Age of empires 4 art of war

The Art of War is a campaign in Age of Empires IV. It is a series of short scenarios that serve as challenges to test the player's skills in using more advanced strategies such as booming, rushing, and turtling, while also expanding on game mechanics such as unit counters and battle formations.

The name is taken from The Art of War, an ancient Chinese military treatise written by Sun Tzu during the 5th century BC which explains the various aspects of warfare and its application to military tactics and strategies. The Art of War is a very influential work for over one and a half millennia since it was written; countless military leaders and thinkers took inspiration from the text, and some of its contents are even applied to civilian fields such as business, lifestyle, and more.

Scenarios[]

In each scenario, the player will obtain a medal (gold, silver, or bronze) depending on how fast they could complete the scenario (or based on the number of units they lose, in the case of the Land Battle, Naval Battle, and Battle Formations scenarios).

The player plays as various civilizations in each scenario, and the player color is always blue.

1. Early Economy (English)
2. Late Economy (Rus)
3. Basic Combat (Holy Roman Empire)
4. Early Siege (Mongols)
5. Late Siege (Delhi Sultanate)

The Art of War Challenges

It is time for the last 3 achievements to finish this long but fun game!

This part of the game is skill based but I estimate it to about 1-2 hours for an average person to complete.

The Art of War Challenges tab is found next to Skirmish on top of the screen after clicking on Single Player. You need to get the Gold medals for all 5 challenges in order to unlock their corresponding achievements. The challenges are time limited, except for one of them that has a minimal loss of Military units requirement.

These challenges are 5% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 10% pleasure, 50% coordination, and a 100% reason to read and plan ahead before playing the game.

So be ready to replay missions a few times to get familiar with them and use everything you learned during the Campaign such as shortcut usage, unit/Villager queuing, and grouping of Military units.

I will try to explain each step in detail especially for time limited challenges, where every second count.

You can always just jump right into each challenge to get the general idea and feeling of the level first then head back to the walkthrough if any help is needed. This might actually be the best strategy for these five challenges, since remembering the map is important to follow each step from the walkthrough.

You can also pause the challenge by pressing ESC if you feel the need to read the tips again.

First Challenge: Early Economy

Objectives:
-Train a total of 21 Villagers
-Gather 400 Food and 200 Gold
-Build Landmark with the 400 Food and 200 Gold we gathered

Gold Medal Requirement:
-Finish within 5min 10sec

The key in this first challenge will be to immediately queue Villagers at your Town Center and always keep the queue up.
Next, order the 7 Villagers you have to slaughter the sheep that is in front of your base and order the Scout to go to the deer spawn (Southwest) and bring the second sheep over to the Town Center. After the Scout brought the sheep over, select him again and then queue him to kill all the deer that are waiting where the second sheep was. Do this by clicking each deer while holding (SHIFT+RMB). This will save valuable time as you will later have to reposition your Villagers to the Deer spawn for Food gathering once the Sheep ran out of meat.

The first Villager you get from the Town Center will join the Sheep slaughtering, while the second one will immediately build a House next to the Town Center and then a Lumber Camp. This should also be next to the Town Center on the right side. Don't forget to queue new Villagers whenever possible! At this point, you should be left with 50 Wood which is exactly enough to take one of the Villagers off the sheep to run over to the Deer corpses and build a Mill in the middle of them. Once the Sheep ran out of meat, transition all Food gathering Villagers over there to collect Deer meat.

The next two Villagers you get from the Town Center along with the one that was building the House and Lumber Camp, should be chopping Wood in the meantime since you will need to build a Mining Camp next to the Gold Mine plus a second House to accommodate 21 Villagers in the end. That means 2-3 Villagers on woodchopping until they gathered the remaining 150 Wood for those two buildings. After that, the only things you need will be Food and Gold.

Newly produced Villagers can now be assigned to the Gold Mine using a Rally Point from the Town Center.
At this point, you just have to wait for the 400 Food and 200 Gold while also having enough Villagers in the queue at the Town Center to end up with 21 Villagers in the end (22 units in total including the Scout).
Once enough resources are gathered, take all Villagers and let them build any of the two Landmarks, doesn't matter which one.
If done correctly, the Landmark should be constructed around the 4:15 minute mark and all that is left to do now is wait for the last Villagers to walk out of the Town Center.

If Villagers were constantly in queue, the first Gold Medal will be yours before the 5:10 mark and you will earn the Challenge Taker achievement

Challenge Taker

Earn your first Gold Medal in an Art of War challenge.

3 guides

Second Challenge: Late Economy

Objectives:
-Train a total of 80 Villagers
-Train a total of 30 Traders
-Build a Landmark and advance to the Imperial Age IV (2400 Food and 1200 Gold)

Gold Medal Requirement:
-Finish within 10min 30sec

This second challenge is very similar to the first one. You have to keep Trader and Villager queues constantly filled to have a chance at obtaining the Gold Medal. The focus will be on building a second Market and a second + third Town Center as soon as you can manage, while keeping all the queues up. Also click on the Markets and put a rally point to the Trade Post in the South, so Traders earn extra resources as the challenge goes on.

Build the second Market at the 2:00 minute mark and immediately queue Traders. Otherwise, you will need to build a third one to actually get a total of 30 Traders by the end. (Don't forget to put the rally point).
Use the first few Villagers that you produced from the original Town Center, alongside a few others to build a second Town Center and then set the rally point on Wood (North) for now. Whenever you need Villagers for other resources, just pull them away from the trees.
Generally speaking, the first half of this challenge will be a struggle for resources and the second half will be a struggle to spend them all efficiently, so get comfortable with the level and just see for yourself. Unlike the first one I wont go into too much detail on specific Villagers since you will end up with 80 of them and it will be a huge mess to explain. I will just give a general advice and some key timings for resources (Food, Wood, Gold, and Stone)

First let's talk about Stone and Gold. You will start of with 2 Villagers on each of these resources by default and you should keep it like that for Gold until around 5:00 minutes passed. After that, set your rally point of all existing Town Centers to Gold until you get roughly 1800 Gold. Then reduce the number back to around 4 Villagers and split the others back to Wood and Food, whichever one you currently need, and remove the rally point away from Gold back to Wood. This should be enough Gold to build the Age IV Landmark and keep the Trader production going.

For Stone, you want to put 4 Villagers on there and leave them there until you have enough to build all 3 Town Centers. If you want, you can build more but I figured 3 is enough if the second one is built immediately after starting the game and the third one around the 6:00 minute mark or even a bit earlier.

Wood is needed for construction of buildings so keep the original 7 Villagers on there until the 1:00 minute mark, and then increase the number up to 14 Villagers around the 2:30 mark. At around 4:00 minutes you should have roughly 20 Villagers on Wood and at around 6:00 minutes, roughly 30. You should have a rough idea now on how much Wood is still needed for the mission (remaining Villagers and Traders, as well as farm building). You can most likely remove about half of the tree-cutting Villagers now and use them elsewhere, most probably Food at this point or Gold if still needed. Keep in mind that each new Field will cost Wood to create.
Whenever you have spare Wood create additional Fields around Hunting Cabins. Having around 40 Villagers on Food at 8:30 minutes should get you enough resources by the end of the mission.
Keep the rally point on Wood until the end of the game for convenience and just pull Villagers away to create Fields whenever enough Wood is available.

This challenge, as you can probably tell by now, is difficult to structure properly in a written guide but playing it is actually a lot easier than the first one. Just try to balance Villagers between Food and Wood as they are very important resources in this mission. Stone and Gold are barely changed throughout this challenge. Keep Villagers and Traders in queue all the time and start the construction of the landmark early enough before the end of the mission (45s before at least) and you will have no issues achieving a Golden Medal.

If done in under 10:30 minutes you will get your second Gold Medal.

Third Challenge: Basic Combat

Objectives:
-Defend your camp against 5 waves of enemies
-Don't lose more than 6 buildings

Gold Medal Requirement:
-Lose fewer than 16 units [ x/15 ]

This challenge is pretty unique. You will have the option to choose between Archers, Horsemen, and Spearmen. There will be five waves and you can choose new units after each one. Surviving units from the previous wave will not be playable in the next one. The goal is to lose as few units as possible. This means picking the right counters for the upcoming waves of enemies and also doing some micro-management. Whenever you have units that are below 50% HP, quickly select them and get them out of the fight so they have a chance to survive.

Now let us get started with the waves:

Wave 1: Choose the Spearmen to counter the enemy Cavalry. Put them into a "Line Formation" (Z) and place them as shown in the picture. Just let the Cavalry run into your units and don't attack first. You should not lose any units during this wave and be at [0/15] lost units. Losing one unit is still okay but any more and you should just restart.

Wave 2: This time choose the Archers and split them into two groups using the grouping feature [CTRL+NUMBER]. The strategy for this one is to pull hurt units away but also lure enemies around and make them run behind one group while the other group shoots them. This will be a bit messy to execute but should make you finish the wave with around [2-4/15] lost units.

Wave 3: Choose the Horsemen for this one to counter the enemy Archers. Place them South in the forest and wait until the enemy Archers are as close as possible to the forest, then charge at them. The first horse that attacks will take a good chunk of damage immediately as all the Archers will focus on it with their first shot. Be aware of that and pull him away immediately. The others should be fine and will probably not die. You should not lose any additional units during this Wave. Total count will be at around [2-5/15].

Wave 4: This is the first crucial wave that will decide if you get Gold or not. For this wave you can choose two different units so pick Spearmen and Archers and place them as shown in the picture or even a bit close to their original spawn. There are different tactics for this stage.
You can do it the same way in Wave 1 and have the enemy Cavalry charge into your Spearmen and then just pull out single Spearmen once they are below 50% HP.
Another option would be to stay back and let the enemy Cavalry hit your Tower while you try to pull the other enemy units and therefore split the enemy wave into two separate groups.
Both ways work and it is honestly more about luck during this wave. Use the tactic that you feel more comfortable with.

This picture shows the setup for the first tactic but feel free to try pulling the enemy units apart like you did with the Archers.
You should be somewhere between [8-10/15] lost units by now.

Wave 5: This last wave will let you choose two different units again and you will also get attacked by two groups just like in Wave 4. Choose Spearmen and Cavalry this time. Put them into two groups and set them up like this in the South.

You have now (hopefully) received your third Gold Medal and the achievement Precious Medals should unlock.

Fourth Challenge: Early Siege

Objectives:
-Destroy the Rus Town Center
-Destroy the Kremlin Landmark

Gold Medal Requirement:
-Finish within 6 minutes

In this challenge, you will start with a little army and some resources. The time limit of 6:00 minutes is plenty and actually used to be 5:00 minutes before a recent balance patch. This is probably the easiest of the 5 challenges and possible to complete in around 4:30 minutes.
Order all your units to attack the Tower that is located North of you.
While the units are walking towards the Tower to destroy it, click on your Siege Workshop and build the 2x Mangonel Siege. Be sure you build the 2x one on the right side, don't build two solo ones. This will cost 400 Wood/200 Gold/600 Stone.

Additionally, buy a normal Springald for 250 Wood/250 Gold and order it, and the two Mangonels, to attack the Tower as well. This should leave you with enough resources to build 3 Battering Rams with your Spearmen once the Tower is destroyed.
While the Spearmen are building the Battering Rams in front of the destroyed Tower, select your Springald and move it a bit closer to the Wooden Gate of the Rus. This will unveil an enemy Mangonel, as shown in this picture

Order your Springald to destroy the enemy Mangonel and place a few units in front of it to protect it from the enemy Melee units who will soon attack you.

Once the Mangonel is destroyed, order the three Battering Rams to hit the enemy Wooden Gate while everything else you have is focused on destroying the Tower next to it. Don't send any units to the Gate just yet, as they will just be killed by the enemy Archers hiding behind it.
If your Springald happens to get destroyed, you will have to restart as it is crucial to the success of the mission later on.

Once through the Gate, gather everything that is left near the Wall [Yellow Star], South of the Fields. These Fields will soon be overrun by a bunch of enemies that you would attack using your units and most importantly, your Mangonels. These Mangonels are extremely efficient for this kind of unit killing as all the enemies are standing close to each other. Keep an eye on your Battering Rams as the enemy units will focus them whenever possible.

Next, select your Mangonels and make them attack the remaining Archers that are standing around the Rus Town Center. Send your units in as well to help speed everything up but wait a moment with the Battering Rams as they can be easily destroyed. Once the majority of the enemies are dead you can send the Battering Rams in to finish the Town Center.

While the Town Center is being destroyed, focus on the two Springalds up the Hill. This is where your Springald will do its second job. Select it and turn the enemy Springalds into dust but be careful since once you hit them, a group of enemies will run towards your Springald to destroy it. These will be the last 10 Spearmen in this mission so be ready to defend your Springald with a few units.

After that, it is just a race to destroy the Kremlin Landmark as fast as possible.

If done correctly, you should finish well within the time limit and earn your forth Gold Medal.

Fifth Challenge: Late Siege

Objectives:
-Destroy the Holy Roman Empire's Town Center
-Destroy the Aachen Chapel Landmark
-Destroy the Regnitz Cathedral Landmark

Gold Medal Requirement:
-Finish within 6 minutes

Similar to the previous mission, this one will start with some units and the ability to buy a few additional things. First press (F1) to select both Siege Workshops. Then produce a Bombard (R) and research the two technologies "Greased Axle" (D) and "Siege Works" (F). Next, select the Madrasa building and don't Press (F). This would take the two Scholars out and you could use them to heal your units but they are more beneficial inside the Madrasa since they speed up the researching. Research all 5 technologies (Q) (W) (E) (R) (A).
Next, select your 10 Spearmen and let them build a Siege Tower. Once built, order 8 of them to go inside of it by selecting them and pressing (RMB) on the Siege Tower.
Now split your Man-At-Arms units in 4 groups and let them build 4 Battering Rams with the remaining Wood.

Time to attack! Order the Siege Tower to the Wall between the Left Tower and the Stone Gate [Orange Circle]. This will unload your 8 Spearmen onto the Wall where they can start killing the enemy Archers.

The two elephants should be focused on the Right Tower while the rest are hitting the Gate.
The Bombard can help with the Right or Left Tower.
Be aware that once you get close to the Gate, a few units will rush out and try to destroy your Siege Weapons. Stop them with all your melee units. You might lose one Battering Ram here but that's okay.
Everything will happen fairly quickly and the Towers and Gate will get destroyed, while your Spearmen will walk across the Wall and kill the Archers.

After the Gate falls, order your Battering Rams BACK immediately. They will be heavily damaged by the enemy units otherwise. Clear the area and advance towards the Landmark right in front of you.
[The Siege Tower is not really useful anymore after getting into the city so feel free to move it out of the way or use it as a sponge to catch some arrows that are being shot from remaining Archers on the Walls or Towers surrounding the city]

While the Battering Rams are taking care of the first building, order your units West towards the second Landmark. This will unveil a couple of Cavalry units that you have to kill.

If done correctly this will give you a Gold Medal and earn you the last achievement Record Breaker!

If you have followed the structure of the walkthrough you will now be done with the game!

Thanks a lot for reading our walkthrough and we hope it helped you along your way through this long but fun game.

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