Just when you thought life couldn’t get any better, you find yourself about to loose it all. Your heir has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. You are being required to pay in gold and goods to get him returned to you. And if that is not enough for you to worry about, the Snake has decided to take your lands for his own. Your once peaceful life is about to be shattered. If you wish to have something for your heir to inherit, you must protect yourself well from the Snake. The kidnappers won’t wait forever for you to pay up. You may need to be a bit cruel in order to get your people to produce the items they need soon enough. But keep the ale flowing and the food coming and your people may make it through this without a revolt.
I think I have this map tuned to be fairly difficult. I had some good feedback in testing it. My thanks to those who tested it and gave me your thoughts and ideas.
Playability: This map was simply fun for me to play. It was a little bit long but I never got bored. I think that one of the things that made this map better than many was the multitude of victory requirements.
Balance: Because this scenario does a really good job of forcing the player to consider the ransom and the time restraints it did not matter that the Lord is not threatened by the invasions. I do think the invasions might have been a little bit stronger, but as they are, they still provide plenty of headaches trying to meet the victory objectives. Also the fire events were well timed and balanced the scenario nicely.
Creativity: This scenario/map does great job of taking the existing tools and making them work well. The way the market and building limitations worked well with the stated objectives. I specifically liked the cruelty element, although it exists in other scenarios it seemed well thought out in this map.
Map: I really was impressed with the map. The look overall was quite attractive. Specifically I liked the way the stone quarry was presented. The creek running through the castle was a really nice touch. The castle was well put together. The river and the overall "uneven" natural terrain also added to the "looks" of this map. I also thought the Signposts were well placed they seemed exceptionally well thought out and caused some interesting dilemmas considering the resource locations and the terrain of the map
Story: The instructions were better than average and fit the objectives well. Although I will have to say that the kidnappers of the heir would have to be very patient, because it took quite some time to get the ransom together.
Good Job and keep 'em coming.
ericgolf Staff
Posted on 12/21/08 @ 03:24 PM
I was passing by out of curiousity and noticed there was no minimap. So I took the liberty of adding the minimap. In the process I had to guess that the version used was v1.1 (the update form insists that the version is now added)
Posted on 05/06/02 @ 12:00 AM 
Just when you thought life couldn’t get any better, you find yourself about to loose it all. Your heir has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. You are being required to pay in gold and goods to get him returned to you. And if that is not enough for you to worry about, the Snake has decided to take your lands for his own. Your once peaceful life is about to be shattered. If you wish to have something for your heir to inherit, you must protect yourself well from the Snake. The kidnappers won’t wait forever for you to pay up. You may need to be a bit cruel in order to get your people to produce the items they need soon enough. But keep the ale flowing and the food coming and your people may make it through this without a revolt.