Thank you for featuring Alwyne Valley. I am very honored and looking forward to player comments on this scenario. As always, I hope you have as much fun playing the scenario as I had creating it.

Fun Fun Fun! Just finished Alwyne Valley on VERY HARD.

Failed miserably the first 5 times playing. Could not last past the first large invasion (1/3 of the way through game). Then I realocated the stockpile (Didn't even know that could be done until reading Sparrow's write_up). Finished second time after stockpile relocation and studying the map carefully before playing. First time the early bandits wiped out iron mines, stone quarries...never recovered from that.

I experimented different wasy to start and stumbled on how to gets lots of archers right away with a certain build sequence. Got lots of pitch immediately. 4 quarries, 6 iron mines, 5 pitch rigs. FUN.

Played on very hard, score = 42,806. Finished 116 months early, April 1120. Never finished early before like that...always thought HAD to play through "last until last battle."

Duke of York...thanks for a great map. The hardest map I have ever played is Duke of York's Treasure Island-shaped like a skull. I have attempted that map DOZENS of times (30+ times) and have never even gotten to halfway point, always playing on VERY HARD. I just don't want to lower difficulty just to win.

Has anyone ever beaten Treasure Island on Very Hard? Want to share any tips???

Congratulations on your victory, Duke of The Glen. And glad you had fun doing it. I've put your name up on the Honor Roll.

Regarding DoY's Treasure Island. It's definitely one of my all time favorites and I'd love to put it up as one of the extreme challenges. But I fear it may be a little too extreme, even here. I'm still thinking about it. It is possible to do on very hard and I remember someone else in the past mentioning they had also completed it on that setting, can't remember who it was, though.

I'll give you a few very minor tips that helped me on Treasure Island. I think keep location is critical. After failing a few times I went for what I thought was the most defensible location. I ended up with incredibly massive walls. Experiment with fortifications. I came up with very unique ones for this mission. I quarried a lot of stone and trained a lot of missile troops. If you can stick to it you'll probably eventually make it through. If you need additional help, feel free to drop me an email.

Forgot to ask you. I was curious on which of the six sites you located your keep, and was the stockpile close by. For reference, look at the mini map (you can still see it displayed on the main SHH page or the SEC main page) and number them starting in the upper left and going clockwise, as:

1 2 3
6 5 4

First off, this is one of my all-time favourite maps and I've beaten it from a couple of starting locations at Normal but never before tried it at Very Hard.

However I've now beaten it at Very Hard too, so I can join the Honour Roll for this one.

Playing Level = 15000
35 Months Early = 3500
114 Fruit Extra = 570
3 Swords Extra = 150
89 Meat Extra = 445
74 Gold Extra = 74
Score = 24039

For playing at Very Hard I bravely hid myself in the north-west corner, (position 1); the majority of the farmland is here and it's a fairly simple place to defend.

From this position I produced enough food to keep approx 100 peasants on at least 'extra rations' for the whole game. With full ale coverage and a bit of help from churches, this let me run taxes at around -8 for most of the game. Having a very good gold income allowed me to buy most of my iron, I wasn't too worried about collecting it myself - the north-east iron mines were a very long walk away, so I just didn't bother!

The invasions were troublesome but the single gatehouse and long pitch-lined approach to my defences dealt with them well enough. I used mainly spearmen as my melee force inside my walls if ever the gate was breached. Though I did have a small group of 5-10 macemen and swords as back-up. The archers arrived in good number and the vast majority survived the whole game, it pays to be religious in this map, doesn't it?
As you can see, my keep was on high ground, but I did seperate the stockpile and place it lower down making it more acessible for my peasants and industry.

(turned 180 degrees)

This is a superb map from Duke Of York, brilliant design and a very entertaining play. I was pretty confident I could beat this at Very Hard by hiding in the corner. I think I'd have a far harder time of it with my keep located out in the open, but I really must try!

(Sparrow, I did beat Challenge 4 at Very hard too, but I think you must have missed that post - I still haven't done Map 5 though).

[This message has been edited by brave sir robyn (edited 03-22-2006 @ 11:34 AM).]

Excellent, Brave Sir Robyn.

When I played this originally I put my stockpile on pad #1 so I could maximize weapons production around it and still use every scrap of farmland for crops, and placed the keep nearby on pad #6. Looks like that much caution may not have been necessary on this map.

I'm so sorry I missed your win for challenge 4, BSR. It's posted now along with your acknowledgement for this one. Our red button flag for new posts has worked quite reliably for me, but that one somehow slipped by.

So anybody else, please yell out if I mess up and miss someone again.

Sparrow: I placed my Keep at position 5, in the "V" of the river, and place the stockpile at position 2, north of the keep. This allowed stockpile location to be near NE corner Iron Mines and Quarry as well as a lot of farm land once trees were cleared from area jsut NW of location 2.

Most invasions came from the south and east and it's a long walk to location 5 from there (especially with 100+ archers shooting at you). I purchased some iron but mostly relied on all the iron mines. I also built a few lg towers near the earthen bridge over the river to the NE and had mangonels on them for advancing troops (along with a lot of pitch by the bridge). Mangonels fired at ADVANCING troops only!

I used a church at the beginning (which was extremely helpful) but later deleted it as the priest was all over the place and blessed was 7%.

One invasion from the north got through but I halted all woodcutter buildings and then turned them back on as the macemen got to the keep. They had to deal with 25 angry woodcutters!

I am going to go back to where I had saved the game half way through and re-play without finishing all the swords so I can play through all battles. I had a great defense built up but finished 116 months early. I am thinking I missed a great big battle at the end!!!

Very interesting to read some of your details, Duke of The Glen. As I mentioned previously, I've played in the past from position 1 and 6. Now I know when I replay it this week I definitely have to try a different location. Nice to see how it worked from your chosen starting spot. And very clever use of the woodcutters by the way. They can be a good delaying tactic.

You guys sure are the cream of the cream at "Strongholding"...I can't even beat Alwyne Valley at Hard...

Thank you guys for your comments about the scenario - I really enjoy creating maps that make you think. I personally liked to play this scenario from "position 4". You are near the stone - have natural beariers of the stream, pond and elevated mountain to help with defenses. I also played from position 1 and 6 as you mentioned. I must say - in my personal opinion - position 5 as played by Duke of the Glen is the hardest location on the map - even though it is located in the center of the map - it is far from vital resources.

Great Job on beating this scenario on very hard!

As for Treasure Island - you can not build stone walls, so you have to build adjoinint towers and pad theim with wooden palasades. I chose the starting location in the SW of the "nose". As for difficulty level, It was created to be very difficult on "NORMAL" setting - I have personally never beaten it on VERY HARD setting.

Thanks again for the comments - if you liked the map - write a review.

You can count me in Sparrow.

As for this map, I had been playing it a long time ago and enjoyed it a lot. (I love the "place your keep" maps...) I can't remember if I had beaten it on very hard, which I think, but my computer has been reconfigurated a few times since...

Anyway, once you survive the first two invasions, if you are well organised, you should be in for the victory.

I managed to get as many archers as possible with the way the game ticks, it is a necessity.

I placed my keep on the location to the bottom right of the map when the north is up. I closed the opened path to the extreme left of it, beside the river so the enemy would have to attack from the north. After handling a good production of stone, I built a wall surrounding the stone production and going along the river, which made a long narrow path on which I placed pitch. It was not too hard to handle the spearmen until the macemen arrived on the path and burned. The horsemen where not too difficult to eliminate althought there are a lot at the end.

A nice map, worth being played.

Congratulations, Duc de Noisiel. I've put your name up for this one. Nice screen shot.

I finished this one today on very hard. It was a beautiful and very fun map. It was also the easiest challenge for me so far. After doing some short experiments on placement and then some experiments on how to get reinfrocements earlier I ran through fairly easily. I built next to the waterfall just below the ruined keep. I put my granary in the large farm area south of my keep. I built 6 or 8 orchards here and wheat farms on all other secure land. I put my bakeries on the keep area in between. I liberally built woodcutters and ended up selling some wood and using them to clear my defense zone for towers. I never built a barracks and used the monks for rabbits and built a defense line near the quarries where toers would fit. I built some towers up on the quarry to protect. They also had excellent range up there. I added two ballista in the 3rd and last major attack. I used dogs here and there as extra qaurry protection and to harass knights and once as rear and flanking guard to protect 3 separate archer spawns that happened during the 2nd battle. I was able to get all archers back while only losing a monk. The archers and a healthy stone and pitch production were enough to handle the attacks. It was difficult to seal up the quarry area and I probably would have built differently, but what I did was good enough. The meat was easy with only a few by the granary and then sealing consumption. The apples were easy and I was able to continue consumption from the farms I had. I used 4 total producing swords. With one mine and purchases this was easy. Taxes bought the armor and wood and taxes met the gold limit. With ale and extra rations allowing for -8 most of the time. So that's it. I had a 40359 total score.