Their main army routed and defeated, their reinforcements several days away, the last remnants of the Ikarian revolutionary forces fall back to their last bastion. The ancient keep hangs ominously on the hilltop overlooking the valley, the men patrolling its walls shift nervously. Over the hills and the marsh, past the forest and the river, all around there is the feeling of restlessness, the calm before the storm. A lone armor clad figure stands upon the highest battlements and looks out with sad eyes. This would be the last chance for his revolution, if he were to die this day, the ideals for which he fought would die with him. His lieutenant interrupts his reprieve with a hand on his shoulder and three solemn words. "They are here." One way or another, everything would end here, today. The men go to their posts with kamikaze spirit, each one of them ready to give their lives for their cause. All of them ready to die.
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Hello all, this map is an attempt at 3 things:
1. To make a siege that map more challenging than any other.
2. To accomplish (1) while still creating a logical and aesthetically pleasing castle design. (no super-thick-multi-layer-crenulation walls .etc)
3. To make a castle at a location previously unusable in the Siege That! landscape.
-The castle's location is made using an editor trick. This is how it is done:
a. Play any map and slow your game speed to the slowest setting.
b. Start a new siege that map.
c. Immediately place troops and go kill wolves (I suggest the island)
d. WHILE your troops are fighting, place a single square of pitch next to the rocks (not stones) that you would like to remove, this should delete the rock.
e. Delete you pitch and place your structure.
-To flatten hilly terrain for structure building, place a tower so that the majority of the tower is on a higher level than the rest. Delete the tower and you will have a flat patch of dirt. Rinse and repeat. WARNING: This can be very time consuming to flatten a large area.
-Any and all feedback (positive and negative) is greatly appreciated. Comments and ratings are like my crack. Please leave me some feedback so that I can improve upon my designs.
What can I say mate. I rarely place 5s these days but your map really deserved it I don't know how much time you spent on it but it was absolutely astonishing.
As I started I got my usual 6 engineers and 6 macemen and the rest was x-bowmen. I decided to overtake the upper left part of the castle ,place a siege tower and conquer the stone towers from where a got a clear shot. Okay I killed the garrsion there. And sent my macemen to dig the moat so a road for the siege tower can be established. Everything followed my plan and at this time the playability score was somewhere around 3 I wasn't impressed. I started to change towers as I slowly advanced to the last one. I had killed most of the units in the castle type thing but the mangonel was still there along with 10 x-bowmen and some archers. While I was killing the garrison I ordered my engineers to build a trebuchet and destroy the middle gate (near the swamp). Right this was done but I didn't notice the dog cages my x-bows were too close and mabye 10 or 12 died. The tower from the island was firing at me. When I destroyed it I had around 50 x-bows (from 160). Things started to get interesting. I went downstairs and lost another 10. By that time I was very impressed. I still thought I could kill the remaining archers on the last wall. I went near the swamp only to find tons of pitch (nice) and I lost on the second try I did the same thing but this time I used the trebuchet to destory the towers on the last wall which I couldn't reach. A great map this was. The creativity is form the castle design everything was placed in a very strategic way.I don't care that the map design isn't yours you have done a splendit job with the rest of the map so I think it would look stupid of me to ruin this map by lowering the score. As I said the balance was perfect. You had a story it wasn't so interesting but you had one accompanied with explanations tips and clues.
EDIT: I decided to change the score because I realised that I was wrong in certain fields of my rate. I got a bit carried away back then because the map got me really excited and forgot to follow my standarts for reviewing. Normally I give tough reviews.
But before I start I want to say that this has nothing to do with anyone. I was bothered later by the fact that I placed a perfect score and WL_D just shared with me what I already knew. I don't consider it a mistake it was just a spur of the moment and I forgot some serious things.
So as in previous maps I don't agree with the map design and as good as siege that maps are I don't think there will ever be a full one (at least for me) so as previous I will change the score back to my original intentions.
Well as I looked the story again I thought it was worthy of a three but then I decided that the numbered comments are actually explanations why you built this map normally a sentence or two would have been enough but you wrote a lot more and didn't write so much instructions or a large story.So I decided to set it even lower. I don't understand why most of the designers don't write long stories to have a certain 5 there.In summary I remain true to my words that this map was a great one in playability and AI issues etc.
P.S. Sorry for the mistakes but I was in a hurry.
I hope others play this map and share their impressions of it.