Elderby
By Lord Vetka
Elderby
When you arrived at your new castle you realized just how hard of an assignment this would be, sure there are a few villages there to trade with, one we can hold easily, but the iron and stone will be a challenge. Looking at the amount of space we have and the lack of resources, maybe some wood and a few farms, if we want weapons we will have to do some trading, we just don't have the room.
Our enemy is well defended, large towers loaded with range units, troops at the keep to protect the Lord of these lands. With new reinforcements and new troops being trained we will expect a large amount of attacks upon our own castle, our enemy Lord is already built up and ready for us, now it's our turn to build and get ready to take the fight to our enemy Lord.
A bit about the map, you will have to build up your castle, your enemy will not be waiting long before the attacks begin, getting walls up and holding the village will be priority, a few small groups of reinforcements will come your way just in time.
Your enemy is setup so you can attack from 2 ways, come straight at him from the front through the moat past the gate and into the waiting aim of the archers and crossbows on the towers. Or you can work your way in behind through the stone village, and pound your way to the keep from there.
The aim of the game is to have some fun, but you must remove all of the enemy to get your win!
Please enjoy!
By Lord Vetka
Your landscape was very well created, it seemed to flow naturally. I especially liked the narrow winding pathway that led from the corner of the player's estate to It was a nice small map, that worked just as well as a big map. The way you constructed the tower fortifications around Sir Grey's castle was marvellous! I really loved that.
The way the player could only get stone from one estate on the map was very good - especially since it was the furthest away, sand next to Sir Grey's. And the addition of bear was also very good, and even better the fact it was in the middle of the map.
You really are good at creating small pathways, which is something I love to see in maps, also something I find very hard to do effectively! Some of them are that good they just blend in with the scenery so you don't even notice them.
I liked the way you couldn't trade wood, that stopped me from just buying all the resources!
You created the scenery around the stone mine very well, no matter how hard I try, I can never get it to appear as realistic as that.
The invasions seemed massive at first!! And the sieges were very well co-ordinated as well. I know how hard that can be sometimes, so well done for getting that working 100% correctly. You must have put a lot of effort into that alone.
The map alone without the scripting would have taken ages, it's perfect - totally realistic, no square estates, even terrain, and you can place bushes (and rocks) well (which I can't). And I never even seen the Iron ore it was that well camouflaged.
It was a struggle to get your economy up and running initially, which is good, I hate it when you're just given it on a plate it's much better when it's harder like that. I also never lost interest once. It was one of those maps that you wanted to keep going, and were determined to eventually do it.
I do think I may have found one bug though.
When you first un-pause the game, all of Sir Grey's troops go beneath his walls and towers.(They could also go through the moat)
I don't exactly know what causes this, but when it has happened to me before, I deleted all of the walls and towers the troops were on then re-built them and placed the troops again.
It possibly could be a patch thing, I have 1.3 Deluxe, you said yourself in the forums you had 1.4.1.
And there is only one negative thing about the map in my opinion (it's not really negative):
At the start, you have 3 mission quests:
Control a number of Estates : 2 (1)
Recruit Archers 80 (0)
Control a number of Estates : 3 (1)
And a win condition:
No enemy left on map
However, the win condition will only trigger when you kill all enemies on the map - not when the other things happen as well(I don't know whether that was what you intended). If I was you (obviously it is up to you) I would change the win condition to 'RESULT OF QUESTS A, B AND C' then add the "No enemy on the map" as a quest.
Still, these are very small faults with an almost flawless map.
Because of everything included in the map, my final rating is: 5
Wow! For a first upload, this is outstanding! I'd love to see what else you have!
You also said in the forums you aren't very good with the storyline? - I totally disagree. Your storyline was superb.
Please make more!
[Edited by Lord_Chris on 3rd Jan 2014 00:00:00]
Thank You for the great detailed review.
I made this map for my own enjoyment never planning on posting it, it never got a whole lot of detail work, I did add in a few things to make it look nicer before posting it.
You found the invasions massive, I was going to call the map normal and decided on hard, even after plenty of play testing it's still a bit hard.
To play a map with everything given to you is not to much fun, restrictions can take a dull game and make it interesting, make the resources hard to get, now you have a bit if fun.
The win condition is as it should be, an enemy AI castle that you must remove the Lord to win, when the Lord dies so do all of the troops. the quests I use to trigger building and market ques.
You liked my story? I didn't really say I can't write just that I don't like it, to have someone who likes to write would be a bonus.
I know why you had a problem with troops in the walls, I found this out when I had my SH2 game corrupted, I lost a lot of work on maps to this little problem.
I saw recently a post about using the save to map trick. This trick does work, but in SH2 it will corrupt your game files creating all sorts of strange anomalies, and ruining lots of map work, I've had to throw almost completed maps away, not to much fun.
When a map is posted using the save to map trick and you down load it and play the map, it will start to corrupt the game files and as you play more maps and do more save to maps the worse it gets.
The only way I found to fix this is to completely remove SH2 and clear all registry entries.
You have a thread explaining how to do the save to map trick, I could explain how to clear the registry of all SH2 entries if you like.
I noticed a few people using 1.3, I went to 1.4.1 because it was the norm, but I wanted to go back to 1.3, so I might just do that, it's time to reinstall SH2 anyway.
Careful what you ask for:-) I used to post a new map to Heavengames almost every 3 weeks, and I do have more maps on my hard drive to post.
Thanks a lot Lord Chris, I will be posting more maps.
Lord Vetka
[Edited by Lord_Chris on 3rd Jan 2014 00:00:00]
I saw recently a post about using the save to map trick. This trick does work, but in SH2 it will corrupt your game files creating all sorts of strange anomalies, and ruining lots of map work, I've had to throw almost completed maps away, not to much fun.
I did not know that.
You have a thread explaining how to do the save to map trick, I could explain how to clear the registry of all SH2 entries if you like.
Yeah, that sounds great. I'll send you a PM in the forums with the URL to go to in order to add your page.
I noticed a few people using 1.3, I went to 1.4.1 because it was the norm, but I wanted to go back to 1.3, so I might just do that, it's time to reinstall SH2 anyway.
Personally, I think it's such a shame that you have to completely uninstall the game to remove the 1.4.1 version.
The main reason I am still on 1.3 is because you can't modify the game as much in 1.4.1. Even though generally there are a lot of improvements made to the 1.4.1 version, that's the primary reason for me.