I've been beating all campaigns on hardest and fastest speed, in a single segment per scenario, without saving the game. I personally found Battle of Tunes to be by far the most difficult out of all campaigns (Ninevah may be harder, but people have used cheap ways to win in about 3 minutes: such as paint houses or run a suicide team of camels right up to the wonder and have Ninevah's own catapults destroy it). I found the difficulty of Battle of Tunes strange since it's from the trial version. Several videos online use some strategies, for example taking the two catapults and rolling them in through a hole in the cliffs east of the wonder, then micromanaging them to destroy the wonder guardians, and another video brings a few villagers and bowmen immediately into Red's town, takes out the two cavalry guarding it with some clever micromanaging, then building a tower to attract the villagers then killing them with the archers. At least one of these videos involved also juggling boat repairs while yellow attacked your dock endlessly.
I was not able to make either of these strategies work, no matter how many times I tried, and also could not win by any other means, since Red rapidly builds a gigantic army of long swordsmen, ballistas, and catapults, while yellow sends wave after wave of ships. The 16 phalanxes you can discover in the north are absolutely useless, since they are so slow. I came up with an alternate strategy that finally allowed me to win the mission: the key is to "paint" two layers of walls around red's gold mine: this prevents them from mining any gold so their army will be much weaker; they will almost never destroy any squares of your wall; I tried this mission twice this way, and the first time they only destroyed some squares after about 30 minutes, so the second time I built two layers instead, and they didn't touch the wall or any of the gold the entire time.
To see red's town in order to paint walls around their gold, train a scout in the very beginning and send him southwest and to the red's town. As for yellow, I didn't bother defending my original dock besides with my initial fleet; I simply created a few villagers and about 4 priests, converted a few of the red cavalry, then took all my people and left my town. Then, I marched them to the shallows next to the red guard tower, and built two town centers: one south of the gold mine on the east side of the shallows (must not be too close to shore so that yellow doesn't discover you), and a second one in the berries, also on the east side. With these built, I rapidly built my economy without worrying about yellow attacks at all (at this point they won't know you exist) and also built a ton of fishing ships to take the significant amount of fish in the shallows (>2500 food). Red, having no source of gold, will send only axmen and scouts; which your bowmen and converted cavalry can easily take care of. I advanced rapidly to iron, then built about 8 heliopolises and 8 horse archers, and completely wiped out red. Note if you hadn't painted the wall around red's gold, you would be facing catapults, ballistas, long swordsmen, and priests at this point, which would have been nearly impossible.
Once I completely destroyed red, I filled two transports with heliopolises and horse archers, then sent them and about 8 triremes to yellow's continent. By this point they were fully upgraded and swarming with long swordsmen, triremes, guard towers (which they cannot rebuild) and sentry towers (which they can) and ballistas, so I wiped out about 1/4 of their town before dying. Having control of the entire southern continent and its significant gold mines, I was able to send 2 more waves of the same army and finally destroyed yellow. In hindsight, perhaps 20 armored elephants would have worked better than 10 heliopolises and 10 horse archers. Interestingly when I destroyed their town center, they did not attempt to rebuild it, but their docks do get rebuilt.
With yellow completely destroyed, I took out the brown wonder guardians, plus the wonder, and won instantly, without needing to build my own wonder (apparently conquest is an acceptable condition for this mission)
EDIT: I've generalized this "wall-painting" method to also wall in both red and yellow's town centers. This severely cripples both of their economies, allowing us to leisurely build up an army and invade both of them with minimal resistance.Here's a video I just made.
I was not able to make either of these strategies work, no matter how many times I tried, and also could not win by any other means, since Red rapidly builds a gigantic army of long swordsmen, ballistas, and catapults, while yellow sends wave after wave of ships. The 16 phalanxes you can discover in the north are absolutely useless, since they are so slow. I came up with an alternate strategy that finally allowed me to win the mission: the key is to "paint" two layers of walls around red's gold mine: this prevents them from mining any gold so their army will be much weaker; they will almost never destroy any squares of your wall; I tried this mission twice this way, and the first time they only destroyed some squares after about 30 minutes, so the second time I built two layers instead, and they didn't touch the wall or any of the gold the entire time.
To see red's town in order to paint walls around their gold, train a scout in the very beginning and send him southwest and to the red's town. As for yellow, I didn't bother defending my original dock besides with my initial fleet; I simply created a few villagers and about 4 priests, converted a few of the red cavalry, then took all my people and left my town. Then, I marched them to the shallows next to the red guard tower, and built two town centers: one south of the gold mine on the east side of the shallows (must not be too close to shore so that yellow doesn't discover you), and a second one in the berries, also on the east side. With these built, I rapidly built my economy without worrying about yellow attacks at all (at this point they won't know you exist) and also built a ton of fishing ships to take the significant amount of fish in the shallows (>
Once I completely destroyed red, I filled two transports with heliopolises and horse archers, then sent them and about 8 triremes to yellow's continent. By this point they were fully upgraded and swarming with long swordsmen, triremes, guard towers (which they cannot rebuild) and sentry towers (which they can) and ballistas, so I wiped out about 1/4 of their town before dying. Having control of the entire southern continent and its significant gold mines, I was able to send 2 more waves of the same army and finally destroyed yellow. In hindsight, perhaps 20 armored elephants would have worked better than 10 heliopolises and 10 horse archers. Interestingly when I destroyed their town center, they did not attempt to rebuild it, but their docks do get rebuilt.
With yellow completely destroyed, I took out the brown wonder guardians, plus the wonder, and won instantly, without needing to build my own wonder (apparently conquest is an acceptable condition for this mission)
EDIT: I've generalized this "wall-painting" method to also wall in both red and yellow's town centers. This severely cripples both of their economies, allowing us to leisurely build up an army and invade both of them with minimal resistance.
[This message has been edited by sabinscabin (edited 09-18-2018 @ 00:36 AM).]