|
|
| Author |
File Description |
| rakovsky |
Posted on 01/12/21 @ 11:58 PM
| File Details |
|---|
| Version: |
Other Modpack |
| Required Modpack (if not included with the download): |
Forgotten Empires and Havie's "Dynasty Warriors Chinese ReVamp" |
| Style: |
Build and Destroy |
Screenshot:
 |
Mission Name: Emperor Xian's Dream
Mission Designer: Rakovsky
Scenario Version: 1.0
Date: 1/12/21
Difficulty: Easy
AOE2 Version: AOK:TC:Forgotten Empires with Havie's "Dynasty Warriors Chinese ReVamp" Mod
Single Player or Multiplayer: Single Player
STORY:
One night when thinking back over his reign, the Chinese Han Emperor Xian dreamt that mighty Japanese forces had landed on his eastern shores. He wondered how his empire could have protected itself because it was divided between conflicting warlords. To withstand the invaders, some of China's best generals would have had to put aside their enmity to work together.
Emperor Xian thought back over the history of the warlords, their generals, and their conflicts. Three of the strongest warlords were Lu Bu, Cao Cao, and Lieu Bei. On the opening Story Map of China, the three warlords control blue, green and yellowish green regions next to each other. The island of Japan is just beyond the Story Map's right edge.
Lu Bu was born in Jiuyan County in Inner Mongolia and was called the "Flying General." In 192 AD, Lu Bu rebelled against and killed the warlord Dong Zhuo, who wielded abusive power over the Han government and Emperor Xian. Lu Bu fled the capitol, and he sided with the warlord Yuan Shu in 198.
The second key warlord in the dream, Cao Cao, moved his headquarters to Xuchang in 196 and persuaded Emperor Xian to move the capitol there. Cao Cao was appointed "Minister of Works" and "General in Chief." Cao Cao allied with Liu Bei to defeat Lu Bu at the Battle of Xiapi in 199, and he killed Lu Bu afterwards. As a result, he was able to take over the northern provinces.
The generals of the third key warlord, Liu Bei, included Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei. Luo Guanzhong's 14th Century novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" called them "Tiger Generals." Zhao Yun came from Zhengding County and served Liu Bei in Shu Han. The novel called him the "General Who Guards the West." He served Liu Bei in the 208 Battle of Changban and in the Han Zhong Campaign.
DESIGN NOTES:
In 2015, Havie made the "Dynasty Warriors Chinese ReVamp" Mod for AOE: Forgotten Empires. Havie designed his Mod to portray characters, troops, and architecture narrated in the famous Chinese story "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and portrayed in the video game "Dynasty Warriors." Havie changed practically a big majority of the Chinese Players' building and unit graphics. But except for the Chu-Ko-Nu, I think that Havie only changed units' appearance, rather than their statistics. Despite making impressive architecture and modding lots of Chinese units, Havie's Mod was not used in any Scenarios... until now.
So I designed my scenario as a fun and easy "Build and Destroy" scenario that would showcase the Mod's buildings and units. The Mod allows the Chinese player to train both Lu Bu and 3 of Liu Bei's generals, even though Lu Bu and and Liu Bei belonged to different factions. Further, the Mod uses different Chinese architecture for each Age, whereas the Japanese Player's architecture still use the default AOE2 Asian graphics. Although a Scenario designer should be able to block the Player from training units belonging to opposite factions, I wanted to use all these features of the Mod.
Emperor Xian's dream of Chinese generals uniting to defend China from Japan is fictional. In the Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era, Japan was not strong enough to invade China. Despite it being unhistorical, it provides an opportunity for the generals to be together on one team. In order for the Player to see each of the Ages with different architecture, there is a "Dark Age" Chinese village in the north, and one of your goals is to reach the Imperial Age. By fighting a Japanese Player, you can clearly notice differences between the Mod's Chinese graphics and AOE2's standard Asian graphics.
The Scenario's basic idea is that you have emissaries in Japan and when you bring them back, they inform you that their negotiations failed and that the Japanese gave them a few weeks until they declare war. In effect, you have a countdown of 15 minutes of game time from the start of the scenario, which is when the Japanese notified your emissaries of their intention to declare war. So while you can't stop the japanese from declaring war (eg. by leaving your emissaries in Japan), you do have a "grace period" to build up your forces and advance to the imperial age.
The main challenge or weakness in the scenario's design is the AI Personality and the resulting Balance issue. Ideally the Japanese would use their soldiers on the Chinese shore to try to storm your base as soon as they declared war, which I imagine that the "Aggressive" Personality in AOE1 would do. I gave the Japanese "The Khanate" Personality, which is at least functional, but it makes the Japanese focus on building their forces in Japan instead of building a base on the Chinese shore and then attacking with their shore units when war is declared. The setting also makes the Japanese awkwardly call your ally a "noob" at the start of the scenario, but that is at least in keeping with the game's use of humorous taunts. The other Personalities that I tried (Standard, None, Horde, Barbarian, Principality) seemed more defective.
I don't consider the Personality issue to be a big problem though. You have enough of a head start with resources and the Japanese are slow and defensive enough that you can take your time gathering your forces even after they declare war. And this is OK because my main goal in the scenario was to showcase the Mod. Specifically, I wanted to give you as the Player a good chance to research the Mod's upgrades, rather than being invaded and having the mission end first.
If you could not get the scenario to work, please leave a message in the Comment section.
GAMEPLAY NOTES:
I beat this mission myself on the Hard setting. Each objective is straightforward and easy to meet. You do have to gather resources and research upgrades to make your soldiers successful in battle. You don't actually have to bring your trade carts in Japan to your Headquarters to win, but it makes sense to bring them back anyway so that they can trade with your Chinese ally.
You should save your game after you meet each objective. Even though I designed the Scenario to work and I beat it one with no crashes, two earlier versions of the scenario crashed about 20 minutes into gameplay. Since the scenario uses a Mod ("Dynasty Warriors") on top of a Mod (Forgotten Empires) on top of an Expansion (AOK:TC) made for older versions Windows, there seems to be more risk for crashing.
The Gaia "Elephant Archers" that you can find and get on the map occasionally become invisible to you, even after they join your team. I don't know if this is a problem in Forgotten Empires or an intentional feature, because AOE1's Editor had "Hidden" units that included camouflage archer units that appeared and disappeared.
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1. Have AOE2: The Conquerors 1.0 (The original 2000 Version) installed on your computer.
I installed AOE2:TC using CDs, but a "No CD" copy of AOE2:TC should work as long as you can install the "Forgotten Empires" Mod on top of it. I did not install the "AOE2:TC 1.0c" patch to use these mods or to make the scenario.
Step 2. Install the "Forgotten Empires" Mod. Forgotten Empires' "Manual Installation" that used fe_update.zip worked for me. It is here: http://www.forgottenempires.net/install
Note: The "Forgotten Empires" Mod is not "AOE2:The Forgotten (2013 HD version)". You must install Forgotten Empires on top of the original version of AOE2.
Step 3. Install Havie's "Dynasty Warriors Chinese ReVamp" Mod, which you can find here:
http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/showfile.php?fileid=12349
To install Havie's Mod, download his "FGFilesNonHD.rar" file from that aok.heavengames.com link. You can open it with a free .RAR reader like 7-Zip (available at 7-zip.org).
Back up your files with the same names and locations as the Mod's files' names and target locations so that you can more easily change your game back to the way that it was when you will finish playing with Havie's Mod.
Next, copy the sounds_x1.drs file in your downloaded "FGFilesNonHD.rar" file into your computer's Age of Empires II\Data folder.
Then, copy the other .drs, .dll, and .dat files in your downloaded "FGFilesNonHD.rar" file into your computer's "Age of Empires II\Games\Forgotten Empires\Data" folder.
Step 4. Install my scenario by simply copying and pasting the "Emperor Xian's Dream.cpx" Campaign file into your
Age of Empires II\Games\Forgotten Empires\Scenario folder.
I don't know why the Forgotten Empires Mod uses campaigns in the "Forgotten Empires\Scenario" folder, rather than the Campaign folder. I originally mistakenly assumed that it used the latter.
You don't have to do anything with the .BMP file or the .SCX file. I just included them in case you want a closer look at the map than the Story screen gives you, or in case you want to look at the Scenario in your Scenario Editor. |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
|---|
| newtonerdai |
Posted on 02/02/21 @ 01:10 AM
If translate the title into Chinese, it may be "汉献帝之梦"(The Dream of Emperor Xian of Han Dynasty). |
rakovsky
File Author |
Posted on 02/07/21 @ 03:05 PM |
| cly0806 |
Posted on 02/09/21 @ 10:00 PM |
rakovsky
File Author |
Posted on 02/13/21 @ 08:38 PM
The scenario can only work with the original AOE2 version, not the AOE2 2013 HD Steam version, nor with AOE2:DE.
The reason that it only works with the original version is that the scenario is made to showcase Havie's "Dynasty Warriors" Mod, and Havie's Mod is only for the AOE2 (original version) "Forgotten Empires" Mod.
So to play the scenario, you need to follow the Four Step Installation instructions that I gave in the scenario instructions.
For STEP 1, you need to install the original 2000 "Age of Empires: The Conquerors" (CD version) game. There are three options that you can try to get the original version:
OPTION 1. Personally, I bought the "Gold Edition" CDs. You can order the CDs cheaply online from someplace like Ebay.
OPTION 2. I'm sure that you can also download the game online as well with no CDs, but I wasn't able to find an online download version that worked.
OPTION 3: Buy the 2013 AOE2 HD version on Steam and then use the AOE2Tools program (https://github.com/gregstein/AoE2Tools) to recreate the original AOE2 version using the AOE2 HD version. I am not sure if you will be able to use the AOE2Tools program to create a version that you can install Forgotten Empires onto, though. So I am not sure if Option 3 will work.[Edited on 02/21/21 @ 05:20 PM]
|
 
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 202 |
| Favorites: [] | 0 |
| Size: | 499.57 KB |
| Added: | 01/12/21 |
|
