First I have to say thanks to those who downloaded and played the game and rated it highly. But enough of past success, the idea behind the game was straight forward, I know what I like from a game and decided to put it into a map of my choosing.
Family Feud (Husband v Wife)
http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=848
Family Feud (Blood Brothers)
http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=897
What I like is lots to investigate, tombs, treasure, big fights and a challenge that lasts longer than 50 turns before you know you have already won and you have to spend the next 50 turns just walking round with a uber-hero mopping up what small resistance is left.
The things I hate are trading with the AI for cities, spells and items. I also hate mastery spells in multi-player as the first to cast effectively wins. I also dislike humans taking advantage of the stupid AI in other ways - such as using item teleport unfairly in multiple fights due to far too much mana.
So, the rest is easy, just put this to a map.
The story name came from Kyria from my first map Lets Get Ready
http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=766
She and her husband played that and posted me a great review so I effectively wrote the scenario as a two player called Man v Wife. Without that review I never would have made FF1.
The story then just fell into place. Pick a bad guy (Brennather) tell of betrayal and set the scene as to why you start alone.
A big secret about map design from me coming up - use a random one...
FF1 was a random map that seemed to fit the bill. A large desert area NW and then a split of terrain for the rest. As the story was written in script, I obviously refined the areas to fit the bill, added and removed strutures to help and hinder, smoothed the edges, contrasted the terrain and added signs. This part is the easy part of my map design.
Design of wizards was also fairly straight forward. Brennather neutral, one good and one evil human player to avoid easy city conversion and then a mix of the others to be fair. Names were a mixture of my daughter (Jasmin), my nephew (Bardia) and my old D&D characters (Brennather, Rasilt). Rosie McGee is a pub in Copenhagen, Keepus Safus is something like Monty Pythons (Bigus Dikus) and Lady Painmaker and Blackheart just seemed appropriate.
The difficult part coming up - how to stop human abuse of the AI... and keep the balance against an AI that would normally die at turn 50?
How? Well, funny you should ask. The AI will build quite quickly but will not advance without overwhelming force. So, plan 1, give the AI a good resource base (pluses to income), extra troops to start expansion (plus unique starting heroes) and the key is to delay the human player getting out to expand. This was done by adding the tomb areas for Bardia and Jasmin. One undead underground and one in the void. I like the fights where each and every troop matters. It makes it more exciting to win with 1 HP left standing and the rewards become that much sweeter (for those who like a challenge that is!). Anyway, giving a tunnel complex to explore into, a hero to gain, a couple of items then gives you acsess to the surface.
Balance is key in multi play and very much so in FF1, so then I had to measure the number of turns for each player to get out of the start position, add a hero that was the same in strength for both character and also identical items in both. Both get to the surface at the same time and are gifted with similar cities which are buffed enough to give a key start point against the AI. This 10-15 turns gives the AI expansion time and gets them settled in. Thus the real game starts for you.
So, step one achieved - let the AI expand.
Step 2 - avoid more abuse. Item teleport off. You need a hero to gain and item from a tomb, makes it more difficult to get them to where you want them, then align items to specific players just to create surprise and limit heroes just a little. A lightning storm on your capital should be a nasty surprise if you dont follow warnings!
More abuse - no mastery, so set the spheres to be cosmos wizards and thus mastery cannot be researched by you and cannot be traded as not out there.
More abuse - too much mana. Why have 20000 mana? It is quite often easy to do this in an XL map and there is no reason. Why can you then spend thousands to effect the game in unknown ways? Mana cap also helps balance, get to a certain amount and drain it.
Step 3 - balance - If one player gets a huge summon spell before the other, then toast is served quite quickly on a thick layer of gold dragon. Thus, one big spell each in a vault quite early on. The same for Golden Age as this is unbalancing, but this comes later in the game. So spells balanced.
More balance - cities. Each player is given a relatively secure area in which to start, with very similar numbers of cities to take of a race that suits. Out side those areas, the races deliberately change to cause conversion, but are still balanced in number to give a challenge to evenly matched humans.
More balance - Heroes are good yes? Uber heroes even better, but can unbalance, so even if there are lots of items in the map, I limit the heroes to the ones I give you. One at the start. One if you lose the start hero, one later on and one in the Path to Enlightment. All planned to be fair to both sides.
More balance - AI balance. You need to spawn defenders for the AI when attacking key areas and you also need to spawn extra heroes for them when they lose their main heroes in a stupid way, or to the human player. This keeps them in the game and active. The addition of extra troops with the heroes is also a good ploy.
Step 3 - quests and alliances. The key to a good story is to keep the player interested and waiting for more. Quests do this quite well in this map - at least I think so. One quest on going all the time gives balance. The distance to quest and quest reward to be also similar and you are ok. Sounds easy? Not in any way. Try it.
More quests - Then the twist. Why not I thought try something a bit new. The story's name is wrong, it is not Husband v Wife, it should be Parent v Son. Thus Blackheart and the crushing might of undead armies. But before this, you spend time undermining Brennather. This I liked as if you do not complete the quests, then everyone stays allied and they all come to kick your scrawny ass. Break the alliances and even if they do not stay with you, then Brennather attacks them too, giving you more time. So quests to break these alliances and move you along.
Step 4 - the finale. By the point you become magificent then the game is soon to be won. The AIs gonads are on the block and your hammer is firmly in hand (oo eer missus). So, what to do? After the twist, then I added mega spawns behind the humans front lines to see how well they can defend as well as attack. A few well placed stacks can take the unprepared by surprise.
Step 5 - Miscellaneous. More quests, more tombs, more secret areas and more neutral armies to cause problems and challenge. See Frost Holm, High Mans City etc etc.
And thats about it. It sounds relatively simple when you write down, but getting the spawnings correct, the timing of events and the balance for multiplay takes more time than you think. One stray event and you are back to square one. Thanks for listening... reading, playing, whatever.
Ibobs
Family Feud (Husband v Wife)
Family Feud (Blood Brothers)
What I like is lots to investigate, tombs, treasure, big fights and a challenge that lasts longer than 50 turns before you know you have already won and you have to spend the next 50 turns just walking round with a uber-hero mopping up what small resistance is left.
The things I hate are trading with the AI for cities, spells and items. I also hate mastery spells in multi-player as the first to cast effectively wins. I also dislike humans taking advantage of the stupid AI in other ways - such as using item teleport unfairly in multiple fights due to far too much mana.
So, the rest is easy, just put this to a map.
The story name came from Kyria from my first map Lets Get Ready
She and her husband played that and posted me a great review so I effectively wrote the scenario as a two player called Man v Wife. Without that review I never would have made FF1.
The story then just fell into place. Pick a bad guy (Brennather) tell of betrayal and set the scene as to why you start alone.
A big secret about map design from me coming up - use a random one...
FF1 was a random map that seemed to fit the bill. A large desert area NW and then a split of terrain for the rest. As the story was written in script, I obviously refined the areas to fit the bill, added and removed strutures to help and hinder, smoothed the edges, contrasted the terrain and added signs. This part is the easy part of my map design.
Design of wizards was also fairly straight forward. Brennather neutral, one good and one evil human player to avoid easy city conversion and then a mix of the others to be fair. Names were a mixture of my daughter (Jasmin), my nephew (Bardia) and my old D&D characters (Brennather, Rasilt). Rosie McGee is a pub in Copenhagen, Keepus Safus is something like Monty Pythons (Bigus Dikus) and Lady Painmaker and Blackheart just seemed appropriate.
The difficult part coming up - how to stop human abuse of the AI... and keep the balance against an AI that would normally die at turn 50?
How? Well, funny you should ask. The AI will build quite quickly but will not advance without overwhelming force. So, plan 1, give the AI a good resource base (pluses to income), extra troops to start expansion (plus unique starting heroes) and the key is to delay the human player getting out to expand. This was done by adding the tomb areas for Bardia and Jasmin. One undead underground and one in the void. I like the fights where each and every troop matters. It makes it more exciting to win with 1 HP left standing and the rewards become that much sweeter (for those who like a challenge that is!). Anyway, giving a tunnel complex to explore into, a hero to gain, a couple of items then gives you acsess to the surface.
Balance is key in multi play and very much so in FF1, so then I had to measure the number of turns for each player to get out of the start position, add a hero that was the same in strength for both character and also identical items in both. Both get to the surface at the same time and are gifted with similar cities which are buffed enough to give a key start point against the AI. This 10-15 turns gives the AI expansion time and gets them settled in. Thus the real game starts for you.
So, step one achieved - let the AI expand.
Step 2 - avoid more abuse. Item teleport off. You need a hero to gain and item from a tomb, makes it more difficult to get them to where you want them, then align items to specific players just to create surprise and limit heroes just a little. A lightning storm on your capital should be a nasty surprise if you dont follow warnings!
More abuse - no mastery, so set the spheres to be cosmos wizards and thus mastery cannot be researched by you and cannot be traded as not out there.
More abuse - too much mana. Why have 20000 mana? It is quite often easy to do this in an XL map and there is no reason. Why can you then spend thousands to effect the game in unknown ways? Mana cap also helps balance, get to a certain amount and drain it.
Step 3 - balance - If one player gets a huge summon spell before the other, then toast is served quite quickly on a thick layer of gold dragon. Thus, one big spell each in a vault quite early on. The same for Golden Age as this is unbalancing, but this comes later in the game. So spells balanced.
More balance - cities. Each player is given a relatively secure area in which to start, with very similar numbers of cities to take of a race that suits. Out side those areas, the races deliberately change to cause conversion, but are still balanced in number to give a challenge to evenly matched humans.
More balance - Heroes are good yes? Uber heroes even better, but can unbalance, so even if there are lots of items in the map, I limit the heroes to the ones I give you. One at the start. One if you lose the start hero, one later on and one in the Path to Enlightment. All planned to be fair to both sides.
More balance - AI balance. You need to spawn defenders for the AI when attacking key areas and you also need to spawn extra heroes for them when they lose their main heroes in a stupid way, or to the human player. This keeps them in the game and active. The addition of extra troops with the heroes is also a good ploy.
Step 3 - quests and alliances. The key to a good story is to keep the player interested and waiting for more. Quests do this quite well in this map - at least I think so. One quest on going all the time gives balance. The distance to quest and quest reward to be also similar and you are ok. Sounds easy? Not in any way. Try it.
More quests - Then the twist. Why not I thought try something a bit new. The story's name is wrong, it is not Husband v Wife, it should be Parent v Son. Thus Blackheart and the crushing might of undead armies. But before this, you spend time undermining Brennather. This I liked as if you do not complete the quests, then everyone stays allied and they all come to kick your scrawny ass. Break the alliances and even if they do not stay with you, then Brennather attacks them too, giving you more time. So quests to break these alliances and move you along.
Step 4 - the finale. By the point you become magificent then the game is soon to be won. The AIs gonads are on the block and your hammer is firmly in hand (oo eer missus). So, what to do? After the twist, then I added mega spawns behind the humans front lines to see how well they can defend as well as attack. A few well placed stacks can take the unprepared by surprise.
Step 5 - Miscellaneous. More quests, more tombs, more secret areas and more neutral armies to cause problems and challenge. See Frost Holm, High Mans City etc etc.
And thats about it. It sounds relatively simple when you write down, but getting the spawnings correct, the timing of events and the balance for multiplay takes more time than you think. One stray event and you are back to square one. Thanks for listening... reading, playing, whatever.
Ibobs
[This message has been edited by ibobs (edited 05-02-2008 @ 08:43 AM).]