hey guys Spirit at the law here if you're anything like me something you were looking forward to in
the return of Rome DLC in addition to the Romans being added was to have them in a campaign or
even just a standalone single player Mission there was the trajan campaign before launch which when
I found out was for a wee1 felt like 23 knives in the back that's now four Roman campaigns in
Age of Empires 1 and 0 in Age of Empires 2 for those keeping score given that Injustice I've
decided to personally answer the call and make an unofficial campaign mission for the new DLC which
is an overhauled single player or two-player Co-op version of my scenario Romans vs barbarians this
is available in the aoe2 mod section and just search Romans vs barbarians single player now
I should point out you don't actually have to have the new DLC to play it and you shouldn't
run into any problems if you just play as the byzantines the map is based on an old 8 player
online version I made where six players teamed up against the Romans though at this point I think it
created that 6 or 7 year years ago and it needed a major update with single player in mind so I've
spent the last few days beefing it up in this video we're going to take a look at the scenario
and talk about the new features the first obvious change is to the map and the position of players
the timeline has moved forward from roughly 300 A.D where the empire was still in good shape and
reasonably strong to now a little after 400 A.D when things have started falling off the rails
at this point the Romans have abandoned Britain which is now taken over by Anglo-Saxons and you
even have some cyan colored subtle Goths in Spain and Western France to deal with but haven't yet
lost Carthage I always thought of this as the last moment the West could have maybe been saved in
some alternate history and once Carthage was lost The Jig was up in fact to emphasize the importance
of Carthage I also greatly open up the area around it to make it easier to farm as it really
was the breadbasket of the West I also connected Carthage to Sicily with shallows as previously
if the barbarians destroyed Carthage to get to Rome you had to go all the way around through
Spain and then the Alps and clearly no one in the right mind would take that route any reasonable
person would just jump over to Sicily and invade Rome from the south obviously now going back to
those cyan colored gods they have a slightly different mechanic inspired by the historical
situation they're migrating and settling in your territory and have a neutral diplomacy with you
which means they'll attack your military units but they won't attack your villagers and vice versa
with your army leaving their villagers alone it's up to you if you want to break that agreement and
make them your first Target though if you enemy them kill one of their villagers or attempt to
break into their core territory in Northwest Spain then they'll enemy you back and all bets are off
alternately though you might be best to tolerate them temporarily if you delay attacking them and
haven't made them officially enemies yet you contribute them 500 gold and they'll send you
eight World Raiders as a mercenary Force those Road Raiders can be used to help you attack other
barbarians nearby or defend in a pinch but keep in mind if you enemy with cyan those mercenaries
will abandon you basically so you can't just use them to turn on their own people the idea is the
settled Goss potentially provides the manpower to fill your ranks as they did for the real
Roman Empire though on the flip side the longer you leave them to build up the more established
they get and ultimately removing their Town Center is one of the victory requirements so you have to
turn on them eventually given the extra time and goal that you've sent them that might be harder to
do if you don't deal with them right away even on neutral stance they'll still fight your military
units and defensive buildings in the area so they are a bit of a threat as long as they're around
and I've tried to make it an interesting choice of whether you want to rush them down as your
first Target or use them as an early Army boost mirroring the fact that times there was a blurred
line between Romans and gods as other enemies or sometimes cooperating now as for the other side
of the map unlike the previous version I thought the smithsonians were important to include as an
enemy for the Eastern Roman Empire so they're a new player in yellow and give at least a bit of
a threat to the East and keep them distracted the sasanians and Eastern Romans actually got along
fairly well for the most part during this period though there were a few brief Wars in 421 and 440.
the first was settled quickly with a return to status quo and the second one the Romans just paid
them off because they were being invaded elsewhere by vandals given the AI can play the Eastern
Empire questionably at times I didn't want to run the risk of this assonance conquering them and
leaving you to fight the entire map by yourself so the sasanians are pretty defensive and just a tiny
corner of their empire is represented so with the two new factions explained what is the ultimate
goal of the scenario well first the Western Romans have four major landmarks with three town centers
and a Wonder in their Capital at Rome any of these can be built in the same location but if all four
of these important buildings are destroyed at any one time you instantly lose the game and the West
has fallen previously online this was a completely defensive scenario for Rome and you just had to
survive for a set time but I thought we'd make the goal a bit more ambitious if this is an unofficial
campaign mission the goal is to restore the Roman Empire and even in some cases extend its borders
starting by retaking Britain there you have to destroy Orange's town center and rebuild
your own town center on or close to the flag to romanize it again likewise to the east there are
two Town centers with flags in Germania meaning you have to complete augustus's original Vision
prior to the defeat in tudiburg Forest you also have to one-up trajan and Conquest further into
Blue's territory into starmasia and finally go at least as far as trajan's Conquest into Mesopotamia
and replace the sonnets major city of tessaphon with your own Town Center if all five of those
new town centers are built and standing at the same time and of course you destroy the settled
Goss Town Center in your own territory then you win now you might be thinking those locations
don't seem too far outside your existing borders and maybe you're wondering about all the empty
space out there well that's our next topic which is the Huns who have had a radical change in how
they work they're not a regular old civilization with farming and Mining that just doesn't feel
like their style instead after 20 minutes in game they start to have resources attributed to them
from outside the map and can begin to build up the resources they get are about the equivalent income
of a 75 military economy but makes them unratable and frees up more population space especially on
higher difficulty levels just when it feels like you have things under control with the gods and
maybe even making progress in the East the Hunts come in and take things to the next level now if
you're looking for an even greater challenge than the mission on Extreme difficulty I've added three
extra modifiers you can make to this scenario on the far left of the map you'll notice there
are a few outposts and destroying the one beside the long swordsman enables the Imperial age for
the three goth players and Anglo-Saxons which makes them that much more dangerous in the late
game without doing that usually as the Romans you have a technological advantage as I had to give
them Imperial age if for no other reason than to unlock legionaries at the barracks though you're
also two versus six so I thought you could maybe use an edge now in addition to that you also have
bleda and Attila with some outposts beside them destroying the Outpost beside bleda gives you
some tarkans starts the Huns resource trickle earlier and increases their Max population so
you can do that one from the start for a greater challenge especially if you're playing co-op with
a human player deleting The Outpost besides Attila gives an even stronger version of this and you can
delete both at the start for a truly impossible fight or just delete them anytime to increase the
difficulty once you have the gods handled and want a true test of your defenses of course at
any point as well I've also given you the option to make this a truly single player scenario by
assassinating the Eastern Roman Emperor if you do this you get control of the entire Empire and
your population cap jumps from 200 to 300 to accommodate the extra villagers and territory
to defend the idea behind only a hundred instead of 200 more pop space is that there should be a
bit of an incentive to let the East run things and remember you also lose the potential of trade with
them if you do this of course on the other hand combining your forces right from the start will
often let you make quick work of at least one opponent early and hopefully gives a different
enough experience that it adds some variety and replayability personally I find this scenario
slightly easier if I take over for both at the start and ride a massive economy but I also know
the map really well and if you're just starting out I think it would be a lot to manage which is
kind of the point that the empire was too big to run efficiently by one Central Authority a last
final mechanic I want to highlight is something you can totally ignore but works as a bit of a
panic button if you find you're being overwhelmed once throughout the game you can send a thousand
gold to an invading faction besides cyan and this will instantly remove all of that factions units
from your territory this might sound contrived but is a reference to how the Romans actually
paid the gods to leave Italy in 408 among many other examples of paying off Invaders of course
the Visigoths returned in 410 and sacked Rome so just like in history everybody gets one and it's
a good reason to keep a float of gold for a moment you feel things might be slipping out of control
and which players you can still bribe is tracked under the objectives alternately you can just
ignore this mechanic and the scenario works just fine like that these things are here to add flavor
and not make you play in any specific way that's the map at a glance and while it's not an official
scenario I'm hoping it still scratches that itch especially if you bought the DLC and are excited
to play the Romans in a non-standard game I'm very happy to receive feedback and will make balance
changes as needed but I've tried to include built-in ways to already adjust the difficulty
yourself once you have it downloaded from the mod Workshop you just go into single player or
host an unranked Lobby change the game mode to scenario and pick it from the list of scenarios
you have I should note I haven't tried swapping player numbers so do that at your own Peril and
hopefully the triggers don't get too confused if you decide to try that it also hasn't been made
with more than two players in mind so no promises it'll be anywhere close to balanced or fun for all
players in that setting if you try to add more people try it out yourself though against the AI
or co-op with a friend and let me know what you think thanks for watching I'll see you next time