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| Author |
File Description |
| aMa |
Posted on 01/06/14 @ 09:04 PM (updated 06/02/14)
| File Details |
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| Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
| Style: |
Mix |
| Number of scenarios: |
4 |
***Updated to v1.1 on June 2, 2014***
-Fixed "random" crashes that some were experiencing by removing all multiple gateposts in each scenario (there were hundreds of them, causing some change ownership trigger effects to affect more than 300 objects and thereby cause a crash).
-For some reason, playing on Fast speed in the 2nd scenario can cause random, sporadic crashes (1 out of 10 times at most) right when you defeat the Duchy of Remsgau (Green). To avoid this, save often and play on Normal or Slow speed, or, if playing on Fast, switch temporarily to Normal or Slow when dealing the final blow to Remsgau.
This campaign was designed by Andreas Marscheider (aMa), webmaster of AgeArena and longtime brilliant AoK/AoC designer.
All credit for the design and story is therefore to him. I (HockeySam18) have only translated the campaign from German to English.
I can say from experience that the scenarios are quite difficult and progress in difficulty throughout the campaign. It would be advisable to save often. Additionally, Moderate is the most balanced level, though those unfamiliar with certain gameplay styles may still struggle. Standard is quite easy and is for beginners, while Hard is a good challenge even for AoK/AoC experts.
The story, though it has a certain historical context, has no intended similarities with any figures, living or dead. The plot and design is entirely that of aMa's making.
See the readme files for more info. Comments and reviews would be much appreciated and will be responded to!
Now enjoy this great classic of aMa's
Cheers,
HockeySam18
Introduction:
After the Third Crusade, the young Sir John de Falls returned to his homeland. Meanwhile, 10 years have passed since the last time he saw the local castle. He also wonders just what has become of his young sister Joan, who now would have to be a woman. After a long sea voyage, they finally reach the local coastline. As he goes ashore along with his longtime and loyal companion in arms Wilhelm, he does not know about the ill fate of his family.
The entire family has now been ousted by the Marquis of the country Count Richemont. He of course was anything but pleased when he learned that the young Sir John unexpectedly returned from the Holy Land. Even John could not know that his father, the old Count de Falls, was killed by Richemont's sneaky henchmen, to take possession of his property.
So Richemont therefore sent those assassins again to make sure that John de Falls never reached his old family estate ..
When the young Sir John left the ship and went ashore, waiting for him already were alleged envoys of his father ...
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| Pages: [1] 2 » Last » | | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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| Thomas_Elliott |
Posted on 01/11/14 @ 11:47 PM
One of the things I would say I enjoy most about this campaign, like other aMa campaigns, is that he just gets B&D right. You can't just build a huge army and steamroll your competition; every second of the game, you are clawing to hold onto life against enemies who never stop producing soldiers. Just when you think you've got enough soldiers in one place holding the enemy, they show up in a distant, undefended place and proceed to start slaughtering your peasants. Never make the mistake of relaxing; that is when they will hit you! As you're limited in your buildings (in most scenarios you cannot build towers and walls), chokepoints must be held with men, forcing you to make many strategic choices. Your enemies constantly favour monks and mangonels to smash and convert your troops, requiring you to micro carefully. Every castle is a mission to take down, as you are generally restricted to rams and your extremely resourceful enemy throws everything it has to bring them down. I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment for each goal I accomplished as it almost always went down to the wire. This being said, I never felt frustrated playing the campaign; it always seemed fairâ, despite being often very difficult (I played on moderate). In a move I don't see too often in B&Ds, your already aggressively producing enemies often have their armies supplemented by spawned units. While this adds significantly to the challenge, it's generally balanced as taking out a specific building is able to stop the spawn. I enjoyed every second of this campaign and felt constantly challenged over the 10 or so hours it took for me to complete it.
In terms of map design, this is a typically beautiful creation by aMa. All four of the maps showed extremely careful design, from both pretty eye candy (excellent use of damaged and partially built walls to add interest to the many castles) to extremely clever layout of the towns and cities. One of the things I admired most about these maps was the sense of life in the maps; they felt like a living, breathing world. In some scenarios, there are small, unaligned towns located in the countryside that give the whole world a feeling like it wasn't just created for the game, but the game is just occurring in this otherwise self-sufficient world. Rather than flattening entire enemy cities and just leaving patches of rubble, usually when a specific task is accomplished, your enemy would turn ally to you, or their buildings would switch to an allied player, leaving their interestingly designed cities intact. While a smaller feature, I found it greatly satisfying to scan over the map and see the cities where I fought my battles still standing (a more realistic feature then leveling each one).
A few notes though; while the translation was excellent, there were points where the translation seemed to be missing (someone would be speaking and there would be no words on screen). I am not a fluent German speaker and while some of it made sense, I did occasionally feel a bit left out of the story. This being said, I am extremely impressed with the voice acting, as I have been on aMas other projects. Despite not speaking German, hearing the voices speaking is extremely enjoyable and adds to the immersive feel.
There were also two bugs I noticed; in the third mission, my longships managed to destroy some sort of dock that kept switching between allied and enemy control. It did not really change the overall story (except make the town with the brewery a little bit less beautiful) but I suspect something was off in the triggering here. My other bug almost ruined the last mission for me; in the last bit where you lay siege to the large city, whenever I garrisoned the prince in the Iron Tower after destroying the other two castles, the game would crash. What I ended up doing is using my forces to level the entire enemy city, and then for some reason when I garrisoned the prince it was ok and triggered the last bit of that scenario. I am unsure if perhaps some building or unit in the city was causing the crash; it worked alright once I destroyed it, but it almost caused me to quit. Perhaps a buggy trigger?
Overall, a fantastic campaign and one of the best I have seen in years in the Blacksmith (despite not posting much, I have been lurking around here since 2007). This is unmistakably challenging campaign, and those unfamiliar with B&D styles may struggle a bit at first. My only suggestion would be to stick with it; while often quite difficult, it is extremely rewarding, and there is a good diversity in play style to keep you from ever getting bored. I am unsure if aMa has any other untranslated campaigns, but if there are any, and you would be willing to translate more of them, hockeysam18, you would have a fan here. Well done.
[Edited on 01/11/14 @ 11:49 PM]
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HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 01/13/14 @ 11:30 AM
The points that you described where translation seemed to be missing- it actually is not. Instead of writing walls of text in some parts, aMa decided to simply speak it. So there is no text to go along with certain interludes. Thankfully, although the information spoken there is cool and advances the story (I can understand it of course), it is not integral to gameplay.
I also noted the bug with the destruction of the dock at the brewery. Whenever the dock is not visible, it changes ownership to the enemy player so they can fish. When you see it (in LOS), it switches back to the allied player (neat trick)! So you can circumvent that and let your ships destroy it while not watching. If I were making the scenario, I would have used a short trick to make the dock invincible, but when translating scenarios I prefer not to mess with the work of the author and leave it as is.
The crash you mentioned is doubtless due to a change ownership effect that effects more than 300 objects of the enemy Pouken player. My guess for the culprit is the multiple gateposts that show up in a scenario whenever it is tested often- sometimes a gate can even have 60 hidden posts underneath (you can tell by the darkness of the shadow on the building) which would add drastically to the object total. If this persists as a problem, I'll go through and delete all duplicate gateposts in the campaign, as they are also rather annoying when you destroy a gate and want a space of 4 tiles to bring your army through but only get 2.
Thanks also for your compliments and encouragement vis a vis translation. It is a tough job, but is made much easier by UserPatch v1.4, where all conditions and effects are given their specific name in the trigger list, allowing me to spot each effect with text and quickly translate it. Then I open and save in 1.0c (as the campaign was designed and meant to be played in 1.0c- it works fine in UserPatch except for some AI differences). The key is that using this method, I don't have to blindly click through triggers and risk causing bugs.
At the moment I am helping Fr_Steve translate his scenarios from the Age of Voivods mod, but if I spot any other scenarios that I want to translate, then I'll be sure to do it! Cheers. |
| exitus_10 |
Posted on 01/16/14 @ 03:32 PM
The level of saving and repitition and pure luck required to finish or atleast complete certain objectives leads to dissapointment when the scenario resolution comes along in the end of the road. For example, in the first scenario there is a massive explanation of what happend to your father, I cant immerse mself into the game suddenly because I cant understand anything and all that hard work trying to finish it goes unrewarded.
Also the thought behind each of the objective and the unorthodox methods you are forced to use while interesting can become a little tedious as how to acheive an obviously measured way of approach is not really hinted on, for example the blowing up of the occupied barrack in the third scenario where you park a wagon the villager pops out with 25 hp and the surrounding pikemen have +10 damage and a tower and you have to walk past them and get to another allied tower.
Took me forever to figure out what to do to the level that I am assured that original creator is sadistic to the level of annoyance on my part.
Another problem I had was pathing and random triggers going off in the third scenario, for example when you are travelling past the barrack I mentioned before the road winds toward the edge of that base, you cross a little crack nearby and the trigger is supposed to activate. I had a problem of my soldiers being nowhere near the thing and swordsmen suddenly popping out of the barracks and attacking my men even though they are meant to have a defensive stance.
I had to replay and resave that part only to find that bug gone, but another bug appear where I garrisoned Joan into the tower in the village you resue from the tarkans and immediately the tower changed players and Joan just died. It was odd. But I replayed it and that didnt happen.
Apart from that it is a fairly enjoyable scenario and I have to say that the level of detail is overwhelming, the strategy and tactics you employ must be carefully considered and unit deployment should be measured and intelligent. It forces you to think abstractly to finish certain objectives and approach forts with more than brute force, something I welcome and enjoy.
Overall it is a brilliant campaign that requires a lot of patience and thought just as the author and creator intended and a lot of frustration to go along with it. I honestly think it refelcts on what the creator went through to make such a brilliantly detailed campaign and shows the time and effort it takes to do something good.
Thank you Andreas Maschneider for a brilliant piece of interactive fiction, regardless of its minor shortcomings. |
HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 05/23/14 @ 10:24 PM
@D_E: When I've got the update ready, mind if I send it to you and let you update the file? |
| Dead_End |
Posted on 05/24/14 @ 12:25 AM |
HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 05/24/14 @ 11:38 AM
EDIT: @D_E: Mail sent with the update in a .zip! If you could also update the OP with the message below, that would be great!
I should also mention to everyone that this campaign was designed in and runs best on v1.0c. Playing with the UserPatch causes no gamebreaking bugs, but it may cause some quirky events and behave differently than intended at times.[Edited on 05/24/14 @ 02:06 PM]
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| Dead_End |
Posted on 05/24/14 @ 04:34 PM |
HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 05/25/14 @ 12:59 AM |
| Dead_End |
Posted on 05/25/14 @ 05:29 AM |
| firesidecake |
Posted on 05/29/14 @ 09:16 PM |
| Pages: [1] 2 » Last » |
 
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
|---|
| 4.6 | | Breakdown |
|---|
| Playability | 5.0 | | Balance | 3.0 | | Creativity | 5.0 | | Map Design | 5.0 | | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 2,531 |
| Favorites: [] | 7 |
| Size: | 15.26 MB |
| Added: | 01/06/14 |
| Updated: | 06/02/14 |
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