Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Warning! Glitchy!
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Much like the Wonder related achievement "I Was in China Before" in Genghis Khan's Campaign this one is buggy but not entirely unobtainable.

On my first run I wiped out all enemies saving and reloading several times. No achievement. On my second go I finished the mission in one shot, in fact I never opened the options menu at all. Didn't touch the diplomacy settings either. I did however pause the game with (F3) a few times.
The achievement popped at the post game scoreboard.
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Strategy tips:
- Immediately attack and cripple Grey with your Galleons. A river to the East leads to their TC.
- Invest in fishing boats and trade cogs. Get the speed upgrade too! The sea to the South is all yours. Trade at the Market for a fast start.
- Fend off the early attacks; garrison your "hero" Archers to outgun Blue's Bombards, counter Yellow's Ram spam with your Onagers.
- Teal can be mostly ignored as they won't build Cannon Galleons and will be ineffective.
- Elite Mamelukes are your best unit for the mission. Prioritize their upgrades after getting all economy boosts.
- Attacking either Blue or Yellow early is advisable. Mameluks and Trebuchets work well. You may need to fight both at once but keep Red out of it! Don't aggro their patrolling units.
- Shortly after you receive the free Elephants, Red will attack. Sally out to kill their Siege units. Consider counter attacking with Elephants, Rams and Mameluks. In a Trebuchet fight you'd be outgunned.
- Expect the enemies to migrate and set up satellite bases if their TC is destroyed. Keep an eye on the score tracker and explore with Scout Cav.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (PC) - Achievement - Offense Is the Best Defense

Defeat all opponents before constructing a Wonder in the sixth Saladin mission "The Lion and the Demon".

As of this video being uploaded (22nd November 2019, game version: 101.101.33059.0 4403463), there is what I believe to be a bug with this achievement. Many people, myself included, realised that the achievement is not as simple as it initially seems. Your goal is to defeat your enemies before building a wonder, however, once you defeat your enemies, the game ends and your are unable to continue building. While it doesn't seem the way this achievement was intended to be obtained, you can work around it by changing your diplomatic stance with Persian Outpost (purple) to enemy so that the game doesn't end after defeating your final 'actual enemy', but this is hopefully something the Age of Empires team will look in to / clarify in the near future.

UPDATE: The December 17th 2019 update has fixed many issues relating to achievements. This should no longer be bugged.

My solution will allow you to get this with unlimited resources and with the enemy unable to attack your new base at all.

Step 1A: Don't bother to fully defend your starting base.

launch a half hearted defence in order to buy enough time to gather all the resources within the base. Get your villagers to gather up all the gold and wood, leave food for fishing boats. Only put enough villagers on stone to get enough to build a castle in the middle(place on side by entrance opposite right hand gate), a tower or two and to wall off all the other entrance points EXCEPT where your middle castle is. Make a few Camel Riders and Marmadukes to harass and destroy their siege weapons (don't bother upgrading quite yet)

Step 1B: Naval Warfare

This needs to be done in conjunction with 1A and is essential. Research chemistry at the university (top right of base). Whilst that is waiting double click on one dock (whilst all three are on screen) and set the way point to the left hand side entrance. Move your galleons to there and start creating a few fire ships and gallerys whilst you wait for chemistry to finish researching. Once that is done you should have enough left to research Cannon Galleon. Do that and trickle a few more units into your navy. Once that's done upgrade to Elite and again trickle new naval units. Now move the way point to the right and create 4 Elite Cannon Galleons (move it back left after).

Step 2: Bombing run and conquering the sea.

You are now going to attack grey on the right hand with ONLY your cannons (keep feeding new ships into your navy). If you go far up right as possible, to the left you will find a small river you can sail up. Follow it and you will find their town centre, castle and two keeps. YOU MUST DESTROY THE CASTLE This is because the town centre will just be rebuilt later on further back but they aren't programmed to build new castles in this mission. Also the castle is where they produce trebuchets. This will buy you some time as they will only be able to send the four they have. Ongers will arrive after or during your attack but only engage if you are still attacking (move to dodge shots).

Once the castle is destroyed rally up your cannons back to where your navy is and parked them a small distance behind. Before you move, create a transport ship, park on shore and set your archery waypoint to it. Feed Calvary archers: you will need them soon

You need to clear the sea ahead with your other units and take the brunt of the fire. Move forward at a slight left angle with your cannons following a safe distance. until you reach Turquoise's harbours. Use your other ships to draw fire from and protect your cannon galleons who will be destroying docks and towers then there town centre.

Whilst this is going on bring your Calvary archer filled transport ship just behind the carnage. Wait until all targets are destroyed then use your remaining ships to harass, distract and kill any nearby military. Now unload your Calvary archers to the far left and send the transport ship back to base. Start hunting down Turquoise's villagers and ignore any military units. Make sure you kill until they resign as they can build new docks.

Step 3: Packing up and moving out

Keep using Marmadukes and Camel riders to destroy seige equipment and draw infantry and calvary to the castle and tower outer area from step 1A. Make sure you are clearing all the wood and gold out of the base. If they're running out of wood by the town centre. Build a lumber camp to the trees on the right under the cliff. Guard with a few units. Add more fishing ships (up to 10) for food.

Eventually you will get a support party of a few war elephants. Place them in the front by the castle. This is where usually the stressful part is as this triggers red to launch a full assault, flooding the area with seige weapons and trebuchets. We're not going to stress as all we need to do is harass them with as few units as we can get away with kin order to buy us time to collect resources.

When things start getting too much out there: pull back all your wood gathering villagers and send most to the gold and a few to stone at the back of the base. Park the transport ship nearby. Just like how the band played whilst the Titanic sunk , they are going to mine whilst the city sinks into rubble. The twist is that unlike the Titanic they are going to get on the lifeboat (transport ship) at the last possible moment. Since all your units are too dead to buy you time, your buildings will. They will start destroying their way towards you. Now you can start upgrading units. Use the blacksmith on the bottom far left and BUY CALVARY RELATED UPGRADES ONLY.

Step 3: Exile and raiding parties

At this point the enemy are starting to get uncomfortably close to your villagers. Luckily you have that transport ship so load as many as you can on there and sail (with your fishing ships) out the left entrance and onwards up left slightly until you come to an extremely tiny island with some gold and a few trees.


Clear the island of all gold and wood. Whilst this is being done, put a couple of villagers in the transport ship and explore the lower right hand side of the map until you find an even smaller island with your Purple ally's base. Unload your villagers and build a lumber camp behind the dock so they can chop all the wood up. Once they have chopped it all up, destroy the lumber camp and starting from the top, work your way down and build as many houses as you can.

Now go back to your island and build a dock at right at the top point . Set the way point to Purple's dock. Queue up 10 trade cogs to be created. Set your fishing ships to create fishing traps in a half circle near the docks, with space at the bottom right for your trade cogs. Click on the dock and set fish traps to auto create.

Despite having cleared all resources and destroyed our lumber and mining camps space is still tight. You need 3 things: a stable, market and houses. Stable at top with room to park a transport ship, market at the bottom and houses in the gap. What you can do is set down your stables and market but stop your builders when they start walking towards the construction. Now select a house but don't click build: instead move the mouse over the island and see where you can fit it before you build. The houses on both islands should get you a 65 population cap.

Now with your trade cogs and fishing ships running on auto YOU MUST SET PURPLE TO ENEMY OR YOU CAN'T GET THE ACHIEVEMENT. Don't worry your cogs will still trade and they won't attack your houses.

Step 4: the waiting game

Now save, leave the game running

Step 5: Raiding party ! Dadgum...

So anyway you have gone and stretch your legs and you are now a tiny filthy rich island nation minus the offshore tax haven. The trade cogs have been getting 600 gold per trip and your fishing ships have farmed all your wood into food. You will now have an insane amount of gold (and is still growing) and a healthy amount of food. Anything you need you can just use your market to buy seeing as you have an infinite supply of gold.

The enemies have also been gathering resources but unlike you they are limited and have most likely chopped and mined everything. The upside of this is that their villagers will be standing around like sitting ducks.

Anyway gold and food are going to be your most abundant resource so use your stable to make Heavy Camel Riders (upgrade if not already): they are the best thrash unit here as the enemy has no counter against them and you can rip apart their knights whilst their fast speed can deal with siege weapons. Park your transport ship (use dock to upgrade to max capacity) and set your way point to send them straight to the transport ship and fill her up. Have another one on stand by, move the full one out the way and set it up in a similar fashion. Essentially you're going to be continually swapping them out.

Grey (where we destroyed the castle at the start) is going to be our initial landing point. Send your full transport ship here and unleash hell. The other enemies will help out Grey at first but they will back off the more you just keep on sending wave after wave. Focus on Grey's military buildings and town centres and villagers, killing any stragglers. Keep feeding in those camel filled transport ships and they won't have time to properly recover and you will notice a change in atmosphere

Eventually you will reach a point where Blue and Yellow have become much less enthusiastic about engaging you to the point of only engaging if you attack or happen to hang around nearby Grey is either defeated or on its last knees, villagers and military units are standing around clueless. Kill all these as you see them. The only player now aggressively engaging you is Red, hunting you with a few long bowmen. We're about to go full circle because....

Step 6: Honey I'm home !!!

Set up base bottom left corner in your original base: Produce loads of bombard cannons with loads of Heavy Camel Riders and Elite Marmadukes (upgrade if needed) to max out your population limit. Set it to have more in line for production and move the way point just outside and again continuously feeding in new units. Now just use bombard cannons to take out as many buildings as you can whilst using the other units to distract and defend them.

So if you don't like having to intensely micromanage every second and be punished relentlessly if you slip up then this is the solution for you.