I Haven't posted on scenario 3 yet... been busy.
I really loved the scenario itself. allowed us to get the feel of both manage a small empire and get seriously attacked by 2 factions at the same time.
My first run through was chaotic, made a few mistakes, but in the end I survived it all. I attached both outposts right off the bat, one to each city.
On my second try, I attached only one outpost to Londonium, and left the other outpost unattached but bought a fortress. That turned out pretty bad, since I lost that outpost in the first 3 turns,
and then didn't have that 2nd horse resource to allow me to build more knights. I still stayed alive, but lost the Oxeneford to Khmer.
On my third try, I only attached one outpost to Oxeneford and didn't attach the other one to Londonium. I then managed to wipe everything the Khmer sent to me before they ever got to Londonium,
and even went out and wiped out the Khmer capital. That was VERY satisfying ;-) I found that building units in the cities and then buying them out when they were at 1 or 2 turns from being completed
was a very good recipe.
A few thoughts:
- I found the Aztecs, and in particular their Jaguar Warriors, to be very underwhelming. I had no problems whatsoever dealing with them even when leaving limited defenders. I suppose the terrain layout was a lot more helpful to Longbowmen in Londonium, but still, I was surprised at how easy it was to deal with many Warriors; You could take your archers to the hills, then park a single defending unit on the entrance tile to the hills and let them come. peasants were not strong enough to handle this, but pikemen easily were because of the high ground.
- I found the terrain layout of Oxeneford much harder to handle. yes, the fortress was well placed and allowed at least a very strong longbowman to be placed, but even the fortress was pretty hard to defend. then most of the coty tiles themselves were on lower ground from everything east and south, so your units were very vulnurable, even if fortified.
- The Dhanvi-Gaja was an awesome and difficult enemy to handle. 2 of them at the same time made it even worse. thx
@Catoninetales_Amplitude for explaining how expensive they're going to be to produce, that's a real relief. I found that they are almost impossible to handle if they get a chance to enter a fortified position or high ground (at least with the units we had at hand). But... after a few tries, you could find ways NOT to let them take those 2 kind of positions on the map. then, a Knight charge from high ground was proven to be very efficient, and longbowmen repeated attacks from high ground at 5-10 damage apiece also. So they were not totally unbeatable. In one instance, I had few defenses left and had a longbowman in a high ground fortified position, and saw the AI use very efficiently the Elephant's "move and fire" attribute by sniping me then going into fog of war, then next turn moving back in and sniping again. That made me lose one attack on him every 2 turns, quite annoying ;-)
- I really don't like that if you successfully block a reinforcement during a siege, once it's over, another siege immediately restarts, on the same exact round, with the blocked units. I feel this is WAD, but if that's the case, then I really hate that design. There should be only ONE siege on a single turn.
- I also saw the AI go after a peasant I was using to block a reinforcement. I really like that the AI is already intelligent enough to do stuff like that ;-) I was mad when the peasant died and the reinforcement came through, but it's still what we want to see ;-)
All in all, I am extremely satisfied on where this game already is and is headed to at this stage of the development process. It's impressive. Many many people have complained about many details, especially on the UI and on combat limitations and clarity, and I feel with good reasons, but also people seem to have forgotten that 1) this is a pre-alpha product and 2) the goal was to get feedback. I think that goal has been very successful.
finally.... DIE KHMER !!! ;-)
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