Having escaped the seige at the cathedral city, the peasants set out under the lord's stewardship. Deep in the swamp, they met a merchant, and toiled for many days to collect pitch to trade for necessities, and struck camp shortly before the enemy's forces arrived en masse.
The peasants have discovered that a garrison of the invaders has taken the high pass; they are mildly armed but must capture the monastery and hold out there through winter. The same trader has journeyed with them, and offers to trade pitch for their defense - at increased prices, naturally.
Review of PeasantRevolt’s Pilgrim's Plight -3- Ash
Summary- Overall score 3.7
A very good scenario. Relatively short. Fun to play throughout with the added bonus of a very interesting cede assault at the start. Well worth downloading this one.
Playability: 4.0 – Excellent.
The cede at the start was very interesting and posed a few tricky problems in taking a small, but defensively well-placed fort defended by archers and some aggressive macemen. Fun to play throughout and I had several decisions to make on how to go about winning. (See Map design below for a negative point affecting playability).
Balance: 4.0 - Excellent:
Won on first time on Normal setting, but I had moments of worry especially when the first invasion arrived and I wasn’t ready yet. The cede seemed finely balanced to me – Well done! Later on, when I had seen that I might be up against a tough challenge I managed to boost the economy so that I was comfortably placed to meet the final attack. (I think I would have had a very tough fight on my hands at Hard setting).
Creativity: 3.5 - Good: Not a whole lot of creative stuff but good points are:
1) The two-part castle was an unusual idea and was quite interesting.
2) I have not played the other maps in the campaign/series but I can see it is set in a context.
3) There has been some thought put into the restrictions at the market.
Map Design: 3.5 – Overall Good:
Much of the terraining is average but some aspects boosted this category above average.
Positives: Terrain features have been added for game play purposes. There are some areas of the map which look quite natural (areas of marsh and woodland).
Negatives: More time spent on the highland terrain could have added to the look of the map (Care would have to have been taken to avoid blocking placement of farms had this been done). The river could have been more naturally formed. Also the inability to sell wood was inconvenient. I had to resort to building and demolishing the market to consume wood and make space in the stockpile. I know that allowing the sale of wood will swing the balance in favour of the player but the player does start with zero cash (so can’t buy in wood at the start) and there are ways to counterbalance wood production. For me this did affect playability a bit.
Story/Instructions 3.5
Not much on the site page. A suitable story in the map – Well done. Also this is set with the context of a campaign/series.
Possible improvements would be:
1) Add the in-map story here on the site DL page.
2) Learn how to use the html button for the DL page description
3) Include some overall supporting story or the story so far in the zip
On a separate point (and not affecting my scoring in any category) I found an odd thing while remodelling my fort: - Two of the gates counted as enemy when I tried to build next to them but I was allowed to delete them (as if they were player property) and build new ones. Strange.
[Readers of this review please note. This review contains *my* opinions. If you have different opinions then write your own review. Please don’t expect me to hold the same opinions as you. I detail here the URL to the review guidelines should you harbour any thought that this review does not conform to them:
http://stronghold.heavengames.com/dl/guide
]