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Author |
File Description |
Lord Ako |
Posted on 03/05/04 @ 12:00 AM
File Details |
Map Size: |
400x400 (Large) |
Difficulty: |
Hard |
Made with version: |
1.1 |
Minimap:
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The Ice Age
It's 40.000 years ago and you are the Cro-Magnon people,
the ancestors of modern man.
This is the time known as the last big ice age, when wild animals and another humanoid, the Neanderthaler, roamed the land.
A land teared apart by moving ice and eroding winds.
You will need to finish on top in the battle for food and provide safety to your people.
>Eradicate wolves.
>Eradicate Neanderthalers.
>Enclose village.
>Reach population 32.
Further away from the ice, where the climate is more temperate, there is a Taiga with pine and birch trees. It will be vital to get a steady supply of wood coming in but the Neanderthaler caves are nearby. They have trapped the Taiga with pitfalls and their hunters are never far off...
This map is a bit hard so perhaps these tips will come in handy:
-Completing the objectives early will make things easier.
-Think small, resources are somewhat limited so don't overextend.
-Place lots of woodcutters at the start, and place them well.
The story can be found in the map.
Some geographical and historical data, as well as more hints, can be found in the Zip File.
I hope you enjoy playing this map, cheers, Lord Ako.
[While fixing the minimap link I had to make a guess that this was made with version 1.1 - edited by ericgolf] |
Pages: « First « 1 [2] | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Nevyn Anderson |
Posted on 07/24/10 @ 10:50 PM
Unfortunately I have not been able to get this map to run, Crusader just crashes almost immediately. Going by the rave reviews - I'm the only one with this problem.
Any body got any ideas - I'd sure love to play this map? I have deleted the original download, and re-DL a fresh copy using a changed name, and inbetween between first DL and 2nd DL I had done a clean install of XP. |
ericgolf
Staff |
Posted on 07/25/10 @ 06:29 AM
Nevyn Anderson, This is a map for Stronghold 1. It will not play in Crusader. (I think you can by Stronghold 1 online from GOG. Might be worth doing as this is a great map to play :) |
Timballisto |
Posted on 07/23/11 @ 02:26 AM
Playability: 4.5
...And a year later after downloading this map, I've finally mastered it on very hard. It deserves a review, so here goes. This is a very interesting map due to the restrictions placed on you and usually there is always something to do. Your only source of archers comes from achieving the objectives laid out for you. Otherwise, you can only produce spearmen. This is both a hurt and a help to this score - it forces you to think in unconventional ways, but at the same time there is a great disparity between the forces you have to contend with and the soldiers you have available to you. Hunters can act as stand-ins for archers, and you have to try to keep some around for the purpose of, at the very least, countering the enemy hunters, which will hound you continuously, and this increases the playability score. The location of the woods is probably one of the greatest difficulties presented to the player in this map, as well as the numerous killing pits placed within the forest. This is easily mitigated, but a few scripted events as well as the constant barrage of enemy hunters will frequently disrupt your wood supply. This also increases the playability score, although walling off all of the killing pits is slightly irritating. You only have one real option for a plentiful and reliable food source in the end game, dairy farms, so largely your wood resources are competed for by farms and spear production. Everything else is mostly an afterthought, and wood isn't a limiting factor in troop production if you're managing it properly. Speaking of wood, I should note here that I had some difficulties in getting Stronghold to register that the keep was enclosed. I believe that it was using the wrong tile to track the pathing, and that the keep was moved at some point during editing, or some other thing happened that might affect the pathing. This was irksome as it delayed the receiving of reinforcements and caused me to lose wood while trying to rebuild the walls in a way that would trip the enclosed keep condition. Chasing down the wolves was always a good challenge. Crossing the map involved dodging the constantly-shifting enemy hunters, and typically my archers were significantly hurt from the group of wolves nestled up near the glacier and the signpost, opposite the corner that contained the enemy camp. It gave me something to do while I was waiting for the woodcutters to deliver their first loads. As for the reward gained for eliminating all of the enemy troops, it really only served one purpose - to be used in order to achieve one of the goals in time. Had I tried to eliminate the local neanderthal tribe prior to the second attack then I couldn't have repelled said attack. The archers simply weren't worth the loss in spearmen, especially due to the unavoidable losses caused by the killing pits. Even if you could afford to bring up masses of spearmen, great vigilance was required to fend off the enemy, the second attack especially. The enemy had to be engaged piecemeal or you would lose your forces entirely (pitting spearmen against macemen was evil!). This was a good thing for the playability score. One thing that hurt this score was the lack of level ground for placing dairy farms near the keep. There was plenty surrounding the keep, but it was far away enough to warrant moving the granary, which was impractical for a long time. This was more an irritant than a gameplay challenge to me, but it wasn't too significant. One small complaint I had is that the positions of some of the killing pits seem rather unreasonable to me, specifically the ones that are outside of the cave but not in the marsh. If I remember correctly the premise was that the woods were marshy and so a misstep could kill you, so putting killing pits on the top of a hill seems rather unfair.
Balance: 4.5
Certainly a good challenge. The problems posed by the troop types have already been discussed - archers will have only a limited impact on the invasions, due to the number you can actually obtain and the fact that you're up against macemen. So essentially your best defense is masses of spearmen. This makes life difficult, because massing them in the first place takes some work due to the location of the forest. All of these things taken together caused me to take several fresh attempts at completing the level, perhaps one too many, but still I appreciate the challenge here.
Creativity: 5
This is a very, very creative concept. You can't approach this in a traditional manner, especially, again, due to the lack of archers. It's particularly galling and yet it's also one of the best aspects of the map. Also the author gets points for not only removing the one wood source far from your keep, but also from complicating matters with killing pits and the occasional enemy hunters that meander in that direction. The glaciers are great, even if they have a tendency to unfreeze in my version, as well as the braided river and the enemy camp. The setup of the available technologies and the landscape feels appropriate to the proposed setting. Of course that setting in and of itself is a big contributor to this score - taking Stronghold and extending it to something of this nature worked really well.
Map Design: 5
The map design is great. It feels perfectly bleak for the most part, giving a good indication of what it might have felt like to live in the time of the melting of the glacial ice sheets. The glaciers are awesome, again, as well as the braided river, and the plains. The hills are good-looking also. Not much to say about this, the evidence is in the map...
Story/Instructions: 5
The actual story included is perfectly appropriate for the scenario - a primitive person describes what you should do and that you will get help if you do well, and that you will be killed if you don't. I don't think much more background is needed than that, although the information provided with the scenario is also helpful. Regardless, the story is good enough for a five.
Additional Comments:
This is an excellent scenario, a different kind of scenario that will frustrate you by stealing away the tools you would normally use to deal with macemen and even enemy hunters. Your own archers are a precious resource to be conserved. |
Stratego |
Posted on 02/02/19 @ 01:18 PM
Well, in deed one of the older maps on this site, but one of the best creations I've ever played. I confess that I had laid it aside after several failure attempts a few years ago , so I thought it might be worth a try once more ... and I wasn't disappointed at all. It is a MUST for everyone to deal with! And futhermore you will figure out the fantastic interaction of different units and how they are implemented/embedded into a sensitively scripted scenario where all events and restrictions are perfectly composed or combined.
Simply expressed with one word: Magnificent!
Stratego[Edited on 02/02/19 @ 01:21 PM]
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Pages: « First « 1 [2] |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.5 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 4.3 | Balance | 4.3 | Creativity | 5.0 | Map Design | 4.8 | Story/Instructions | 4.3 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 3,424 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 766.67 KB |
Added: | 03/05/04 |
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