I'm not the sort of gamer that needs help often. I never use cheat codes, look at strategy guides or even play a game at the lowest difficulty level. But I am having trouble on Age of Empires 2. I have never been able to beat 2nd mission of the Joan of arc campaign! It's really embarassing to me. I'm no stranger to "Age of" games (including Starwars battlegrounds which is essentially Age of Starwars" but destroying one of those forts is so damn hard! I have a few ideas like cutting sown the forest next to the wall or creating some kind of diversion and sneaking in some rams with pkiemen inside. But I was wondering what strategies worked for yall. Lack of an "attack-move" button is really annoying btw!

I found this GameFAQs walkthrough to be very useful in dealing with the campaign missions. I don't remember the mission you're talking about being particularly challenging, especially compared to some of those that come later, but everyone's mileage may vary. The guide I linked has somewhat of an alternate strategy for tackling the mission, but I found a straightforward assault to work fairly well. Build several rams and back them up with a good amount of knights, and maybe some archers if you're a fan of them (obviously, make sure everything is as upgraded as it can be). Send in your rams to attack the walls/gate next to the castle you're attacking, keeping them covered with your other units. Once they've broken through, immediately get them all on the castle; if you've lost too many knocking the wall down, fall back until you've built some more. As soon as the castle goes down, you've won the mission.