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The Gladiator - Opening Battle
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| Author |
File Description |
| Daedaless |
Posted on 03/31/08 @ 05:21 PM (updated 04/20/08)
| File Details |
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| Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
| Style: |
Mix |
Command the Roman army as Maximus leads his men to fight the Germanic Barbarians just as in the first 10 minutes of the movie. You take control of a large battalion of troops as you try an push through the forest to destroy the barbarian invaders. In this scenario, there are many twist as you can meet reinforcements along the way. You can also build up your own army once you are promoted, and obtain greater strength and power as well. |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Tanneur99
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 04/03/08 @ 06:41 AM
I moved the file from Single Player Scenarios. We will move the file to the respective category after the completion of the campaign.
-Blacksmith Administrator
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| rakovsky |
Posted on 11/20/20 @ 04:37 PM
The Playability would have been fine if the Designer gave clear and detailed enough instructions.
My Initial Playthrough experience:
On AOK HD on HARD, General Icarus rides alone to attack the troops to the southwest of him. When he naturally gets killed in the assault, you get an announcement that you get villagers. So it's as if he is supposed to get killed. But it doesn't make sense for him to fight alone and leave his troops behind. Maybe he fights like this because it is on HARD and there are green enemies near him.
About the time that my archers reached my starting camp, the Yellow ally did decide to send his troops into battle. Soon afterward, Maximus got killed when trying to come back from the cliffside dead-end in the east of the treeline near the east corner that I mentioned.
On STANDARD, the same thing happened where General Icarus went out alone into battle. There were no enemies in sight when he went. The Yellow and Purple cavalry are just sitting by the edge even when I bring the archers to them, although a single yellow horseman rides alone one after the other into the enemy area. I notice that rather it's when I send my troops SE along the clearing this time, 20 minutes in, that the allies attack. But attacking at 20 minutes in with only the archer armor tech researched, my forces get slaughtered...
I am keeping my army back while I build up my forces for the first 20 minutes or so, since the enemy in the woods seems strong... I put a tower on the east side of the opening area. I only get 350 stone in a pile and no market, put further in the center of the map, there are more stone piles. 25 minutes in, Orange elite Woad raiders start attacking from the west edge side. They appear to spawn in the center/NW Orange base without there being any Orange barracks or Castle there.
At 41 minutes in, after researching all the Blacksmith techs, I sent 4 rams into the western Orange base with all my fighting units left and they got chewed up by the enemy axe throwers, archers, and woad raiders.
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Balance: 4
The balance is good once you learn how to play the map, but if not, then you are facing a constant stream of Woad raiders on the west side while you are trying to fight the grey base that has active villagers replenishing it in the south.
The Designer says that it is designed for HARDEST in his instructions screens or tabs, yet he also notes that his friend had a hard time beating the main enemy and yet was playing on Standard. Plus, Tanneur99 in his comment in the review page on the Blacksmith says that it's "Best to play Standard." I beat it on Easiest after my forces were crushed and I got the orange Woad Raider stream trigger, but I think that once you understand how to play it, Standard would be a good choice,
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Creativity: 5
This was a very creative scenario in general, as it has you accomplishing several objectives and requiring you to make different strategies
Map Design: 4
The Map Design was generally good. There were a few issues like not having much space to build houses in your opening area unless you put them in front of the cavalry. Then there was the fact that the Purple and Yellow cavalry basically sat around where they started, although this is probably not the case in the Harder difficulties. But even on the Hard Difficulty you had the weird issue where the General Icarus went into battle alone and of course got killed.
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Story/Instructions: 2
This was the weakest part. There is alot that the Player should know in this scenario that the instructions either don't mention or don't explain well enough, like the fact that if you fight the campsite on the west side of the middle, then a constant stream of woad raiders is triggered to go to your base until their total number of woad raiders on the map goes to 10.
The Opening instruction chat message to Maximus is confusing. The Campaign screen for the scenario says that there are reinforcements in the east, which would mean that you go toward the far right corner, because East should be on the Player's right. When the battle opens, Maximus is on the west/leftwards of the opening troops, but actually on their "right flank" if you were standing in the middle of the troops. General Icarus tells Maximus to attack on the right flank, which is again confusing because "right" can mean the right of the player or the "right" of the way that Maximus' troops are standing if you are one of those troops. The natural thing if you had no orders or hints would be to attack on the leftward side of the map (west) because that is the side of the opening troops.
When the instructions say not to waste your time trying to raid the enemy campsite, it's also confusing, because in common speech, that means not to raid the campsite because it is wasting your time. However, General Icarus does order you to attack the Barbarian camp. One possibility is that the Designer was talking about two different camps that are both SW of your position. Also, since you get villagers in the beginning, it's not clear if you should build a base before attacking or if you should just attack when you get your archers because the instructions say to hurry.
The instructions have two secondary objectives: rendevous with your forces in the east and find your captured archers in the east. This makes it sound like there are two sets of reinforcements that you can get. But the archers are in the far east corner, so there is nothing more eastward than them, and if I go along the east side of the clearing instead of the NE edge path, then I just end up at a dead end surrounded by a cliff line and forest line. When you get the archers or bring them back though, you get a message saying that you met your secondary objective, meaning that those are your only reinforcements.
Yet later, using the marco polo cheat when I got overwhelmed with the orange campsite's woad raiders, I see that in the south corner, which you get to by going east from the orange south market, there actually is a pack of Gaia archers that you must be able to free. You can get to the market probably most safely by going along the cliff edge in the SE quarter of the map that runs in a SW direction.
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Additional Comments:
The Designer writes: "Sometimes, the AI will want to change diplomacies with you. I cannot prevent this but what ever you do: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE PC AND CHANGE DIPLOMACIES WITH ANYONE. KEEP THE DIPLOMACIES AS THEY START OF!!!!"
On AOK HD you can set the Lock Teams option for this.
THE BASIC IDEA, BASED ON THE EDITOR AND MESSAGES:
There is actually a path that runs along the NE edge of the map, and it leads to your archers. There is gold and stone near your starting place, so that is where you are supposed to set up camp.
According to the Editor, if the Orange player loses 10 woad raiders, he starts sending in a constant stream of them. The messages basically say to first find the archers in the east corner and then to use them to plow through the enemy base. Icarus says to go on the right flank, which suggests the east/right half of the map, but is unclear if it means the left half. You do get villagers in the top, and to protect your base from the Woad raider attacks, you need like half of your archers and a tower there.
The Orange player does not actually build with units or generate with barracks, so it's not clear why you need to hurry. The grey player does have some villagers, but hasn't generated units in the first 40 minutes and his grey buildings are few... There is a ring of yellow and purple walls in the NE half of the map that you can build it seems, and you probably don't need to use up stone for it.
Triggers are set so that at 70 seconds in, Icarus attacks the center area with his unit, and at 250 seconds in, Icarus dies and you get command of his villagers.
They are also set so that if the Orange player has 10 fewer Woad Raiders, then he spawns sends a constant stream of raiders to a spot just SW of the NW Roman trebuchet until the Orange player has at least 10 raiders. Since you need to protect your opening area because your red "king" stands there who you must protect, I guess this means that you need to put towers and archers at that trebuchet spot, and that you also don't want to attack the Orange base that is just SW of your opening area because it could set off the trigger. He also has a trigger that creates "unbeatable" towers with 9000 HP at the Orange camp that is just SW of your main base area.
This is important information for the Player, and I needed to review the chat messages, instructions, and Editor to understand the basic scenario concept and strategy. But I can see that some of it would be better for a "Hint" section than putting it in the instructions. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
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| 3.6 | | Breakdown |
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| Playability | 3.0 | | Balance | 4.0 | | Creativity | 5.0 | | Map Design | 4.0 | | Story/Instructions | 2.0 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 319 |
| Favorites: [] | 0 |
| Size: | 11.74 MB |
| Added: | 03/31/08 |
| Updated: | 04/20/08 |
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