|
|
Mountain's Fist - The Healing - Resubmitted! (Map 9 in Saviour of Léugìm)
|
Author |
File Description |
Dougleass |
Posted on 01/10/08 @ 01:01 AM (updated 01/15/08)
File Details |
Map Size: |
400x400 (Large) |
Difficulty: |
Normal |
Made with version: |
1.1 |
Minimap:
|
Other uploaded scenarios in the Campaign:1. Mardonton - The siege
2. Bealaigh Hill -The Ambush
3. An Unlikely Saviour
4. The Lost Estate
5. Mountain's Fist
6. The Pilgrim's Progress
7. The City of Columbar
8. Ithélâ's Challenge
Mountain's Fist - The Healing
Map No.9 in The Saviour of Léugìm Community Campaign.
The Mountain's Fist
Short Description: Collect stone to rebuild the cracked walls of Mountain's Fist, as you need to survive yet another attack from Dayon. Recruit your army for the war, produce armors for your men. Mountain's Fist has been your shelter once, now it is time to see if its walls can protect you once more. But hurry!
Story
You were drinking some tea and eating some biscuits, taking a break from your father�s story, when someone knocked on the door.
�It must be that darned tax collector again� � Said your father.
He slowly got up and walked to the door and opened it, revealing the person behind it. He was tall and bald, and slightly overweight. While you examined the person, you also saw your fathers� face, smiling.
�Aylma! So great to see you! I thought you were over at Irlim! � That�s a ki
ngdom north to Léugìm, son � Have you finished studying Irlims� plants and their magical purposes?�
�Hmm, not really. You see, there are pretty unpleasant people over there, you know. Sometimes they threw me rotten eggs or tomatoes just to make me mad� They didn�t let me work, so I decided to leave that horrible place and pay you a visit � Why, but we have another member of the family! Nice to meet you, young chap� � He shook your hand.
Your father indicated the really old Aylma to a seat, and gave him some tea and biscuits.
�So � Your Father started � Umm, no offence, but, what has kept you alive for so much years? When we freed these lands, you were pretty old enough��
�I suppose � answered Aylma � it�s all those green stuff I eat. When I was at Irlim, I tested myself, and ate almost every herb, vegetable or anything edible to see what would happen. Some of them were really good, and I included some in my daily meal. I guess some of these herbs really have some magic inside, �cause it kept me alive�
�Anyways � Spoke your father � I was about to tell my son here about those days when you were in charge of Mountain�s Fist while I looked for help from the Ice God. I was already coming back when you wrote me a letter about a second series of sieges to Mountain�s Fist, do you remember? I was going to give him another oldie letter, but I think it�s better for the man itself to tell the story�
�Yes, I perfectly remember those days� Good thing we have time in our hands�
- I don�t remember exactly the year� but who cares. Your father was coming back, allied with the Ice God� But my men only had moral support by that fact. Still, the ice army was on its way, while we were slowly repairing the great Mountain�s Fist, just in case another attack came along. I ordered the installation of many iron and stone camps. The iron would be used to make armour and swords, to re-arm my men, and the stone, to start a reserve of stone just in case another siege came along and we needed a quick repair of the walls...
Full story follows the zip. file.
Campaign Map
Click thumbnail pic to see 250k JPEG
Instructions
Start by building 2 - 3 woodcutters, to get your wood income stabilized. Then start rapidly doing Dairy farms, and don't forget to supervise military productions.
Objectives
On Normal Setting:
- Survive the attack at the end.
- Lose if your Lord is killed, or when all villagers are killed.
- Game starts June 1088
- Game ends around July 1095
Author's Note
I apologize for the past event, the map wasn't fully playtested or thought out. I hope my new version is acceptable.
Zip Contents
- Map
- Story
- Mini map
Acknowledgements
Lord Michael I wrote the story; and playtested the map.
Also Thanks to: FroobaChoob for starting and organising the campaign;
Younghappy for taking over from FroobaChoob when he had to go offline;
Sir Ravenclaw for the campaign logo graphic;
Younghappy for creating all the campaign maps and submitting news articles;
SHH staff for posting up the news articles;
Ericgolf for the DL page template. |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
---|
Captain Diablo |
Posted on 01/12/08 @ 12:30 PM
To see the edits, scroll down until you see EDIT: written.
-----------------------------
Playability: 4
So the ninth mission of the destined to be classic community series is here, at last--the penultimate scenario. So far the series has been phenomenal, and has wowed and entertained us to no end. This map, however, has a few things wrong with it in terms of challenge and playability. I can't review this map in light of the whole series (which would most definitely get a 5 in all categories), I have to review this map as a piece of it. If not for the excellent story, map design, and creativity this scenario displays, the score would be a lot worse than this.
Now perhaps I have this map's intentions wrong...maybe I'm trying to play this map differently than it was meant to, I'm not sure. There is simply no challenge in the map at all, the two simple economic conditions can be easily completed way before the invasion, (even on normal) which is a whopping 4-5 years away from the start--and is relatively easy to fend off anyway. The plague and granary theft is negligible, since when you get the 3 armorers up you no longer need gold: you can offset the plague with a gold gift. The granary theft is pretty small as well, and since you have ample space to build inside and outside the castle you never run out of food. To make matters easier, you can tear down the blacksmith, tanner, both poleturners, and the stables for extra wood and gold.
To increase stone production you just delete two ox tethers, and if you want (since it is possible to do) you can just tear down the walls until you meet the stone quota.
Wood is easy to gather, even after the tree fungus. I managed to have a whopping 5 iron mines around the map, constantly providing my ever hungry armorers with materials.
Even when I let the invasion come, I managed to beat it back pretty easily--although it is an exciting fight--by just stacking my soldiers in the main stronghold near the keep. That place is pretty impregnable, so when defended correctly the enemy just can't break through.
Again, maybe I'm just playing this incorrectly, maybe I had expectations that were too high, but this seems more like an economic freebuild than the epic invasion map it's predecessor was set up to be.
Other than those qualms the map was playable.
EDIT: Much, much more engaging and fun Doug, I had some fun playing this time around. The only thing that bugs me now is the huge, huge wait time before the invasion (which is necessary, because you must amass a large army) and that I wish the inner gatehouse had been attacked more often.
The first time I played the updated version, I was surprised (happily) that there was a special twist to the invasion (I won't spoil it!)But after utilizing the troops given to you and situating my crossbowmen/archers atop the keep, it was a pretty easy fight the second go around.
The Pikeman is my absolute favorite unit, and I thank you for that. However, I wish there could have been more of a balanced unit makeup of the enemy army. Some spearmen serving as walking meat shields, and some siege equipment would have been apt.
Also, you don't actually have to repair the castle, as the best defense lies within the belly of it. If I had had to rebuild, say, the inner walls, then I would have, but the outer walls are too remote: not worth defending; especially since this is a short scenario, you don't have to bother defending your food production buildings or the like.
Balance: 3.5
Again, balance was broken. Everything was in the favor of the player until it just wasn't a challenge anymore. The map is impossible to lose too, since there's no lose condition. The one invasion is fairly easily defeated if played right, and the economic goals are super easy to beat.
Another thing that irked me was the ease in which a player could cheat. Tearing down the walls for stone is simple to do--there's no way to stop this of course, unless you just replace the condition with something else. If you had somehow limited building space, by use of rocks or something, and had limited the player to one mine, and had made the map much longer and more challenging, then I could have scored this higher. But being able to win such a beautiful map within 20 minutes, while hardly lifting a finger, is boring and unbalanced toward the player.
I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to review this fairly.
EDIT: Have to cut this short. Although you stopped the player from cheating, and completely redid the map (for the better), the keep and the walls around it served as an almost impenetrable defense--too high for the crossbowman, and the pikeman were too dumb to figure out how to get around. I suggest getting some macemen in, for the shock value.
Creativity: 4
A large mountain, a big castle nestled in its arms, it has been done before, many times. However, in light of the story, it's very creative and the castle design is a real work of art.
All of the small little passageways and seamlessness of the keep and its surroundings were very well constructed and seemed to have been designed with a purpose. The destroyed gatehouse and invincible walls were pretty neat as well.
Every time I played I would usually just study all the passageways and how they were constructed--perhaps for a lack of something else to do, probably not though, as it really is an awesome structure worth looking over.
Map Design: 4
The main focus being the castle: as I've already said it's extraordinary to study and look at.
As Sulis mentioned in his review of the last map this castle was featured in, the surrounding land is dark and foreboding, creepy and mysterious. Unfortunately though, a large portion--I'd say around 30%--of the map is himalayan terrain, which is not altogether bad, as it is used effectively. The bad part is that the surrounding countryside isn't interesting enough to make up for the huge amount of space it takes up.
Everything together works though, and looks seamless, nice work.
Story/Instructions: 5
Once again, a wonderfully written narrative adds a little spice to the map, and subtly incorporates hints and suggestions on how to win into the dialogue. Nice work, I always enjoy reading the stories that have gone along with this series.
Additional Comments:
Again, maybe I was playing it as something else, had expectations that were too high, or maybe I somehow got a corrupted map file or something, but this map was way too easy and too short. As a penultimate, this is disappointing, and I hope the end to the series isn't anti-climatic.
Please, please, PLEASE don't be angry with me. If I have made a mistake just tell me, I'm just trying to review as fairly as possible according to my playtime experience.
I have an immense amount of respect for everyone who worked on this map, and every other map in this series. I don't want some kind of grudge thing. (perhaps I'm just paranoid)
This series is definitely going down as a classic in the history of this site.
EDIT: Nice work, good edits. I enjoyed my game. :)
Good wishes, Captain Diablo[Edited on 01/16/08 @ 05:44 PM]
|
Sulis |
Posted on 03/13/08 @ 11:02 AM
Playability: 4.5
On to Chapter 9 in the Leugim series and after a few tweaks to the original version, Dougleass has addressed many of the initial concerns and produced a very good map. It takes the form of a basic invasion map, placing you at a distinct disadvantage as your defences are weak and army limited. Repairing the stone walls and replacing destroyed gatehouses from a previous chapter is one part of the pretty huge task that you face. Establishing a thriving economy focused on weapons production is a challenge in itself. Combined with the large and very potent invasion towards the end, this all adds up to a very busy and hectic scenario. There is so much to do that boredom is never a factor and it was pleasing to see the minimal use of events, which would only distract from the game in hand. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Balance: 4
Much better than the original. I made a point of not destroying certain pathways or castle structures to confuse the AI, allowing them to attack in the way that the map was intended. This resulted in a challenging scenario towards the end. Crossbowmen are probably the most important unit to you and using smaller groups of pikemen to hold up the attackers whilst my crossbows fired away was a good tactic. The castle design is such that the AI will work towards two main attacking points - the main entrance and the smaller gatehouse to the west of the keep. It is difficult to work out which entrance they will take and therefore cover is needed. This means moving troops from location to location is necessary, adding to the challenge of the scenario. The AI attacks well, with force and purpose, although I did encounter a few problems with the enemy pikemen destroying certain stone walkways and therefore cutting off their route to the keep. The intricacy of the castle is probably to blame, combined with my tactics of forcing the attacking AI to fight at selected points of my choosing. In addition to this, managing your economy takes a bit of careful planning and with limited goods to sell at the marketplace, you can either carefully sell surplus stock or take a risk - place 'good things', tax heavily and generate gold that way. This isn't necessarily the best approach as vital weapons manufacture is reduced to a bare minimum as workers decide to take the rest of the day off! Either way, a fair challenge and it took me two attempts using different tactics and approaches before I won.
Creativity: 4
The creativity found within this map is largely due to the design of the castle and the modelling of the walls to produce bespoke towers and platforms. The story and instructions element also helps to boost this area. The map itself still relies heavily on the basic invasion scenario. There's nothing clever or overblown here, just a very well designed, well modelled and well thought out scenario.
Map Design: 4.5
Very good in parts. I love the castle design, as suggested above. The use of walls and stairs to produce bespoke towers has resulted in a very ornate and unique castle structure, giving the appearance of depth rather than just a keep with walls. I love the appearance that parts of the castle could have ben carved out of the solid rock (maybe this is just me using my imagination..) and the feel of a settlement tucked into the hillside is very apparent. The surrounding countryside is equally well designed and despite the bleakness and lack of any life, it resembles a wild and unoccupied landscape. It's just a shame that large parts of the map aren't used, but I acknowledge that this is secondary to the function and purpose of the map. There are some nice little touches around the inner stockpile with lowered palisade walling.
Story/Instructions: 5
The story has been the backbone for the maps in this series and chapter 9 develops nicely. By concentrating on telling the story in this way - literally someone relating a story to a captive audience - the scene is set very well and it is an approach that works in my opinion. In fact, the story is absolutely essential reading before you even begin to play the scenario as there are always clues contained within it to give you some idea how the map is likely to unfold. Good use of instructions, simple but adequate and the continued thread in the forums ensures that this remains a campaign that everyone can enjoy.
Additional Comments:
Another fine instalment in the series! |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
---|
4.3 | Breakdown |
---|
Playability | 4.3 | Balance | 3.8 | Creativity | 4.0 | Map Design | 4.3 | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 1,796 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 788.88 KB |
Added: | 01/10/08 |
Updated: | 01/15/08 |
|