the Barracks and three villagers near the TC. There is no shortage of wood, as always in AoE2. If you run out you are doing something wrong. There are thirteen Gold mines, eight Stone mines, four Turkeys and six Forage Bushes in the immediate vicinity of your village. You only need about 3500 Stone so this is enough resources to last you awhile.

According to the scouts section of the Objectives tab, the Tepanaca (orange) have a wall that will require siege weaponry to break. This is true to some degree. They do have a wall. One wall. However there are two ways into their town, so getting in isn't too hard. They are Mayan, not Aztec and train Archers and Eagle Warriors. They are North North-West of your base. (Note: The second way into their base is not at the end of the West road. Instead, go West and then North at the first opportunity. Go North North-West at the fork in the 'path' and then travel North-East at the road. You can then attack the Tepanaca town from the West without worrying about the wall that blocks the Southern approach.)

Next are the Tlatiluco (red). They are South South-East of your base. They train units from the Swordsmen line (Starting with Militia) and Eagle Warriors. Finally, the Xochimilco (purple) are your most dangerous enemy. They are Mayan, not Aztec and they train Archers and Scorpions. Leave them until last unless you are very sure of yourself or strong enough to fend off the other two enemies while attacking the Xochimilco.

Note: Red is the only one that is vulnerable to a true rush, due to their infantry focus and total lack of defenses. If you (as you should) blast through to the Castle Age, you can send Jaguar warriors against a Feudal opponent and slaughter them. Orange and Purple both have castles. This guide assumes you are attacking Orange first.

First, order one of your villages to each resource and one builder. (You will have to make two more villagers in order to do this.) Build a Mining Camp near the Gold mines to the West of your TC. You don't need a Mining camp near the closer Stone mine. When you hear "I hear the growl of the jaguar. Is this a bad omen?" ring the Town Bell. This is because four jaguars will attack. When your TC and Watch Tower have killed the jaguars, send your villagers back to resource collecting and assign your builder to build Stone Wall across the two approach roads into your village. This is to stop minor raids. Once the stone wall is finished, build towers and an Archery Range. Unfortunately, since you are playing as the Aztecs, you cannot build any cavalry. On the plus side, neither can your Aztec and Mayan enemies.

You can use your three Eagle Warriors to either scout carefully or to kill intruding enemy scouts. You can safely scout everywhere inside the walls, up the Northern road to the Tepanaca wall, around the lake to the North, all the way to the river to the West and anywhere North except for the Tepanaca town and jaguar enclosure (through the Palisade Wall near the lake).

All the time while using one villager to build the defenses, the other villagers should have been collecting resources. You have good amounts of stone and gold inside your base that should last you a while. The trouble with the early stages of this level is how slowly you get resources. I recommend not trying for the Castle Age until you have at least five villagers per resource and two builders. Also, don't do anything that costs food except for making villagers. (For this reason, Archers are the best unit to make if you want some soldiers early on.) By this stage you should have a good amount of resources (except food). There is nothing you can do about the orange Archery Range near the top right-hand flag, so ignore it. As soon as you can, with the number of villagers mentioned above, advance to the Castle Age. Then build a Castle and start training Jaguar Warriors. When you have ten or so, send them and a villager to either of the closest two flags. Capture the monastery and wall it in, with a Watch Tower and gate.

Make one monk at the first monastery you visit and collect the relic. Leave the monk there. Then go to the second monastery and do the same, walling it in and making a monk to collect the relic. Then make another monk and heal all the soldiers. Then take the soldiers and monk up to the Tepanaca town and destroy the mill. Be careful of the Watch Towers in the lake. Go around the towers, but otherwise ignore them. They disappear when the Tepanaca resign.

Next, upgrade Archers to Crossbowman, build a Blacksmith and research everything available there. (Note: You are restricted to the Castle Age in this level, so with these units and researches you have the required military). If you like you can build a University, but it isn't really necessary except for the Treadmill Crane which increases villager build speed. You should probably build a siege workshop, as the Tepanaca have a castle and many villagers to garrison in their TC.

When you have about fourteen Crossbowman, three Eagle Warriors, ten Jaguar Warriors, one Monk at each Monastery and one with your army, you can attack. Go around the forest and bypass their wall, it's quicker and cheaper because you don't need Battering Rams that way. Destroy just about everything except for the TC, Castle and Towers in the lake. Make some Battering Rams and destroy the gate in the Tepanaca wall. Destroy the TC and Castle. (The Castle is on the cliff near the TC. There is also a mill and some villagers who will garrison in the Castle.) When you capture the Monastery, some Eagle Warriors will charge out of nowhere and attack. Defeat them and build a Monk to garrison the relic. Build a Castle and some wall around the Monastery.

Up near the castle there is some Stone. By this stage your Stone Miners will almost certainly have run out in your base, so bring them and build a Tower and another Mining Camp. You don't have to destroy the Tlatiluco, but it is a good idea because they will periodically attack you with Men-At-Arms. When the Tlatiluco are destroyed, raze the Xochimilco town and then build a dock. Create a Transport Ship, take some soldiers across, kill all the jaguars, capture the Monastery, build a Monk (or use the one you had, if you brought it across), garrison the relic and win.

Actually there is one other thing you have to do. When you garrison the last relic, a patch of trees will appear in the South-West of the map. Mine through it to win.

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 using the pause key for thinking thoroughly before you act and saving often (at least when I write SAVE in the following, but better more often) will be very helpful.

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 overstrenghtened Jaguar Warrior (I suggest to assign a number to this unit) towards the lower right and find a few units and two houses. Then walk in the other direction, 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 loose time by sailing back and forth, rather delete some units (you will have to anyway later due to population limit), the pikemen are relatively useless, you can also delete some Eagle Warriors.

Sail further towards the upper left, SAVE, 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 I suggest to 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.

Don't loose time and walk toward the upper right, until you reach the Tlaxcaltecan village. SAVE. Don't start attacking anything, rather convert at least two villagers, better three, and I suggest to convert a few buildings like the barracks and a few houses, not necessarily the blacksmith (don't loose too much 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 loose it, reload a save game).

Move further, towards the prisoner area, but SAVE 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, 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 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.