Four Elements
By Nigel
Four elements
After the giant brothers Fafnir and Fasold had build Odin's new stronghold Valhallah, they were paied with gold and riches. Howerver, evil as they were, the two giants started to argue over the gold and as their fight grew out of hand, Fafnir killed his brother Fasold.
Now the giant turned fully to evil and so evil was he, that he also physically transformed and his body changed into that of a huge dragon.
The story of how young Siegfried went up into the mountain and, with a sword he had forged himself, slew the evil dragon Fafnir is well known and the bards have made many songs about it.
Less known is the story of he managed to come back from the mountain.
The dwarf Alberich had been guarding Fafnir's treasure and after his master's death he was now at the service of Siegfried. He ordered local farmers to go into the dragon's cave and bring the gold to Siegfied's treasury.
Soon the young hero had all the gold he ever wanted, but also discovered that it would not help him in the mountains, where there was nothing he could buy with it. To get out of the magic mountain, he would need to gather 500 of each of the 4 elements: gold, iron, wood and stone.
Only then would he be able to return to his beloved home in Xanten.
Author's note: In the Age of Legend people believed that the elements were gold, iron, wood and stone. Modern science has long since demonstrated, that the four elements are fire, water, earth and air. This is a well known fact, but some backward looking and old fashioned alchemists still believe even today, that iron and gold should be considered to be elements. That, of course, is utter nonsense.
Acknowledgements: Thanks go to Andreas9541. The idea of the dead dragon is taken from his brilliant map "Necropolis Twins".
The map was beautifully designed. I loved the intricate mountains and little glaciers you put throughout the map.
This was a tricky map that required a lot of patience. The constant bombardment of enemies coupled with the fact that you had to figure out a way to have your peasants working with low population in the beginning was hard. Starting with no resources whatsoever really made me feel frustrated with the map. It felt like you were rolling a dice and hoping to get a sliver of hope onto the map as you were constantly harassed in the first third.
The second "act" was a test of patience. Once I got an economy going it really was just about waiting and being strategic with the limited resources (notably wood) available to you. Thank you for allowing knights and crossbowmen because without them I don't think I would have made it. Due to the lack of wood I also found it inffective to produce anything other than knights and swordsmen later in the mission due to the lack of tankiness and resources needed for the mission.
Unfortunately I did not find the pitch very useful as the werewolves were too fast for it to be effective and I believe later units make it not very useful. And since you can't buy resources it really felt like the pitch was more for aesthetic than anything. The fire drakes also were not useful as you could not build walls in the mission.
Resource wise I was very reliant on stone and iron mid game but after getting into the groove the map was a breeze. This map was a camping map so to speak. All I did was wait and slowly build up-yes I had ranged units but due to fearing I would run out of trees I switched to knights quite fast.
The huge resource requirement really discourages building an economy that would feature something like the church and the lack of statues made the glory useless. I understand it has to be difficult but the church really just felt like an afterthought whilst I was playing and not something that would be a staple resource for honor. By the time I had enough to consider a church the resource requirement was already 90% done.
The final invasion was underwhelming. The earlier invasions and invasions set in the middle were by far the hardest in the mission. By the end I had so many knights and was so developed it seemed like an afterthought.
The ally at the end wasn't that helpful since I already had dealt with the final invasion before they even arrived.
Overall this map wasn't bad but there was definitely room for improvement. There were such strong invasions in the beginning which were also put rather close to your castle. They harassed rather nicely that made me think I would take a week to complete the map. However there was no calm before the storm. I expected a big invasion only for the invasions to get smaller as the map progressed whilst my army got bigger. Maybe one more invasion could have done made this map better.