I know this may be a weird place to put this, but I was unsure how to contact you. I am doing some research on the early work of AoE contributors and I have the campaigns you put up as Al-Kharn, but there was a curious note in the Land of the Pyramids campaign. It said that if I liked this, I should check out your other campaign, The Rise of Greece. However, when I search the Granary, no such campaign by Al_Kharn seems to exist . . . however, there is a campaign named The Story of Greece, by ThePaladin, which bears several hallmarks of your early campaigns such as lots of scenarios, long scenario names, detailed descriptions, starts that put you right in the action, etc . . .
Would you be able to confirm or deny if this is your campaign? If this is not it, can you tell me whatever happened to The Rise of Greece?
Hi @Tanit thanks for reaching out. I didn’t expect a question about such old designs! I can confirm Story of Greece is not mine, but I am unsure about the Rise of Greece campaign referenced in Land of the Pyramids. Possibly, I had intended to make such a campaign and never did or never finished it. It has been 25 years so I have no recollection of this and only the vaguest memories of this period of my campaigns. Thanks for checking.
Hey @PhillySouljah, thank you for your work! I thoroughly enjoyed all of your scenarios. I only recently have gotten to Three Kingdoms III and have played most factions to see how the game shifts and every time you have a different experience altogether, from classical build and destroy to stealth missions, raids and nomad migration. Of all your scenarios I think this one is the most elaborated. I did find some bugs though through my playthroughs and I’ve come up with a few suggestions to edit them out for everyone who still wants to play. Here’s the list of bugs and unbalances I found:
When playing as Shu Han (maybe others as well), when you gain sight of Sima Yi, he changes to your side. If you do this while at peace with Cao Wei you get their hero to your side for the rest of the game!
Lady Trieu victory needs her to raze a Palace but the triggers counter each other and you end up not getting the victory if you raze the Sun Palace (it happened twice for me).
There is a Xianbei message to train Tarkans to raze the gates but Tarkans ar not available until you get a Palace and by then they are not needed anymore as you can have rams and trebs
When you play as the Xianbei and manage to raze Xingnu’s (orange) base, they escape with a scout and don’t admit defeat until they reach Imp Age via events which then triggers some messy messages like the Han Zhao Kingdom founded only for it to be instantly defeated. Same for Yan (teal)
Some unbalances:
Lady Trieu gets a really easy start against Shi Xie with her and 29 rattan archers she can simply raze their starting TC. I suggest some defenses south for purple when the player chooses Viet faction (3 yasama keeps and 4 extra battle elephants).
Shu Han have it harder than the rest with max 75 pop (150 if you implement only population policies). I suggest giving them 7 maximum policies instead of 5 for more flexibility
Bandits have it too easy. With 75 pop you can have 35 vils and 40 bandits will simply raze the whole base with just one 4 minute cease fire. I suggest reducing their pop cap to 50 and cease fire to 2 minutes
In all playthroughs purple (as Yue) is too strong and steamrolls yellow (Sun). I suggest giving the three kingdom AI some extra resources to make sure they are stronger and reflect their historical dominance over the others
Yellow turbans have a really rough start. By minute 14 everybody rushes them (hundreds of units on hard). While you can anticipate it (a second time) and kinda block their way, gameplay is really suffering. I suggest giving them triggers to make the Shanyue three villages join them via quests (not right away) so you can have some extra buffers until you get your economy, barracks and stables running
Xianbei also have a hard start. By minute 23 in my first playthrough when Xiongnu (orange) declares war, they have infinite Mongol light cav with 2/4 armour and bonus hp and they prove too much for a nomad economy. They can also easily pillage your yurts and villagers crippling you. Also yurts cost 200 food and 100 wood which is over expensive for a barracks and meager economy. - Suggestions are many here:
make it so they can train tarkans - an essential unit for the nomad raiders (by having a gaia tent train just tarkans where you meet the first three - which should be at least 4)
give them a gaia hun temple (shrine) for them to store relics and give them a trickle of gold at start
make the secondary yurts cost half - 100 food and 50 wood so they can afford it
after defeating the Xiongnu, give some resources and hint them to betray Yan (teal) for lots of resources and chain barding armour. While optional, it’s good to have the aggressive Yan out of the way as you plan to precision strike with your 40+ tarkans at a palace and make sure they don’t backstab you instead.
make it easier to defeat Xiongnu and Yan after ~10 minutes of their initial TC and hero are dead while in Castle age (I’ve had them run around with a scout and were only defeated when they reached Imp Age via triggers as stated above)
Sorry for the long post! I took the liberty to implement some of these changes in my copy and have tested them out so let me know if you want me to send you a list of triggers I edited. Thanks again for your dedication and tell us what are you working now on?