Meant RTS games in general, sorry. I am rather curious why Hikage found it difficult as well, hence why I asked did he play most difficult RTS I know (Mental Omega). I never played Armies of Exigo.

Ah, this reminded me. Populous 3D was a game where I did hate those baseless levels. Incarceration was the one you played without a Shaman, right? It was terrible.

It's hard to describe.
Resources are constantly used up. It's not like Warcraft where you get some gold and wood and it;s there until you need it which means you can load up and stop gathering. In Cossacks, everyone eats so your food is always diminishing, and bullets take iron and sulfur, which means every, and I mean every bullet fired, takes away from both. You start to run out of food, so you put more people on food gathering, but then your troops tun out of ammo, so you put more people on sulfur, but then you start to run out of food again, so you create more peasants, but that means higher food consumption. And I forgot about gold. Your troops get paid by the hour and if they don't get it, they won't fight.

I think I spent around 20 hours in Cossacks 3 skirmish, I know these aspects of the game. They have high degree of macro management. You solve many of these problems by pumping out pikes from three 17th Century Barracks and having 90 percent of your villagers on wood and stone, then selling them at the market. Also, auto build is your best friend.

I don't like "baseless" levels.
Whenever I'm in a more tactical gaming mood, I can always play a tactical game directly.

Armies of Exigo is one of my favorite RTS games. I own the disk version too and I have completed the main campaign twice. There are competitive maps, but I don't think it gets unfair.

I played the game when it was released. I don't know how well it runs on modern systems though.

More technically, your shaman was fully in play.

In a cage. On a timer.

But that does remind me, there were indeed a few levels where it went, "Shaman only, good luck."

That's a problem I also have with those missions. Often they're more like puzzles than tactical or strategic gameplay, but without the clues that a regular puzzle game might give you..

I enjoyed myth the fallen Lord's and sequels' baseless levels (no bases in any of them). Also, the European Escalation games where you get off-map deliveries purchased with land held. But some games without bases arent very fun because the majority of the gameplay involves building and maintaining a base.

So it all depends on the game. Bit even for basey games, a little twist on the gameplay is always enjoyed if it is periodically and story-wise makes sense.

I'm asking about games that normally have bases. Otherwise it's just a baseless (tactical?) game.

I like such missions for some variety, but they shouldn't be too many.

The developer, Black Hole Entertainment was notorious for the unforgiving AI in their games. Armies of Exigo and Heroes of Might and Magic 6 are prime examples of that. Still the game IS good so dont let that stop you from trying it, just be prepared for some frustration.
No i have not. I havent touched RA2 in years, in fact.

Well, Mental Omega is most difficult RTS AI I know - easy difficulty is more difficult than vanilla Yuri's Revenge Brutal/Hard.

Now I am really interested in how Armies of Exigo plays. Especially since I rarely get challenged by RTS AI.

While I like some of the "baseless" levels in some RTS games, in general I'd rather not have them. They are a similar out-of-place diversion as the clumsy action-sequence in some old point'n'click adventures, or forced (not optional) stealth or timed missions in some FPS games.

The main game (basebuilding etc. in Command&Conquer clones) is why I like those games, so missions which don't have that are not the reason why I am playing the game.

Also, those baseless "special" missions tend to be much more scripted (ie. full of triggers when something happens or a timer is started etc.), or they have a timer. So they are usually also much more linear than the basebuilding levels.

EDIT: Moreover, in baseless missions you often have only a set number of units, so if you lose many of them, you might have to restart the whole mission because you can't finish it with too few units. With base-building missions, you can overcome such hiccups by just producing more replacement units.

That's a good point. This actually could be a problem for me sometimes in some such levels. The level might be now impossible to beat without you knowing it, because you made a mistake at the start.