It sparks with a creative force that sometimes hurts your eyes! Its a monster of a map that will take months to play and shows off what is possible with the AoW-SM Editor when pushed to it's limits! It's overdone in quite some areas, cluttered and you can even say that it bursts with too many ideas! It begs to be channeled and contained and you want to say: there is more in less!! Ok, the detail and amount of work required for this scenario is staggering. I tried starting with each player just to see the area around their cities. It was all unique, creative, and beautiful. The author is clearly a master of creating believable, immersive, attractive terrain. There are many beautiful nooks and crannies where little cities and regions lie and represent miniature worlds. The layout of this map is equally impressive and evenly distributed, although perhaps a few alternative paths to the same place would give it more replayability. In summary, because of the terrific terrain painting and distribution of magical places across the map, it feels like a much bigger place—a complete world. Wonderful work! This map was fun to play. I tried it many times not just to evaluate it, but because it was such a pleasure to enter and explore the map. But, because many of the events didn’t seem to work according to the mapmaker’s intentions, the storyline was thrown off and the map became too cluttered with inactive independents. (I know the Groll made this, and so I would like to recommend that in your next map you make a really strong computer player or two and spawn some of their units as berserkers and raiders! It really adds a challenge to the maps. Your maps are so beautiful, adding a challenging AI would make them the best around) [This message has been edited by Magog (edited 02-01-2006 @ 12:48 PM).]
The biggest issue with this map, however, lies in the playability that will not appeal to everybody. Had this mapmaker designed 4 'CPU only' and 2 playable sides, this map would have been a LOT better in terms of playability. Currently, the insane amount of 'standing still' indies allows for a very slow game and even cripples the AI. Sometimes the game is so slow, that it actually gets boring! Having less playable sides also allows for much more emphasis on storytelling aspects, AI control and prevents bugs that trigger events that are actually meant for other players.
For a pure multiplayer like me, its not always fun to take on non-moving independents and the game has a tendency to drag.
Despite these points, this map simply leaves all others behind in terms of amount of content, replayability, mapmaking techniques and different storylines! When I pushed through the initial 'drag' (day 30/40...
Bugs/tips:
- Please stop making single player maps that have over 5 playable sides or start making multiplayer maps!
- Orcs: where is Broch??
- I had an AI player die on day 3... (the dwarf)
- There is way too much text in the introduction. Keep it short and to the point! This is ridiculous.
- There is a crossbow item, but it doesn't allow the user to shoot a bolt...
- Sometimes events go off that seem to be meant for other players (Enelrams Pass).
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So, we have the champion of originality, mappainting, storytelling and gameplay!!