I built 263 Castles to beat AOE2:DE AI on Extreme

SETTINGS:

Game Mode: Death Match
Map Size: Tiny (2 Player)
AI Difficulty: Extreme
Population: 500
Reveal Map: All Visible
Starting Age: Post Imperial
Victory: Conquest
Turbo Mode
Empire Wars Mode

I used CaptureAge Pro to play back my recorded game.

My goal was to wipe out the AI Extreme army with just my castles. My villagers would not build any new castles during the main battle. Only at the end when the surge died to a trickle, did I surround the AI with more castles. In order to build fast, I used Onagers to destroy my trees. The Tiny map is 120x120 tiles and a Castle uses 4x4 tiles which means you can fit 30 castles in one row. I had 6 rows so 180 castles but it was actually 179 because I had a Towncenter instead of a castle at the start of the 6th row. Later, I surrounded the AI with 84 castles so 263 total. I also wanted to let the enemy in quickly so I used Onagers to break a wide hole in the trees. I wanted to test if my 6 rows of 179 castles could take the full brunt of the attack. Strangely, most of the pack didn't attack near the tree break. Instead they proceeded down to the castles across from where they were hanging out which got a lot of them killed in the travel. I did not attack the AI before the wall break so the AI was not weakened but my 179 castles were more than enough to destroy them.

Had I left it run for days, they only had 1 relic collecting gold. They would have made a bunch of monks. When they reached a certain threshold, they'd attack and die, then repeat the process forever. The AI can be really dumb sometimes.

One mistake I made with the trade cars is that I only gave them a 1-tile path to go back and forth and that kept causing traffic jams. I had to reduce the number of carts from 10 to 5 and I also deleted a bunch of the houses to make more room and that fixed the problem.

I picked Portuguese (Blue) because they have the Feitoria building which gives me gold, stone, food and wood. Each takes up 20 population space and I built 25 which took up 500 population space. But how do you build the 25th Feitoria if you have no villagers? It turns out that your population can exceed 500 if you build a Feitoria when you have anywhere from 481 to 499 population. That will give you from 501 to 519 population, so I make the 25th Feitoria when my population is 499. That gives me 19 villagers and my 500 pop space is taken with Feitorias.

I chose Huns (Red) for my AI because they don't have Onagers so they can't cut through trees. They could use their trebuchets to cut through the trees, but I've never seen an AI do that. Trebuchets are not accurate so if they're trying to hit something next to trees, they may accidentally hit a tree and destroy it. I could have picked Turks but Turks have the bombard cannon and Huns don't. Bombard cannons are great for destroying Castles.

The Huns do have Siege Rams which are good for taking out castles but with so many castles attacking them, the Rams didn't get much of a chance to damage the castles.

I picked location Michi because it has a tree wall between us, so they are stuck on their side until we both chop through as we cut wood.

We each get one relic. I got it as soon as I could, then I killed the Monk. I also killed my scout. Later in the game, when I surrounded them towers, their monastery got destroyed, so I built my own and took the relic.

[mediamagpieka-pow]

I did the same with the AI on Extreme and with a 200% handicap. I have done it with the AI being Huns and Turks. It is a long game though (7+ hours). Still fun to try.

[Hjoerleif]

Bleda doesn't need to hear all this. He's a highly trained professional!

[recepaltay]

activity of my unemployed friend on wednesday...

[THEYEAR]

Wow It's so cool to see a game form above like that !!

[RennieAsh]

There's always that fight vs NPC and you give them the civ that has crappy siege so you can spam towers or castles lol

[Naxonax]

Only sad thing is, Portuguese Castles are not the tankiest nor the strongest. You're pretty much required to use them though as the Feitoria is pretty much a necessity in this a challenge, and infinite resources in the settings is of course not an option as it would make the fight endless.
Would be interesting to same the same gimmick but with Bombard Towers instead.

[ariisee]

I had Extreme AI on Amazon Forest, won by capturing all relics and walling myself in. Hm.

[ordinaryrat]

How did you get that many feitorias? I think the max possible is 10 because they take up 20 pop.

[DeRobyJ]

I'm missing something basic
I'm guessing that you're not trading with yourself, you're trading with a market on gaia I believe, but why don't you get ownership of it? Am I missing something?

[darthjump]

U can rush the Extreme AI with 3 militia.

[AEGISAOE]

or you can just ban siege rams and trebs from a specific match

[misaominakami]

In Islands is easy defeat IA on extreme if you focus only on water. And finally attack on earth

[atleticomineirovideos]

Do you have this map on steam workshop?