This scenario allows you many years to build up a large, wealthy, happy town and a mighty army before formidable enemy forces attack.
Built next to the sea, the castle is set in ample farmland approachable only through narrow gaps in mountainous terrain. The enemy must breach two large strong outer walls before they reach the castle itself, a small castle of impressive defensive capabilities.
Be assured however that when the enemy do attack you will be glad of the strength of men you have gathered to your side. Bitter war is your enemies' desire..........
NB the previous version was STUPIDLY the wrong one. This is the right one. See the comments on this map for an explanation- my apologies.
I played this map once on hard difficulty, I did not need to restart or load.
This is a 'colossal' map, the scale of everything is massive, the moat you can dig, the castle you can build, the amount of troops you can make and the invasions as well.
This leads to a big problem : the AI. The enemy does not know what to make of it, resulting in large invasions attacking partially and scattered. This is basically Firefly's 'fault', but also of the designer. This kind of massive maps DO NOT WORK properly at this point.
I would discourage designing these kind of maps, untill the AI is fixed at least.
Playability : The map was fun to play, but much too easy.
It also had a too large period in which nothing happened.
At the end I had to move out with knights and pikes to slaughter an entire army that had remained at the signpost, this was annoying.
Balance : The period to expand your castle was too long and my economy ran much too well. I had an avarage 10.000 gold, with which I could buy and sell everything at the marketplace. My castle was much too strong for the attacks, they only breached the two seperate, pre-build walls.
Creativity : The story was nice, the map and the castle design too.
Map design : the map design only made matters worse for the AI. Because the enemy had to round two corners and walk a great distance before they reached the actual castle. It also allowed me to construct a moat lake in front of my castle, this was too big and diffucult for the AI, they dug in the wrong places for instance. The map also had too much and easy accesible resources and farmland.
It was pretty too look at though. But that doesn't justify the poor overall make up wholly.
Story/Instructions : There was good story, without spelling/grammar mistakes and it had in-game messages.
I would advice playing this map if you like to play one map for a long time and build the 'perfect' castle, and see how it holds out against large invasions. Or if you don't like a real challenge, or are relatively new to the game.