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Komnenos - The Byzantine Restoration
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| Author |
File Description |
Filthydelphia
(id: Al_Kharn the Great) |
Posted on 01/01/20 @ 01:42 PM (updated 07/14/23)
| File Details |
|---|
| Version: |
Age of Empires II: DE |
| Style: |
Build and Destroy |
Screenshot:
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Can a dying empire be saved?
The Roman Empire is collapsing, plagued by internal power struggles, rebellions, and foreign invasions. As Alexios Komnenos, seize the throne from a failed emperor, fight the Turks and Normans to expand your realm, and fend off pretenders and rebels with their own aspirations for your crown.
Features:
Unique hybrid Fixed Force/Build & Destroy gameplay
Re-capture lost Byzantine lands from Turkish horsemen, Norman knights, and Pecheneg nomads
Carefully manage your legitimacy to ward off rebellions and forestall scandals
Receive missions from a cast of courtiers to re-build the empire
About the Author:
Filthydelphia (xbox: PhillySouljah) is the award-winning designer of historical custom campaigns and official content for the Age of Empires franchise. Part of the Forgotten Empires campaign team, his works include the Portuguese, Burmese, Bulgarian, Italian, and Indian campaigns featured in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition as well as several campaigns in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition. |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
|---|
Filthydelphia
(id: Al_Kharn the Great)
File Author |
Posted on 03/18/20 @ 05:29 PM
3/18/2020: Reduced Elite Berserk hitpoints from 162 to 112 to improve game balance. Added change view triggers to make the arrival of Crusaders more clear. Added water layering to the sea. |
| shaam007 |
Posted on 04/12/20 @ 03:49 PM
" an error occured while trying to start the game. tile (2)(0) has invalid terrain type: 255 ( this world has 110 valid terrains)
out of all 8 new custom maps. i am getting this on 4 maps (dont remember if terrain number is same or not) but other 4 are working okay. harald, seljuk, blood mayan and valhala are okay but other 4 are giving same problem.i have copied the files same way as i have done for the working maps.
thanks for your help. |
Filthydelphia
(id: Al_Kharn the Great)
File Author |
Posted on 04/14/20 @ 03:48 PM |
| kud13 |
Posted on 02/20/21 @ 01:14 PM
Playability: 5
“Komnenos” is a campaign-length B&D scenario that puts a greater emphasis on territory management and managing your unit roster. There is no resource gathering to speak of, and the Empire's resources come in the form of taxes that are collected each spring (there is an in-game calendar that goes through 4 seasons of each year). The more cities the player controls, the greater the amount of Gold collected as taxes that can be exchanged at a 1:1 rate at the Market for additional resources. The player also needs to maintain his Legitimacy, which is constantly being decreased either by losing units in combat, or by random triggered events. The player can restore legitimacy by spending gold to hold races at the Hippodrome, or by completing certain objectives, and capturing additional cities. Although the Hippodrome is supposed to allow the player to bet on one of the coloured teams, I found that there were no tooltips I could use to see which team I'd be betting on, which was annoying, but did not have much effect on the game; The need to maintain legitimacy put a new emphasis on taking smart fights, conserving lives, and evaluating priority targets, which was a neat twist to the formula, giving the scenario more of a simulation-y feel.
Balance: 5
Played on Moderate, I found the scenario to be fairly challenging throughout. In the beginning (provided you manage to beat the fixed force introduction and take over the Empire), the player is faced with a Norman invasion and the need to quickly restore control over cities in Greece, since any excessive losses would trigger a rebellion, and early on it's a challenge that's essentially impossible to handle; as with many hard B&D scenarios, the beginning requires you to be nearly flawless in executing your defensive strategy, before amassing a critical mass of resources and military to expand; in case of Komnenos, however, the ongoing scripted events undermining your legitimacy mean that expansion is a necessity; failure to maintain and increase legitimacy by taking back additional settlements leads to a spawning of a massive rebel army that cannot be stopped by Constantinople's walls alone.
The game does a fairly good job maintaining the pressure with several scripted events requiring the player to engage in massive defensive battles regardless of their overall strategy; However, the difficulty does fizzle out towards late game, and in particular conquering several key cities with multiple defenses (such as Castles) created hurdles the AI could not address. In addition, the AI did not have any villagers, so destroying production buildings and docks meant the occasional raids could be halted outright. Overall, though, the rise to hegemony was fairly challenging, and the later drop off in difficulty felt like a well-deserved reward, rather than an anti-climactic disappointment
Creativity: 5
I do not recall ever playing such a “simmy” scenario before. While multiple factions handing out objectives with various rewards isn't a new concept, the legitimacy mechanics, were a great addition that really fit the theme of restoring the Empire by recapturing lost territories.
Map Design: 5
The map is expansive, varied and interesting to explore. The designer did a great job incorporating geography into gameplay, such as the objectives to hold the nomad hordes by fortifying the Danube frontier; the design of various Byzantine cities also encouraged naval assaults and emphasized the civilization's strengths in both defense and offensive rosters.
Story/Instructions: 5
The story was fairly open-ended, since the scenario offers a lot of freedom to tackle objectives in any order with only a few events being more tightly scripted. The ongoing use calendar timer and its incorporation into the game mechanics was a great touch, since it added a strong “story-telling” dimension to scenario, providing a more “alternative history” view on the events. (Byzantines didn't really ever re-capture Bari during Alexios' reign, but it sure felt good to do that in the game, after the Bari campaign) . The ongoing events and the fluctuating legitimacy meter kept the sense of momentum and ongoing struggle constant up to the very end of the scenario, and also added to the overall enjoyment.
Additional Comments:
"Komnenos" is, simply put, a great scenario that is an amazing companion piece both to the developer's earlier "Seljuk" scenario, as well as the Bari and Sicillian campaigns; Ignoring all that, it is an incredibly creative and enjoyable scenario in its own right that demonstrates an entirely new style of "empire management" gameplay and offers a map that's fun to explore, and a story that's exciting to forge. [Edited on 11/12/21 @ 01:37 AM]
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| darionaturopata |
Posted on 11/03/22 @ 01:52 PM |
| Ragnar Lodbrok |
Posted on 08/01/23 @ 04:36 AM |
Filthydelphia
(id: Al_Kharn the Great)
File Author |
Posted on 08/10/23 @ 12:35 PM |
| Ragnar Lodbrok |
Posted on 09/03/23 @ 12:26 AM
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HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
|---|
| 5.0 | | Breakdown |
|---|
| Playability | 5.0 | | Balance | 5.0 | | Creativity | 5.0 | | Map Design | 5.0 | | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 1,873 |
| Favorites: [] | 4 |
| Size: | 6.91 MB |
| Added: | 01/01/20 |
| Updated: | 07/14/23 |
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