This is an entirely new scenario. The city is not only more historically accurate but it's huge. The enemies invade and stop after a VERY large onslaught.
In this scenario you are on the side of the last Roman Emperor Constantine Dagrazes as he defends his large undermanned capitol of Constantinople from the large onslaught of the Sultan Mehmet II. Odds are against you and win or lose you have God on your side...
A decent map. Excellant work building the city, although it may not be historically accurate. I'm a big fan of historically accurate scenarios. Overall, nice work.
Sulis
Posted on 11/26/03 @ 12:00 AM
Playability: 3/5
If you like epic invasions to defend against... and I do mean, epic, then this map may be for you. It has a flaw in the scripting though, which means that the game won't end. The lose condition is fine, but witn no end to the invasions I got severely bored after eleven game years. It became a stalemate, with the 500 troop sinvading every two months being shot down with relative ease. All this map needs is a 'turn off repeat invasions' event somewhere in the timescale. As it is, the map suffers badly in terms of playability. Good for a while, but then gets rather tedious.
Balance: 3/5
Once you set your stall and decide how to defend, you should be able to hold off against everything that is thrown at you. I opted to vacate the outer walls, concentrating on the keep area. This gave me a much smaller area to defend and more concentrated firepower. Balance could be improved by looking at the invasions and rather than throwing 500 troops at you all the time, maybe play around and be more frequent but with better troop combinations. Added to this would be to reduce the starting weapons within the armoury, as well as the raw materials. Once sold they generate more than sufficient gold to recruit troops. Still, this isn't a bad effort but would benefit greatly from some tweaking.
Creativity: 3/5
Recreating Constantinople is never going to be an easy feat. Recreating an epic invasion is probably even harder, and the author has done relatively well. The idea and principle is fine, but i'm afraid that there was little here that really stoo out as exceptional.
Map Design: 2/5
The map looks okay, as does the recreation of the city. It's just that it looks rather bland, with the landscape showing minimal signs of modelling and what could be a thriving, bustling city, looking a bit sparse. I'd improve the terrain greatly and spend many hours recreating a true 'city' feel to Constantinople.
Story/Instructions: 2/5
Again, not too bad. The story really lacks depth and content though. With Constantinople being such a major feature of the Crusades, i'd like to have seen a detailed write-up, accompanied by some of the author's thoughts and feelings about the map in question.
IN SUMMARY
Generally, a fairly playable and enjoyable map, certainly for the early years. Needs tweaking, events investigating and some modelling of both landscape and structures.
marcel74
Posted on 02/29/04 @ 12:00 AM
I played stronghold warchest a lot and most crusader. So I tried this map. But this map has the same "bug" as most of my own maps the AI isn't attacking, or attacks with 5 troops. I shoot them all. Why is the AI not attacking with all the man?? And why isn't the computer using siege weapons??