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Author |
File Description |
Gaspar |
Posted on 01/11/06 @ 06:04 PM
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
Style: |
Other |
The Rocky Mountains span from Canada, southward through the United States, and on into Mexico. They are called the backbone of America, splitting the Northern Continent in half. Within these mountains there is a rugged wilderness that has yet to be conquered. This ideal state cannot last forever, as greedy settlers descend on its many natural resources.
TS@Rockies is a wild mix of valleys, cliffs, forests, hills, and meadows. Though there are reletively open areas around the Town Centers and to eachother's bases, alternative routes and the majority of the map's resources can only be found by plunging into the gnarled underbrush and pine groves. A few lakes dot the landscape, providing natural barriers and fishing grounds, but do not expect to take the war to the enemy on a boat. The forests, cliffs, and other terrain features also encourage voracious seige wars, providing many unique and strategic battlegrounds across the map.
I hope you enjoy, this is my first public random map, and I would like any and all praise, criticisms, or suggestions. Just note them here or at the SD forums. |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Stephen Richards
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 02/23/06 @ 09:02 AM
THEME (5)
As the name suggests, the theme underlying this random map is the Rockie Mountains, in the author's own words, "a wild mix of valleys, cliffs, forests, hills, and meadows." The author's description is good and conjures up the essence of an untamed wilderness and the challenge of venturing out and exploring it. The theme of the Rocky Mountains is captured by the use of the different terrains, and many other elements which I'll cover under Visual Appeal. It's a big landscape, with the odd large open space but broken up by various elements. Not having played too many random maps, I'm not sure if this theme is completely new, but I've not come across it before and, having looked at a couple of ES scripts earlier, they pale by comparison.
VISUAL APPEAL (5)
Overall, this map looks great. There is good use of terrains, elevation, cliffs, rocks, woods and wildlife. Both the terrains and the (many) variations in elevation are subtly blended, with none of the transitions jarring. They are also consistent. I wondered about the scarcity of mountains but in my view they often look unsatisfactory and the author may have taken a similar view. In any event, the use of elevation, cliffs and rocks alone creates a rugged mountainous feel to the design. It is primarily a land map - there are mountain lakes with shore fish but they are relatively small, sometimes blocked by trees and tend to be towards the edges of the map so may not play a significant part in many games. A couple of pernickety observations/suggestions: firstly, the lakes tend to be rather rectangular and lie between cliffs which looks a little unrealistic (better if the cliffs faced each other to form a canyon effect, but I don’t know if this is possible); secondly, a light smattering of snow might add something. Overall, I feel the balance of eye-candy is just about right - the author has not gone overboard but there is enough to appreciate without completely taking one's eye off the main purpose of the game!
PLAYABILITY (5)
The playability is also excellent. There is a standard starting position for each team of town centre, villagers and a scout. Each town centre is in a relatively large, open space to facilitate building, and all four resources are plentiful nearby. The use of trees, cliffs and other elements enable some chokepoints to be walled for defensive play - it is not as open a map as, for example, Arabia - but this is far from Black Forest, and the player who expands and goes on the offensive will have the edge. So, it would suit flushing. As well as turkeys and berries, there are generally deer fairly near the town centre, which may in part compensate for there being only one boar, something which would otherwise cause flushers to have to adapt the standard strategy. The map has five relics, sometimes blocked by trees. In my experience, the Standard AI has no trouble playing on this map (aside from it's normal terminal stupidity).
All in all, I think TS@Rockies is an excellent random map script which will provide anyone with many happy hours playing AoK. I recommend you download it now. Go on! |
Plasmaflow |
Posted on 04/09/06 @ 07:56 AM
This isn't worth a 5.0... |
Stephen Richards
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 04/11/06 @ 11:40 AM
I think it is, as I have explained at some length. Why don't you do the same Plasmaflow and then we can all have a good laugh about it. |
Emperor Aidan |
Posted on 06/26/06 @ 06:33 PM
I just finished a game on this map against my brother. I found that the variety of terrain okay and the placement of resorces was great. I was able to monitor over 75% of the map (giant) at all times and have enough room in areas to build large checkpoints to launch attacks from. I played for about 3 hours and ended up winning with plenty of surplus resorces. I'd say this is one of the best random maps i have ever played. |
Cataphract_Fan (id: cataphract_fan) |
Posted on 06/28/06 @ 08:41 PM
Theme: 5
The theme itself is spectacular, in my opinion. The maps include exactly what one would think when they think of "Rockies". There are rocks, a variety of terrain, mountains, and cliffs. I haven't played on this type of map before, so I would say it wasn't copied or anything.
Visual Appeal: 5
The visual appeal..wow...if I could, I'd give it a rating of six. When I type in cheats to reveal the map, and look in the minimap, what I see is a total variety of land. There is never a moment when the land is the same--it is always different. Also, mountains are added onto this map making it even more realistic. The different terrain types on the map (leaves, dirt, grass) make the map even more enjoyable to see.
Playability: 4
This I would give a slightly lower rating, only because it does have some difficult aspects. Due to the cliffs, exploring is quite difficult, thus making it harder for humans (but not for computers). There is also only one boar which makes it harder to advance quickly (again, not like the computer as when I see recorded games, they never hunt boars). The forage bushes are also scattered around in smaller groups making it costlier to build mills. There are also, thankfully, PLENTY of mines and forests, making it easy to gain large stockpiles of stone and gold.
Additional Comments:
I would suggest not blocking off lakes too much, and having turkey behind the trees makes no sense as by the time someone would break through the trees blocking the lake, they would probably be in castle or imperial age, no time to herd the turkey. |
Gaspar
File Author |
Posted on 08/11/06 @ 08:29 PM
Cata. : I would like to point out that this is an RMS script, it will never look exactly the same way twice, and the author has minimal control over the exact placement of objects and terrains. Therefore, some of the problems you mentioned may very well dissapear on your next round of gaming. |
aswath |
Posted on 04/20/07 @ 02:58 AM
This map is not good for 4v4 and 3v3 ......some plyr getiing boar and deers .... some playr dont have boar and deers |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.8 | Breakdown |
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Theme | 5.0 | Visual Appeal | 5.0 | Playability | 4.5 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 8,427 |
Favorites: [] | 2 |
Size: | 2.65 KB |
Added: | 01/11/06 |
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