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Siege of Quebec: Battle of the Plains of Abraham
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| Author |
File Description |
| As_Saffah |
Posted on 06/07/08 @ 04:10 AM (updated 10/31/08)
| File Details |
|---|
| Game Version: |
AoE3+TWC+TAD |
| # of Players: |
2 |
Background
The year is 1759. You and your native ally are either the French forces entrenched in the walled city of Québec, or the sprawling British camp a few miles to the east. Your enemy and his native allies are at the opposite end of the St. Lawrence river.
Tonight your task seems simple - the enemy is on the move, and may try to surround you in the night. Spot them, block them, and they will fail. At dawn, reinforcements are due, but if they are ambushed...Try not to think about that possibility.
Gameplay
This scenario begins with a 10-minute "night" phase in treaty mode with a moderate fixed force and plenty of scouts. You have no villagers to start with. Use the treaty period to collect treasures, especially wood treasures, and build at the fishing villages and native posts across the map. Move your army into position for either offensive or defensive action. Avoid heavy losses at night, since you can't replace them in time for battle.
At dawn, players receive reinforcements and settlers and treaty is broken. A fair amount of island-hopping and amphibious maneuvering is needed to sandwich your foe in his base. An underwater trade route and wall upgrades for the bridges help you guard your landward flank, but you need to build a navy.
Archive includes map, overview screenshots, and profiles of the French and British positions at dusk and at night.
Instructions
This scenario is compatible only with TWC/TAD
Download and unzip to C:\Documents and Settings\Yourname\My Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\Scenario
Players 1, 3, and 5 comprise Team 1 (French). Players 2, 4, and 6 comprise Team 2 (British). Players 5 and 6 must be Computer players.
Players may play as any civ, but playing the French and British and Iroquois gives the best result.
Update 7 June 2008: Recurring reinforcement delivery fixed. Huron post now functions properly. Thanks, guys. Version 1b is intended to replace all previous versions.
Update 31 Oct 2008:
Asian civ support and building upgrades added
Villagers now autotask to economic work
Town Center auto builds inside fortified towns
Sequoyah "cheat" fixed
fair reinforcements
pathing improved in Québec
Objectives clarified
Improved comp AI commands for targeting objectives.
Version 2d is intended to replace all previous versions.
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| Pages: [1] 2 3 » Last » | | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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MosheLevi
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 12:11 AM
Playability has great potential but you will have to work on a few issues first.
The 10 minute treaty (night time) at the beginning is too long and player 1 doesn’t have much to do during this time since he cannot train villagers or build a base.
Player 1 has no villagers, no TC, no home shipments, just Explorer and army.
My ally had villagers and buildings and I (player 1) had only a Fort.
However I couldn’t train any units since I was in Discovery (and no resources too).
After 10 minutes fighting started and I was getting reinforcements and I could train an army from the Fort but I couldn’t build any more army buildings (other than TP’s) so I couldn’t raise more army despite all the resources I got (from my ally and triggers).
Then something WEIRD happened.
My ally was kicked out of the game and I got all his buildings.
The same thing happened to my opponent.
What was that for???
The playability for this scenario can be great, just decrease the treaty time to 3 or 4 minutes and display a timer showing how much treaty time is left.
If you allow all players to have TC, villagers, explorers, home shipments and so on then this scenario can be very fun to play because players will have many options and many strategies to explore.
Balance: 5
Balance looks very good.
Equal size strongholds and location, and equal size reinforcements.
Creativity: 4
The idea of having a day and night cycle where at night you can’t fight but you can use the time to explore, rebuild and reorganize for the next attack is very creative.
Map Design: 5
Map design is AWESOME.
Incredible amount of eye candy and detailed map with pretty shores, landscape, rivers, water passes, bridge and more.
Guys, if you want to learn map design then learn from As_Saffah who is definitely the Master in this area.
Story/Instructions: 2
Sorry, but instructions need more work.
The objectives give high level description what to do, but you need more details to overcome player’s confusion, and believe me, there was plenty of confusion among the players.
It’s important to display a message that the night cycle is for so many minutes and to use that time to prepare for battle.
Players need to be informed that they cannot fight at night.
The map is big so cinematic with instructions and map overview would help a lot to understand what to do.
When we get reinforcements it’s important to display a message so we know about it.
Additional Comments:
This map can be very fun to play.
Just work on the issues I mentioned in “Playability”.
We also had an issue that the teams got messed up because I thought it is TVB and it was players 1 & 4 VS players 2 & 3.
So maybe you can indicate the teams in the Home City names.
Your map is too beautiful to keep it in the dark, lol.
I am referring to the night cycle making the map so dark that you can hardly see anything never mind seeing all this eye candy you worked on so hard.
Even day time is too dark.
I would suggest taking advantage of the other two big empty areas and to place small settlements there for each player.
This way players can also raid each other’s small settlements and the battles can rage everywhere.
Please look into the 2 players being kicked out from the game issue.
[Edited on 06/24/08 @ 02:31 AM]
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As_Saffah
File Author |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 12:29 PM
Players 3 and 4 (should ONLY be computer AI, not human players yet) should not be kicked out of the game, they should remain and you get control of their buildings by design. Are they actually being made to resign? Is there a line through their names? After sunrise, the player 3 and 4 should remain in the game and continue building and helping you fight. If this doesnt happen, it could be that those players need additional villagers and buildings of their own to avoid triggering the defeat condition when they cede buildings.
As for the treaty, that is also by design. If you read the Objectives, the primary objective during the treaty period is to collect as many resource treasures as you can. In the original battle this is based on, as described in the first Objective, there is no fighting at night, all night long. I agree, a timer would be helpful and have just now only figured out how to make this.
I did not want fighting in the first 10 minutes. I wanted people to use that time to scout and collect resources and claim trading posts. If you are busy with your Explorer, you can collect 500-800 food and 1000 wood in 10 minutes. But you will be very busy during this time, there is barely enough time to go from mainland to island to southern mainland to collect and build. Your explorer will always be on the move. Scouting also takes longer in a map this size. You are provided with native scouts, but they will still have a lot of ground to cover.
Otherwise, in a map this large, you would not know where your enemy's weak points were. You can only see the tiny area around the trade posts, which are set away from the center of their bases.
As for a variety of strategies, raiding is not one of them. If a person sets up buildings outside of their walled fortress, they can be raided, but historically Quebec City was one of the most heavily fortified civilian communities in North America.
There are plenty of maps both in Random Maps and among Custom Scenarios where people with an inclination for rushing and raiding can do so. Quebec is not intended to be one of them.
Darkness: I can prolong Dusk and Dawn so to speak, and add in a nice Great Lakes Daylight phase after a couple minutes. I can only ever play with graphics low, so I don't see any darkness, just a bluish dim cast and this is enough.
Cinematic: I am not inclined to try cinematics on my current hardware profile. I can barely run the Editor as it is. Perhaps if one of our scenario wizards with a better computer and graphics support would like to collaborate, that's a nice idea and might go well in the future.
Thanks again for looking at my scenario and reviewing. |
MosheLevi
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 01:07 PM
It was not clear that players 3 and 4 must be computer players.
Perhaps you can indicate that in the scenario’s Home City names.
Players 3 and 4 were human players and my guess is that they resigned once their buildings were given to me and to the second player since they had nothing left to do.
It was also frustrating at the start when I noticed that I don’t have any TC and villagers.
As a result I couldn't collect too many resources and I couldn't train more villagers.
Perhaps that will help to keep players busy.
If I knew in advance (via notification) that I will get player’s 4 buildings and villagers after 10 minutes then that would have helped to ease my frustration.
There was no indication that we need to collect as many treasures as possible during the first 10 minutes.
It would be best to include on screen instructions telling players to explore and collect treasures during treaty times.
In any case, it was too dark for me to see much during night time.
I am just offering you some feedback so you know where the weak points are.
[Edited on 06/24/08 @ 01:10 PM]
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| ivanelterrible |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 01:53 PM
But lol I suppose that Moshe was fater than me, still, I was a bit lazy to do it, because, i planned doing that 2 weeks ago, rofl... |
MosheLevi
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 02:37 PM
Besides, nobody is stopping you from reviewing this scenario, lol.[Edited on 06/24/08 @ 02:39 PM]
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| ivanelterrible |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 06:55 PM
But, its just that, the scenario is so bad, that each time that I play it, everyone resigns before 3rd minute passes, not mattering how much do i convince to dont, and I cant really rate a file just be seeing the triggers in scenario editor. |
MosheLevi
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 07:34 PM
Did you read what As_Saffah said? It’s for 2 human players only.
Players 1 and 2 are human and players 3 and 4 are computer players.
At the beginning of the game just tell the other player that at the start there is 10 minutes cease fire where he supposed to explore the map, collect treasures and build TP’s.
So it’s like 10 minute treaty game.
After that fighting starts and you get villagers and reinforcements.
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| ivanelterrible |
Posted on 06/24/08 @ 07:45 PM
I read the description 5 times and it never said ANYTHING about p1 and p3 vs p2 and p4 and that p3 and p4 must be comps ^^.[Edited on 06/24/08 @ 09:01 PM]
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| BurningSushi460 |
Posted on 06/25/08 @ 09:16 PM
The game was pretty fun once you got the hang of it. Aside from the treaty, the starting battle was pretty high pace if you saved up the armies. Not bad overall
Balance: 4
Well I felt that the cherokee riflemen were somewhat overpowering on the cree on their own. Everything else seemed perfectly fine.
Creativity: 5
It's historically accurate, I guess it deserves the bonus.
Map Design: 5
Now when I started exploring outside the camp, I saw the beautiful stone mountains, vibrant grass in just the right places, trees elegantly placed to make a light, manuverable forest, and the rocky shores of the beach leading to the ocean. Nothing seemed to be lacking in terms of visual quality and the designs for the city and camp were well-thought out too. I like doing eye-candy and honest enough, Saffah's the go to person for good eye candy design.
Story/Instructions: 3
I was playing with Saffah on this map who had to explain the history to me plus my need to look it up on the internet to figure out what the hell was going on.
Additional Comments:
Not bad. |
MosheLevi
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/25/08 @ 09:39 PM
The description doesn't say to set the teams as p1 and p3 vs p2 and p4 and that p3 and p4 must be computer players.
That needs to be added to the instructions. |
| Pages: [1] 2 3 » Last » |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
|---|
| 3.9 | | Breakdown |
|---|
| Playability | 3.5 | | Balance | 4.5 | | Creativity | 4.0 | | Map Design | 5.0 | | Story/Instructions | 2.3 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 569 |
| Favorites: [] | 1 |
| Size: | 1.52 MB |
| Added: | 06/07/08 |
| Updated: | 10/31/08 |
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