Playability: 3. You start in Post Iron with 20,000 each. You really only need 10,000 stone to win. Egyptian full tech tree. This time through I got a massive cavalry and infantry attack through the right hand gap. I had to hustle a bunch of villies over there to build towers quicker than the enemy could wear them down. I just managed to stay ahead of the attackers and finally created a thick enough wall of towers to hold them off. In the middle gap, I built walls of towers but didn't use catapults this time, just put my infantry in the gap and while they held off charges, the ballista towers and heles wiped out endless waves of attackers. At one hour 30 minutes the attacks stopped, I had 1075 kills, and started recon raids. This is tough with no cav units and no cav arch, all infantry and foot archers trying to search out stragglers. Slow.
Balance: 1.5. If you have the wrong combination of defense units and the enemy breaks through, you can get wiped out. But with 20,000 stone you can build enough towers covering both gaps to basically leave it hands off and watch the enemy feed troops into the meat grinder. I might have finished this faster but I was putting together a book case for my wife with the game running itself in the background. I didn't need to use the mouse very often to wipe out enemy troops. The final count was 1339 kills.
Creativity: 3. Nice idea to tie in a Biblical theme, lot of work setting up troops.
Map: 2. Nice defensible cliff plateau, but map is flat greeen, perfectly square gold mines, perfectly straight cliff NOT on elevation (!) perfectly square 4x8 houses for 32 houses, farmers locked out of their farms.
Story: 1.5. Nice reference to Biblical story, Instructions: win. Hints: Do not leave the safty of your city, which is wrong, you can't win without leaving the city and wiping out stragglers.
rakovsky
Posted on 05/03/19 @ 12:03 AM
Rating
4.2
Breakdown
Playability
4.0
Balance
4.0
Creativity
4.5
Map Design
4.0
Story/Instructions
4.5
Playability: 4
It was very playable except that the balance is off.
Balance: 4
The enemy side was far harder, although maybe using the tower building trick I could have beat it on MODERATE difficulty.
Creativity: 4.5
Very creative, but the map could have had more things.
Map Design: 4
The map was good and simple, but too simple. More decorations like elevation changes would be good.
Story/Instructions: 4.5
Good story with the Bible verses in the ZIP file, but it still could have used more story writing.
Additional Comments: I got wiped out on Moderate after I left my base looking for the enemy. I took out maybe 100 enemies out of 1000. One problem is that my villagers alone put me far over my population limit, making it hard to renew my forces until even alot of my villagers have been killed.
I handily beat it on EASY by building 2 lines of towers 2-3 towers thick running northeast from my main entrance out into the middle of the map and beyond, about 3/4 of the way across the whole map. It turned into a kind of trap for the enemies and I built it as they gradually walked into the line of towers. After I used up my stone (on building towers) and used up my soldier units fighting, I sent about half of my villagers to attack, and then I built priests and elephants and ballista weapons using the population space I'd freed up. This strategy I suppose would have worked on MODERATE difficulty.