Age of Empires/The Great Hunt: Difference between revisions

This is a March scenario. You only need to get one unit through the gauntlet, but really, you should be able to eliminate all your enemies. There are a set of obstacles that you have to negotiate, and you usually get more troops after each one. The obstacles can be quite tricky, so you should save the game frequently, and use more than one save file.

The first obstacle is 5 Lion Kings and 2 Elephant Kings. You will generally trigger only one of them at a time. Organize your Axemen into two control groups of four each, one on each flank, and a scout/bait in the middle. Reorganize your troops after each encounter to put the wounded units in the rear, while the bait is at maximum health. Very cautiously explore forward, and run away as soon as you trigger one lion, while your flank groups pound on the lion. If you do this properly, the bait unit won't get hurt too badly. Just restart the game until you get the hang of it. Elephant Kings are a different story. DO NOT engage them in melee combat. Run away with the bait until the elephant loses interest, luring it away from your march route so that you can pass by it safely.

At the end of this phase, you should have four Axemen in perfect condition, and a few others in decent condition. You then recruit 6 archers. You could now go back and slaughter the elephants, but you may critically need them for food later, so leave them alive for now.

Archers have some limited scouting capacity, so use them to explore until you get better scouts. Your way forward is blocked by some enemy archers. If you explore the small lake, you find nothing. Don't explore too far around the big lake, because that narrow shore path could be a death trap for slow units.

After moving past the area where the enemy archers were located, you recruit two scout cavalry. You can explore the shore of the big lake, but you are blocked in the north by fire from a catapult and in the south by archers.

You now have to fight your way past four more enemy archers. Use standard anti-archer techniques when you lack healing capacity: Luring and Ambushing. Your Scouts need to not be damaged in this encounter.

You next encounter an enemy Tower. You have no option except to run past it, and its partner, and then three more pairs of Towers. Only the Scouts can do it and hope to survive. Run fast, and run smart. One of your Scouts needs to survive this phase in excellent condition, and the other needs to be no worse than half dead. You then recruit 6 Cavalry.

You next encounter two enemy Ballistas. While one Scout distracts them, rush your Cavalry in to point-blank range and waste them. You shouldn't take any damage in this encounter.

When you explore the area where your priests were standing, you recruit a small Transport.

You can run your Scout along the river bank to link up with your Transport. The catapults can't hit it. You find nothing but grief on the north side of the river.

The proper technique is as follows. First, walk to the river bank with a Cavalry. Move over a certain amount when the catapults shoot. Move back when they shoot again. Keep doing this. Second, move your Transport to the near river bank, but not where your Cavalry is being engaged. This location will be in range of the catapults, but they will not switch targets. Third, move your priests into the Transport. Stay alert in case the catapults do decide to switch targets. Fourth, transport your priests onto the catapults' island. Fifth, let nature take its course.

Move back the way you came and blow up the two nearest Towers. Then go and recruit the four Elephant Archers. You can set up some bait units, but it isn't really critical and may not work in any case. The bait unit may need to actually be attacking the elephant, not just be running around in range. When a priest tries to convert one elephant, the other elephants don't respond. Therefore, as long as your second priest can heal the damage caused by the elephant fast enough, the conversion proceeds safely.

At the end of this phase, you actually have a fairly powerful army. Six Cavalry, four Elephant Archers, two small catapults, two Scouts, and a dozen weaker units is nothing to sneeze at.

Go back the way you came and blow up all the Towers. Heal all your infantry. The Axemen aren't particularly useful, but you might be able to find a use for the archers.

Blow up the Orange Towers. Start exploring their territory. Depending on how, exactly, you move your Scout, you may trigger one Catapult or a bunch of Ballistas, or a combination. Run away, then go back and lure the Catapult forward alone, if possible. Since it has a range of 12 and does lots of splash damage, you actually want to recruit it. This is very dangerous, unless you execute the procedure perfectly.

You next encounter four more Catapults. If you already have one, you could kill these. If you didn't take the first one, you should try to convert one of them; that would definitely make the rest of the scenario a lot easier. But why not convert them all? They are very powerful units, and the conversion procedure is pretty safe, as long as you execute it correctly.

You next encounter 10 Green archers and 5 priests. If you have a Catapult, wiping them out is a piece of cake. If not, you could lure the archers forward and hit them with your heavy units. Then you could try killing the priests with splash damage from your small catapults, but that is at least somewhat risky. Alternatively, you could sacrifice your Axemen and archers and hit the priests with your heavy units immediately afterward.

Before pushing forward, go back and wipe out the three Grey catapults on the other side of the ridge north of the river. There is a fourth one on the extreme left that you can't quite reach. You have no interest in owning these units anymore, so they might as well be dead. If you have a big Catapult, this is very easy. Otherwise you could outmaneuver them with your own small catapults or something, or maybe you have to deal with them later. At this time, you might take note that your small catapults actually have twice as many hit points as standard catapults, even the big ones.

Further over to the left, there is an enemy force of two small catapults, some Cavalry, and some archers. Your force is powerful enough by now that you can deal with this group easily. On the way there, you recruit a second small Transport.

There is an island in the top corner of the map. It is surrounded by an archipelago, shallows really, and Grey has about 15 small catapults and Ballistas scattered around this region. It would be very easy to wipe them all out with a big Catapult, but it is by no means very hard to deal with them otherwise, although quite tedious. You have no interest in converting any of the catapults, but if you want to have some Ballistas, there are several that are trapped and could be taken safely.

You are almost on the island. There is a landing beach on its SW side, and there may be one on the NE side, but you can't even approach to find out, because there's too much enemy artillery there, and no place to deploy yours.

The end is near. You can almost smell victory. Continuing on as before, you blow away a couple of Ballistas and a Tower, no sweat. Then you are engaged by a large Catapult. There's nothing else for it; you have to retreat and bring up a scout cavalry. It runs in to perform a reconnaissance by drawing fire, but has to retreat in a hurry. You are facing a bunch of large Catapults, some Ballistas, Towers, and Cavalry.

If you didn't capture any of the big Catapults, you could be in trouble. You could probably do a suicide charge with your best units. You win if even one gets through the final gauntlet. You might eventually have to do that in any case, but if you can, try to eliminate some of the opposition with bombardment first. Standard luring techniques should still work as well.