Review of Tariq Ibn Ziyad’s Campaign
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* literally one-shot-kill the entire enemy army.
In the Tariq version, you just have to wait until the enemy army gets close enough to your hero and then kill them all with one shot.
This is not fun.
The AOE3 mission also has you fighting a variety of native tribes, which is something Tariq 4 is sorely lacking.
The AOE3 mission also has a much more interesting map, with a lot of elevation changes and a much more engaging layout.
The Tariq version is a flat map with a few cliffs thrown in for good measure.
All in all, this mission is a huge disappointment and a huge step down from the AOE3 version.
Part one of Tariq Ibn Ziyad, an African Kingdoms campaign showcasing the Berber civilization’s conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, didn’t get much positive feedback.
For those who are playing the Xbox release, I would strongly advise avoiding this campaign.
A good campaign should inspire players to learn more about a less-known part of history, showcase the civilization it features, have engaging hooks to each mission, tell a good story, and have good enemy variety.
Unfortunately, the Tariq campaign fails to meet these criteria.
The first mission, The Battle of Guadalete, is an incredibly difficult mission that is designed to be almost impossible to win.
You are stuck in castle age against two opponents who counter your civilization, and your mission is to crack two heavily fortified fortresses with rams.
You can’t trade on land, and your opponents get infinite resources and so are constantly spamming you with units.
The castles are surrounded by fire towers which deal melee damage and eviscerate rams, and you have a 120 population limit.
The second mission, Consolidation and Subjugation, is better but still grindy and quite boring.
You capture a city in the center of the map and then have to go kill three of your other opponents and take their cities.
All your opponents get infinite resources and have no economies or villagers, and you are still stuck in castle age for some inexplicable reason.
You get a 200 population limit in this mission, which is a nice improvement.
The story and theme are barely there, and there is no variety as none of your opponents build unique units.
The third mission, Divide and Conquer, features a split base mechanic.
You are yet again facing Goths, with Spanish-but-not-really thrown in.
You get a 200 population limit, which allows you to exploit Goths’ lack of infantry armor by going for Champions.
However, you still have to destroy five castles across four fortifications, and the Goths vs Berbers matchup is starting to get really old.
The fourth mission, Crossing the Pyranees, is a poorly conceived knockoff of a similar mission from AOE3’s main campaign.
You have a small band of soldiers running from an advancing enemy army, and you can periodically take shelter in caves which will automatically regenerate health.
However, you can just wait until the enemy army gets close enough to your hero and then kill them all with one shot, which is not fun.
The AOE3 mission also has you fighting a variety of native tribes, which is something Tariq 4 is sorely lacking.
All in all, this mission is a huge disappointment.
Upon reading your review I realized I completed this campaign on HD.
I remeber thinking: man I suck at this game, and not really enjoying myself indeed.
Except for scenario 4.
I still really liked that one.
I also appreciated the challenge of beating the AI while being constraint.
Going on YT to see how easily viper does it was humbling to see and made me realize I had lots to gain when it came to unit control.
Dont remember a single thing about the story except the retreat through the pyrenees so i agree the story is not compelling
I would still give it a D rating.
Tough challenge and fun 4th campaign
I just started playing the Campaigns in earnest.
Online I am a try hard 1v1 player but I play Campaigns on Moderate mostly for the story and just to experience this game in the fullest.
Glad to know this campaign can be put off for a long time.
I have played this campaign on Moderate only and definitely don’t remember anything particular too enjoyable.
I think 4 was still ok.
I do remember hating 5 a lot, finding it excruciatingly painful.
I wanted to complete it some day on Hard, but your explanation seems just about accurate to what I remember and so I am not looking forward to it now. 😅
I think you undersell the badness of that final mission.
The one thing that mission teaches you is almost a “welcome to ranked for new players” because while you are setting up your eco in castle age a bunch of f***king FU paladins comes out of nowhere to get up in your grill.
You got these annoying ass boats on your ass too, and they break your walls so you need some towers to deal with them (rare use of castle age towers with heated shot doing something, let’s go hybrid maps for no reason!).
Even breaking the damn building is a slog cos of the navy from the other side, had to slowly push with castles to get anything done.
Full titanic level actually worse than level 1-3 (level 1 I beat just like you except I flooded in hussars and ran them back and forth to kite the fire towers, and I think petards got involved at some point too but yeah the main work doer was a castle to shoot down the enemy castle garrisoned full of camel archers.
Mission 1 drove me insane because of how the docks trickle in ships.
Every 20 seconds a galleon got created and sent down the shoreline to attack anything it finds.
I got sick of it and built a couple towers to destroy them in a single volley, but there’s still enough time for it to fire a bolt and send an attack notification.
EVERY.
TWENTY.
SECONDS.
ringing bells.
Tooting horns.
For well over an hour.
By the end of the mission i had conditioned myself to ignore attack notifications as they didn’t mean anything.
Really makes you appreciate heated shot though.
Finished the map with **6000** units killed.
At least you don’t have to bother with constant ship attacks in the other missions right?
Slightly off-topic, but still related, can anyone who’s played the co-op version of this campaign share their thoughts on how it fares in this mode vs the normal singleplayer version?
Damn this is the only campaign I played and I thought campaigns just sucked and was wondering why people played them.
It’s so sad too bc I love the Berbers but didn’t get to enjoy them as you said.
I appreciate your disdain.
Now do Pachachuti!
Yeah I remember playing the campaign and being very underwhelmed by it.
Bit better in co-op because at least you suffer with a friend.
Also it should be a crime to have missions where you take down castles with castle age rams.
It wasn’t fun back in 1999 with the damn Joan of Arc campaign and it still isn’t.
I genuinely hated Scenario 4 with a passion.
It was such a boring slugfest, and I just don’t have the patience to cheese it all with a hero.
My view on the Campaign:
The “enemies have no vills yet unlimited eco” theme for all Scenarios (ok 4 doesn’t count) is repetitive, but it could’ve been made much more enjoyable if there was something else involved.
The worst part arguably is that, when you finish the Campaign, you don’t know how to use Berbers, since you only face Goths, Conq-less Spanish and Franks
Scenario 1 is easy because its meant to make it easy: Defend all access to your base, gain the water, trade for unlimited gold, get pop maxed and kill first Teal and then Purple (who, for some reason, doesn’t attack until you’re hitting their walls)
Scenario 2 is a tough one and the only one I don’t care that enemies have unlimited res.
You’re on a tight time limit and need to defend from all kind of Castle Age units with a civ that doesn’t really shine on killing Huskarl + Pike + Ram combos.
I feel it the best designed one by far.
Scenario 3 looks scary at first sight until you send 3 Trebs to snipe the green castle.
Red has the potential to kill you but doesn’t use it, and Teal is also at half of what they can do (I’m speaking about Hard level, BTW).
With an easy way to trade, you get to Cavalier + Camel Archer + Treb and can play with your enemies
Scenario 4 can be easily cheesed by using your Hero.
If there were a timelimit, it’d be a very hard one
Finally, on Scenario 5 you face a civ you can counter straightaway.
I haven’t tried it in DE, but in HD, leaving the purple Market alive was a winning move for unlimited gold and afford (if you’re quick enough, you can even not need that Market) for a double Camel composition that will counter anything they throw at you.
Any building you destroy will become a non-production one, so it’s a fine 3rd or 2nd Scenario, but not for a final one
My rate is C because of the 2nd scenario
Imo the requirement that you spam huge amounts of cavalry every game to overpower your opponent really does play into the Berber identity, and after getting used to that theme I started enjoying the campaign a lot.
It was only annoying on the 1st one, and even there it’s not so bad as you gain access to Capped Ram in castle age
This campaign is IMO the hardest one currently in DE.
It hits you with the force of le loi without giving you the economy or unit suite.
Most
Missions I found the only real way forwards was to reset until I found a way to tactically position castles to cut off the spam long enough to build up my camel archer deathball.A big downside is how every mission plays the same way, and how all the maps have the same kind of blocky layout.
Also mission 4 is dumb given the only way to win it is to slowly cheese through with your hero unit.
Finally having to crack castles with rams while getting huskarls spammed at them SUCKS.
Great review and I completely agree with you.
The Berber campaign was very disappointing for all the things you said.
And it is really a pity because there would have been far much more interesting historical settings for a Berber campaign.
You could have had an Almoravid campaign basically playing as the “villains” in the El Cid campaign(similarly to the Burgundy campaign) or my favorite idea: You could play the founding of the Almohad caliphate, starting with some nice Berber vs Berber action (and some Saracens mixed in) destroying the Almoravid dynasty. (You could have a Nobunaga like scenario with trying to save Ibn Tumart in the beginning, before declaring yourself Caliph with Abd al-Mu’min.
After that you could have lots of missions duking it out with Spanish, Portuguese, Saracens and perhaps some Franks representing crusader for control of Andalusia.
Lot’s of opportunities for the Berbers to shine and an interesting and not that well known period of Spanish and North-African history.
Oh and please continue the review I greatly enjoyed reading this one.
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