The Danube River map is a team based map. It is best played between two teams. The map is unique in that
i The river is made of deep water which prevents building docks or ships.
ii A single land bridge spans the water way between you and the enemy.
iii A bloody battle awaits as both teams try to gain control over the bridge. The battles you fight on this map are like no other.
TECHNICAL JARGON ABOUT THE UPDATE
UPDATED: JAN, 2002
Danube River 5 now makes better and more interesting landscapes.
The land bridge has been widened and made variable to the number of players, this was due to many requests for a bigger fighting space.
Fixes in road terrain and mountain types placements have been made.
Some problems with teh map:
1 It is based on AOE coastal where it was possible to have a piggy in the middle type scenario. This is true for this map if more than 2 teams are used (however for zoners that is rare).
3 The bridge has been optimised to allow +2 or -2 players for each given size map. Using 8 players on a Tiny map is +6 more than should be on that sized map, so you may get a second bridge in this case. (This does not happen in original Danube River, however I think this new version is a more balanced and optimised map).
The author has done a nice job in scripting a new concept, that of a land bridge between opposite teams without any possibility of naval involvement or transports. Nice to see a new idea in rms...
PLAYABILITY: 4 As stated above and in the map description, the map involves a land bridge across a river, between teams, without any chance of building a dock. Early strategy involves getting control over the land bridge and/or walling off your end (or walling off the enemy's end if you can get there soon enough :) ). A little different and/or new gameplay results.
VISUAL APPEAL: 3 There are a few points that could be significantly improved upon. First, there are 3 random terrain patterns for variability, which is nice. However, the winter version has 2 problems. First, the road connecting the players could have been made using , for example, " #const 38 SNOWROAD " then using the connecting road in the winter version as SNOWROAD which looks a lot better against a snow backgroound. Second, the landbridge looks kind of dumb made out of a grass terrain in this winter scene- could use SNOW for a better visual appearance.
Another minor point involves using the 'brown' mountains against a green base_terrain - should try to avoid that as it looks artificial (not that these mountains ever look perfect, but you gotta try...).
Last point regarding appearance is: especially when playing on a relatively smaller map size, sometimes the connection to the landbridge for some of the 'wing' players puts a strip of that terrain down the beach (i.e. on a TINY or SMALL size map with 4-6 players... some people like to play with a relatively small map size). On the winter scene, again, that looks bad. You could avoid that by assigning a cost of 1 to all of the land terrains and increasing the value of the cost of the BEACH, ICE and water terrains (say 45 or 99 or something - experiment & go with what works)
I suggest to the author that he try revising the script with these ideas and I will be glad to re-review it.