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Heroes of the Three Kingdoms - Episode I v 1.02
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Author |
File Description |
Tsunami Studios |
Posted on 07/16/01 @ 12:00 AM (updated 08/11/08)
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
Style: |
Mix |
Number of scenarios: |
6 |
Episode I: Rise of the Heroes
By: Tsunami Studios Team -
http://scnpunk.heavengames.com/tsunamistudios
Head of Project: The Conquistador
Head Researcher: The Conquistador
Sounds Technician: The Conquistador (90%), General_Zhaoyun (10%)
Scenario Designers: The Conquistador (97%), Mythie (3%)
Modpack Designers: Ballista_Turtle (92%), Cian McGuire (4%), The Conquistador (4%)
Intro Bitmaps: The Conquistador
Playtesters: Christopher, Inquizative, The_Conqueror, General_Zhaoyun, Emperor_Vishruth, TNK, Phenix Sunflame, Shiva, The Vampire Slayer, Ballista_Turtle, IrishStag, The Ztolk, Brave Sir Robin
Intro to Story: Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is based on the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The story begins at the Battle of Ke Zhou in 187 AD, where Liu Bei, the main character of the story, leads a small army of militiamen to aid in the attempt to destroy the Yellow Scarves, a group of rebells that have been plaguing China for almost one decade. Cao Cao, the commander of the reinforcing cavalry, comes in soon and together they defeated the Yellow Scarves. Then, Liu Bei went to Gong Sun Zhan, one of the great nobles of the north, and Cao Cao took a position at Luo Yang.
However, the destiny of the two men was to meet each other again. Soon, in 189 AD. Gong Sun Zhan and Liu Bei both joined the Eight Duke Alliance, which Cao Cao organized. Together they shall challenge Dong Zhuo, the most powerful man in China. This is where the story of Three Kingdoms began.
Characters:
Liu Bei (Xuan De) - The descendant of the Prince of Jing Shan and the founder of the Shu Han Empire. Although of noble birth, he was actually very poor for most of his youth. He made his fame when he defeated the Yellow Scarf army in 189 AD. He is the adopted brother of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.
Guan Yu (Yun Chang) - The adopted brother of Liu Bei and a symbol of honor and loyalty in Chinese history. In fact, a miniature statute of him is often found in Police stations in Hong Kong. He was the head of the Five Tiger Generals of the Shu Han.
Zhang Fei (Yi De) - The adopted brother of Liu Bei and Guan Yu. When Guan Yu was serving in Cao Cao's army, he said: "My brother Yi De is a much better fighter than me. He can take the head of a general in a battle like he can take a coin out of his wallet.". Zhang Fei's ferocity is very menacing. He was the third of the Five Tiger Generals.
Zhao Yun (Zi Long) - One of Liu Bei's most trusted generals and would later become one of the Five Tiger generals of the Shu Han. He is both cunning and brave.
Cao Cao (Meng De) - The founder of the Wei army and was dubbed the "Hero of Chaos". What he did was nothing short of amazing. He was the son of a middle class merchant and volunteered himself to destroying the Yellow Scarves. After attempting to assassinate Dong Zhuo, he organized the Alliance of Eight Dukes that almost succeeded in destroying Dong Zhuo. After that, he built his army and eventually conquered all of Northern China.
Xiahou Dun (Yuan Rang) - Cao Cao's cousin and most loyal follower. He is dubbed "blind Xiahou" because he is blinded on one eye. He lost his eye during a conflict with Lui Bu's army in 197 AD. Xiahou Dun is one of the fiercest generals in the Wei army and was given the title commander-in-chief after Cao Pi came to the throne.
Lui Bu (Feng Xian) - "In warriors, there is Lui Bu. In horses, there is Chi Tu". Lui Bu was perhaps the greatest warrior in the entire Three Kingdoms period. A master of the bow and horse riding, the great warrior is just as great and fierce as his steed, Chi Tu. However, Lui Bu had a poor sense of honor and loyalty. He served three masters before founding his own army. He was eventually defeated by an alliance formed by Cao Cao and Liu Bei.
Yuan Shao (Ben Chu) - Lord of Northern China. His family has been amongst the ranks of the "Three Ancestors" (three highest positions in the Han court) for four generations. Yuan Shao himself was a proud and arrogant man. He left Luo Yang in 187 AD because he did not recognize Dong Zhuo as the chancellor nor the new emperor, and went to northern China to build an army of his own. In 189 AD, Yuan Shao responded to Cao Cao invitation to forge an alliance against Dong Zhuo, and was named the commanding general.
Yuan Shu (Gong Lu) - A lord at southern China and half brother of Yuan Shao. Yuan Shao was a buffoon and had always been a midget in ability compared to his brother. He tagged along his brother and joined the Eight Duke Alliance, only to be a mere food transport manager. Yuan Shu became sour because of this, and contributed to the eventual failure of the Eight Duke Alliance.
Dong Zhuo - The chancellor of China and ruled China with an iron fist. Because his reign was so cruel, all the nobles in China rallied together to fight him. Defeated by the Eight Duke Alliance, Dong Zhuo burnt Luo Yang and fled to Chang An.
Instructions:
This campaign requires 2 speed settings. For the first scenario the cutscene, you need to play on normal (unless of course you don't download the music files) or the music will overlap. For the rest of the scenarios, it is recommended to play on the fast setting because the gap between each repition of the music will be rather big if played on normal or slower.
Unzip the campaign file into the campaign folder in your Age of Empires II directory. If you have music files (each music file is available for individual download), you must unzip them into the scenario folder under the sound folder in your AOE2 directory. The only exception the the music files is the "Intro Music", which you must put into the "stream folder" under the "sound" folder in your AOE2 directory.
Features:
- very accurate to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel
- RPS gameplay
- Interesting bitmaps
- The new "upgrade" units system, where you click on towers and pay gold to receive massive unit upgrades
- New upgrade heroes system
- Special weapon bonuses
- Gain an aura by gathering relics
- Unique music files from the game "Legend of Cao Cao" by Koei
- Custom modpack that changes the portraits of heroes and the initial viewing screen (extracted from "Fate of the Dragon")
Misc.
This campaign is made by Tsunami Studios. We are an Asian civ based team that specializes in making Asian campaigns. We would like to prefer that you ask us before posting our campaign at your site. You can contact me, The Conquistador, the head of the project, at stan_the_conquistador@hotmail.com. Thank you for your cooperation.
Music Files:
Edit: 08/11/08 The .zip includes Music File 1 to 9 and Intro Music.
Custom modpack:
Please download it from the link below and extract all files to your AOE2 directory.
Heroes of the Three Kingdoms modpack
Edit: The above link does not work anymore. If you have the Heroes of the Three Kingdoms Mod Pack please contact the Blacksmith Administrator.
FAQ:
Q: What is the upgrade system?
A: The upgrade system consists of 6 "upgrade towers" and money. Each time you click an upgrade tower (separated into 6 categories: infantry, cavalry, archers, buildings, towers, and siege weapons), that specific category gets upgraded. With the exception of archers, each click will cost you 1000 gold and will improve your units substantially.
Q: What are "Auras"?
A: Auras are hero generated magical effects. Only two heroes generate auras in Heroes of the Three Kingdoms - Episode I: Rise of the Heroes. These two are Cao Cao and Liu Bei. Liu Bei generates the Aura of Deprivation, which drains all resources from all enemy players every 5 seconds. Cao Cao generates the Aura of Famine, which drains food from all of HIS enemy players every 5 seconds. Auras require relics to activate and upgrade. In other words, the aura is activated when you obtain one relic and will upgrade to level 2 when you have 2 relics. You will be notified when it is activated or upgraded.
Q: In "Taking Xu Zhou as an Obligation", I die when I am savin the purple town! What gives?
A: You must rush to the ORANGE town (revealed on mini-map) and save its castle. There are some villagers you will get outside the city, use them to repair the orange castle.
Q: In "The Eight Duke Alliance", the game crashes when it change view to the fat guy!
A: Turn off the music by removing the music files from your sound/scenario folder.
Q: I can't download any of your stuff... I get a 403
A: Right click the link, and then select "save target as".
Signed,
The Conquistador, Tsunami Group Emperor
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Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Andres_age |
Posted on 07/25/01 @ 12:00 AM
Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is based on the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The story begins at the Battle of Ke Zhou in 187 AD, where Liu Bei, the main character of the story, leads a small army of militiamen to aid in the attempt to destroy the Yellow Scarves, a group of rebells that have been plaguing China for almost one decade. Cao Cao, the commander of the reinforcing cavalry, comes in soon and together they defeated the Yellow Scarves. Then, Liu Bei went to Gong Sun Zhan, one of the great nobles of the north, and Cao Cao took a position at Luo Yang. The campaign has got 6 huge scenarios (the first is a cut-scene), really exciting and funny. I think this is one of the best historical campaigns I have ever played, and it must be in "The Best of AoK". But for
the moment, it hasn´t got a 5.0...
Playability5
The playability is great. All the scenarios were a challenge and exciting. There´re no bugs, and the IA is wonderful. Perhaps the main problem is the lag. It was terrible, and the second scenario crashed 5 times. But as I´ve got a slow PC, and almost all the scenarios with my computer have lag, I don´t think this detail should take off marks for this.
Balance4
Perhaps the campaign´s too difficult. The second scenario is easy. Your enemies rarealy attack you. And when they do, the attacks are easy to repel.
The third scenario isn´t easy. I had to rush a lot to protect the orange player, and I had to restart the scenario 4 times. I had luck and in the 3rd time I arrive when the castle was 120/12000... The 4th is really difficult. It is the most exciting and funny, but one of the most difficult. It was a headache to enter to Xia Pi.
The 5th is terrible. You have to enter and take Xu Zhou. The enemies are really strong, and you have to gather lots of resources and specially gold, upgrade your units several times and attack. The problem is when you take Xu Zhou, you get the city and lose your initial camp. Cao Cao, who was gathering and creating a huge army, attacks. you. It was simply terrorific. My best score was 19:48!!! but then the enemies destroyed my castle. I couldn´t bear the 20 minutes and I had to use the cheats... The 6th scenario was terrible too. Everybody attacks you from every side. It was a nightmare...I had to restart all the scenario several times (in the easiest level of difficulty!), and I spent hours and hours playing and playing. I am a bad player in economy, and an average in battles (F&F) but I think the difficult should down a little...
Creativity4
The objectives in H3K were the same. Attack and defend. You have to defeat several kingdoms and defend yourself or another kingdom. And the worst, there are no sidequests :(
There´re no terrain trick neither, but in the game there are many tricks, like the Aura of famine (I didn´t understand it!) and the Upgrades towers. The units are stronger. A crossbow can get 250 HP and more than 20 points of damage. If you want to have strong units, you have to collect gold and use the Upgrades towers. On the other hand, this trick is unrealistic. Perhaps the next time the authors should put "Towers of science" or a new player called "Scientist" or whatever and investigate technologies.
Map design 5
Really good. The design was really realistic and wery well done. The bad point is that only a little part of the map is used in some scenarios, but I won´t down points only for this.
Story/Instructions 5
When I played the Demo, there were lots of spell and grammar mistakes. But in the final version they are corrected. The Story is exciting and the dialogues and objectives are clear. The history is wonderful and the bitmaps are good. It has a more-than-deserves 5.
Perhaps the difficulty is too big. If the authors down it and put one or two sidequests, the campaign would have a 5.
Anyway, I enjoyed very much the campaign and was very funny. Good work, Tsunami Studios!
In you want a challenge, you must download H3K. And if you don´t, download too! ;)
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Park (id: Angel Park)
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 08/11/01 @ 12:00 AM
Ok, upon request I decided to try out this campaign. For those that don't want to read the whole review, lets just you have a very good chance of enjoying this campaign.
Start off, this campaign completely has an Asian theme. The story rotates between many different main characters.
Playability:
This was a pretty hard thing to judge. After playing so many games and campaigns, scenarios tend to get boring. This campaign mostly deals with either building mass units and than attacking/defending or using your highly trained heroes to kill the enemy. Therefore it wasn't too fun or unique but still was greater than most scenarios. The author also included a unit/building upgrade system that spends gold. I found this almost useless. Although the author could of found ways to make this scenario much more funner, I cannot say that it was bad.
Balance:
This was sort of a touchy part. Some people might disagree with me about this score. When I review a campaign I look overall if there were easy and hard scenarios. In this campaign, the starting scenarios are pretty easy. All you really need to do is create a large army to destroy the enemy's starting large army. Than you just use heroes to waste everyone else. I remember one scenario I used my 2 heroes to kill all the skirmishers that the computer were making and 2 trebs to destroy buildings. Another scenario where you must protect an allied town only requires you to use the 4 heroes they provide. The later scenarios became harder with larger armies and weaker heroes.
Creativity:
Well the asian based campaign was a nice touch. Some of the additional music, mod pack, and name changing was a nice touch although not all really needed. Only thing that really looked great were the Asian Icons for heroes and some music they played.
Map Design:
They weren't any new things in the scenario. But overall the scenary looked great. Perhaps not the best but really up there.
Story:
The story sounds like something great for a long book, and this scenario was based on a book/story. Still scenarios in general are very hard to put long stories in. I felt lost many times in the plot and characters and only knowing what my basic objectives were. Perhaps some people will understand the story and have fun but there are still many out there that won't.
Note this campaign also comes with a modpack and music to download. I personally didn't find the music to help very much. The modpack while it was good, it didn't help the fun level of this game.
Pretty much a pretty good scenario. I'ld suggest downloading it and having some fun. |
kud13 |
Posted on 12/19/20 @ 02:54 PM
Heroes of the Three Kingdoms- Rise of the Heroes is a quasi-historical campaign, based on the famous Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that depict the turbulent era in early Chinese history during and following the collapse of the Han dynasty. The player follows one of the greatest heroes, Liu Bei and his brothers-in-arms, as they crush the rebellion and depose the usurper Dong Zhuo, before falling out with Cao Cao, another hero who eventually becomes the ruler of the Kingdom of Wei and one of the pretenders to the imperial throne. The campaign involves a cinematic introduction and 5 post-imperial scenarios, focused usually on either leading a siege, or defending from one. It was played using HD version on Moderate difficulty.
Playability: 5
To start off, the campaign was fun. It's essentially all about large-scale battles involving units that had their stats greatly boosted (think some of MCrnigoj's battle scenarios), where the player is additionally given the opportunity to choose which troop types he'd like to upgrade with large quantities of gold. The hints warn early on that the opponents will be periodically upgrading as well, so speed and aggression of of the essence. Although a few defensive situations took me multiple tries to get right, overall I found the gameplay to be compelling and engrossing. the player's heroes increase their stats as his kill count goes up (levelling up), which I think is a mechanic mimicking the "Dynasty Warriors" series. In addition, in longer B&D scenarios, collecting relics grants each side "auras"- causing the opponent to start losing resources such as food or gold. A neat mechanic, one that I felt encouraged exploration so as to at the very least deny your opponent relics. Although I've struggled with a few scenarios, at no point did I feel frustrated with the design- rather, i was motivated to try again and learn from my mistakes, which to me is a hallmark of a highly playable scenario.
-I DID need to restart the introductory cinematic scenario to have a scripted fight end up the way the designers intended (without units wandering off and not getting killed as intended), but I'm pretty sure that's an HD pathing quirk, so I won't be deducting anything for that.
Balance: 5
The campaign was tough, but ultimately fair. My only real complaint comes from the first playable scenario, where a group of allied souped-up paladins was scripted to stay frozen and unmoving, as me and the AI were embroiled in a bitter tug of war over a killing field in front of the castle. It was annoying, because no explanation was provided why those units didn't flee (when their leaders were killed in a cutscene), why they didn't join me (when my heroes drove back Lu Bu who killed their leaders), or at least charged pointlessly to their deaths when the enemy fled to regroup. This was jarring, though I guess maybe they'd join me on Normal?
In any case, aside from this, I felt the balance, and amount of enemies was generally fair. The last scenario's DTS portion took me multiple tries, as I tried to figure out the optimal use of terrain, but I felt it was the terrain that was more of a hindrance than the AI troops themselves-so it's not really a balance concern. Enemy composition and power level were generally manageable, and though I was kept engaged and suffered multiple setbacks, at no point did I want to throw up my hands and declare any scenario unwinnable.
Creativity: 4
There wasn't much originality to the mix of genres- It's B&D sieges, or DTS, or any combination/transitions of the 2. I did appreciate the "auras" mechanic that did encourage me to go scouring the countryside for relics- something I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise- but I have no real way of knowing how my aura affected the enemy forces, and the effect of the enemy's Famine aura, slowly depleting my Food supply was always pretty miniscule, and only really felt (a bit) in the one scenario where I could not make Farms.
The one thing that does make the scenario stand out is the use of "upgrade towers" to specialize my units, by upgrading the stats of a particular unit types (infantry/archers/siege/cavalry) to super-human levels. This was neat, though the campaign essentially forces you to focus on countering the enemy's power creep, and doesn't give you a whole lot of time to think of tactical niceties, as there's chokepoints, bridges, and wall breaches to clog with endless bodies. Given the warfare during this period tends to describe battles involving hundreds of thousands of men, I guess this is appropriate.
Map Design: 4
For the most part, maps were well-done, with decent amount of detailing, while also mostly forcing the player to stick to their objectives. In a few cases, there was time to go exploring (and looking for relics), and those scenarios tended to have pretty good terrain mixing and design.
One thing that irked me, however was the random placement of trees and bamboo in the designated killing fields in the last mission, as well as mixing up trees and gold piles. I get the aesthetic concerns of trying to make the maps look organic, but there are certain times when practicality should prevail. Needing my vills to build a lumber camp to clear up 4 or 5 straggler trees to get access to Gold is one thing, and as annoying it might be, I can forgive that. But having chessboard pattern stragglers in the middle of a narrow 4 tile corridor I need to use to get my troops quickly from one defensive front of my base to the next? that's just bad decision-making, and having the field under my walls full of stragglers that always seemed to confuse my units' pathing more than the AI was a reason for several of my restarts.
Story/Instructions: 5
The story is told in the introduction sections, as well as the accompanying Readme file (it contains the cumulative History sections of all 6 scenarios); The bitmaps weren't particularly useful, as they largely indicated the heroes involved in each scenario, but the Scouts tab in-game usually made up for that. Auras and upgrades weren't explained in-game (the Hints tab in one of the scenarios suggested referring back to the Readme, which isn't ideal); but since I found that to be a fairly miniscule element of the game, I'm not too bothered by it.
I rather enjoyed the story being told, as we traced Liu Bei's journey and his developing antagonism towards Cao Cao; In-game dialogue was fairly sparse, but appropriate. Overall, the campaign gave me resolve to finally pick up the source material, so I suppose it's done its job well.
Additional Comments: Although it might not be for everyone, the campaign offers very solid and entertaining Post-Imperial gameplay, mixed with a few interesting innovations and a pretty interesting story. A shame we never saw the continuation from the same team, but if you fancy some lengthy battles with huge kill counts, all to the backdrop of the Tree Kingdoms setting, this campaign should not be missed.
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rakovsky |
Posted on 05/07/21 @ 05:00 PM
Playability: 5
I beat all the missions without any glitches stopping me. The Prologue played smoothly.
There was what seemed like a small glitch when I played MISSION #5 on MODERATE after losing the mission on HARD. On MODERATE, I put some soldiers and a small base north of the western Green city base and they didn't switch to the Comp's control. I also put a castle and some units and towers inside the western Green city walls. Not long after the battle with Cao Cao started, Cao Cao (Blue) attacked the small base and invaded that western city. While he did that, I noticed that the Zhang Fei hero who was based there somehow switched the my control, even though the western fort did not switch to my control and in fact the western fort stayed passive and didn't fire on Cao Cao's troops. Zhang Fei changing to my control at this point seems like a glitch because Guan Yu did not and the western fort did not. Zhang Fei lost a big majority of his health, so I sent him east to my base in Xu Fou for protection. So I ended up eventually making Liu Bei and Zhang Fei flee together to the flags in the northern corner after the 20 minutes' siege ended, even though the Victory Screen said that Liu Bei got separated from his brothers during the fight.
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Balance: 5
The balance was great because I consider myself an average player for Single Player missions, yet I beat all of them on HARD except for the 5th one (Parting of the Ways). I did use lots of Pauses however, during which I issued commands to my units. There was a challenge because the enemies streamed out of their enemy bases in the missions and I had to set up defenses to hold their attacks. Another great thing about the balance was that in Mission $6, the Designers seemed to balance it so that I could just about conquer the initial masses of attacking enemy forces and still have my heroes left alive.
In MISSION 2, playing on HARD, my forces took major losses in the opening battle from the enemy archers and also the enemy priest behind the enemy walls was annoying when I tried to attack those archers with my paladins. I guess that I need to make trebuchets as soon as the mission starts and it may also be smart to bring my forces back so that my towers shoot at the enemy forces. The danger in bringing my forces back is that it can expose my allies' heroes to enemy attacks since the allied heroes are in front of my walls.
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Creativity: 5
This was really creative. I liked how the mission objectives included taking and defending premade cities against major enemy forces, building defenses, and counterattacking.
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Map Design: 5
The Map Design was great, including tons of eye candy. I would consider this campaign on par with the best "3 Kingdoms"-themed campaigns that I've played in the AOE series.
Actually, each of the Scenarios' individual opening instruction pictures came through for all of the scenarios and they looked pretty nice with characters' portraits, even without the Mod.
In Mission #2 (8 Duke Alliance), about the time of the opening duel, Dong Zhuo declares war on me, but Dong Zhuo (Im.) stays set to allied and Army of Dong Zhuo has me set to neutral. I don't know if it's supposed to be that way, but they stayed with those settings even when I was attacking the final (ie. second) fortress city.
I especially liked MISSION #3, like the part about defending the two cities.
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Story/Instructions: 3
STORY
The Story was exciting, fun to read, and followed the career of Liu Bei up until his got his base in southern China in 200-201 AD. Normally with other 3 Kingdoms Campaigns that I've seen, the scenarios follow the events of the 3 Kingdoms story, like Cao Cao's major battles with Yuan Shao. However, this campaign specifically was composed of the battles that Liu Bei fought in and it focused on controlling his soldiers in these battles.
This focus on his battles before c. 201 AD is a little bit different and interesting because in the period up to Liu Bei getting his base in southern China, the 3 Kingdoms story seems to see him as a secret major, positive hero lurking in the background of events. So for example in the beginning of the 3 Kingdoms stories much of the focus is on key historic national events like the war with the Yellow Turbans and Dong Zhuo's takeover. And during the time of those events, Liu is described as participating in the war, meeting his three brothers, and making the Peach Garden Oath with them. And so you get a sense that he has some kind of greatness or importance, and he does participate in events, but the importance of his leadership role doesn't come out later until he has his own kingdom (one of the 3 Kingdoms).
Reading the story over in the zip file, it talked about how Guan Yu was captured by Cao Cao, how Guan Yu fought Yuan Shao, and how the 3 Brothers (including Liu Bei) were reunited and went to China's south out of Yuan Shao's realm. However, it did not talk about Cao Cao's defeat of Yuan Shao, which happened some time between Guan Yu fought Yuan Shao and the Three Brothers got control over a city in China's south.
In MISSION #1 (the Prologue), the order of events involving Cao Cao, the Yellow Turbans, Liu Bei's involvement in the fighting, and Dong Zhuo's rise to power were not very clear from the story. Historically, Liu Bei fought in the war against the Yellow Turbans in 184-189 AD, including under Commander He Jin, and was rewarded for it by becoming prefect of Gaotang county. He also went into service under Gongsun Zan after fighting the Yellow Turbans. In May 189 AD, Emperor Ling died, the Eunuchs killed He Jin, and then the warlord Dong Zhuo entered the capitol and took power. In September 189, Dong made one of Ling's sons, Xian, the new official emperor, but still held power.
MISSION #3's title says Nu Zhou in the Campaign screen, but it's actually supposed to say Xu Zhou. In Mission #3, the instructions' story is written in a confusing way: The Story section explains that Cao Cao's father was killed and that Cao Cao attacked Xu Zhou in revenge. But the instructions are worded as if Liu Bei went against Xu Zhou in revenge for his )Liu Bei's) father's death, which wouldn't make sense because the mission is about Liu Bei saving the city.
INSTRUCTIONS
The instructions were mostly good, but a few things like how to install the music files and play them correctly were not explained in enough detail.
The instructions describe where to put the music files, adding, "The only exception the the music files is the "Intro Music", which you must put into the "stream folder" under the "sound" folder in your AOE2 directory." This must be talking about the file titled "xopen", because there is a file by that name already in the "stream" folder.
I think that you need to turn your normal game "Music" off in your Options menu when playing missions #2-6, because the campaign uses Sound files to serve as background music. If you don't turn off your Music in your options, the standard AOE2 game music will play at the same time as your special campaign music. The one exception to this is probably the Intro music, and the Campaign might play it in Mission #1 (the Prologue). This is because the instructions have you replace your standard AOE2 Intro music file with the campaign one. Consequently, as I recall, there was no music overlapping during Mission 1.
It would have been helpful to state the Population Limits. In MISSION #2 (The Eight Duke Alliance), the Population Limit is 100. However in Missions #5 and 6, your population limit is 125. Since you don't see this in the Instructions, you can only find the population limit out by building enough residence space (eg. houses, castles, TCs).
It's not clear from just looking at the towers which towers do upgrades without clicking on them. In practice, you need to pause the game, find the tower that you want, and then unpause the game for it to work well. It would have been better to say this in the Hints.
In MISSION #3, the SCOUTS section of the Objectives Tab during the mission says that Bei Hei (Purple) is across the bridge west of the city, but actually it's across the bridge to the east. The Designer seemed to get the words east and west confused in writing instructions tabs in some of his missions like this.
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Additional Comments:
NOTE ON GAME SPEED:
The Instructions say: "For the first scenario the cutscene, you need to play on normal... or the music will overlap." The instructions also said to play the game on Fast speed for the other scenarios or else there would be long pauses between music tracks. I played those other scenarios on Fast and got the pauses, but it did not bother me. Sometimes having music playing all the time can be repetitive or distracting anyway, and there was so much action when playing on HARD that playing on Normal speed was best.
MOD NOTES:
It's too bad that I could not get in touch with the Mod's Design team to ask them for their Mod. Dan Bayne who headed Tsunami Studios looked through almost all of his old hard drives and didn't find the Mod. Nonetheless, I think that missing the Mod didn't hurt the Campaign much. One reason is because some people were helpful enough to provide the music, which was good. The music is in the download Zip. Another reason is that the Mod was just graphics and didn't affect the gameplay.
The Custom modpack "changes the portraits of heroes and the initial viewing screen (extracted from 'Fate of the Dragon')" Fate of the Dragon is a 2001 PC game. You can read a review and see screenshots here:
https://oldpcgaming.net/fate-of-the-dragon-review/
Screenshots with Liu Bei's portrait are here:
https://oldgamesdownload.com/three-kingdoms-fate-of-the-dragon/
NOTES ON WINNING MISSION #5:
Playing MISSION #5 on HARD, 7 minutes into Cao Cao's siege of Xu Zhou, Liu Bei got killed by the Cao Cao Hero unit personally while trying to protect a tower that my villager was building. What happens is that after you capture Xu ZHou and send your hero units to their respective 3 cities, Cao Cao declares war. You need to beef up defenses NW of Xu Zhou before putting the 3 heroes each in their 3 cities. The downside with taking the time to build defenses is that maybe Cao Cao may be building his forces in the mean time. But you need to anyway because of how much his forces spawn SE of the northern bridge. Not long after the mission started, Cao Cao got a Deprivation relic. It seems that I need to find that relic in the far north ASAP to get to it first. Also, as soon as my three heroes are in their respective cities, I lose control of the relics that I collected in my main city. It's best then if I store them south of Xu Zhou. After losing on HARD, I beat the Mission on MODERATE.
You need to have Liu Bei cross the bridge NE of your starting location and then use him with your other 2 heroes to attack the enemy hero. It's nice to use priests when assaulting Xu Zhou because they have a bunch of soldiers that come out and attack and have tons of HP.
Main starting plan:
1. Build lots of villagers (maybe 50), focus on gold and stone.
2. Scout for and get relics, starting with the one in the far north, and store them SE of Xu Zhou or in all 3 cities
3. Send defenders to the NW base.
4. Attack Xu Zhou with 1 or two trebuchets, a mass of priests to take their strong swordsmen, heroes, and use a few towers by the bridge going to Xu Zhou. Draw them into tower fire. Avoid Xu Zhou until you're ready to attack.
5. Build a bunch of castle, wall and tower defenses NW of Xu Zhou and maybe your NW city. Keep cavalry on the sides for attacking their siege equipment. Keep archers and priests behind your walls as defenders. When attacking Xu Zhou, the enemies seem to spawn on the land SE of the bridge NW of Xu Zhou. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.7 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 4.8 | Balance | 4.8 | Creativity | 4.8 | Map Design | 4.8 | Story/Instructions | 4.3 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 10,809 |
Favorites: [] | 2 |
Size: | 19.91 MB |
Added: | 07/16/01 |
Updated: | 08/11/08 |
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