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Unfinished Scenario: Across Roman Borders
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Author |
File Description |
Nick The Hun (id: Nick_The_Hunn) |
Posted on 12/19/09 @ 05:08 AM
File Details |
# of Players: |
6 humans + 1 comp |
Version: |
AoM: The Titans |
Unfinished Scenario:
Across Roman Borders
A Historical Scenario about the Romans invading The Netherlands and settling on the Rhine. Legends of warlords, generals and chiefs. Fighting for Rich and Glorious, but also Love. Their aim is Conquest through out the whole landscape.
Player 1 to 3 are Germania Inferior's Dutchmen.
German warriors ready to fight for their village's sake. To take on any request towards the Romans to keep them out.
Player 4 to 6 are 3 Roman Factions.
The Romans are settling in the southern and southeast area. Humble servants and soldiers are coming to serve your aid. Generals requesting to lead your mighty armies and defend your humongous forts at the edge of Civilization. Ready to kill any man who stands in their way of conquest.
Player 7 is a computer, it will include Germanic Tribes from the East but also Celtic Villages in The Netherlands itself. It acts as a secondary mother nature.
GODS:
Player 1, 2 and 3 Must be NORSE Gods.
Player 4, 5 and 6 Must be GREEK Gods.
Player 7 the computer must be a Norse God.
<hr>
If you would like to continue finishing this scenario, go ahead but add my credits in it:
Nick_The_Hun
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Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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rakovsky |
Posted on 11/08/20 @ 04:13 PM
I initially thought that this is an early version of your other scenario, "Germania Inferior", because on that Germania Inferior page, you link to a thread by this name, "Across Roman Borders".
But now I see big differences, eg. that one is done in Winter.[Edited on 06/04/21 @ 05:30 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 11/13/20 @ 01:42 AM
I was looking forward to playing your finished scenario on Multiplayer. But now it looks like someone would need a tool to reduce map sizes (the Map Editor's biggest option is 800 X 800 for example, whereas your Map is 2000 X 2000) in order to make the Multiplayer engine for AOM be able to run it.
The only thing to do is reduce the map size drastically.
Maybe even cut out 2 of the players and make it a 2 v 2 map instead because it's hard to find lots of players online.[Edited on 06/04/21 @ 05:32 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 06/04/21 @ 05:29 PM
Playability: 1
The map is designed as a 3 v 3 Multiplayer Map, but the problem why it doesn't work in Multiplayer must be that it's 2000 X 2000 in size, which experts' information tells me is far too big for the map size.
I switched the Players to all CPUs in the Player Menu except for Player 1 (for me) and ran the game in Voobly for AOM:TT with myself as the only player and it crashed at the loading screen.
The similar "Germania Inferior" crashes too on Multiplayer and it's only 1000 X 1000 in size and the experts tell me that the problem with that one is that that one's too big.
I tried reducing the map size using the Map Size menu in the Editor and it won't let me. Based on what Dutton told me, there is no way to reduce the map size for such a big map. In fact, you can't even make a map this big with the regular Editor, so even Germania Inferior must have been made with Dutton's Editor Super Pack, based on what Zenophobia told me.
It looks like the only way that someone could get this map to work is to get a tool that lets you either reduce giant AOM maps' sizes or copy and paste terrain onto regenerated maps. In AOE1, there is a tool called ROCKNROR that lets you copy terrain and redraw your scenario's map as a blank with smaller dimensions. I'm not sure if even with ROCKNROR you can paste the copied terrain onto the new redrawn blank map though.
In talking with Nick the Designer on Steam, he told me that originally this map did work on the original ESO Multiplayer server for AOM, but after they closed it, it does not work on the currently available Multiplayer platforms (AOM:EE's Microsoft platform, Voobly, and Gameranger.)
In my view, even if the map did work, the giant map size is still a practical playability hurdle for gameplay because it forces you to micromanage the battles and resource gathering across the giant map.
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Balance: 3
The Balance looks mostly good because it's a 3 v 3 map. However, the Orange Roman Player has 3-4 cities already and the Purple Roman Player has no cities. I didn't even notice any purple units on the map. Of course, the Designer might not have put them down yet, so it looks like at this point Orange being a bit overpowered looks like the main balance issue. There do not look like nearly as many open town centers in the Roman part of the map, which would give the Dutch side a serious advantage on the other hand.
Creativity: 5
This is pretty creative, with a geographic map resembling Holland with shores and rivers and neat Roman and Dutch cities, forts, armies, and towns.
Map Design: 3
There were nice things like the Roman and Dutch forts, cities, forests, and rivers, and roads and shores.
The main downside is the giant size, even allowing for the fact that the author did not realize that having such a giant size would crash the map. Probably the AOM game designers realized that having too big a map would be a disadvantage for game play. There are such long open spaces between cities on this map that it would needlessly lengthen gameplay, and on Multiplayer that is even worse than on Single Player because you can't save your game during your play on Multiplayer. You would literally be sending your armies through long spaces where there is no point for them marching over so much extra space, which makes it boring at least, if not very annoying. I've played with oversized maps in AOE1 where they at least work technically and they are less fun because of problems like trying to fight lots of mini battles at once or combing a giant map looking for the stragglers of de facto defeated Players.
Another problem is simply there being lots of blank space between the cities and lack of fully completed roads between them. Sure, it's an incomplete map, and resources for building civs should be laid down too, but even if the roads and decorations were filled in on the blanks, they would still be overextended for a Multiplayer 3 v 3 battle.
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Story/Instructions: 3
The Designer has good potential for a story, since it deals with the Roman conquest and rule in Holland. Plus, it's relatively straightforward overall conceptually as opposed to being an RPG that demands intricate storytelling and instructions.
Still, the Designer did not give much background or Story here. He wrote a lot on the forum for this mission and it's an unfinished mission, I know, but I still get a sense that he probably wasn't going to write a big description or give much more story in the Objectives tabs. Of course, I could be wrong.
One of the characters is General Varus, and a quick search shows that he was fighting farther south, in Germany proper. Maybe he was in Holland or the Designer is just using that as a fictional option wherein Varus "could" come to Holland.
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Additional Comments:
In discussing his Roman-era mapmaking, the Designer asked whether he thought Dutch names or Roman ones would be better for the cities. I think that it's most fitting if the Dutch Players' cities have Dutch names and the Roman Players' cities have Roman ones.
Another way to do it would be to use the ones most known in the era. So if we only know what the Romans called the cities and we only have modern Dutch names for the places and know that the Dutch names weren't in use then, we would just use the Roman names.[Edited on 06/05/21 @ 09:26 PM]
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HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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3.0 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 1.0 | Balance | 3.0 | Creativity | 5.0 | Map Design | 3.0 | Story/Instructions | 3.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 153 |
Favorites: [] | 1 |
Size: | 1.48 MB |
Added: | 12/19/09 |
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