Towton, also known as 'Aftermath of Towton' is the second challenge scenario in Historical Battles in Age of Empires IV: Knights of Cross and Rose. It portrays an unspecified conflict between the House of York and House of Lancaster following the latter's loss at the Battle of Towton to the former in 1461 during the Wars of the Roses.
Intro[]
Scenario description[]
The House of Lancaster has retreated to its rural holds after the bloody defeat at Towton. With the Yorkists seeking to claim a final victory, it is up to you to ensure Lancaster's survival.
Opening cinematic[]
The Battle of Towton was a bloody day for our House of Lancaster. We can hardly count the losses among our allies, our soldiers, and our family. But we are not yet defeated, for the King and Queen have escaped to the north. Queen Margaret now sails to recruit aid from Europe, while we try to stem the Yorkist tide at home. In order to survive, we must rely on the goodwill of the common folk. The Yorkists attack our people in their very homes. If we can protect them, I truly believe they will protect us in turn. While we pray Queen Margaret will rally support for our cause, we must also stand strong and defend what is still ours.
Start of scenario[]
The Yorkists are attacking towns where we still have support. If they can, they may even attempt to destroy our stronghold. We must protect these towns and our castle for as long as possible.
Scenario instructions[]
Starting conditions[]
- Starting Age:
Feudal Age - Population limit: 200
- Starting units:
- 2 Scout
- 5 Demilancer
- 3 Hobelar
- 13 Yeoman
- 15 Villager
- 2
- Resources: 500 food, 500 wood, 200 gold, 150 stone
Objectives[]
- Defend your allies against Yorkist attacks
- Allied buildings remaining (40/40)
- The Lancaster stronghold must survive
- Conqueror challenge: Prove your ability to defend your allies for a greater challenge
Medals[]
Minimum number of buildings remaining:
- Gold: 35
- Silver: 20
- Bronze: 0
Players[]
Player[]
- House of Lancaster: The player starts out with a small, fortified base in the center of the map. The inner citadel is defended with Stone Walls and three Stone Wall Towers, and contains a Town Center, a Manor, Lancaster Castle, and a Mining Camp on the gold, as well as their entire army. Two bridges lead from the citadel to secondary side areas on the west and east, with each having a single entrance from the north and south defended by Palisade Walls and Outposts. These areas only contain a few Houses, and the eastern section contains a Blacksmith and a Market as well. In each of the allied towns except the northeast one, the player has some Villagers working. Miners gather gold in the northwest and stone in the southwest, while several Villagers stand idle next to Berry Bushes and a Mill in the southeast. The player is prohibited from building walls in this scenario.
Allies[]
- House of Lancaster: A small allied town is located on each corner of the player's base, outside of their walls. Each town is defended by a forward Outpost along the road to the Yorkists, and then has several buildings in the 'inner' areas, including Houses, Manors, Outposts, and production buildings. Several additional Outposts line the northern river, but these are cosmetic and not included as part of the defendable buildings. Additionally, a Stone Wall blocks the pass to the south, but the gate is impassable except when reinforcements are arriving. Each town will defend itself with small armies of Spearmen and Yeomen.
Enemy[]
- York (English): The Yorkists do not have a permanent map presence except for one minor encampment along the northern river and one in the southeast, about midway between map corners. However, their Stone Walls guard the west and east corners of the map, and from here, they will launch successive attacks on the allied towns. The attacks start off small with only a few basic Longbowmen, Spearmen, and Horsemen, as well as a few siege engines and Men-at-Arms, but the units become progressively stronger, more upgraded, and more numerous as the scenario progresses, especially in Conqueror Mode. The player can expect every type of land unit and siege engine available to the English to attack them by the end.
Strategy[]
Preparing for the attack[]
The difficulty gap between conqueror and standard modes is vast, and even activating conqueror mode is more difficult than obtaining a gold medal on standard mode. Nevertheless, there are some general strategies that can be applied regardless of the mode, especially in terms of building an economy. Since the player starts with a secondary Town Center, they can build a Capital Town Center for free, making it a no-brainer to build it at the start of the scenario. The player should also build the first two additional Manors as soon as possible. Since this scenario lasts for over twenty minutes, there is plenty of time for Manors to pay off, so it is worth building all nine of them, the earlier the better. There are additional Sheep located at the positions indicated in the image below, and the player can also find eight Villagers, two Wood Caches, and two Boars at location two. These are guarded by several Horsemen and Longbowmen. The player will start the scenario with four idle Villagers next to some Berry Bushes, but this is a misdirection. These Villagers should be send to build a Lumber Camp and chop through the narrow strip of forest cutting off the two southern towns from each other. This is essential; otherwise, units will have to travel around it to move between towns, which takes considerably longer and makes it difficult to reinforce them in time. These same Villagers can also be used to chop through the wood blocking off the Gold Chests at location four, which are very helpful given the low amount of gold on this map. A Trade Post is available to trade with, but the location is not optimal for efficient gold generation and Traders can end up running into enemy units. However, the Market can still provide a source of gold through exchanging resources once the Gold Veins are exhausted. There are also additional Gold Chests across the river to the north along the map's northwest edge. Docks along the northern river and the player's starting pond can provide an additional economic boost. During the attack, although the player cannot build walls, it can be useful to build Keeps, as well as The White Tower and Berkshire Palace along the paths to further fortify them. In terms of army composition, combining Yeomen and their powerful Synchronized Shot with cavalry (both Hobelars and Knights) to take out siege engines and quickly move from town to town is a solid choice. At any town, the player can repair allied buildings with their own Villagers to prevent them from being destroyed.
The Yorkists will start the scenario off by sending 'scouting attacks' to target the allied towns' forward Outposts. If they manage to repel all the scouting attacks without losing an Outpost, they will unlock conqueror mode; otherwise, the player will face the standard mode. Losing the Outposts does not count against the scenario score.
Standard mode[]
If the player fails to kill the Scouts, the scouting attacks will be insignificant, with only a few units per attack and easily defendable with the player's starting army. If the player kills the two Scouts, the enemy will progress with the larger scale attacks until an Outpost is destroyed, upon which the attacks will cease. Afterwards, the Yorkists will begin the main attacks against the allied towns. In standard mode, they will focus almost all their attacks on a single town at a time. Only a single attack will come along the first and second path while defending the second and third path respectively. This makes it relatively easy to defend all of the attacks if the player positions most of their army at one town, as long as they are growing and maintaining a good economy and creating additional units. The player will receive an additional objective to advance to the Castle Age if they haven't already, and this, along with advancing to the Imperial Age, should be able to be comfortably achieved with the pace of the attacks. The main danger to look out for if trying to get the best possible score is that at each town, the enemy will try to rush Horsemen around the towns and attack from the back. Even though there are only a few of these raiders at a time, the allied towns' militaries will not be able to stop them before they destroy at least a few buildings, so they should be dealt with. It can be a good idea to build defensive buildings to guard these locations. Generally, the attacks on each town will start with Longbowmen and Spearmen, and then add in Men-at-Arms, Horsemen, Knights, Crossbowmen, and siege engines with later attacks. The attacks on the southeast and northeast town will feature more advanced siege engines like Trebuchets and Bombards, and the Yorkists will send elite units in the fourth wave. After defending the attack on the northeast town, the Duke of York (represented as a generic King) will make one final attack on this town with a large number of ranged siege engines and elite units of all kinds. By now, the player should have achieved a large enough army to fairly easily repel even this wave, and having the Berkshire Palace defending this path can make it even easier. Once this last attack is defeated, victory is achieved.
Conqueror mode[]
Just activating conqueror mode requires very strict timings that can be easily thrown off if the player makes even a single mistake. The player should start off with the aforementioned strategies: building a second Town Center next to the closest woodline using all their Villagers gathering Sheep, using the four initial idle Villagers to chop through the forest barrier, and then building a Dock in the pond next to their base. Wood is the most important resource needed at the start of the scenario, due to the immediate need to build additional Fishing Ships, Manors, and military production buildings. Therefore, both Town Centers should initially rally Villagers onto wood, although if the player is low on food, they can keep a few on the initial Sheep. The player starts out with two groups of military units, and both of these will have to defend three of the scouting attacks. The Yeomen should position themselves at the northeast camp after killing the Scout, while the cavalry should head to the southwest one. The Yeomen should make good use of their Synchronized Shot ability to take out groups of Spearmen and Longbowmen that attack at the northeast, then southeast, then southwest towns in succession. This will be impossible to do if the player has not chopped through the forest barrier by then. The cavalry have a wider array of enemy units to deal with. At the southwest town, they should bait the enemy Men-at-Arms away from the Outpost and into the town to have their allies help out. They will then need to quickly head north to the northwest town to take out the Mangonel and then the Horsemen, and then immediately head to the northeast town to defend the second attack there. The timing on this last movement is the tightest, and can be disrupted by the Yorkist Longbowmen and Mangonel positioned next to the river in between the towns. The Battering Ram is the most dangerous unit of all, since it can destroy the Outpost in just three attacks. It should therefore be focused down immediately. Overall, it is possible to defeat all of the scouting attacks without creating any extra military units, allowing the player to spend their initial resources on preparing their economy for later waves. If desired, the player can try to obtain the eight Villagers in the south of the map before the initial scouting attack, but this will make reaching the towns in time to stop the destruction of the Outposts trickier. It can also potentially weaken the player's cavalry too much to survive all attacks. However, the additional resource crates and Villagers can also give a big initial economic boost, allowing the construction of production buildings and the creation of units earlier to reinforce any losses.
Defending against the official waves on conqueror mode is also significantly more difficult, as not only are the waves themselves stronger, but during each wave the enemy continuously attacks along the other paths as well. If their goal is simply to defeat conqueror mode, the player can focus most of their army to defend a single path, but doing so will result in buildings being destroyed at the other towns and a reduction in their score. Additionally, once allied towns are fully destroyed, the enemy units will continue attacking the player's base. There is no magic strategy that can guarantee a high score in conqueror mode, other than simply being extremely active with multitasking and army positioning on all four paths, and diligently keeping track of all the action on the map, constantly creating units and maintaining an efficient and balanced economy. Keeps can provide valuable defense against secondary attacks, which often lack many siege engines. It is especially important to gather enough resources behind these attacks to advance to the Castle and Imperial Age, as otherwise, surviving the last attack is unlikely. Researching Blacksmith technologies, especially ranged damage upgrades (since the player should be using a lot of Yeomen in their army), is also critical. Note that the enemy will use unreachable Trebuchets to destroy the player's starting Market and Blacksmith, so these will need to be rebuilt. To be able to defeat the final attack by the Duke of York, the player should be around 200 population or more (with the reinforcements) and should further strengthen their defense on the path with the Berkshire Palace. The Yorkists will lead their army with the King and a group of Elite Knights. If this group can be drawn forward, it is easier to focus down and kill the King, which is a necessity in conqueror mode since he has an extra ability that provides a massive DPS boost to all of the other units. As long as the player has a large mass of Yeomen with a strong frontline, this should be possible. Knights should be used to destroy the large mass of siege engines in this attack as soon as possible, after which the Yeomen should be able to clean up most of the rest of the units.
Outro[]
End of scenario[]
- Standard Mode: We've survived their attacks. Our house may yet have a future
- Conqueror Mode: We've really done it. We've defeated the Yorkist army! England is ours for the taking.
Unlockable content[]
- Page from History: The War of the Roses
Trivia[]
- The leader of the Yorkists is described in the objectives as the Duke of York, although the narrator simply refers to him as 'The Baron'. In reality, the Duke Edward IV, who had already been proclaimed King, returned to London for his coronation, and further activities against the Lancastrians following the Battle of Towton were carried out by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
- The conqueror mode ending especially implies an alternate-history fate for the House of Lancaster. Although the House of Lancaster did continue resisting, the House of York still in fact managed to rule England for over 20 years.
Gallery[]
2. Villagers and Wood Caches
3. Sheep
4. Gold Chests
5. Gold Chests
