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Holding Jerusalem (Byzantine vs. Saracen)
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Author |
File Description |
Octavian Augustus |
Posted on 08/17/00 @ 12:00 AM
File Details |
Version: |
Age of Kings 1.0 |
Style: |
Mix |
Sometime the the seventh or eighth century, the Islamic empire captured Palestine from Byzantium. This scenario places you in command of the Byzantine Jerusalem garrison. You must defend to city for 80 minuted. This file makes a challenging single or multi-player file. |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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rakovsky |
Posted on 05/05/22 @ 01:46 AM
Playability: 4
I beat it on HARD, but some aspects of how the scenario plays out are a bit murky, specifically (A) my Wood and food drain and (B) how the enemy seemingly melts away during its second wave.
By the resource drain, I mean that throughout the mission, I notice that for some reason, my resources go to zero wood or food, or else leak a big part of the them, yet don't manually tribute it to anyone.
BALANCE: 4
I beat it on Hard and consider myself from average to good in skill for Single Player missions.
I repulsed the first blue and green wave about 5-10 minutes in, but used up all my forces. Then they sent another wave 15 minutes in. The blue wave was especially big.
The blue wave took out most of my towers but then somehow melted away, as did almost all of the green wave. About 40 minutes in, the enemies demolished my TC with a siege ram. However, at this point the enemy soldiers had seemed to melt away, leaving almost all of my walls and buildings in place. The enemies didn't launch a serious attack after that.
80 minutes into the match, expecting that the enemy changed to defense and still had their large army, and with me about ready to give up, I turned on the MARCO POLO cheat and noticed that there is practically no enemy army on the map, which is weird because the enemies do have enemy military buildings. Maybe the enemy just started with a fixed number of soldiers and then doesn't regenerate them much, despite having lots of villagers. The green enemy did crank out a line of foot soldiers, who weren't strong however against my hero unit.
I tried hunting down the green villagers and knocking down their forts. A little annoyance on HARD mode is that the enemy pumps out tons of villagers and when I knock down the enemy TCs, the enemy villagers build another one. So it's like "Whack a Mole." I got 1 hr 54 minutes into the game, and the green enemy was still going strong with villagers and TCs even though I could easily overcome any foot soldiers at this point.
The balance seemed okay with the defense part of the mission. But somehow the enemy's second wave melts away during the enemy attack phase, and this could either be because I was fighting well or because there is some aspect of the AI telling them to turn around and flee after some point. But the HARD difficulty is annoying when it comes to the stage of taking out the enemy TCs and villagers.
I wasn't able to build up major defensive forces before the first wave- I didn't have enough time or population space, and my resources were draining automatically. I played skillfully with the soldier force that I started with.
CREATIVITY: 4
I thought that it was creative because it gave you a castle space and an ally and had you defend from two enemies while using limited resources and limited preparation time.
MAP DESIGN: 3
I notice that my wood and food somehow mysteriously drains away even when I don't click on things. I guess that this could this be some kind of automatic tribute function. I don't know if it's intentionally arranged to happen by the Creator- maybe he wanted you to have more limited resources.
I finally conquered the Green enemy at 2 hr 8 min, and then the Blue ones at 2 hr 27 min. ... But the mission didn't end. It turns out that I still had to destroy my ally, "Tel Aviv." Fortunately, this was easy- I just built two castles in the Aqua base and some fire galleys in the western sea and it was over pretty quickly. My guess is that this is a design flaw and that the Creator intended for you to win as soon as you took out the green and blue enemies.
STORY/Instructions: 3
Your ally is Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv got its name in 1910. Previously, the main city in that area was Jaffa, which is still there today.
I didn't lock the teams. I guess that you aren't supposed to.
After over an hour of me holding my castle successfully, after the enemy killed my TC, the enemy went away. Yet the mission play continued. As I recall, the opening announcements said I needed to hold the castle for an hour. The webpage's description says that I must hold it for 80 minutes. But I did that, and the game still continued. The Objectives tab says Conquest: "Destroy all enemies". I am guessing that this is a Design Flaw and that the Creator intended you to win as soon as you took out the blue and green enemies, but this is not clear.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
One commentator wrote:
"ALL of your ALLIES are neutral to you So that the people you are trying to defend *Such as the Port town of Tel-Aviv* Shoot at you".
I didn't run into that problem, so I guess that the Creator fixed it.
The population is automatically set to a 75 person limit.
HINTS:
5 minutes into the match, Green attacks from the Northeast.
There is a relic east of Jerusalem and two north of it. There is a bush patch SE of Jerusalem. You have some trade carts; you don't need to focus as much on stone or gold. Use the sheep in the opening city area or the ally will get it. Start with making wood because you need it for buildings and upgrades. A logging camp is good. At a TC you can research carts to move faster.
The spot just west of your stone walls seems a good spot for a TC. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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3.6 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 4.0 | Balance | 4.0 | Creativity | 4.0 | Map Design | 3.0 | Story/Instructions | 3.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 1,443 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 77.25 KB |
Added: | 08/17/00 |
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