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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 7, 2010 9:25:36 GMT
Well... it did.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 9, 2010 18:26:02 GMT
By the way Basse, the people of Gwyndlegard should probably consider whether my rule was any better than Xaphira's. Before I gained control there was only the occasional use of slaves and most people were standing around doing nothing. When I gained ownership though the mines were exhausted, the forests felled, fields covered in farms, wildlife hunted to extinction, a sprawling mess of buildings constructed, the capital torn apart and hundreds of people sent to certain death. Compared to the total war they'd have been well off with a little light oppression.
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Post by Basse on Jul 9, 2010 20:06:18 GMT
Yes, that's what the sequel will be about. Civil war among warlords in a ravaged country, abused farming grounds turned into worthless steppe etc. Oh, and zombies, plenty of zombies.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 9, 2010 21:27:19 GMT
How could there be warlords? Immanuel rules over all except the southern regions with a fist of iron.
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Post by Basse on Jul 9, 2010 23:06:40 GMT
Exactly. He isn't powerful enough to rule the entire country, so Fabian goes independent, his former aidées rebel, Maruvian is resurrected and commands the zombie army, and in Gwynhill there will be a new main character, a Chosen One called Plarfbert Qaythblarfgurg'Ur'I'Wrang.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 9, 2010 23:58:33 GMT
Whatever, even zombies and polysyllabic names cannot triumph if I build a dozen barracks and pump infinite halberdiers from each.
It's good to see Gwyndlegard taking such a dark turn. Presumably we can expect also to see the ethnic minorities persecuted as scapegoats by the warlords and a famine take hold while the liberators squander their plundered gold on lavish banquets? Possibly even a Maoist uprising in Aderton, and Selenir defecting to Alingard?
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Post by Basse on Jul 10, 2010 0:23:16 GMT
Perhaps so. ...
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Post by Basse on Jul 13, 2010 22:10:15 GMT
Updated according to Julius' and Popeychops' criticism.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 18, 2010 2:08:23 GMT
I've checked out the update. However it doesn't change my mind about anything I said in the review. If there are any changes you've made that definitely should alter my view, I have missed them and please tell me. But generally I think my criticisms of playability and balance still stand. I wouldn't worry about this, because I think they're inherent weaknesses of the style of scenario that Gwyndlegard is that are extremely difficult to remedy.
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Post by Basse on Jul 25, 2010 21:03:40 GMT
The changes I made are as listed in the description;
But I assume that if you're a skilled player, you will still be able to win the way you describe, quite a walk-over. But there isn't much more to do, and most people seem to find it challenging enough, so yeah, I'll stop at it here.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 25, 2010 21:22:15 GMT
An improvement and a good one, but not enough to change the scores. But never mind, it's still a great scenario. Actually I've finally come to despair of both the reviewing system and the community's taste. If I were to give Gwyndlegard a score out of five stars right now I would say five. Unfortunately in the context of reviews generally and the guidelines I don't think this would be correct.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 7, 2014 22:02:13 GMT
Time for my yearly playthrough of this one
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Post by Basse on Aug 7, 2014 23:15:00 GMT
Let me know if it still holds up!
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 9, 2014 17:47:00 GMT
Holds up quite well. I'd give it a 5.0 if I were to review it now- RR and RoA were better imo (RR is actually imo one of the top 5, probably even top 3 single scenarios ever made for AoK, and RoA is probably tied with Ulio for the best campaign the blacksmith has to offer, though it's hard to compare since they're both so different), but it would be unfair to knock your old scenario by rating it below 5.0 just because the sequels pushed things to a whole new level, so I'd just give RR and RoA 6.0s if I could It's rather fitting that RoA is at the top of the Best of AoK section, actually. Back on-topic: I actually ran into something this time that I had never seen before- the player gaining control of the McAnthony manor during the B&D, by which I was pleasantly surprised. And despite being able to distinguish (I think) between what parts of the map you designed in 2008 vs 2010, I think the 2008 bits still easily deserve a 5.0. There are some minor issues I noticed though, so I'll list them in case you ever want to do a special "Collector's Edition" or something and revisit it: 1. During the FF, it's possible to kill off all of the enemy units on the map with your FF army before you get to Pumpkindon with patient micro and good use of your heroes. This is tedious (often involves using Magnus or Urdana to lure enemies in circles while your other units hack at them), but it allows you to get to parts of the map that you're not supposed to see- you can activate some sidequests (like buying the Janissaries), reach Sarachrion, or kill the guards at the pier that takes you to Wale Island. For the record, this was on Hard as well. Of course this takes a while, requires a decent amount of reloading, etc, but is still possible. I visited Winsborough during the FF, for example. 2. The battle for the pier that takes you to Wale Island is probably actually the hardest part of the scenario. It's hard to trigger the arrival of Mezenghi's cavalry unless you fight right in front of the gates, which is of course dangerous because of the towers and many archers. But you need his cavalry to come to kill the many enemy archers since they otherwise shred every unit you have, so I finally used my mounted units to run to the gate to lure the enemy out and trigger the cavalry, and was doing well, but it turned out that I actually hadn't killed off every enemy patrol, and I guess the fighting drew the attention of 20 heavy cavalry, so I had to reload. This probably would have been easier if I hadn't lost a lot of my men while killing off all of Tengil's patrols, but I wanted to do some "post-PT", if you will, and see if I could identify any issues. Also, the triggering to gain control of the captives in Wale Island uses areas that don't always cover the spot where your units could walk, so freeing them is sometimes difficult to trigger, and the player has to walk around a bit to get it to work. 3. You can cheese the B&D a bit (well, killing off the enemy units west of Aienborg during the FF that are supposed to attack your base already makes things easier) by building your eco and a ton of buildings before upping to Castle Age, which triggers Xaphira to start going nuts. With enough stone for 30 castles and tons of other military buildings, the challenge diminishes a bit. There also isn't really enough space to build up until you cut a lot of trees and recycle the ruin fortress, so (assuming the scenario is played how it is meant to be played) the player gets matched up against an enemy with far greater production power and technological advantage. Of course, once you reduce the map to an industrial wasteland covered with castles, barracks, and siege workshops, that is no longer an issue 4. The Selenir units that spawn before the attack on Aienborg will chase an enemy scout that comes nearby, causing them to stream all over the map and even end up inside Aienborg, which blocked some of the enemy spawns for that battle. 5. The Briton Xaphira AI causes a lot of lag, because she has control of a number of units in the capital and repeatedly tries to order them to attack me, which is of course impossible because the water separates us. This could be fixed by making all units and buildings in the capital be owned by the Immobile (Celt) Xaphira player. 6. The typical Celt combo of Siege Onager + Heavy Scorpion + Halbs + Woads is very OP, especially considering that you never really have any chance of running out of gold (I almost ran out during the attack on the capital, but then gave the Spire to the old monks and got 10k gold). I'd at least disable Siege Onagers, as they can also cut trees, allowing the player to reach locations (like the path to the Relic of the Rock) long before they are supposed to. When I attacked the capital, I built 50 siege onagers and then just marched into the city, flattening everything. 7. Saving and reloading for bridges to be built (both the bridge to the capital and the land bridge to Xaphira's island) is a little tough on the balance because even players who haven't played the scenario before can realize that they should wall the bridge and put up 4 castles to kill the massive armies that are about to come your way. The balance in RR really improved over this sort of thing, as you couldn't cover the map with castles. For the bridges, I think you can place the normal bridge in the editor and then trigger a few middle pieces to be removed and replaced with cracked pieces, and then remove those and replace them with middle pieces when the bridge is rebuilt. Iirc, cracked bridge has walkable water as the base terrain, but is just an impassible object. Not sure about broken bridge. That said, it was kind of amusing to flatten Xaphira with 50 siege onagers 8. There were a few long walks, but this wasn't too bad, considering that I still had an eco to manage and such. Little things like tasking Mezenghi to Aienborg so you only have to ride half the distance are nice because they show that the designer has this in mind and is conscious of the player's enjoyment. To close, this is still one of the best scenarios that AoK has to offer and a source of ~10 hours of great enjoyment. Even more impressive is the fact that you were able to keep a project of this magnitude under control (I am not always able to do so). The dialogue, story, humor, and gameplay are all quite strong and the fact that you were able to do even better in RR and RoA is quite cool. I look forward to playing the next chapter- well done
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Post by Basse on Aug 13, 2014 23:12:11 GMT
Glad you still enjoyed it, Sam! I'll definitely keep your points in mind if I ever do an update (I'll probably copy the whole post and just go through it, actually ). The fact that you have to reload the game for the land bridge to work still annoys me, as I didn't find a solution to until quite a while after releasing the scenario, and by then I was pretty burned out on AoK altogether. I don't think I've played Gwyndlegard myself for several years, actually, but I do remember thinking the dialogue is often very long-winded... even though I shortened it quite a bit before the release!
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 14, 2014 2:12:16 GMT
I've never minded long-winded dialogues unless they're boring, which is certainly not the case with your scenarios. As long as it serves a purpose, it's fine by me, but then again I've never had trouble getting myself to read long books either
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