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Complete Ages of Mankind, Version 2
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Author |
File Description |
rakovsky |
Posted on 08/27/21 @ 07:59 PM
File Details |
Number of Scenarios: |
31 |
Difficulty: |
Mod-Hard |
Version: |
Rise of Rome |
Campaign Title: Complete Ages of Mankind - Version 2
Campaign Designed by: S_Bishop
Campaign Edited by: Rakovsky, submitted as Ver. 2
Date of Version 2: 8/27/2021
# of scenarios: 31
Difficulty level: Moderate-Hard
Designed for: AOE ROR, Single Player
Acknowledgements: Chab's ROCKNROR Editor tool
DESCRIPTION:
This campaign is about humanity's challenges through ancient Ages. It covers the technological and survival difficulties beginning with early man, and continues as you build empires. You begin in the Stone Age, as a group of early Homo Sapiens struggling for food. Later your group becomes a Tool Aged tribe led by a priest. You must battle other tribes, and fight for your territory; Vanquish them! Later, your tribe begins exploring out at sea, and colonizing new lands. You come into contact with new enemies with powerful bronze weapons. Will you be able to survive?
From the Bronze Age, the story continues into the Iron Age. Experience the rise of the Hittites, the Israelite conquest of Canaan, Alexander the Great's conquest of the Middle East, Archimedes' use of mirrors, and Rome's expansion across the Mediterranean, among other famous events.
Thus the campaign oversees humanity's developments its earliest Paleolithic beginnings up until the end of antiquity. The scenarios' order corresponds to many historians' and anthropologists' chronological order for humanity's development. Although some of the tribes' names and conflicts are fictitious, their technologies are not.
Many of the scenarios are challenging. But the zip file for downloading here includes the Designer S_Bishop's walkthrough and the Readme with the Editor Rakovsky's Gameplay Advice for individual scenarios. Have fun!
DESIGN NOTES:
In 2010-2017, S_Bishop/Granite_Rocks made a three part series of "Ages of Man" campaigns. He revised the scenarios and combined almost all of them into his "Complete Ages of Mankind" campaign:
http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=2628
I played all the Complete campaign's scenarios and liked them. But they had some design flaws, particularly mistaken VCs making scenarios unwinnable. So S_Bishop asked me on his Comments section, "Would you like to fix them and even add or amend to them at your own pleasure"?
I fixed the scenarios' most important flaws and made them all winnable. I used Chab's ROCKNROR Editor and they should be all playable in AOE ROR, including in the AOE ROR UPATCH HD version. I am listing some of the more important design issues below.
1. S_Bishop left the TRIBAL WAR scenario from "Ages of Man, Part 1" out of the Complete campaign after another reviewer complained that the enemies didn't invade his base early in the mission. I think the the Designer is skilled enough that he could have easily revised the mission to make the enemies invade. I followed the Designer's decision not to include the mission in the complete version. You can find "Part 1" with the "Tribal War" mission here:
http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=2289
2. In METAL ALLOYS, I made the VCs work so that you win if you destroy the docks and bring home the war chest. I also made the Elite Objective work so that you win if you kill the enemy heroes.
3. I fixed the EMPIRES scenario so that bringing a chest to all temples gives you a victory.
4. I fixed the RELIGION Scenario so that capturing enough ruins gives you an instant win like the Designer intended.
5. In the ALEXANDER THE GREAT scenario in the Complete Campaign, the Instructions and Victory Conditions require you to capture the Arabs' artifact and bring it home from Arabia. But there are several problems with this Objective:
(A) You can't get to Arabia. It is blocked off from the rest of the map by two lines of cliffs on the west side and the Persian Gulf on the north. You can't build a dock, and nor can the Indians, who don't have docks anyway. So you can't convert an Indian dock to make a transport to cross the Gulf.
(B) The History section correctly says that Alexander never made it to Arabia like he planned, which means that it's more historical to leave conquering Arabia as a purely Elite Objective rather than as a regular requirement to beat the mission.
(C) The author made a different version of this mission in "Ages of Man Part 3," and that version does not require you to go to Arabia to win. In fact, the Arabs are missing from that version.
(D) The Designer said that he beat all the missions on MODERATE, but this could only apply to the version in the "Part 3" campaign, since it's impossible to beat the version in the Complete Campaign.
(E) The Balance is already very hard in my opinion without demanding that the Player battle Arabia, and the Designer gave me flexibility to "amend" the campaign.
So I edited the ALEXANDER THE GREAT scenario so that you don't need to get Arabia's artifact to win, and I also added a transport boat owned by the Blue Player in case you want to go for the Elite Objective of conquering all Players, including the Arabian Player.
6. I fixed HANNIBAL'S MARCH so that destroying the Grey farms gives you a victory like the Instructions say. I also made it so that you can defeat the grey Player in order to accomplish the Elite Objective of conquering all other players.
7. I fixed CTESIPHON so that after you attack the Blue Player and the Blue Player destroys one of the Red Player's Government Centers, this destruction does not make you automatically lose the match. A second problem was that the Designer wrote that your enemies would break out of the mountain base with the Red GCs once you captured the Blue Player's artifact. But in reality, the Blue base is so heavily defended that you can't realistically capture the artifact in anywhere near the 3 minutes that it takes for the enemies to break out of the mountain base. The base is surrounded by water, Zenobia's Towers, Heavy Catapults, Helepoli, Elephant Archers, Composite Archers, priests, and a line that is part-wall and part-cliff. So I weakened the defenses around the entrance enough that you should be able to get the artifact in 1-10 minutes.
INSTALLATION
1. Put the .CPX Campaign file into your Computer's Age of Empires folder's Campaign folder.
2. The README file details changes from the original campaign and its Gameplay Advice section is to help you if you get stuck.
3. S_Bishop's "GUIDE" file is also for your information if you get stuck playing the scenarios.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
1. If you beat a scenario and the next scenario does not unlock, please tell me here in the Comments section. Try running your game in Adminstrator mode. If the glitch still occurs, download the Campaign Manager here:
http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=7
Then use it to extract the scenarios from the Ages of Mankind version 2 .CPX campaign file. Then use your game's "Campaign Editor" to reassemble the scenarios into a new campaign file that works for you.
2. If you are still stuck after reading the Walkthrough and the Gameplay Advice in the README, let me know here in the Comments section. If you are struck because I missed fixing one of the scenarios' glitches, then you can use my Design Notes to fix it yourself. |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Nifferent |
Posted on 10/06/21 @ 05:06 PM
It crashes the game whenever I pass the volcano |
rakovsky
File Author |
Posted on 10/31/21 @ 12:19 AM
Nifferent,
Which version of AOE1 are you playing? It should work with AOE1 ROR 1.0A, AOE1 ROR 1.0A ROCKNROR, or AOE1 ROR UPATCH.
I guess that you are referring to Scenario #1, which has a volcano that you must go around. Scenario #1 was one of the scenarios that I didn't edit because I beat it using the Walkthrough. So that scenario is purely "Copy and Pasted," so to speak, from S_Bishop's original "Complete campaign," and therefore should work fine without crashing.
Therefore I recommend that you try playing the scenario with those versions, and also try going around the volcano in another direction (eg. counterclockwise). If you try everything and it still crashes, you can try skipping to the next scenario in the campaign using the "Home Run" Cheat. |
Granite_Rocks (id: S_Bishop) |
Posted on 06/17/23 @ 05:04 PM
Hey Rakovsky, thankyou for taking care of my campaign. I've modified my campaign as well. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 416 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 4.49 MB |
Added: | 08/27/21 |
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