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The Rise of Ghengis Khan
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Author |
File Description |
Hector Ocampo |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
This campaign includes 3 scenarios about the rise of Genhis Khan. I have included a whole history of the Mongol empire but only some battles were taken for the campaign. The first scenario is very interesting. you have to return an artifact to your town, but you don´t have any villager and your army is smaller than that of the enemy. The trick is to make a coordinated attack with another tribe. You can't win by yourself!. But you have to make that this tribe allies with you. Of course this tribe is not able to win the game until a long time. So you have to help them. The second scenario is related to the invasion to the northern China. You have 4 enemies and you have to "convince" the leaders of each enemy and bring them to your town. Some ai file are very interesting. Finally the last scenario is a difficult one. You have to fullfill the victory conditions against one enemy with a very large army and a very big map. It will take long time to win, be patient. In all scenarios, the first steps you make are of primary importance. A wrong step could occur in a quick loss. I hope you could find funny this campaign. P.S. Sorry about my bad english. hope this is not an important criteria for evaluation. |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Steideli |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
This campaign begins with a young Temujin riding in the forest north of his village. Suddenly he hears the sound of battle to the south. Jaralein Raiders are attacking his village and it will surely fall if he doesn't get back there soon to defend it. "Temujin Chase" is the first scenario in the campaign. The attacking bowmen don't pose too much of a problem for Temujin, but he discovers that they have carted off the villages treasures. The goal in this chapter is retake these treasures and return them to the village. For that, Temujin must first locate the Mongolian forces and enlist the aid of another local tribe called the Bogurchi. The introductory bitmaps are very nice and clean looking. The author did an excellent job on them with their crisp and uncluttered look. The introductory story isn't as well developed as I would have liked to see. It doesn't have the rich prose that I found in some of the other entrants. I get the feeling that English isn't the first language of the author, as some of the writing is somewhat awkward. I didn't deduct anything for that, but I did knock him down a point for the underdeveloped story. The introductory story isn't bad, it's serviceable, but, for the contest I'm holding authors to a high standard. Maps...5, story...3, Bitmap/Introduction total 4. The second scenario, "The Conquest of Modern China", begins with the player looking at a bunch of grass huts in the forest. Your men are there, you just can't see them at first because they are all hiding amoung the trees. I think that was a nice touch. Your men are all axemen and unimproved archers, (Gulp), yes, you begin this one in the stone age. Villagers are nearby, so you'll need to get busy building up a real army to take the 3 objectives, Tangut's Empire (Iron age set piece), Chin, a live civilization with a big head start on yours, and Beijing, another live civilization with Indian Iron age reinforcements. The final chapter is "West Invasion". It's played on a huge map and your goal is to take out the Kwarezm Empire by destroying their town centers. You start with a fixed force and won't get villagers until some way into the work. The Kwarezm Empire is really big, you will have several hours of work ahead of you. Overall, this is a pretty good campaign. I had a lot of fun playing it. |
Angel Grex |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
A fine campaign. Temujin must recover stolen valuables, conquer China and other Asian states, then venture into Kwarezm to settle scores with Shah Muhammed. By review element, here are my reactions: Playability--Very nice. One fixed force, two explore and buildup settings. Solving the tactical problems created by clever map design is fun; I will play it again. All scenarios slightly laggy on my P2/233MMX w/64MB RAM, first two probably due to snowy terrain, last one to large number of enemy units. Creativity--Slightly above average. Good use of regular .avi file to end final scenario; little new in the way of tricks or decoration. Some cleverness in Victory Conditions. Balance--Excellent. You have just enough of the right types of units as each scenario begins. You will lose if you use either the wrong strategy or shoddy tactics. As an example, your only unit at the start of the first scenario is just strong enough to get to where his reinforcements are. The reinforcements, although apparently massive, are just barely enough to fight to the objective if you choose the correct route out of three possible routes; otherwise, you'll lose. Ai/Per files keep enemies fight well for quite a while. Map Design--Wonderful. One or two litte glitches where cliffs dangle into water, but otherwise beautiful and fun to roam around. Swamps, mountains, mixed forests, streams, rivers and great seas. Terrain used well to channel player toward objectives, but allow exploration. Extremely nice Tangut town in second scenario, mountain pass to first battle in third scenario. Snowy fortified village in first scenario, altho' it creates lag, also well-done. Excellent blind alleys and decoys to hide and make difficult the approach to the third scenario's final objective. Story/Instructions--Three nice-looking and helpful bitmaps. Instructions and hints generally clear and useful. Victory conditions function well. Good victory and loss messages. A tad weak in connecting you to the hero's feelings, and in connecting the story to history. Historical Content--Excellent. Accurate, tied well to story. Temujin becomes a man, unites the clans, conquers nearest neighbors and China, then marches into Kwarezm to achieve by conquest what diplomacy couldn't accomplish. Superb use of Aftermath panel in final scenario to tell us what happened as a result of the Kwarezm effort, and make us wish for another scenario. OVERALL: A must play, unless you have a really slow computer. Lots of fun, nice to look at, educational. Hector Ocampo is an accomplished designer who has given us a marvelous campaign. |
Rich Parker |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
Scenario 1 - Temujin Chase: Very nice bitmap work in this and the other two scenarios. The story line covered the necessary ground, but lacked any real narrative fire. The scenario itself was well done, both in conception and execution. The snow effect was the best use of that technique I've seen. Temujin must scramble to protect his village from the plundering hordes, then find some allies, retrieve a chest and return it to his village. Sounds simple enough, but the bad guys have no intention of letting him just walk in and take the chest. A good play. Scenario 2 - The Conquest of Modern China: A Stone Age start was disappointing in this scenario. It was inappropriate to the historical angle. The scenario basically revolves around a build-up-and-conquer strategy, which has been done many times in other campaigns. Scenario 3 - West Invasion: After a pretty good start, this scenario became disappointing when I hit the "valley of the priests and towers" (my terminology). Otherwise, it was nicely challenging and not a bad play. |
Ronin |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
The historic background is duly sketched in this campaign, but I missed the involvement, which a skillfully worded story line creates for the player. The campaign was just that: a RoR-campaign with clear objectives and working victory conditions, otherwise, I did not feel its relevance to historic events, neither found it to be a re-enactment of them. The main task of the player is to confront force with force in a rather repetitive manner on maps, which - except for the few straight lines and clumped resources here and there - create a random feeling. In this respect, the first scenario stands out, since it bears the marks of much more effort put into design than the other two. In fact, the first scenario is noteworthy both in map design and gameplay. The trick is written into the AI of the computer players, one of them the (soon-to-be) ally, the other the foe. Since the enemy has well established defences, the player has to cooperate with the allied computer player to wear it down. It works fine if the player wants to get his share of action, but if not, if the player decides to remain on the sidelines, his ally does the job just as well. I tried this approach too, then, after watching them in no-fog mode battle it out, made some mop-up operations and retrieved the Artifact. In the third scenario I missed the visual signs to tell apart the Hero to be destroyed among the hordes of Priest who descend upon the player's raiding party. I found also disturbing, that no anti-priest unit was provided in such a priest-heavy setup. A Chariot may not be so correct historically, but neither is the use of Priests if we speak about the Mongols vs. Kharezm Empire story. One of the entrants made a point in noting, that "The Chariot Archers represent inferior mounted Archers", and I think this is the correct approach considering the limitations of the game. At the "Above Average" level (4) one expects a scenario with a story line of a slaughtered caravan then the ensuing wrath of the Khan with just that: seeing your hapless Camels slaughtered within enemy city limits. Then you know what to do and what the scenario is all about - instead of reading in the instructions: take revenge for what happened. The first scenario started with such a little episode, but in this case seeing the "later-to-be-retrieved" Artifact taken away by the marauding party would have bean really elegant. |
DeathShrimp |
Posted on 10/11/99 @ 12:00 AM
This is a well done entry that feels very Mongolian. There is a nice mix of exploration and combat and I felt challenged without being overwhelmed (as long as I followed the hints). The enemy seemed to respond intelligently and did not get units stuck, even in some complex cities. There was a bit of "saggy ending syndrome" where I had clearly won but still took some time to mop up, but I know how hard it is to anticipate every kind of playstyle. There were a few creative elements I had not seen before--I bet I am not the only player who will wonder where their units are in scenario two! ; I liked the maps a lot. They were far-removed from boring random maps, but not so crazy with detail that they seemed artificial. ; Occasionally, there was too little room in the forests to path large groups, but most areas managed the difficult task of merging artistic form and gameplay function. ; The final scenario has a city that is magnificent, gigantic...and brought my P400 to a crawl. (ES spends a lot of effort making certain that there are not so many objects on the screen as to make the game unplayable.) |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 810 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 222.00 Bytes |
Added: | 10/11/99 |
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