lol when i want to install the ironside, it say that i need the viking music and when i want to install the viking music, it say that i need the ironside. So i can t play

it's ok if you like not being able to have villagers

Miss the little side quests in Ragnars raids, but I'm liking this a lot. Doesn't seem quite as hard to me, with less teamwork and comparably less unit spawning from your enemies than in ragnars raids. Only Viking voyage not covered is the Baltic.

Oooff man, Like new content? You are crazy, you are making this AOE DE a must have now!

I will also be releasing all new custom campaigns for the Definitive Edition!

Ok, so, another reason to give it a try, i bought recently the 2013 edition, but if the Definitive edition has backward compatibility, then i will get it, specially to play this amazing campaigns with better graphics.
Thanks for the fast response!

They will work in the Definitive Edition. In fact, the Definitive Edition provides new scenario editor tools allowing players to create new amazing scenarios.

This particular campaign has been amazingly well done! The AI mirroring your age advance, the high difficulty.... man, i cant still defeat the Purple Byzantins and Yellow Spanyards (sorry, im spanish speaker), and they are really though!! Its incredibly funny tho, i played for hours, i quit frustrated but come back later. Amazing, thanks God that Workshop and people like you exists!
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A question: Do you know if this kind of custom campaigns are going to work in Definitive Edition of AOE2 ?

Rise of Genghis Khan is perhaps my personal favorite of your mods. The attention to Historical detail is amazing. I hope you add more to Genghis Khan and Ironside campaigns.

Thanks, Kud13. The villager thing is something I've learned from and addressed in raiding scenarios I've made after this campaign such as Rise of Genghis Khan.

Generally fun campaign, my comments will largely echo what others have said- having only 6 work units as means of getting resources other than gold means losing a fishing ship to a stray tower arrow, or a villager to a wolf is a catastrophe because your game grinds to a halt. Maybe give us an option to capture some "slaves" when pillaging an enemy's town for extra workers?

I also had the Spanish princess bug out-this might be because I sailed a bunch of Longboats to sack the city before bringing any units into the city walls. The trigger worked in free-play though, so it wasn't a huge deal (I had way too much gold by then anyway).

Filthydelphia, That link you posted in your reply is blocked.

I think it's tedious due to the lack of counter units, I spent most of the time to swap between types of units, example: Green and Teal navy is week, I bought some Longboats to destroy their coastal buildings. However Yellow and Orange have (Fast?) Fire Ship, making my Longboats useless. Pikeman is the best thing I have to counter Blue Paladin, but Pikeman become useless facing Green Onager. Healing also cost much time... The map is designed well, with details

esvalente, thank you. If you have Age of Empires Definitive Edition, I have released a bunch of campaigns for that game (available for download at aoe.heavengames.com) . I may not be releasing anything for this game for a while, however.

Thanks, any plans to add more campaigns? I really love The Rise of Genghis Khan campaign.

In Trigger Studio, open your scenario and go to triggers. What you want to do is create a looping trigger and set a condition where if p1 accumulates attribute razings qty 1, p1 receives a tribute of gold from gaia and then tributes away 1 qty of razing to gaia. This means that the player will either have 0 or 1 buildings razed in his stats but every time he gets to 1, he receives gold and gets reset back to 0.

I actually used a variation of this method in this scenario, but that's even more complicated to explain.

esvalente, this is an advanced trick. I have to respond in multiple posts. You have to use a user-made tool called AoK Trigger Studio (downloadable here [aok.heavengames.com]. The normal editor does not have the triggers to allow you to do it. Note that Trigger Studio only works for the HD edition, Forgotten, and African Kingdoms. It will not be able to open scenarios made with the Rise of the Rajas DLC.

Question: What triggers did you use when everytime you destroy buildings that they give you gold? I'm still learning about triggers but i want to learn how to implement that.

Again, as a fan of your work, i will be straight with feedback.

While the technical; aspect (recruiting, raiding) was cool, for me it didn't result in an efficient/challenging gameplay. You raid tons of gold, but with only 4 villagers the entire mission everything is just slow without a valid reason. i'd rather prefer very little resources of everything rather than just gold when destroying buildings. When you reach the Spanland, it gets hard for no reason. SInce you have a popcap of 75 without the ability to create a wide cariety of counters, your army gets decimated by the billions of saracen monks, mamluks and cav archers. The only way to tackle this is through hit and run, which makes the gameplay just tedious and long . At Ragnars raids i liked the story progression and the challenges/rewards that pop along the way, even though at the end it got a tad too easy.

! agree with Chud below about issues concerning Fishing ships + vils - perhaps we are just meant to take better care, but it feel's rough losing one when you have such a slow Eco anyway.
I also like the idea of a cataclysmic event, though I don't think the game needs it.

Laastly, I too encountered a bug with the Princess of Iberia, she stayed as Viking Ally, even after I cleared everything Yellow from around her ( and the rest of map ;) ), and gathered all heroes around her.

I have to say though, hands down, one of the most enjoyable scenario's I've ever played on AoE - quite likely only topped, by other of your scenario's! Please keep making them, you are a Scenario Editor God! :D

Fantastically designed map, I really felt like the geography was accurate enough to feel like I knew where I was (which was nice). Gameplay, and implimented features were as ever - a pleasure to discover.

Honestly, I was a little worried about it feeling samey, after Ragnar's raids, but it has enough of it's own character, to be a little gem in it's own right.

REALLY liked the addition of using each hero to summon different warbands, as that was one of my few issues with Ragnars Raids - touching the base spanwing units you didn't necessarily want.

Also, I had forgotten quite how satisfying it is to take down Castles with Elite Longboats >:D

Thanks, Chud! Don't feel bad about the essay. It's great to hear your feedback!

Anyway, great scenario, really enjoyed it, sorry for the essay!

Tips for players
If you want to finish the scenario quicker (or before you run out of gold), focus on first destroying the pre-placed armies that civilizations field, and then demolish their military production buildings, and they will run out of steam (the Franks, for example, can keep on churning out paladins if you don't destroy the stables, so I sent tarkan suicide squads to destroy them, as the paladins were completely damming my advance).
Clear out the easy areas, such as Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearics and oases in the Sahara desert. Then use your resources to build up armies with siege rams to raze the fortified cities.
It's completely unnecessary to invest in a navy of any sort - carefully managed transport ships are sufficient.

Some suggestions and comments
It's quite easy to lose fishing boats (to Langobard towers) and even villagers which can permanently handicap your economy. I would suggest that future scenarios of this kind would have a means of replacing lost villagers and fishing boats. In other ways, this scenario is extremely forgiving as your dead heroes are immediately resurrected and there is little of an existential threat. How about adding a cataclysmic event of some sort sometime in the mid- to late-game that actually threatens you with total defeat, forcing you to move base and fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive (something like the Mongol invasion in Medieval II)?

My playthrough
Unlike other commenters I wouldn't say this scenario was awfully hard. The beginning was challenging but as you age up, upgrade your troops, gather the heroes and amass the resources you need to field large armies you can largely abandon amphibious hit-and-run raids and engage in straight-up land campaigns of conquest. At that point it became pretty grindy, but remained enjoyable. There was definitely a sense of progression as you destroy civilization after civilization. By the end of the game, my motley band of Viking footmen had developed into a huge cavalry force that swept across the Iberian peninsula, crossed the Pyrenees, and devastated the Francian countryside. At which point, I encountered paladins. And spent hours mustering more cavalry to finally take out the Franks, which was a bit of a struggle.

I completed this on Moderate in 10 hours. It was fun. Thanks for making this, Filthydelphia!

A quick bug report
The Spanland princess did not flip to my side when I 'liberated' her. Also, I'm not sure whether this is intended but you can train tarkan/boyar warbands even when it exceeds the population limit.

+1, extreme hard, but playable. Need 16 hours for the win. My compliment.

It would be nice not to overdo it with the wolves, especially not in the corners, if you think you already have them all: I can give up now after 8 hours of playing time and start again.

Greetings, another nice scenario, thank you.

Note: If you march & sail a little towards Rome (right at the beginning) with a bit of bad luck you suddenly have two lightships in front of your only port and have lost.

Completed this on Standard today, not sure how does higher difficulties play out, but this is more tedious than Ragnar's Raids :(

Some parts of the map are less accessible by boats, lots of walking time needed, with less potential for conducting amphibious assaults. Too much gold while other resources
trickled in too slowly, maybe offering us a chance to purchase other resources through random events? Eg sparing towns to obtain resources, or temporary alliance allowing for trade?

Warbands are ok, but for Standard I only went for Berserks, since access to monks was limited. Disabling siege workshops makes walking time a big problem, since rams are absolutely needed.

Requirement of heroes for recruitment is also problematic - travel time or losing a decent fighting unit. Of course the idea of the hero coming back to raise a new warband is cool - but can recruitment be done through taunt, for example?

Still enjoyed it and maybe will play again at a higher difficulty :)

UPDATED VERSION RELEASED:
- Changed Princesses (Queen units) from Gaia to AI Player 8 Vikings.
- Changed Haraldr (Hero Charlemagne) from Gaia to AI Player 8 Vikings.
- Added a time delay before enemy players research new technologies after the Human Player reaches the Castle and Imperial Ages. This means the AI will still approximately mirror the Player's advancement, but with enough delay to allow the Player to briefly use a technological advantage.
- Made cosmetic tweaks to water.

Thank you for a great scenario. I´m enjoying it a lot.

the style is great and raiding never gets boring. I'd just be interested to see what other civs and settings outside the naval world you could use. but great work all round!

Thanks, mrk_ck! I really appreciate your positive words. I liked the raiding mechanics in Ragnar's Raids so I had to use it again in a different setting. If that style is not getting boring yet, I will consider what else I can use it for. I actually have an older campaign on Steam Workshop called "The Magyar Conquest" that uses some of the same raiding for resources ideas.

this is a sublime map! as were your other two viking ones. this template/style of campaign would also work great with Mongol or Hun/Goth campaigns against their asian/european foes. But either way I love it. Hope you're still working on more to come!

Can you change the princess,etc into an other faction to trigger the capture only when we have take control of the place. My ship just scout and the princess got immediately capture and kill by the ai. It's quite strange to have them capture even we have not attack the castle

UPDATED VERSION RELEASED:
- Added triggers which inform the Player when units are near recruitable heroes to make it easier to locate them
- Player can now see objective Wonders on all difficulties, instead of just Standard
- Player receives Careening from the start of the scenario
- Villagers converted by Players 6/7 (Langbardaland and Frakkland) now automatically return to Player 1 control

Nice warband startup screen. Nice campaign.

Good game lot of fun, but teal converting vills is bs. You get one vill converted and your down 25% Maybe make the princess turn into vills instead of gold or something

very funny!

Great campaign!
Playing on hard without knowing the map and the location of the heroes is nigh impossible (maybe some hints in the description would be an option?). You have to scout very well and test the enemy bases, where they reproduce what units. Raid the weak spots and towns without reproduction facility first. With this knowledge it is still a tough challenge due to tech tree limitations. The water is neglectable imo, they just start training ships as well, when you go water.
Especially for the teal and yellow bases you need an army of the right ~65 units sized warband combinations and siege rams. The teal elite axemen and paladin combo is still deadly. Turn up the speed for the time on sea.
Maybe put it in the hints as well not to attack teal too early. It happened to me twice that i had teal monks all along the river shoreline after one raid and they converted my villagers several times.