Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/A Barbarian Betrothal

Objectives

 * 1) Defeat Orleans, Metz and Burgundy.
 * 2) Defeat the Roman army.
 * 3) OPTIONAL: Tribute 500 gold to Burgundy, build a castle in the flag area of Burgundy in 10 minutes.

Map
Available on the Steam website.

Walkthrough
This is a scenario where Hun rushing is of limited value. Your principle enemy, Orleans, starts a full age ahead of you with a full fortified city, while you are basically starting a random map. They have a secret weapon as well. You will need to grind down your main two enemies. As the scenario intro and hints indicate, the Burgundians are ally potential.

First thing - you need a base. The best location is in the far eastern corner, as it is largely protected by cliff ridges and a large forest you don't need to cut down. As the Huns have bad defenses, something that can be defended with castle chokepoints and forward defenses is gold. Don't bother trying to wall off the bridge to the north, the river is frozen. You have three goals - get a castle up on the west side of your base compound, get a rush army for Burgundy and get to the Imperial Age. You will need a combined 1300 gold that you're not spending on units, so get cracking. Forgo upgrades that cost gold at this point.

Burgundy is an unwalled settlement to your southwest. Once you have 500 gold and 650 stone in reserve, send your army to crush the town center. Burgundy will then ask for the gold as tribute and a castle in their territory within ten minutes after you pay that. After this they will ally with you and you have your side of the map free of enemy. You can also trade with Burgundy's market for a revenue stream and can freely access their resource camps. This is far superior to burning resources to wipe them out in a 3-on-1 match.

You'll need to be in a maxed-out Imperial Age to win, so get cracking on that and your cavalry and counter-cavalry lines. Don't bother with non-trebuchet siege weapons; Hun trebuchets are excellent and so are the Frankish defenses. Heresy is a useful technology to grab on this map because Orleans will have monks behind those walls.

Deal with Metz first. During or after their demise, you will want a forward base near theirs for the attrition that is Orleans.

Haven't seen that promised Roman army from the hints yet? That's because it's waiting for you to destroy the Orleans town center. It's big and advanced and will flood directly to Orleans. The good news is that all the troops are one-off; Rome does not have production buildings. You're going to lose an army or two in this endeavor between Orleans and the Roman counter-attack, so just be prepared to reload your ranks.

Tips

 * Use natural terrain for your base defenses.
 * Don't make Burgundy more of an enemy than they need to be.
 * This is a resource-intensive, turtle-cracking mission. Just accept that cheap won't work and you will expend many times the resources and casualties of the last three missions combined.
 * The Roman army is triggered by sacking the Orleans town center and cannot replace its losses.