A New Journey
By Lord Vetka
A New Journey
Lord Reginald ! Yes what is it squire, Well Sire a letter has arrived from your Uncle Frank. A letter from Uncle Frank Reginald last time we spoke he was sending us some reinforcements all was good I hope nothing has happened since then, Well let us take a look.
Lord Reginald the last we heard you had won your kingdom, Last you heard all was well here. But now I beg of you a new problem has arisen, Where Olafs brother Olaf the Red held the northeast in peace, Now a new menace has appeared he goes by The Bull, This Bull has killed Olaf the Red and all of our villages are under his control and he has almost finished us off as well. I'm afraid to say on our last skirmish I was wounded, My shoulder took an arrow, While I was down The Bull hit us hard we have next to nothing left with no villages to help with food and supplies I do not think it will be long before we are finished. But I think that in The Bulls lust for land and power The Bull has left himself weak and is now rebuilding for a final blow.
I am still to week to get out of bed so again I beg of you send help fast. My scouts tell me that The Bull has indeed used up most of his resources in taking my Kingdom he will need to rebuild before finishing us. This should give you enough time to send some troops into the southwest corner of the kingdom you can take back Stainforth, We need the food from them. The bridge is out so you need to supply the Monks and they will rebuild it for you. The scouts said that most of my troops that were guarding the villages are being held prisoner so you should get help at each village. On the other side of the river is a Bandit camp a surprise attack should make short work of them. Then you can take back Churly we had apples and pitch from them and we had horse on guard at Churly hopefully you will find them still there. You must take back Hoggle Bray quickly the road our carts take runs past and we get iron and more apples from them.
At the cross roads you can get to Witchhollow it is to heavily guarded at the front so the high back road is the only way, when you get to the gate you will see some kind of puzzle were not sure what it is, But if you can get in behind the guards at the front gate with some archers taking Witchhollow should be easy, The bows we need and the stone is gold but in order to get either one you must take the high village St Columb Miner to make the road safe for our carts and the leather armor and cheese made there, From here you can drop down into Wassle the wood and game are most important but making the roads safe more so.
Now with the south part of the kingdom retaken,you can go into the foot hills and take Scarcliff the wheat grown there is important to us and Shapwick, It will be harder to take than earlier villages but I have every confidence in you my Lord.From there up to Sternly on Toad the ale is fresh and cold and we need it here. Now with the remaning troops you should be able to take back Shapwick and we can have fresh buns and cheese to go with the game meat and tankards of ale when you arrive at my broken down keep, We can talk of how to take care of The Bull. Please hurry Lord Reginald.
Your Uncle Lord Frank
Sire things sound bad for your Uncle Frank. Yes indeed squire we must do something but what? Our troops are spread all across the kingdom our new territory must be defended, I guess if I take a couple of knights and a few horse archers we should be able to take back the villages and pick up more troops along the way, Time is short we should go now and my friend Tom you will have to watch over things here you know my plans for this kingdom as well as I do carry on.
By Lord Vetka
ps: This story tells you about the map, I will tell you that on your journey to mission 4 what you do getting there will make or break your success, Each village gets harder so keeping your troops alive is important, You will need the resources collected by your villages to complete mission 4.
ps: This map was posted at "HeavenGames" in 2007, before I reposted it here I wanted to make a few updates, the bridge took to long to build so I changed the layout of the village, the marker flags that triggered the reinforcements caused a bit of confusion, now when you move to the village flag to take over the village you will get the reinforcements, I also took out the fifth mission, it was a clean up mission.
Good Luck and Enjoy
Wow, looks like you've put quite a bit of work into this! :)
You should have posted the images on the file ;)
I'll give you a full review later, but I just thought I'd let you know how good it is.
[Edited by Lord_Chris on 3rd Mar 2014 00:00:00]
When I made this map it was exciting, as this was a new idea for SH2 for me. I new before I made it that it was going to be well received.
Yes it was a lot of work, this is the first map with so much detail and only the second map with more than one mission, as you know testing multi mission maps is very time consuming.
The next map "Mottes Art" like this will be much the same, starting at a corner and make your way through the missions to the Keep, taking back villages as you go, then repelling the enemy at your castle and finally removing the enemy castle.
Looking forward to your review.
I have an issue with the downloads, it tells you how many views but for some reason the download counter does not work, could you please fix that as I like to know how many times my maps has been downloaded.
Thanks Lord Chris !
The other one sounds cool as well :)
Looking forward to it, it sounds really good.
Maybe doing one with a time limit and a castle under siege would be cool as well?
You'll need to refresh the page for new downloads to be displayed.
Wow, I've been impressed with your skill before, but this one just completely annihilates the other maps! This is one seriously good map. The landscape was excellently detailed as always, and you kept the player with just the right amount of troops to survive. And I didn't even notice the player's encampment at the beginning. This really is one seriously good map.
The terrain was excellently detailed, and the pathways were constructed marvellously around the mountains. You also placed just the correct amount of trees to make it look realistic and the terrain (I noticed it more near the villages) was blended together very well, you couldn't even tell it was blended in fact. Wooden Walls were a new idea. It was a big gamble I think, and they could have gone drastically wrong, but you pulled it off with perfection.
You left the landscape fairly bland near the player's 'encampment' as I call it, which made it look even more realistic and the buildings you placed on the player's territory were very well placed - just far enough away from the walls to make it look realistic and placed in areas so that it looked natural. The water was well constructed, and the stones on the bottom made it look a lot more realistic, however, I'm not sure that colour looks 100% right for the map - especially where the player first starts.
Maybe if you blended some colours together and made the water darker closer to where the player starts it would look slightly better? I like the stones on the edge of the river, along with the many shrubs and animals, but... I'm just not feeling the colour is right somehow. It's probably just my opinion though so it doesn't matter :)
You also did a very good job of concealing the outlaws in that mountain by using the trees. That was very well done indeed. The fact that construction of the bridge started before you took over the first Estate was good as well (though that as automatic) because it meant you didn't have to wait an awful long time for the bridge to be built. One thing I did notice (I don't know whether you intended this?) was that you could target the crossbowmen and spearmen on the walls before the bridge with your Horse Archers and they didn't come and attack because they were on defensive behaviour.
There were a lot of pathways on the main island, which was confusing but great at the same time. The smoke (or whatever it was) on the top of the river was a good add-on because it really looked like it was coming from a waterfall or streaming down the cliff.
Another thing, I like the terrain you used for The Bull's Castle, that was very good. The reinforcements at different points around the map were good, I think it could have been slightly better by somehow making it appear the troops have just come on the map, I.E. from an edge of the map.
Also, not that it really matters because you couldn't do much with your Estate anyway, but I did notice that you had Gong Production and Rat Production on without a Gong Pit or Falconer's Post to remove them so you were losing popularity through it.
In mission 2, you did have two win objectives, I don't know whether you wanted that, but you could either complete A, B and C or take all 7 estates to win. I did think it was extremely clever of you to make the Bull's Troops reinforce the player when you got close to them on some of the estates, and make it from the bull so his troops wouldn't attack them. I also didn't understand how to make the weapons required because I still had the building availabilities from the last mission and I ran out of troops (my lord only just surviving). I had a look around the map and I couldn't find a way to get the weapons, how did you have to get them?
Unfortunately, that's just about as far as I got, my game crashed again. It seems to just be my game so I'm wondering if it's something I've modded into it? But what I did see was brilliant. :)
[Edited by Lord_Chris on 8th Mar 2014 00:00:00]
Thank You, a lot of work went into getting this map just right, I
take it you are talking about the players castle?
Thank You again! Wooden walls, nothing new there, you will find
them in a lot of my maps, they work as well as they do because of the
lack of siege equipment, the troops need to get up close and smash the
gates down.
The players castle was supposed to seam like it had been invaded,
with most of the buildings being knocked down, only a few things left,
but the walls needed to be intact for the map to work the way I intended.
I liked the water color, I have been to rivers that look like
that, the water so clear and blue like that, I could change it, but you
will like some of the next maps even better, this was the first map that
had this much detail.
There were a few people who complained about the time it took to
build the bridge so I made a few adjustments, I'm glad it worked for you.
The map is not meant to be a hard war map more of an adventure, the
troops guarding the villages are there to keep you busy, rather than just
walking through it.
The smoke was mist to make the water look like white water rapids
coming down from the bridge, the water does run down hill from the
bridge.
The story does tell you about the troops being held captive at the
villages, I notice later you say about the troops being the Bulls troops
as reinforcements, those are your troops held captive.
Mission 2 is only one win, complete 3 quests and (not or)take 7
villages, the reinforcements are triggered when you get to the campfire
before you take the village, I used marker flags and enemy near a flag
(you are the enemy) to trigger the reinforcements.
When you get to the village through the wooden walls and puzzle, they
have the fletchers and armory, you have to setup the carters to get the
bows to your castle, and when you move over the mountain, that village
has the leather armor, you just need to get it to your castle, and you
need to get the village with the wood so your carters can get through.
To bad about your game crashing, that's the thing about mods, and
a lot of other things we do that add up to trouble in the game, some
things that effect the game is saving maps and saves from playing, if you
save them as one save, it will cause some trouble, I always add an
extension like a then b and end up with a bunch of saves but no troubles,
as well as the save to map trick, not to mention all of the updates from
FireFly.
You might want to reinstall your game, I will be doing mine again soon, I
have a little map work to finish first.
Thanks a lot for the review Lord Chris!
[Edited by Lord Vetka on 15th Mar 2014 00:00:00]
I take it you are talking about the players castle?
Yes, I was talking about the player's castle.
they work as well as they do because of the lack of siege equipment
The lack of siege equipment made the map much harder, but better IMO.
The players castle was supposed to seam like it had been invaded
You certainly did a very good job of that. Personally I felt there should have been a few small invasions of Outlaws coming to make it more like a battle. Maybe adding a few ruins could make it better too. I did feel like the camp has been invaded though, your use of textures and trees made that very effective.
The story does tell you about the troops being held captive at the villages, I notice later you say about the troops being the Bulls troops as reinforcements, those are your troops held captive.
Very good scripting indeed :)
I wish there was an option to auto save, I always forget to save the game. Maybe I'll have to mod it in ;)
[Edited by Lord_Chris on 1st Apr 2014 00:00:00]