|
Author |
File Description |
HockeySam18 |
Posted on 10/23/16 @ 08:28 AM
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
Required Modpack (if not included with the download): |
UserPatch v1.4 |
Style: |
Mix |
The wind howled across the open steppe, sending a sharp chill down Aldrin's spine. He opened his eyes in surprise, only to be greeted by the ordinary, if unwelcome, sight of the sun creeping over the crest of the nearest hill, signaling the fast approach of dawn. Splashing his face with water, Aldrin fastened his tunic and gazed around, noting that each of his loyal watchmen stood at attention, vigilant for any unwelcome visitors. The Gerothian Steppe was crawling with brutal hordes of Valonian cavalrymen, and the ruthless horselords of Fuldin tirelessly pursued Aldrin's company from the north, eager for the glory that they might derive from the slaying of a rival king. Looking off into the direction from whence he and his men arrived, Aldrin was overcome with an inundation of memories. He recalled with a grim feeling the horrors of the past several weeks, and briefly relived the events that had brought himself and his men to this desperate pass...
Winner of the 2016 Classic Design Contest
A StormWind Studios Production
Requires the latest version of the UserPatch
Background:
Those of you who are familiar with Galderton Hill RP, my previous multiplayer project, particularly if you read the companion document that shipped with the download, will have briefly experienced the world in which Storm of the Steppe is set. This scenario, however, takes place roughly five and a half centuries before the events of Galderton Hill RP, and in an entirely different setting. Hundreds of leagues north of the land of Verstonia lies the Gerothian Steppe, a barren, windswept, and sloping plain whose namesake was a particularly infamous confederation of horselords that dominated much of the region. The inhospitable climate is the least of your worries.
In this scenario, you will guide the distant ancestors of the Aldrian Empire of Galderton Hill RP, who were still known by a different name at that point in time. Driven from their idyllic homeland in a lush valley to the far north of the steppe, Aldrin's followers, who would eventually take the name "Aldrians" in homage to his charismatic leadership, fled to the south in search of a suitable place of refuge. Their success - or failure - is entirely in your hands. Will your guidance bring them to a new homeland and eternal glory, or will they tragically vanish from the pages of history?
Features:
For all of you B&D lovers out there, this scenario should be right up your alley. This scenario is in many ways an experiment, as I have embraced a design style far different than my usual repertoire, and am currently toying with pushing the boundaries of B&D gameplay. Here are a few things that you can expect from this approach:
An extremely open and spacious map (4-player size) and, by extension, a largely minimalistic design style. The setting is a nearly boundless steppe, after all! Mobile horsemen rule these plains, and attacks can be unexpected and deadly. Smart AIs utilizing effective troop combinations and attacking on several fronts will allow the player to test their mettle. The goal here is to consistently present the possibility of setbacks or outright defeats while keeping things fair.
Limited fortifications. We all know the time-proven flaw of most B&D scenarios: the ability of the player to hide behind a sea of fortifications and boom with impunity until finally launching an unstoppable attack with a death ball of 100 paladins. Rest assured, you will acquire a few fortifications at the start of the B&D, but you will be unable to construct any more. The player will be unable to build archery units, either, so there will be no abusing of the AI with unstoppable masses of archers.
Sparse resources! This isn't your standard map - concentrations of resources are few and far between on the open steppe, and you will be forced to battle viciously for each deposit, particularly gold. Due to this concern, troops cannot be indiscriminately spammed at the enemy, but instead must be used frugally and strategically. The lack of fortifications will require the player to defend their economy through the strength of arms rather than with infinite castles.
Difficulty dynamism. This normally goes without saying, but the difference in difficulty levels in this scenario will be quite steep and is designed to accommodate all types of players. If you're relatively new to B&D gameplay and/or desire an experience devoid of the more challenging features of this scenario, standard difficulty is there for you. If you're an expert B&D player and/or want to scratch and claw for every inch of ground, then hard difficulty is for you! If you want something right in the middle, moderate difficulty is tailored exactly to your needs. My goal here is to make the gameplay accessible to everyone.
Extensive usage of UserPatch features. From design tricks largely possible due to the improvements that the UserPatch has to offer, to the new UserPatch trigger functionality, to various UserPatch AI features, this scenario has and will benefit greatly from the commendable efforts of the UserPatch team in building a brighter future for AoE2.
Racing the clock! Time is against you, as the same enemies that drove your people from your original homeland are in hot pursuit. Take too long to complete the scenario, and they will strike, with potentially deadly results.
That's not all for features, but I don't want to give everything away now, do I?!
Screenshots:
Your starting troops | The windswept steppe | A lakeside tomb | A hidden shrine | An abandoned village | Dare you enter? | Precious gold | Restless horsemen | A fearsome enemy | Cascading waters | An ancient bridge
As always, many thanks to my comrades at StormWind Studios for consistent and helpful inspiration, feedback, and above all for being wonderful teammates.
This scenario requires the 1.0c patch of The Conquerors as well as the latest version of the UserPatch. It is not compatible with the HD Edition.
Enjoy! Comments are welcome here or in the project discussion thread on the forum, and a review in particular would be much appreciated. |
Pages: « First « 1 2 [3] | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
---|
Cataphract887
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 04/06/18 @ 11:43 AM
I too find an early pikeman+skirmisher combo to be essential. Keep them on defensive stance and add in some monks for healing. The key here is to divide your troops into multifront components, IE just enough pikemen and skirmishers out in front of the base while a say monk+knight force subjugates the rear enemy. Once the player defeats the rear enemy the scenario is pretty much in the bag since they cannot challenge your monk\knight\trash army effectively. The only difficulty is their fortified bases are quite tough to storm.
One way to defeat the enemy is just trash units plus rams. Have about a dozen each of barracks and archery range then push on their base spamming reinforcements. Mostly they will fight your units and your rams can come through and kill off some key buildings. Pull back to recuperate while waiting for fresh rams to build up before going in again. After some key military production buildings fall they run out of steam quickly.
Excellent scenario I would say-my early review here looks a bit shaky as I didnt express myself too well. I dont think you got enough credit for the story elements perhaps, the quality of writing was very good and the main character was depicted well enough I still remember his scenes. A bit of a shame the scenario didnt have even more story with him hiding in the castle throughout.[Edited on 04/06/18 @ 11:44 AM]
|
HockeySam18
Staff
Official Reviewer
File Author |
Posted on 04/07/18 @ 09:45 AM
I most commonly split my initial recruits between the area by the town center and the area by the farms. Monks are placed near the tower by the mill and under the town center, two places where they can quickly garrison if ever attacked. Despite their slow gather rate, I like to harvest the berries initially because the wood for farms is arguably better spent on soldiers and an archery range in the early going.
It is also possible to funnel West Valon's attacks to the castle with house walls. A cheesy tactic, but one that does render the threat that they pose largely negligible.
I am interested to know how players approached the decision of army composition. I would imagine that trash floods with some rams and knights are the most common choice, but in the past I have also won by flooding longswords and pikes to support my rams. Another particularly entertaining playthrough involved a sea of onagers and throwing axemen.
One potential strike in the playability category is that I discovered that the attack system used by the AI is bugged. Instead of attacking in timed intervals, it sends a new attack once the previous one has been parried. One could argue that this was actually preferable given the result that the player feels constantly harassed by swift enemies, but it was nevertheless not by design.
I'm glad that you enjoyed the story and the writing. I suspect that Dallows' superb voice acting is a major reason that people might find the storyline atmospherically memorable. I had thought about having a little more exposition here and there, but given the trigger limit of the contest and the relatively simple scope of the scenario it was probably one of those situations where less ended up being more.
I was also wary of a setup where the player has to protect a hero in a straight-up B&D, as the result is rarely desirable. Even if I found a way to incorporate him into the scenario (say, by having only him triggering the monument sidequests), players will just end up hiding him in a castle for the majority of the scenario, where he is effectively a wasted unit of population room, rather than risking him in open battle. |
Possidon
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 07/09/20 @ 11:16 AM
Storm on the Steppe is HockeySam18's winning entry to the Classic Design Contest, a competition which focused on created simple scenarios akin to those which you would find in the original ES campaigns or the early releases to the Blacksmith, such as those created by Ingo van Theil, Gordon Farrell or Mark Stoker. The contest had strict rules to discourage the creation of ambitious epic scenarios, such as limiting the size of the map and the number of triggers that could be used.
Playability: 5
Storm on the Steppe is a highly enjoyable scenario. While it may not be as grand in scale as The Quest it is certainly a highly ambitious take on a classic style scenario. The gameplay is a mixture of FF and B&D and gives a really nice nostalgic feel to the gameplay. It certainly felt like I was playing one of those original Battles of the Conquerors scenarios, just made at a much higher level. The scenario is highly enjoyable, highly creative, beautiful to look at and creates and immersive and entertaining experience for all players.
Balance: 5
The scenario is as perfectly balanced as it can get. There's a level here for players of every skill level. There's a high level of challenge which requires some intense tactics and micromanagement within the FF elements and speed and consideration in the B&D section. The player is gifted with limited resources and trainable units, but they are well thought through by the designer to allow you to defend yourself against skirmishes by the invading horse clans. The skirmishes come often enough to keep the player on their toes and in need of constant sight of their surroundings, yet never in a severe onslaught that would make the scenario near impossible to beat. A lot of thought has gone in to using in-game features to make the scenario as evenly balanced an effective as possible, such as the use of civ bonuses and AI behaviours. It is clear that this designer has considerable knowledge of the game.
Creativity: 5
Storm on the Steppe gives the impression of being a fairly simple scenario, with its limited triggers and simple aesthetics, but it is far from it. The scenario embraces the limitations that the contest rules evoked and used them to its advantage, making the player the most vital key to move the story onwards. The scenario has a number of bonus objectives that the player can chose to complete, such as destroying the three additional horse clans before claiming the capital city, or finding the legendary lost books that provide information that will grant you additional power. The scenario creatively uses mechanics such as civ bonuses and AI behaviour to make the scenario as effective as possible, and utilises UserPatch features such as additional tiggers and AI updates. But by far the most creative aspect of this scenario is the fantastic addition of voice acting.
Map Design: 5
As the titled suggests this scenario is set atop a vast steppe which consisted of many open plains and scare resources. There are a few colonies located near the corners of each map and the player is positioned in an abandoned town in the centre of the map. There are also a few mountainous regions and a river to the east. Steppes are really difficult landscapes to design due to the barrenness and plainness of the the landscape. It takes a designer with much skill and artistry to create a steppe which is not only realistic but beautiful to look at, and HockeySam has certainly succeeded in this. There's an exceptional use of terrain mixing and elevation used to make the steppe look as realistic as possible with careful consideration of what terrains to use and the placement of each square. Despite the relatively bland look the map has an exceptional use of eye candy from the odd piece of vegetation to the narrow mountain passes and the abandoned temples of old. Every inch of this map is beautiful to behold and wonder at.
Story/Instructions: 5
The storyline of this scenario take place within the same fictional world which the author created for his Multiplayer scenario; Galderton Hill. Set five centuries before that particular scenario this story follows the ancestors of the great Empire from the previous scenario and their flight after being driven from their homeland by invaders. The storyline is not some much the focal point of the scenario but helps drive the action of the gameplay and sets a nice atmosphere to the scenario. The real highlight of the story though is the incredible voice acting. Every line of dialogue in the scenario is voice acted professionally which helps make the story flow better and helps the player really understand the emotion and dynamics the story is trying to tell. The instructions are clear and precise and explain exactly what is needed in order to achieve victory, and helpful hints are provided if you get stuck.
Additional Comments:
Scenarios with a perfect score a rare to come by these days but Storm on the Steppe is one of these rarities. A must download scenario that proves that you don't have to create a hugely ambitious epic to claim a perfect score.
Thanks
Possidon |
X Mehrooz |
Posted on 11/22/23 @ 07:15 AM
This was my most favourite Custom Scenario from back when I was in my college years. I was hoping to find a DE port for it in AOKHeaven. It's a shame it hasn't been ported to DE yet. This scenario is a masterpiece and much much better than a lot of badly done unfun "official campaigns" :( |
Pages: « First « 1 2 [3] |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
---|
5.0 | Breakdown |
---|
Playability | 4.8 | Balance | 5.0 | Creativity | 5.0 | Map Design | 5.0 | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 1,916 |
Favorites: [] | 4 |
Size: | 8.14 MB |
Added: | 10/23/16 |
|