Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings/Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick Barbarossa, after being elected the Holy Roman Emperor, attempts to force the squabbling German fiefdoms into his Holy Roman Empire, which he then must defend from the invasions and manipulations of the Italian city states and the pope in Rome.

Barbarossa 1: Holy Roman Emperor
Teutons have the best monks. However, their total force has significant weaknesses. The biggest one is that their cavalry is slow. This means, among other things, that it will have difficulty running away from a superior force. Another major weakness is that their scout is not only relatively slow, but weak. There are many important missions for combat-capable light cavalry, and the Teutons just can't do them. Furthermore, the Teuton unique unit is not useful. Sure, it has great melee armor, but how often does it actually catch something that it can beat? The Teutons do have several advantages, such as conversion resistance.

This scenario is not particularly straightforward, so there are more spoilers here than usual. The scenario is fairly hard at the beginning, as a lot of AoE scenarios are. Until you build up, you will be stretched thin, and you need to accomplish a lot. You don't control any secure territory, and you need to be engaged all over the map. You need to micromanage a lot of units all over the map continuously for a long time, otherwise they just commit suicide. Save the game frequently! You need to do like Napoleon did and use those internal lines of communication. The difficulties go down when the Mongols join you, because by that time, you should have some static defenses and some secure territory, you have probably knocked out one enemy, and you have just acquired a strong mobile force, at a bargain price.

The map is comprised of a lot of islands, all connected by bridges and river fords. You start the scenario in the middle. Where to go, what to explore first? There is no way of knowing, but you certainly need a lot more scouting capacity, so build that up immediately. About five scouts, plus a couple of monks to start seems about right. Scout aggressively! This seems to be more imprtant than usual in this scenario. A reasonable choice seems to be straight out, then clockwise with the first scout.

The map is crawling with sheep. Grab as many as you can as fast as you can. At least 10 should be found almost immediately.

By the time you have explored about 1/3 of the map, you should have made contact with Swabia to the west, Saxony to the north, Bavaria to the SE, and Burgundy to the south. Saxony and Bavaria have Towers and walls, Swabia has at least one monk, and Burgundy has Towers. In the balance, Burgundy seems to be the weakest. You should attack Burgundy immediately. Use all available knights, a couple of monks, and some villagers to build Towers and such. Swabia will be next on the hit list. Continue to scout aggressively. At this time you should also start to build static defenses. Stone walls should be used in the west, because those will be permanent positions, and you can expect to be attacked there soon. Some Palisade Walls will suffice in the east, because you have the castle there. Seal off the west completely, including gates, of course, but leave an opening near your castle. This will encourage attacking enemy forces to walk past your castle, where they will die in heaps. If your home area is not effectively sealed off, enemy units will run through there constantly, and at a minimum slaughter your sheep.

Burgundy
As soon as you attack Burgundy, you realize that they also have a monk, hiding in the middle of their town. That's unfortunate, but Burgundy is still the weakest of the potential targets at this time, because they have no other mobile military units. Lure the monk into an ambush, and then leap on him with everybody. If you do this properly, his chance of converting something will be very low. If he does get lucky, you should probably reload your latest saved game, because you cannot afford casualties this early.

Next, knock out a Tower with your knights, probably the one near the forage bushes. This is safe, because Burgundy does not have Murder Holes, and you have a monk nearby anyway. When the Burgundy Tower goes down, you may want to build your own Tower there, as close to the Town Center as possible. If enemy villagers come out to play with it (they often do), kill them with your knights. The next target for your knights is the monastery. You want the relic, and you don't want Burgundy building any more monks. While all this is going on, and definitely afterwards, do not miss an opportunity to kill enemy villagers. The best opportunity is when a villager ventures away from the TC to build something. Each time the villagers run into their TC, you should pretend to run away with your units, until they think it's safe and come out again. When the last enemy villager dies, you can destroy the Town Center safely and probably should. After you are finished with Burgundy, if you built a Tower there, you may want to put a wall around it. Otherwise, enemy melee units could show up and take it down before you can respond, although it doesn't really matter to the scenario.

The attack on Burgundy does not need to happen exactly as described above. The elements or their sequence could be varied. The main points are that you probably want their relic, and you probably want to knock them out. A complete knock-out requires destroying all production buildings and villagers, assuming that the remaining military units cannot hurt your static defenses. But there are other pressing concerns elsewhere, so you probably should only go for an economic knock-out before withdrawing; in particular, kill all the villagers and the TC. This way, even if they get resources from an ally, they can never rebuild their economy. Burgundy does not resign immediately when their last villager is killed, but will do so eventually, after a long delay.

By the time that you are finished with Burgundy, certain other things should have happened. You should have explored almost 2/3 of the map, everything except the SW corner (inaccessible due to terrain), the SE corner and some of the east side (inaccessible due to terrain and enemy presence), some of the west side (the territory of Swabia), and the NW corner (the territory of Saxony and some hard-to-reach areas). You should have made contact with Austria and Bohemia. Austria has a castle, which can easily kill your scout if you're not careful, a monk, and a mobile force, so you need to avoid Austria at this time. Bohemia has a monk but nothing else. Bohemia is currently the weakest enemy, although Swabia is fairly weak and closer to your main base. But Bohemia is right next to your brand new mercenary army! Therefore Bohemia is the next target.

The Mongols
When you check the diplomacy screen, you see that the Mongols want to be our allies. But do we want to accept? After all, they are the scourge of Europe (and Asia). And will they not betray us?

Our diplomatic stance towards the Mongols starts at neutral. At some point, you may decide to set it to ally. You probably won't think of this until the scenario is well underway, because you've got more important things to think about. Exactly when or if you do this is rather unimportant. As soon as you offer to ally with the Mongols, a section of the NE map is revealed, and you see a dozen Mongol units there. These units do not move.

Even if you never set your diplomatic state with the Mongols to ally, it won't have much effect on the course of the game. You know that the Mongols are over in the east somewhere, and you will eventually get there in the regular course of scouting. Allying with the Mongols will locate them earlier, but your scouts have other important tasks, as do all of your units. Therefore, you cannot realistically send a scout to make direct contact with the Mongols until you have explored a third or half of the map, and you will not be able to afford their fee immediately anyway.

When you make direct contact with the Mongols, they offer to join your forces for a total cost of 175 wood (for the market) and 240 gold (including the transaction fee). (For this single transaction, Banking does not pay for itself; you already have Coinage.) Mongolian mercenaries? Why not? For that price, you could normally only get about 3.5 cavalry archers, so these units are very cheap, and they are very useful, especially early in the game. (Note that many upgrades will be unavailable for these units.) Unfortunately, by the time you get the offer, you will have spent all your gold and wood on other critical things.

As soon as you have a reasonable number of villagers and your economy is starting to ramp up, you should make hiring the Mongols a priority. By the time they join you, you should have knocked out one enemy and can immediately throw the cavalry archers against the next one.

Bohemia
When the Mongolian mercenaries arrive, use them to take out Bohemia straightaway. The first step is to kill their monk. Lure him with a scout, and while he fixates on that, hammer him with seven elite Mangudai. He doesn't have a chance.

After that, it is relatively simple matter to hunt down their villagers. At some point, they will probably sit in the Town Center and refuse to come out. Teutonic TCs are very dangerous; you need to keep a healthy distance. Thus you have no alternative but to destroy all their buildings from range. Three Siege Onagers will make short work of undefended buildings, but stay away from the TC! One benefit of wiping out the buildings is that it may induce the villagers to come out to rebuild them, or at least try to. But if they still refuse to come out of the TC, you will need either long range artillery or battering rams.

While the Mongols are attacking Bohemia, your knights should have returned from Burgundy. Use them to take out the two Saxony Towers just north of your island. This is relatively easy, because they probably don't have Murder Holes yet, you have healers nearby, and no troops arrive to support the Towers. After the Towers go down, your mobility increases dramatically. You can now move monks and villagers freely over the entire map without much concern, except for those areas directly occupied by the remaining enemies. Expand your secure areas by building walls in judicious locations. Because of the many rivers and limited river crossings, this should be fairly easy.

Your early military ventures have probably used resources that might otherwise have been invested in the economy. Now is the time to bring the economy and population to the maximum and to go Imperial. You might be able to win the scenario with the forces at your disposal right now, but it would be a hard fight. But if you have a maximum economy and military, winning will be a piece of cake.

Now is also the time to upgrade your defenses in the east. Up to now you have been relying on your castle, with some Palisade Walls for channeling purposes and a few troops to help out. But enemy attacks will have been becoming more powerful, even if not yet dangerous, and they are starting to use siege weapons. Therefore it would be prudent to upgrade those defenses before you get heavily engaged with Swabia. At least a rudimentary Maze Complex is appropriate. Do not seal yourself in completely! Then the enemy will attack anywhere, and they will use siege weapons to safely smash your wall. As long as you leave one opening for the enemy, they will tend to use it, and all of their troops, including their heavy equipment, will just die in the maze.

Swabia
If you cannot finish Bohemia immediately because their remaining villagers are hiding in their Town Center, wall them in and leave a garrison force. If they have no active workers, they cannot rebuild. But this seems to be an unlikely possibility.

Assuming that Bohemia has been finished, redeploy your army against Swabia. Swabia builds a lot of spear infantry. These units are effectively free, because they do not consume any rare resources (gold and especially stone). Relative to their cost, they are very powerful, but only against cavalry, which are primary attack units. However, they are weak against everything else. Swabia does eventually build generally powerful units - monks and artillery.

What do you have that is strong against Swabia? Your knights are too weak in relation to so many Spearmen, so leave them at home. Your Mangudai are definitely required, but stay away from the enemy Town Center! Your regular cavalry archers are borderline, so use them or not, as seems indicated. Your Siege Onagers could provide some amusement, but they are really too slow to be worth using in this attack. Monks are definitely important, but only for healing. After all, would you even consider converting a Spearman? You could build some Teutonic Knights; this might be a rare occasion when they are actually useful. However, while they might be great against spear infantry, somebody still has to take out the TC, and Teutonic Knights are definitely not the unit of choice. You could build your own Town Center in their town, and you probably should. This mini-castle is a powerful attacking unit if properly deployed, and it is relatively cheap. You could build a castle in their town, and you probably should. There are certain risks associate with the Castle Attack, primarily that the builders are exposed until the castle is built, and a castle is an expensive unit to lose. But one of the big strengths of the Castle Attack is that it negates enemy monks.

The recommended attack against Swabia uses the Mangudai, some scouts, some monks, and some villagers. Raid the enemy home areas, and advance your wall line as you sanitize their territory. You should probably build at least one TC for fire support and to give your villagers a safe place. The attack reaches its climax when you build a wall just out of range of their TC. Building a castle just behind that wall is useful but not necessary. When the castle is finished, the enemy morale breaks. This is a symbolic statement, because the AI has no morale as such. However, the fight is now over for practical purposes, because you now move up your trebuchets, and BOOM the enemy TC blows up and then your cavalry sweeps in to wipe out all the enemy villagers and there's nothing the enemy can do to stop it. Complete the conquest of Swabia by walling off what was once their territory.

You now have three relics, and only need one more. You may even have four! All of your six opponents start with one monastery, one relic outside the monastery, and one monk, except that Saxony does not get a monk, and may never build one. All of them except Saxony immediately garrison their relic in their monastery, and at some point at least one of them will raid the Saxony relic. So one of the opponents that you have taken out may have had two relics. Depending on how things work out, it is even possible to intercept the Saxony relic in transit. Note that if you want to keep playing the scenario, you don't actually need to put a relic you own into a monastery.

In any case, the scenario has pretty much become a regular AoE game at this point. You have a strong economy and a strong army and strong defenses. Your strategy, tactics, and operations should be superior to the AIs'. Therefore their attacks will be mowed down by your static defenses, while your attacks will smash whatever they encounter. Even outnumbered three to one, and you're not actually outnumbered in any meaningful way, you should win handily.

There are many ways to finish off the scenario. The fastest way is to grab a fourth relic somewhere; the slowest way is to eradicate all the remaining enemies. The walkthrough ends here because the rest of the scenario does not require any detailed explanation.

Barbarossa 2: Henry the Lion
'''There are some major surprises in this scenario. If you play this scenario knowing what will happen, you are playing it wrong.'''

This is an extremely unusual scenario for a number of reasons. Most importantly, although you do have an economy, you are restricted as to what units and technologies you can have. In particular, you cannot ever have villagers, so you can't do anything villagers are needed for. The primary functions of villagers are to develop a controlled economy, to build static defenses, to build structures offensively, to repair structures, ships, and siege equipment, and to reshape the terrain. You can do none of these things here. (Your economy is not subject to much control.) Secondly, you cannot ever have monks. Therefore, you cannot convert enemy units, and healing your own units will be problematic. Cavalry can only be healed inside castles (there are two in your home area), and infantry can only be healed inside castles, Town Centers (there are two in your home area), and Towers (there are three in your home area). What this means is that infantry become much more cost-effective than in normal games. Infantry are usually worth very little, because they die so quickly that their effective cost is much larger than the purchase cost, while cavalry generally never die, so their effective cost is equal to the purchase cost. But this calculation assumes that healing is readily available, and is not valid in this scenario. Thirdly, you are restricted to the Castle Age, so your most advanced units are unavailable. The biggest problem in that regard will be the lack of long range artillery.

A number of things follow directly from the above points. Loss of any of your buildings is very bad or disastrous. You must protect your buildings AT ALL COSTS, and the same holds true for Henry the Lion's buildings. Damage to your economy is very bad, so protect your economic bases! They can rebuild to a certain extent, and they may even be able to grow, but your income is only their surplus, so make sure that they have a big surplus. Of course, you and Henry can never build walls, so you could be attacked at any point, and there does not appear to be any stone on the map, so your other allies may never be able to build walls, either. In some sense, this is fair, because Poland also cannot build walls. You can never have more than 50 military units, and the same holds true for Henry the Lion. However, this should not be a major problem, because you hardly ever have that many military units in a standard game.

So what can you do? You can build fishing boats and bring in food through your dock. You could also bring in gold through your dock, but that would require some level of cooperation fom Poland, and is not recommended. As the scenario starts, you realize that your allies will have Markets, so you will be able to build Trade Carts and bring in gold. You could do Market manipulations, but this is not recommended due to the inefficiency, except in an emergency. After you have scouted the map a bit, you realize that stone exists, and your allies mine it, so they may build walls. You have Cartography, so you see what your allies see.

What are your weakest points? First of all, the Outposts. They go down real quick if they are attacked, and they are in exposed locations. In fact, they are indefensible against any serious attack. The best you can really do is station some units nearby to lure away attacking units. This might work for a while, but try to keep the Outposts alive as long as possible. Second, your dock, which is your only direct source of food. To defend it, you will need a substantial fleet.

With your initial allocation of resources, produce four scouts, two Teutonic Knights, and several Galleys. Research Bodkin Arrow and Ballistics. You find out in short order that Poland has War Galleys, so research that as soon as you have several Galleys. After that, build up your fleet to five War Galleys. When your allies' Markets are finished, build a couple of Trade Carts. Trading is not as efficient as mining, but you don't know how much gold you will be getting from your allies, so trading is advisable. Of course, if your Trade Carts die, your trading efficiency goes way down, so keep them alive. The Bavarian trade route seems safer than the nothern one, depending, of course, on what Poland does. (The Bavarian market is rated to provide 100 gold per trip, but only provides 30.) This leaves you 50 wood, 80 food, and 295 gold, which is enough to build an emergency reserve of one knight and one cavalry archer, for example, with a bit left over, but don't build those units yet.

Scout aggressively! But be careful. Not only is it hard to heal units in this scenario, but if you run up to an enemy castle, it can kill your scout in the blink of an eye. Poland does not have Ballistics, and cannot get it; use this fact to your advantage. Do not scout with your ships. Their entire mission at this point is to defend your dock, and you do not want to attract unnecessary attention. Send a garrison force to each of your allies. Four Pikemen, two Teutonic Knights, three Crossbowmen, and a knight each seems like a reasonable force. Kill the six Dire Wolves on your home continent, because you don't want them hurting your allies. Use all your archers and a couple of melee units; this way, you shouldn't take any damage. (These wolves are not very dire; they die almost as soon as you sneeze at them. Maybe they are die-er wolves.) As soon as you can reasonably do so, send a "garrison" of one knight to each of your Outposts. The total force listed in this paragraph is larger than what you start with or can build quickly, but do the best you can. This leaves you a home guard of only two Pikemen, plus new production, but it is essential to keep the enemy away from your buildings.

When you have scouted as much of the map as you safely can, you will have found: - on the SW "home" continent, one Polish castle and two Watch Towers; - in the NW corner, five Towers, a Siege Workshop, and two Houses; - in the east, one Polish castle, three Towers, a Siege Workshop, and two Houses; - in the middle-north, one Polish castle, three Towers, a (second) dock, and a House.

This gives the Poles a maximum population of 85 military units, which is much larger than their practical population, so attacking their Houses is a waste of time. Attacking their Siege Workshops is definitely a good idea, because you can fairly easily knock out their production of heavy equipment. After that, it should be fairly easy to deal with the Huskarls, which is all the Poles can keep producing. The Poles will eventually run out of resources, but you have no idea how long that will take. In case it isn't completely obvious, they have no means of generating income. The Poles are restricted to Castle Age units.

Based on what the Poles have, most of your initial force, Pikemen and archers, is nearly useless. You will need good melee units. Do not hesitate to pay off the ineffective units if you are population-limited. Note that Town Centers and even castles are relatively weak against Huskarls. Teutonic Knights are excellent point-defense melee units, but don't ask them to go on extended journeys.

Be advised that the Poles will attack you in force regardless of what you do. As soon as you see their first scout (if you see him), you know that their attack waves are not far behind.

There are three major surprises yet to come. The first is that Henry the Lion should backstab you. It is not at all clear what triggers this. It appears to happen completely at random, even though all AoE scenario triggers are absolute (non-random), and it may not happen at all. Nevertheless, it is intended that the backstab occur. It is probably intended that it happen while you are heavily engaged with Poland and most or all of your units are away from home, and you appear to be doing well. Thus Henry thinks he can get away with it, and he thinks that he needs to do it. You might have had some clue that Henry is not with the program, based on the scenario introduction and the way his units behave (they just wander around aimlessly at home and never try to hurt Poland).

The second major surprise is that you can get villagers. After all you have gone through, knowing that you couldn't have any, and trying to cope with it! By the time you get them, there won't be any gold or especially stone left for you to mine, but your remaining allies continue to send you tribute, and there is no shortage of wood and therefore food in any case. Having villagers, the scenario becomes much, much easier.

The third major surprise is that it is possible to win the scenario without doing anything at all! It is possible that Poland decides to not produce new units. Then all their initial army dies in front of your castle, Poland surrenders, and the scenario ends without Henry ever attacking you. This needs to be considered a bug rather than a reasonable scenario theme. What also appears quite bizarre is what happens if you do nothing or just build up at home, and Poland pumps out their army. Poland attacks indiscriminately, but appears to target Henry primarily. You are quite safe, except for your Outposts. Bavaria and Saxony are also pretty safe, because they restore damage so quickly, and Poland doesn't really have the force and the commitment to take them out. Henry never can attack Poland! Accordingly, his units just stand around and die, and then he surrenders.

But let's assume that you play the scenario in good faith. Then your army will be on the front line with Poland, and suddenly Henry the Lion attacks. The earlier he attacks, the worse it will be for you, because you will have less resources available. Let's assume that he attacks even before Poland, and before you get your first tribute. It's actually not a major problem. Use your emergency reserve to produce one knight and one cavalry archer. These two units, plus your castle, are all you need to deal with Henry's attacks! Henry's main target is your university. Lure his units to your castle, where they die, and use the knight to kill battering rams. As tribute starts to come in, build some cavalry archers as a first priority. Cavalry archers are very effective against Henry's force.

The main action is against Poland. This scenario is too random to say exactly what will happen and what you should do, but there are good general guidelines.

Kill scouts whenever possible. AI units tasked with scouting do not fight back, and in this scenario, each dead scout is a significant loss.

Poland has three War Galleys to start, and never builds any more. Your fleet of five War Galleys will therefore dominate the seas. All the Polish War Galleys attack with the initial attack wave. By using standard naval tactics, you should be able to destroy these ships while taking very little damage. After that, destroy their northern dock. This dock is undefended. But why bother, when Poland never builds any ships? The main reason is that Poland may actually build ships after their Siege Workshops are destroyed, and in any case, all you reasonably know at any point in time is that Poland hasn't built any new ships YET.

The next priority is to destroy the Polish Siege Workshop in the NW. This Siege Workshop is exposed, although it might be defended with mobile units. Not only will the loss of this irreplaceable building cut the production of Polish siege weapons in half, it will limit the directions from which they attack. At first, you will have very little available for this mission, but do the best you can.

As wood starts to come in, build a Transport Ship even before battering rams. This ship will allow you to rescue trapped wounded units, will dramatically increase the mobility of rams and your force in general, and is the only place where siege equipment can hide.

Eventually, you get enough wood to build one or two battering rams. This is enough to comfortably wipe out Towers one by one. The first target is the Tower that has been grinding away at your university. The next target is the Polish Tower that dominates the NW ford. When that Tower goes down (and after the NW Siege Workshop is gone), you can ignore the entire NW region. Then destroy the Tower that guards the Polish dock in the middle-north, after which the dock dies almost immediately. Once you have absolute control of the seas, when more wood comes in, build some fishing boats to secure a small food income. Finally, build more battering rams until you have five, which is a good number to take out a castle. Of course, while all this is happening, you will need to deal with wave after wave of up to ten units at a time from Henry the Lion and Poland.

When you have five battering rams and some breathing room, destroy Henry's castle. Bring along some archers and melee troops to protect your rams against mobile units. These units could not normally stand around near an enemy castle, but in this situation, the castle fixates on your rams, which are fairly immune to misslie weapons but very vulnerable to melee troops. When the castle is gone, Henry is finished. You may need to destroy a few more things to force his surrender, but he won't be able to do anything about it.

And then you go get the villagers that are waiting for you in the SW corner. As soon as you have villagers, the scenario is pretty much over. Your first priority is to build Houses and a monastery, then repair damaged buildings, battering rams, and ships, and maybe some walls. Build a bunch of Town Centers (cheap mini-castles). Use the monks to heal your combat damage. No more running back to the castle for a long convalescence.

After you have villagers, you completely dominate the game and can win any way you like. You could go Imperial for even greater dominance, but it is not at all necessary.

The scenario ends when all the Polish production buildings are destroyed.

Historical note: Henry the Lion did not break fealty with Barbarossa until years later, relating to an Italian campaign.

Barbarossa 3: Pope and Antipope
Start by scouting aggressively on land with all scouting assets. Monks are actually decent scouts, except that they are slow and vulnerable. Guard the monks with your ground troops. The ships are at present your weakest link, and they should hide.

Pick off Crema's villagers with your monks as you find them. Collect the sheep. If you act promptly, you should get 10 sheep. When you find the relic, leave it where it is until Crema is pacified. There will be a brief skirmish with Crema's home guard. Put your knights against their archers, and your pikemen against their pikemen. You can heal your damage. Crema is a piece of cake. You should be able to get about 10 villagers before Crema surrenders. Maybe you can get more in total if you take less up front.

Your immediate priority is Redemption, so you can take over Crema's buildings, but if the River Guard attacks, you will need Houses and ships.

Build up as quickly as possible. Focus on the economy. Limit your initial military expenses to five cavalry archers, two War Galleys, and a castle, or the equivalent. That's plenty to deal with any sea or land attacks that you will face, actually in this entire scenario, because your own offensive will develop so rapidly that you won't need to defend. Of course, you will probably build more defenses, because in some sense, while most of your economy is allocated to the main purpose, a significant fraction of your economy remains available for general purposes, unless you ruthlessly re-allocate villagers on an ongoing basis. Frankly, it's not worth the hassle, and you actually don't know a priori how successful your plan is going to be. Bodkin Arrow and Ballistics are important.

Go Imperial as soon as you can. Start building Cannon Galleons. (For some reason, you get Chemistry for free.) As soon as they are available, start nuking the River Guard. Five Cannon Galleons plus five Galleons is a massive-a fleet for purposes of this scenario. Wipe out enemy docks as a priority, but really, raze everything to the ground. Very soon, all enemy offensive potential will disappear. Your home areas will be absolutely safe for the duration of the scenario, because you control the seas absolutely.

Your ally Carcano does very little in this scenario. Accordingly, feel free to take almost all the stone on the eastern landmass; Carcano won't use it effectively, but you will. You can leave them some gold, because you won't need it all, and you can expect to get a lot more across the river.

The next phase of this scenario is the conquest of Milan. Nothing special is required. Raid an area. Wall off the pacified area. Repeat as necessary. That's literally all there is to it. Not. As opposed to your other two enemies, Milan puts up serious resistance. It will appear that, no matter how many of their units you kill, there will always be about 10 of their units trying to get you. You should see a few monks and medium artillery, and lots of heavy infantry, hand cannoneers, and cavalry scouts. Milan loves to run up and down the shore, and they get massacred by your light and heavy naval artillery. Eventually you need to push inland a bit, so you build a castle on the west bank of the river (behind a wall, of course), and then Milan's troops get massacred by your castle.

There are several special points that should be realized. First, Milan does not use much heavy artillery or any battering rams. Therefore a Wall Maze Complex is not required; a simple wall is sufficient, albeit necessary. Castles pwn anything Milan produces.

Having said that, you will need a maximum force, because Milan does have a powerful field army, and many of their units are actually good, instead of the usual pikeman/skirmisher/light cavalry junk that the AIs produce in extremis. Once you are at your population limit, start converting Milan's Elite Teutonic Knights and hand cannoneers, which, accordingly, you should not bother producing on your own.

You will not at first be able to raid Milan's villagers and cripple their economy, because, when your attack goes in, they will still be working inside Milan's wall. This will eventually change.

The easiest approach to Milan is from the north, because your ships can be used there. As you push forward, you will eventually be able to take out their north gate and replace it with your own gate. After that, you could continue to push into the city from the north, but it is more flexible to attack their other two gates one by one and seal them off as well. When Milan's three gates are sealed, your heavy artillery can roam the map with impunity. You will now be able to assess what is the easiest route into the city. Keep pushing forward, and pretty soon, all resistance will collapse.

Barbarossa 4
Objectives: Build a Wonder in the walls of Verona, Padua, or Venice

This mission in very hard you have enemies surrounding you so be offensive. Now at the start you fort is under attack by Padua so move what Forces you got to the Transport Ships and move them to the west river there you will get a substantial force of war galleys and some transports filled with troops send them to the north of the map where you have some outpost there build a base then train some cavalry and monks then quickly attack Padua's base send knights and some of your onagers and start a all out offensive on Padua get some trebuchets and knock out the towers and start on destroying Padua's Economy but first take out the military the stable and the castle Enemy Trebuchets are a big problem so make sure you make a opening on the wall so that you can send some troops to take out those trebuchets when you have driven Padua off the Base start build a wonder in side those walls try building at the center.

there is another optional way you could take out Venice's defense on a island near the Main Land (this is the island with only 2 bombard towers and three houses) by upgrading chemistry and focusing on the sea rather than land build many Galleons and some Fire Ships then make some Bombard ships and attack the isle there are many and when you take out the castle build the wonder quickly by send all of the villagers to work on that.