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Author |
File Description |
Granite_Rocks (id: S_Bishop) |
Posted on 02/27/17 @ 01:43 PM (updated 05/28/23)
File Details |
Number of Scenarios: |
32 |
Difficulty: |
Mod-Hard |
Version: |
Rise of Rome |
5/28/23: Fixed bugs in levels, such as Hannibal's March and Ctesiphon.
7/28/20: Fixed a bug on Empire of the East level which was preventing people from getting a victory when objectives were finished. Also there is a new level "Rise of the Germans" which takes place in the Teutoburg Forest.
1/4/20 update: Some levels have been updated. I have played through these levels, but if you find a bug in them let me know and I can post your name at the end of my campaign for a special thanks!
(Older updates: 12/5/19, 8/14/19, 7/14/19, 2/8/19)
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This campaign attempts to capture the developments of mankind from their earliest Paleolithic beginnings up until the end of antiquity.
I had a lot of fun playing Age of Empires when I was younger, and hence have some strong nostalgia towards the game. That was part of the reason for me putting all of this together. Some of the scenarios may be challenging, but that is because I respect some of the levels that came with the game, which could be difficult.
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Pages: « First « 1 [2] 3 » Last » | Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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rakovsky |
Posted on 08/28/20 @ 11:42 PM
I want to comment on a thoughtful philosophical point you raised in your first section of your Campaign because your Campaign is so good and addresses different aspects of mankind's development and traits.
In your Chapter I (eg. "Lord of the Animals") History section, you made a comment asking or exploring what separated mankind from animals and saying that it's a philosophical question. You suggested that it was probably that mankind is the only creature that could act to damn itself. I would like to suggest a few other ways, including in theology. In the Biblical POV, in Genesis 1, God (or "Gods as a being") created mankind in His/"Their" image and gave mankind dominion over the earth. And then man started naming the animals. So in this way, more fundamental than the ability to act to damn himself, man is made in God's image and is master over the earth and animals.
Also preceding man's Fall is the issue of God's ultimate and original plan for Man. It's doubtful that God only planned for Man to be in the Garden of Eden, separate from God, however good it was in the Garden. In the Christian soteriology, God eventually gives "communion" to loyal mankind and makes man "one" with God. In Christianity, this happens as a result of Christ-God's saving act and sacrifice, which deals with the problem of sin. And so someone could consider what would have happened had there been no Original Sin and no Fall. Would mankind be able to achieve salvation and oneness with God if the Original Sin and Fall had not occurred? And the answer would seem to be Yes, and that God would have achieved communion with Man in some other way than the Atonement. So even had there been no sin or damnation, mankind would still probably have been raised spiritually by God anyway. This suggests that communion with God is a more fundamental aspect or trait of man than the ability of humans to damn themselves.[Edited on 12/17/20 @ 07:57 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 09/09/20 @ 11:11 PM
Thank you for including a walkthrough for your Ages of Man Campaign. By following it in the "ALEXANDER THE GREAT" Scenario, I was able to get Egypt's artifact and the northern corner's Ruins in order to stop the countdowns in time. This was a major issue that I mentioned in my earlier review. Still, there is another major barrier to beating that Scenario: One of the Objectives is to capture Arabia's Artifact. However, Arabia is totally cut off by cliffs and by the Persian Gulf. You, India, and Persia cannot build docks and there is no dock on the northern side of the Persian Gulf that you can use to sail to Arabia.
The "Ages of Man Part 3" Campaign has a later version of this same Scenario that does not have this problem. This is because the "Ages of Man Part 3" version of this Scenario lets you build docks and doesn't require you to get Arabia's artifact. |
rakovsky |
Posted on 09/10/20 @ 06:28 PM
The Hannibal's March Scenario has a Design Flaw that doesn't let you achieve Victory. The problem is that in the Instructions, you are Hannibal the Green Player and your goal is to destroy the Latin Grey Player's (#7's) farms. However, in the Editor, there are no VCs given to Green Player #6, and instead Grey Player #7's VCs are to destroy certain Grey farms. So in the game, when you destroy Grey's farms per the instructions, Grey wins.
The instructions say that there is an alternative objective where you can check the Allied Victory box and destroy all enemies to win. However, you cannot destroy the Grey and Orange enemies because they have unreachable bases in the far left corner, separated by cliffs. The map is also not designed for you to destroy the Aqua Navy enemy, because the Designer did not put any enemy docks on the southern coasts of France or Italy for you to capture to use to attack the Aqua enemy with. |
rakovsky |
Posted on 09/14/20 @ 10:16 PM
For the CTESIPHON Scenario, there is a critical glitch that I found when playing on HARD. Blue Player 1's VC is to Destroy your Red Player 2 Ally, and your final goal is to get Blue's artifact. So you have to fight Blue, but when you start to, Blue switches its stance toward you to Enemy. And then not long after (like a minute), a message announces that Blue is the winner and you are defeated. Not too surprisingly, if you type in the Kill2 Command against Blue (for the commands, you are Player 1 and Blue is Player 2), it turns out that once Blue is destroyed, Blue does not get a victory message and doesn't mysteriously defeat you.
My best guess for what causes the problem is that Red calculates that Blue drastically outranks Red in terms of units and resources and then surrenders, thereby meeting Blue's VC and giving you an automatic defeat. I edited the Scenario so that I started with 7 juggernauts and a mass of infantry in order to see if the glitch was repeatable. Then when playing my edited version I declared war on Blue, stormed Blue's beach on HARD, and the same thing happened. Somehow Blue got a Victory 2 minutes 50 seconds after I started my "edited" version of the game. Next, I set the difficulty to EASIEST and the same thing happened, so it's not an issue with the Difficulty setting.
My guess is that the Designer wanted to give Blue an unwinnable VC so that Blue wouldn't win. It looks this way because Blue is hardly going to destroy Red's Town Center on the opposite side of the sea, since AOE's AI typically doesn't make sea invasions. But if the Designer intended to make an unwinnable VC, this plan backfired due to the Red Player automatically surrendering apparently when you attack Blue.[Edited on 09/14/20 @ 10:49 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 02/02/21 @ 08:37 PM
The DOMESTICATION Scenario is complicated enough that it deserves a separate comment. You can win by holding the artifacts in the middle of the map, which is how I won.
This scenario is not explained clearly enough in the instructions and walkthrough. When the instructions say to bring an elephant to your hunting area and subdue it, this is not clear enough because to subdue an elephant could mean to tame it, but the walkthrough says to kill it, which apparently is what you must actually do.
Your (ie. Player 1's) VCs are: Destroy Red player 2, Orange Player 5, and Green Player 6. Plus, bring two Tame Lions to your western hunting area with blue flags, Get the Gaia base in the far east, and research domestication. There are 4 elephants in the red cage. Player 6's VCs include having the more rightward of the four elephants in the 80+% of the map outside the NE edge of the map that includes the hunting area. So, based on the instructions, I guess that probably killing the elephant outside the area makes you defeat Player 6, which is one of your VCs.
The instructions say that you can delete your priest when you've got your lions so that you don't have to defend the allied TCs "once they are defeated". The part in quotation marks is confusing. and needs to be reworded. Anyway, even when I deleted my priest after getting the lions, I still lost when the Yellow team killed the brown TC. So I checked the editor, and based on the Editor, I need to have my priest back in my western base when I delete him. So the part in quotation marks is referring to the fact that for the Yellow or Brown players to beat you by destroying the other one's TC, he must control his war chest/artifact, AND you must also have your priest in the 80 percent of the map outside your starting area in the west near your hunting area. So by deleting your priest while he is in the hunting area, you would prevent yellow or brown from winning. But you do need to use your priest to tame at least two lions.
So based on the Editor, instead of deleting your priest, you can choose to fight Yellow and take his war chest. By taking his war chest, he can't win. However, it's also a little challenge to get to those chests, so deleting the priest is not a bad option.
Here is a Walkthrough that I made based on how the scenario looks in the Editor and based on my experience playing it. Asteriks mean that I did it in my successful playthrough.
* Early on, build houses around the yellow base to protect it. Try repairing your allies' TCs if they get hurt by each other. I walled in a yellow villager so that he automatically repairs his own TC.
* Explore the beach to the west of your Brown ally's base and build a dock there for fishing. Do it early on, because on HARD, I see that my ally built farms blocking the path to it.
* Don't look for the priest on the SW edge until you beat the red base near him because he is too weak by himself.
- If you can't protect the yellow base from the Brown Player, you need to delete your priest back in your hunting area.
* Destroy the 3 orange barracks. You might as well destroy their TC and convert their villagers too.
* In case dominating the area around the northern ruins isn't enough to capture it, probably you can capture the green/orange ruins by the orange base by walking to it from the north side of it an by following the path that the green priests were on in a spiral. However, I just got it by killing all enemies near it and having my units near it on its south side.
* There is a Gaia archery and ruins directly south of your opening area that has the brown and yellow TCs. You have to get to the archery by going south along the cliff top clockwise and then chopping your way. It's a good place to snipe the red enemy from too, and there is a ruins there.
* Go to the priest in the east side of the river by sending your villager on the east side along the cliffs to his east. Chop your way through the eastern treeline with that villager to get to the east corner Gaia base.
* Use the priest on the east side of the river to convert lions and send them into the red base and then east to the east corner.
* You can get to the east corner by going east through the SE part of the red base through the grey Medium Wall entrance area.
X To get to the red base from the north, chop your way through the woods south of the gold mines.
- Use a slinger to bring the cage's lower right elephant to your hunting area.
X The way to get to the war chests is north of the area where the elephants are caged in.
On HARD, I got the two wolf lions in the far north corner and then got the ruins to the SE of them. I guess that this means that one is male and the other female, because there are two, but the lions don't appear to be labeled in their gender. Then the Orange enemy defeated my invading army. There is a beach on the west end of my brown ally's base, but it looks like he built farms there that blocked me. Also, I deleted my priest like the instructions said, but when my allies destroyed one of my allies' TCs, the mission ended anyway in defeat. The walkthrough says to build a wall between Yellow and Bown's TCs. BUT you can't build a wall in the Stone Age, which you start in, anyway. PART 2 of this map is not really designed for very active AIs like in HARD mode because of flaws like the Brown player building farms that block off the western beach, and not being able to build walls between the Ally TCs because they you are in the Stone Age. Basically, you don't have a way to stop your allies from killing each other unless you use tricks like putting a wall of houses around Yellow's base. But on a Medium or Hard difficulty, I don't know if the Brown player would use so many slingers that he would kill Yellow's TC before I could repair it even with the wall. Repairing the Yellow TC is not a perfect fix either because after a while, I got a message that I was out of resources to repair the Yellow TC even though I actually had enough Wood, Food, and Stone and because I never had gold to begin with, so my lack of gold couldn't have been a factor either.
On EASY, my army going to capture the northern ruins destroyed one of the Orange barracks and then got slaughtered going for the ruins. Another time, I sent my raft down from the west corner to get the priest unit, but that priest unit is not strong enough against the villagers and bowmen who chop through the trees near him. A half hour into the game, an announcement came that all artifacts were captured and that I had 2000 years to get them back. I had been repairing the Brown TC to keep it alive, but then I got a message saying I was out of resources for repairs even though I had enough food, wood, and stone. So I built a mine near the gold in the middle of the map, thinking that gold was the issue. But the TC got destroyed anyway.
Another time on EASY, I got the ruins in the North by dominating the area around it. On the east river, you get a storage pit surrounded totally by cliffs and the river. I have no idea what that unit is for because there is nothing for that unit to do there. He can't chop through wood to go through the cliff area. But you can movie it with a transport after researching the Tool Age in the TC that you get near the SE edge of the map. I beat it by holding the artifacts for 2000 years.
For some reason, the scenario repeatedly crashes on EASIEST about 10 seconds into the mission, regardless of whether I play it on the UPATCH version or on ROR 1.0A. |
Granite_Rocks (id: S_Bishop)
File Author |
Posted on 03/30/21 @ 11:45 AM
Hello Rakovsky, you seem to enjoy the levels i made a little while ago. Would you like to fix them and even add or amend to them at your own pleasure. If they are good enough then we can use the name Ages of Mankind in the campaign title. Would you have fun doing that? |
rakovsky |
Posted on 05/11/21 @ 02:06 AM
Thanks for replying, Sammy. I tried emailing you, but I guess you didn't see my email. Maybe it went to your Spam box.
The hardest one for me to fix would be Ctesiphon because the Player's Objective is to get the war chest out of the southern Blue Player and then get it back before the teams inside the middle of the map crush you. The hard part about this is that the defenses for the Blue Player are extremely tough and it would take a long time to whittle them down. So I don't know how weak to make them.
The hard part about me fixing this is that I don't know how hard you as the Designer intended it to be for the Player to conquer the southern Blue base. I don't know if you meant it to really be that hard because you are stuck with a practical time limit as to how much you can fight that southern base.
For your reference, I got through Chapters 1-3 and 7 and a couple scenarios in between.
The only ones that I would fix would be the ones that an OK player couldn't win on EASIEST, ie. where there is some bug making it unwinnable (eg. the VCs are set wrong) or far too hard.
I found five ones needing fixing so far:
Metal Alloys, (IV) Empires, Alexander the Great, Hannibal's March, and (VII) Ctesiphon. I recommend that you read my notes in this Comments Section for those scenarios to see the problem. Alexander the Great and Hannibal's March worked fine on "Ages of Mankind 3," so maybe you accidentally used an earlier, broken version of those scenarios in your "Complete Ages of Mankind" Campaign.[Edited on 08/09/21 @ 06:36 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 08/09/21 @ 06:35 PM
I am leaving a separate Comment Message here about the "(IV) EMPIRES" scenario because it is so hard and the 2nd VC is wrong and unattainable.
You start with 0 villagers and can only make trade ships and fishing ships for resources. You have a Granary and berries and storage pits, so I don't know if this is intentional. There is an Orange harbor that is easy to miss that is on the SW edge of the map on the edge of the western river and not far from the west corner. Further down southward on the SW edge of the map is a Yellow dock that you can miss. There is a red dock in the east corner.
On HARD, 11 Minutes in, Kish said, "You dare defy me?" and declared war on me. 20 minutes in, Ur demanded 1000 in Tribute. My gold was under 30 and my attempts to invade Orange had already turned into slaughterfests by Orange. Orange has priests, camel riders, broadswordsmen, strong towers, galleys, archers... My waves of phalanx and chariot archers were melted away by Orange.
On MODERATE, 10 minutes in, I saw Kish ask for 1000 gold, but I had less than 300. 20 minutes in, I ran out of wood. And there is no way to trade for wood, and besides that, I get attacked by sea, yet without wood, I can't make ships to protect my transports or stop the attacks.
On EASY, by 40 minutes in, I had practically beaten Orange and Red, but I had practically no navy, wood, or chariots left. And then at 40 minutes in, Green declared war on me and both Green and Brown still had navies.
On EASIEST, the same problem occurs. Just as I am near to beating one enemy, like Orange, the next Ally (eg. Red) declares war on me. And so I can defeat Orange and Red, but I don't have enough wood to keep making ships and chariot archers to kill the enemy ships and archers. I thought of sending war chests to each of my allies with escorts so that I can try to just fight Orange and Red's temple areas without having to defeat Red, and then get a win by having a war chest at each temple (ie. by fighting my war into Orange and Red's temple areas and putting a war chest by my allies' temples.). But the problem with this startegy is that I can only get into my allies' temple areas by destroying their temple walls, meaning that I still need to fight them. And the problem with fighting all my allies is that I can't make enough ships and chariot archers with the starting wood. Suppose that Each AI on average has 6 ships. This means that I must fight 36 ships total.
One idea is to fight using only ships and camels instead of using any chariot archers or archer units. So I restarted on EASIEST and made only about 6 chariot archers for fighting priests. I also skipped fighting red until I fought Yellow and Brown because Red's temple is closer to your base than Red's base. But the problem is that the enemy navies still massacred my ships, even when I built more boats. On top of that, by the time that I got to Red's temple, I saw that they had trained about 5 priests, and I didn't have enough chariot archers to fight them. I thought hat I might use chariot archers earlier to fight red's temple area, but the problem is that Red keeps training priests from its Temple.
This scenario was not in PART 2 or Part 3 of the Ages of Man series, so it seems like it was made specially for the "Complete Ages of Mankind" campaign, and so maybe the Designer didn't playtest it.
The walkthrough says to make a strong navy, but even a strong navy is not strong enough with the limited wood. It says that the easier strategy is to pay off your allies with Tribute. The problem with this strategy is that not only do I generate tribute slowly, but 1000 gold is a lot and I have to fight a new ally every 10 minutes. I definitely need to fight yellow and red because their temples are surrounded by walls. Supposing that I got enough tribute to keep Green (1500 gold) and Brown friends with me, would they ask for tribute again after 10 more minutes? If not, destroying Red, Yellow, and Orange and tributing the other two players seems the best strategy.
So I restarted on EASIEST and planned to use the Tribute option with Brown, but 4 trading ships and 6 fishing ships was not enough to get 1000 gold for brown in a half hour, and to make more trade ships cuts down on my navy and population size, not to mention that I've just lost a lot of gold that I need for my army. So I had to skip the possibility of giving my allies any tribute. I simply didn't have enough. I beat each enemy except red and I had 4 galleys left. To deal with the priests' attacks at the red temple, I trained like 12 axemen to soak up the conversions. Fortunately on Easiest, enemy priests tend to be mostly passive. I used my four remaining galleys to attack the priests from the south of the red temple area. Meanwhile I used my infantry to break through the NW edge of the temple wall and then massacred the priests. They did convert a few infantry, but I tended to ignore that and focus on the wall.
Finally, I put 1 war chest next to each of the temples of Players #2-6. There is also the "hideout" enemy, but I did not see them having any temples or blue flag spots for me to bring my war chest to.
I checked the VCs, and Player 1's VCs are to create 1 War chest within the square of tiles framed by walls and containing a Temple owned by the Orange Player, and then to do the same thing for the walled Temple areas belonging to the Yellow, Brown, and Red Player. However, instead of marking the same kind of Victory condition pertaining to the Green Player 6's Temple, Player 2's VC #2 says to bring a certain red legion or longswordsman from the right side of the map to a house in the west corner that is blocked off by a cliffline. This VC is impossible to meet.
My main suggestions are:
-- Fix the 2nd VC for Player 1 so that it requires you to put a war chest within the walled Temple area belonging to the green player.
-- Give Player 1 (A) a few villagers or (B) much more wood, like 50% more or 100% more, because you cannot chop any for yourself and it's very very hard even on EASIEST with the current level of Wood, because you have to fight enemy ships and enemy priests protected by walls.
I suggest Option (B) and giving the player 50% more wood because I guess you designed it so that the Player would play it with a limited wood supply based on the fact that you emphasized Trading in your instructions. If you would worry that giving the player more wood would make it too easy, then consider that the Player has the option to play it on a harder or easier difficulty level. If you play this map on HARD or HARDEST, I think it will still be practically impossible to win even with 50 percent more wood to start with.[Edited on 08/09/21 @ 06:42 PM]
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rakovsky |
Posted on 08/27/21 @ 08:21 PM
Today I fixed the glitches in the Complete Ages of Mankind campaign and submitted my fixed version to the Granary as "Complete Ages of Mankind, Version 2."
http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=2839
On one other campaign that I submitted, a game player said that when he played my campaign, he could not open up the next scenario in the campaign after he beat the first scenario. I have occasionally had this problem when playing others' campaigns, but it has been rare. I don't know what causes this rare problem. Maybe it has to do with playing in Adminstrator Mode.[Edited on 08/28/21 @ 11:55 AM]
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Granite_Rocks (id: S_Bishop)
File Author |
Posted on 10/26/21 @ 08:49 PM
Thanks for all your feedback. Feel free to post your version online under your name. I am honestly not sure if I am going to come back to working on the campaign. What good could this game do for me anyhow. There were some unfinished levels that I never did post. Maybe some day I will have to hand them over to you to finish if you want. |
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HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.1 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 3.5 | Balance | 3.8 | Creativity | 5.0 | Map Design | 4.5 | Story/Instructions | 3.8 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 1,461 |
Favorites: [] | 1 |
Size: | 4.49 MB |
Added: | 02/27/17 |
Updated: | 05/28/23 |
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