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| Author |
File Description |
Filthydelphia
(id: Al_Kharn the Great) |
Posted on 12/27/14 @ 12:11 PM (updated 10/21/15)
| File Details |
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| Version: |
Age of Empires II (2013): The Forgotten |
| Style: |
Build and Destroy |
Screenshot:
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Raid and pillage the Carpathian Basin as you lead the Magyars to a new homeland
What is it?
Was the Honfoglalás (Hungarian Conquest) scenario from Battles of the Forgotten too laggy for you to play? Me, too. Instead, live the Magyar Conquest on an optimal Tiny-sized map!
Story Excerpt
The steppe stood before him: a rolling, endless god of infinity who provided a bounty of grazing lands and riches for those warriors with the daring to conquer it. A god, it was mighty but well-tread: pock marks of horseshoes spread across its wind-swept brownish-green face. A war god, his people were its servants, carrying ruin and despair across it and into the soft settled lands beyond. A fickle god, it too could bring destruction to those nomadic servants, like his people, crossing its gaping maw.
Pursued by the ferocious Pecheneg who had seized their ancestral pastures, �rpád led his people through the Verecke Pass in the Carpathian mountains to the basin known to the Romans as Pannonia. Here, Slavs, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Moravians, and Vlachs conquered, migrated, and settled. Here too had crossed the Goths, Alans, and Avars in their raids into Europe. Here, the grasses still lay folded under the ancient weight of Attila's horses as they marched to conquer the Caesars four centuries before. Here, the Seven Tribes of the Magyars would cross.
The steppe stood before him.
History
A steppe people known for their horsemanship and archery, the Magyars originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the homelands of many nomadic peoples such as the Cimmerians, Scythians, Huns, Alans, and Avars. Beginning in the 9th century AD, migrations of Turks from Central Asia, likely forced to find new grazing lands due to climate change, pushed the Pechenegs westward into Magyar pastures. Unable to defend against the rival tribe, the Magyars migrated west, beginning with raids against the Eastern Romans and the Franks. By 895 AD, the raids turned into a full-scale migration, as the Magyar gyula (war chief) �rpád led his people through the Carpathian mountains into modern-day Hungary and Romania.
The region they invaded, the Carpathian Basin or, as the Romans called it, Pannonia, had long been the crossroads of nomadic migrations. After the disintegration of Attila's Hunnic empire, the Avars, a Turkic people, migrated into the region in the 6th century. The Avar Khaganate would be destroyed by Charlemagne between 791 and 795. A Slavic kingdom, Moravia, centered in the modern-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, filled the vacuum of power along with the Bulgarian Khanate invading from the south in the early 9th century. By the time of the Magyar migrations, the region was home to a diverse population including Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Germans, Bulgars, Moravians, and Vlach (a Romanian people).
Like other steppe peoples, the Magyars lived and fought in the saddle and specialized in horse archery and hit and run tactics. While they avoided melee confrontation, the Magyar horsemen carried lances and fokos, a one-handed axe. Pagans, they developed a reputation among the Christians as a vicious people prone to pillage and plunder.
The Magyars would continue to raid as far afield as Bavaria and Franconia before gradually becoming settled and converting to Christianity by the 11th century. |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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| Bala Arizalu |
Posted on 01/01/15 @ 04:22 AM |
| Mahazona |
Posted on 01/01/15 @ 09:49 AM
Since I dont have HD I cant enjoy this campaign but the history part is really well written. |
| Sayyed Hassaan |
Posted on 03/28/15 @ 02:07 AM |
HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 06/30/15 @ 03:46 PM
Playability: 5
Al_Kharn has shown us many times over his ability to create scenarios with exciting, innovative gameplay, and this is no exception. One particularly excellent aspect of the scenario is the balance between the base gameplay of AoE2 and the triggered mechanics that are used to enhance the gameplay. Looting, reinforcement, resource generation, upgrade, and raiding systems are all used to excellent effect. The end result is indeed immersive - I truly felt like a Magyar chieftain descending upon eastern Europe while defending my people from Pecheneg raids. As simply put as possible, the scenario was just fun to play, and easily merits a 5 here.
Balance: 4
The balance, while generally rather good (and having greatly improved since the testing stage), could use a little tweaking in some spots. There is a bit of a learning curve to the mechanics the scenario uses, and players trying it for the first time might run into some frustration trying to raid, defend, and utilize the triggered systems that the author has put in place. I think the beginning part especially could benefit from being a little less fast-paced so that the player has time to orient his/herself. The level of challenge is quite good in the early and middlegame, but tapers off a bit once the player reaches that comfortable point where they have ample resources, buildings, and troops to commit entirely to the offensive and not have to worry about the threat of being overpowered of caught off guard. This is probably more of a commentary on the B&D genre in general rather than this scenario in particular, but something to keep in mind going forward.
Creativity: 5
An easy 5 here. I've already touched on many of the systems that the author uses to enhance the gameplay, but little atmospheric touches like the introduction of the Pecheneg raiders and the Moravian Druzhinas really shine in this regard. The map and writing styles also lend themselves well to demonstrating the creative skill of the author, but more of that later.
Map Design: 4+
The design was so, so close to a 5 here, and I'm sure a 5 could be achieved with a few tweaks here and there. One thing that strikes me about Al_Kharn's work every time is the diversity of his map design. Steppes look like steppes, but there are wildly different parts of the map as well and they are all implemented skillfully. The towns all look quite good, though some spots could benefit from a little more terrain mixing and elevation. The layout of the map itself is conducive to exciting gameplay, with a mix of open and closed areas, key strategic locations, and a feeling of accessibility that only a tiny map can bring. One of the great strengths of the small mapsize was that I felt that my troops could be anywhere on the map in a minute of travel at most, which (coincidence or not) contributed to the lightning-quick raiding atmosphere. The map does suffer in some parts from the placement of off-grid objects, which unfortunately can create issues as the pathfinding in AoE2HD is so much worse than that of the CD version with UserPatch.
Story/Instructions: 5
The writing style of the author is rich, unique, and a pleasure to read. I'd recommend that he at least consider a career as an author, as the writing I see in his scenarios is truly captivating. The instructions are all clear and help a player transition into what could otherwise be a very alien setting with all of the different mechanics that the author uses. One very underrated part about Al_Kharn's design is the organization of his objectives list, which also does an excellent job of orienting the player. All things considered, it is clear that the author enjoys and invests a great deal of effort into his writing, and the result is nothing short of spectacular.
Additional Comments:
An excellent scenario, and a must download for those who have the Forgotten Expansion (AoF) to AoE2HD. One can only hope that Al_Kharn keeps producing scenarios of similar quality to this one![Edited on 06/30/15 @ 03:47 PM]
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| Ahiska |
Posted on 11/08/17 @ 10:31 AM |
| Beermonger |
Posted on 08/11/21 @ 02:07 PM
The scenery is nice looking but everything else is wrong with the map, but its hard to make a fun map out of an event where pretty much nothing happened in an area without anything, u shoulda done one about the coming of the avars, who brought the slavs and heavy cavalry with lances, an own khaganate state with own foreign policy and forays into europe, not just a byzantine satellite proxy light cavalry auxilia foederati like the tribal federation of the magyars that never was employable on its own even in the steppe grasslands or riverine marshlands, let alone in rocky highland woodlands and valleys of the Alps (turned towards the emperor and papacy in 1000 by Stephen, an actual probable kin of the pecheneg, with bavarian aid, they never had problem with magyars being called 'kongar' the endonym of the pecheneg ruling caste, by everyone) who were bequeathed the swampy iodine deficient soil basin with long overgrown pannonian ruins and roads, just to be on the other side of the balkans instead of on the western pontic riverlands a spit away from Constantinople when they became powerful and the imperial government became weak, once again vacated, not for the first time, like by the huns who left to the east for good after the throne fights upon Attilas death, or the langobards who left for the Po valley to become the lombards, or by the avars mostly foederalising into the frankish empire to become the bavarians, and the various gothic germanic scythic elements like the Heruls, a germanized pontic tribe who came with the huns and even invaded sweden/geatland (hence the slanty eyes of typical viking goggled helmets), the actual Marings (not 'moravians') inhabitants of Mähren ('marshland' germanic name not slavic) the avars deprived of their tribal identity upon their arrival now scattered all over the place to become the slavs but theres no artifactual archaeological trace of even that in the carpathian basin, just as to plundering or killing the inhabitants, not even slav biased soviet era academia could find any, unlike say austrians who nonchalantly tag obvious steppe origin artifacts as 'ancient carinthian art' in museum displays) makes one wonder which way the plundering actually happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pressburg#Background
or even better, sourcing hapsburg propaganda from 1865 on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Conflicts_in_Lorraine_and_pacification_in_Hungary instead of "starving bavarian army annihilated due to easily thwarted riverine supply line" "Henry implemented regular Imperial administration in Hungary" really?? with a holy roman imperial electorate of hungary and all??
i digress, this was just a bufferzone used as geopolitical compost by regional empires since the time of the bell-beakers in the bronze age, now with a bunch of swamp dwelling 'pioneers' or more like outlaws lingering around who their frankish overlords didnt hold too hard on to even, always just a province of east francia/bavaria, without any kinda archaeological (artifacts, town burnings, mass killings or even battles) or historian (manuscript documents) let alone castles or great grorious slav Moravian past...[Edited on 08/11/21 @ 02:24 PM]
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HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
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| 4.6 | | Breakdown |
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| Playability | 5.0 | | Balance | 4.0 | | Creativity | 5.0 | | Map Design | 4.0 | | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 1,362 |
| Favorites: [] | 5 |
| Size: | 9.39 MB |
| Added: | 12/27/14 |
| Updated: | 10/21/15 |
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