Age of Empires 2: DE: Hard: Barbarossa 4) The Lombard League

The Lombard League is the 4th scenario in the Barbarossa campaign, with the win condition being to construct a wonder within the city walls of either Venice (Purple), Padua (Green) or Verona (Yellow). The general strategy should be to escape from attack from Padua immediately and set sail to the east where resources and safety is guaranteed. Then build up your defences and forces. Attack and eliminate Padua. Finally build some defences around Padua before constructing your wonder to win the scenario. There is no wonder timer, you just have to build the wonder. To start, grab what you can and immediately escape to the transport ships and head east, you'll gain a small navy and some finishing ships. The goal is to head to the outposts, where you'll have some safety and lots of resources with which you can attack and defend with. Get the town center up, away from the shore, wall up the two shallows to the north and plonk down a castle defending both shores. A dock will help you use those fishing ships and will enable you to boom a little quicker. Once you've got some military buildings up, a few rams or a trebuchet or two can start assaulting Padua's base. Knights and Teutonic Knights are a strong composition that will be able to deal with almost everything sent your way. Making some light cavalry or crossbowmen will be good for dealing with monks and pikemen respectively. Use your castle to help defend the shallows from where multiple enemy attacks will come from and build a second castle near the river entrance to help protect your villagers from naval fire. Definitely get crenellations as your castles will be able to snipe many more units and will be able to defend for a longer period of time. Two or three strong attacks should put Padua almost out of the game (they have a small military base near your old base) but it'll be enough to hold your wonder in. Raze down the buildings, put a town center in there and destroy the gates (as enemy gates can still let their allies through) and replace them with gates of your own. A castle and/or multiple towers, as well as strong army will be needed for defence of the wonder while it is being constructed. Once the wonder is completed, victory is yours! Side notes: 1) Henry the Lion is your ally until you build a castle. Before you build a castle, he will just exist on the map and won't attack anyone, but after you build a castle, he becomes another enemy. Don't rely on him at all. 2) There are a few different ways you could play this. You could try retreating to the south as there are a few chokepoints and resources there, but then you have a lengthy journey to do to attack and raid one of the enemies on the map. Alternatively, you could defend, then wipe out all the enemies systematically, but you should expect a long game should that happen. You don't need to take down Padua, Venice and Verona are valid targets, it's just that Padua is the easiest of the three. 3) Padua will attack with: Trebuchets, Cavaliers and Genoese Crossbowmen Henry will attack with: Champions, Teutonic Knights and Rams Verona will attack with: Monk, hand cannoneers, knights and scorpions. Venice will attack with: Navy, bombard cannons and halberdiers. Knights, Teutonic knights, crossbowmen and some light cavalry will be the effective counters to these compositions. You don't have to contest the navy, a castle and a few towers along the shoreline should be enough.