Discuss William the Conqueror v1.1
The first scenario looked interesting, but it’s a bit confusing. It suggests to scout or travel at night, enemies continue to attack you if you enter approach a fort instead of a village and they get a constant stream of free units to attack you with, neither of which the instructions mention. I had to piece that together myself and wasn’t entirely sure it was intentional at first. Enemy patrols have a long line of sight in addition to being set to aggressive, so they see the player from a mile away and will chase them to the ends of the Earth. They’re pretty densely placed too, so it’s hard to avoid them when dodging one probably puts you in sight of another.
I was able to make it to the destination, but only with a fair amount of foreknowledge that helped me optimize my route. I think it might be a bit more fun if the enemy patrols had a smaller line of sight but were stronger in exchange to reward avoiding them and carefully exploring rather than just going from fort to fort gathering troops to plow through them. It’s doable either way but I didn’t feel much like a fugitive carving a path through the countryside.
It really doesn’t help that your food constantly drops and running out damages your units, which the hints doesn’t warn you about, making it easy to die of starvation while just trying to avoid getting spotted. Granted, once you know about this and the locations of a few farms, it’s easy to survive, because you know not to train any units during the first part, but then, why even give access to those buildings?
I think what it comes down to is that the level is confusing. Is the player supposed to train units in chapter one or not? Are they supposed to fight the patrols or avoid them? Are they supposed to seek refuge or just grab the troops at forts and leave? The instructions make it sound like the player should avoid patrols and hide in villages and forts, but the patrols are nearly impossible to avoid and forts turn you into a huge target even at night.
There’s also the issue that it reads like chapter three is meant to be a set-piece battle where the player destroys green’s cities, but the AI players have standard scenario behavior, so they immediately started building town centers and docks everywhere. It felt a bit weird. Purple in particular put up like, three TCs in an area that fit on the screen and then did nothing with them. On a map this size and with so many green bases to start with, I personally feel that it would be better if the AI wasn’t constantly expanding their bases, otherwise it could drag on for quite a while. I kept getting requests for resources from the cyan player, too, which felt out of place.
I think it could be fun once the kinks are worked out, overall. It’s just that it kind of needs to pick what type of level it wants to be and stick with it, rather than giving instructions that point to one thing while mechanically doing something else. Haven’t gotten to the other scenarios but might try them later.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, Frankish Paladins become available in the stables after you send an envoy to the French, but they have no listed description or cost. Are they even supposed to be available? They’re so much better than Norman Knights I don’t see why I’d use the latter.
Scenario 2: This level has the same issue with AI sending resource requests and colonizing the map with random buildings. Beyond that, I’m not sure if it’s an issue or intended, but it feels like the revolts all come at you at once and give you no time to react. I had one barracks and four different cities about to revolt at once near the beginning. Is it just not supposed to be possible to hold them all?
I’d also like to note that this one really needs a way of telling which city is which such as changing the faction name of the buildings in each city to the city’s name. A flare at the moment an objective is added isn’t very helpful and it’s hard to remember which of the many cities needs reinforcements. I wasn’t even sure where Cerisy Monastery was at first because I got the objectives after just tasking my starting units somewhere past it.
EDIT 2: I tried the second scenario again and found that the revolts only happen once you research high power decrees. That’s fine, on its own, but the fact that they continue to happen on loop quickly makes the scenario unmanageable when other factions start declaring you as an enemy. At the very least, eliminating the bandit camps and green’s three kreposts should halt the revolt plots.
It doesn’t help that so many buildings, like the monastery, university, and town center, are locked behind decrees that cause other factions to enemy you, making it difficult to even prepare for them. I’m not meant to research decrees until I’m ‘ready’, but I can’t be ready because I don’t get access to the things I need until the fighting has already started.
Certain high and low power decrees locking you out of the other tree is insane and unnecessary, as well, especially when low power decrees cause you to get pulled into a war to get access to the buildings I mentioned above, but you don’t get access to siege or stables unless you lock yourself out of further low power decrees with the third high power one.
Also, some of the decrees supposedly unlock things but either don’t properly describe them or are broken. How do I ‘reclaim the countryside’ by repairing castles? And was that in reference to the donjons, kreposts, or castles? Because using villagers to repair any of them did nothing whatsoever.
If there’s a third scenario I’m not even going to bother with it right now, because it’s clear this campaign is broken in its current state.
I played the first mission and it shuts down any mood for me to play any further. So I leave this here as my first mission review, rather than whole campaign.
Mission 1
Beginning is really suck, you have to wait for Little John to wait for coronation. Only little John is controllable. And guess what, getting through the ambush is a hassle, because of pathing.
And tell you what, it’s suck, equivalent to V&V unnecessarily gatekeeping you from having fun with concepts that’s do not need to be existed.
Most of the time, the dense of green units are confusing, blocking, and annoying all the time. DE pathing has always has troubles, and this campaign highlights every parts of it.
You are supposed to avoid the patrol, and every patrol, even with 6 heroes, turns into a mandatory fights since patrols just see you anyway. Combined with food mechanic, it’s a dam nightmare just to play (On standard after I regret playing it on hard). I have no idea where to navigate, all while being on pressure and being clapped so hard by dense patrols. It’s the fifth time until I managed to find an optimal route.
And I thought the hardest path was over… I have no idea that the spy section will be a reminder, along with return to the base section. ENEMIES ARE TOO DENSE AND TOO AGRESSIVE, WITH PATHING THAT DOES NOT HELP ME AVOID ALL OF THEM. All of them consistently throughout the campaign.
Objectives on the other hands are too confusing. You suppose to read the hints to understand it. No map marking objectives, no clear explain. I have no idea.
I quitted as soon as chapter 3 hits, my hero was going to die by patrol anyway, softblock my whole save.
Mission 2
It again testing my patience. The map let me select a group of horse, I moved them out and… cutscene.
No longer control any units, while enemy raging on.
I… am… speechless. I hate it and probably other scenarios will treat me with triggers disappointment.
Conclusion
I think the campaign is tedious and badly designed. It has very good ideas, but triggers ingame are helping players nothing while creating a chaotic mess of information.
I do think the author needs to replay and test it again and again. A lot of times, custom campaign suck because the author assumed players will play the intended way and somehow ignore the gameplay balance.
You need to put into perspective how a single dude with no idea about the scenario play this. It’s frustrating to wait for badly made cutscenes while gameplay part just toss any mess into your face.
in the second scenario it says to send monks and sheeps to cerisy and jumieges, there is 0 mention of which is cerisy and jumieges and no matter where i send that mission does not complete, the relic mission completed by just picking up a relic