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Please post criticism and suggestions for those two maps here - Bookwyrm, Thereunto, et al.

http://aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1203
http://aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1211

download links for latest versions (haven't changed recently)
Post edited December 06, 2019 by southern
I've posted most of my criticisms thus far.

-You need to check on the indy status for the various guards.
--Off hand, there is a stack of 3 goblin clerics near the Undead base that are willing to join the undead. Based on the Doom Priests near the Azrac base, I'm assuming these goblins shouldn't be offering to join up.
--There's the stack of 8 dwarf units, with giants, moles, and bombards, guarding one of the towers in the southern central part on the middle layer that needs to be set to guard with their lives. ~500 gold to hire that stack is ridiculously OP.

-The basilisks in all the dungeons are a neat idea, but neither the High Men nor the Undead can use them anywhere close to the way everyone else can because of alignment problems. I always had to stack serious guards on the basilisks to keep them from rebelling.

-I've already logged my complaints about the Mimo hero being too OP. It isn't really fun knowing there is a hero out there that does pretty much everything. He's immune to anything that isn't physical, you have to have True Sight to find him, he has full vision (except Night Vision), Casting V and Doom Gaze means he will wreck the shit out of stacks of archers, floating lets him go anywhere, 10 defense helps compensate for his low hp, and Dominate gives him a decent chance at stealing strong attackers. Bleh. He doesn't die unless his controller gets careless or someone else gets lucky. Personally, I like more strategy in my strategy games.

-More of a note than anything else, this is the map that taught me Syrons aren't Fire Immune. I think I glossed over their list of immunities and just never noticed it wasn't in there with the rest of them. I found out the hard way when I dragged a Syron to the bottom teleporter and he couldn't cross the lava.

-I'd suggest rock walling the prisons on the river side, so other players can't steal someone's walker wizard.
Post edited December 07, 2019 by Bookwyrm627
To start, Xelm and Swirlmount are beautiful maps, and every time I played either one I learned something new about the game itself and the devilishly brilliant cunning of seasoned players. These maps are an advanced player playground, and they introduced a number of map elements in such a way that envoked emphasis on the third 'x' of 4x games, exploit.

Regarding Xelm...

The game seems to have phases:
1) mini-domain expansion (resource scarce start)
2) Naval combat and the push for middle depths positions
3) A sprawl for underground cities
4) A race to the surface

There are beautiful imbalances that add a lot of flavour and decision making to the game:

Undead:
1) With plenty of ruined cities on the map, reanimate ruins (AR) is a key tactical spell. Undead have a unique limitation that they lack the night vision required to cast the spell from large distances. There is a 12 hex range on AR, but you cannot cast it on cities that you have not seen before (and specifically hasn't been undiscovered by trail of darkness, etc).
2) Access to wraiths later in the game. If an agreement is reached with the Elves, you then have the capability to have a water-walking wraith which could devastate water combat early-mid game (especially if you use a doom priest to dominate a wraith from a cave)
3) Despite no fire magic, has hell hounds that could gold rank and navigate over lava (a weak workaround, but the capability nonetheless)
4) Earth magic provides stone skin for boats and gold-rush, as well as entangle for easier indie combat (and easier domination with the doom priests).
5) Freemovement (FM) for boats (depending on house rules applied)

Highmen:
1) Have access to the most powerful tactical item (Vision IV + Nightvision), which allows them to see threats in advance, despite having a weaker naval presence. Innate true-sight also allows for better early game intel and spotting of enemy leaders.
2) Many of their major cities are on the outer perimeter of their domain (within the dirt wall). They are positioned in such a way that they are susceptible to summon attacks over the dirt wall (summon spawncheck = point + 2 hex radius), but, this also allows them to towngate boats at any of the points of their territory with ease where other races cannot (towngate spawncheck = target +3 hex radius). It's a give and take relationship which gives them a lot of manoeuvrability.

Dark Elves:
1) Have the strongest initial expansion potential with access to haste, summon eagles, summon frogs, wind walking (WW), and healing water. Great water defence and expansion with freeze water. Dark Elves also have night vision and are possibly the most robustly capable race on the map at the start of the game.

Azracs:
1) Their home base is heavily lava which offers good defense against town-gate attacks by players that lack fire halo. Their domain territory has one of the strongest defensibilities against non-fire magic players.
2) Priests are fire immune so can walk over the middle depths lava.

Elves:
1) Waterwalking with mana abundance allows the elves to use any unit in their naval expansion.
2) Liquid form on dragon boats gives one of the strongest naval advantages, as it halves physical damage from enemy boats. (I believe it was statistically better than stone skin)
3) Flood would be a fun spell for players to have access to in order to slow surface sprawl, but it is a resource heavy spell that wouldn't become available until it was too late.

Things I would change (or experiment with):
1) Instead of land caves leading to the surface in the middle, have water caves around the middle that boats can access to go up and down levels. This brings more focus on naval conquests, and gives players the ability to expand into the underground (and to the surface) with ease. The choices for expansion are suddenly more dynamic. The centre would still be contested territory for more gold and mana, but it can't be used to lock out other players from exploring the other levels of the map.
2) Have galleys and galleons pre-installed at the docks that are conquerable. Have drills pre-installed at the guilds
3) Lighten the indie armies on the surface teleporters.
4) Consider having some cities upgraded (we will almost never see high level units unless they are, especially the 4-block depths cities)
5) Consider making the centre spells more useful to early game tactics. It's tricky to find a good balance for this. Spell ward, watcher, disjunction, towngate, low tier summons (frog), and Flood (works on the surface only) are some ideas that come to mind.
6) Minor map cleanups to fix pathing
7) Never leave a spot on the map that is a single hex surrounded by only impassible rock in the underground or depths. There are ways to get your leader into that spot and sit there forever.

Some important spell or ability interactions to consider
1) Many players know that FM and WW work on boats to let them move around, but do people know that Fire-Halo (FH) lets boats move over different types of terrain? FH boats can move over lava, debris-free underground hexes, ice, bridges, and cave entrances. This increases the value of fire-magic and allows for domain territories to be crafted around this concept. FH boats can't attack structures of any kind, nor attack hexes with vegetation/debris. Freeze water is an aggravating lockdown for boats, FH is a perfect counter.
2) Boats can be towngated, and depending on the city hex targeted, it can cause the boat to appear on different rivers, depending on the map setup. You can isolate cities from being able to be towngated to by boats (check is only target +3 hexes) but I found it fun to be able to pick and choose where to relocate forces.
3) It becomes possible with long ranged attacks to micro damage indie stacks by shooting and then leaving battle (wash and repeat), if you have two or more hexes that you can attack from. If you limit access to important locations by only allowing 1 hex entry, you make it more difficult to micro the stack.
4) If two indie stacks are touching, race relations can sometimes be used to force the stacks to fight each other.
Post edited December 07, 2019 by Thereunto
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Thereunto: These maps are an advanced player playground,
I definitely agree with this.
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Thereunto: Undead:
1) With plenty of ruined cities on the map, reanimate ruins (AR) is a key tactical spell. Undead have a unique limitation that they lack the night vision required to cast the spell from large distances. There is a 12 hex range on AR, but you cannot cast it on cities that you have not seen before (and specifically hasn't been undiscovered by trail of darkness, etc).
I mostly didn't have much trouble expanding vision over the earth walls to the ruined cities, since Dark Elf recruits were easily available.

I'm also not convinced all those ruined cities are really that valuable a resource. I had access to Animate Ruins both times, and neither time did reviving those cities seem like the most cost effective use of my limited casting points. They simply haven't mattered in either game, especially because you need to get a digger out there to unearth them.
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Thereunto: Highmen:
1) Have access to the most powerful tactical item (Vision IV + Nightvision), which allows them to see threats in advance, despite having a weaker naval presence. Innate true-sight also allows for better early game intel and spotting of enemy leaders.
This is a big thing on a map that limits vision so heavily, and the True Seeing High Men make extra strong use of it on a map that favors so much concealment.
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Thereunto: The centre would still be contested territory for more gold and mana, but it can't be used to lock out other players from exploring the other levels of the map.
I'm not sure the center can lock people out as much as you think. I've held it against all comers in two games now, but that's pretty much only because only one person would come at a time. If more than one player attacked the middle, the person in the middle can't reasonably hold it because of how long it takes reinforcements to arrive.
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Thereunto: 5) Consider making the centre spells more useful to early game tactics. It's tricky to find a good balance for this. Spell ward, watcher, disjunction, towngate, low tier summons (frog), and Flood (works on the surface only) are some ideas that come to mind.
This is indeed tricky to figure out, since adding the really useful tools weakens the players that have them naturally.

I like the symmetry of having all the [X] Mastery spells available there, but I might be biased since it was my idea.
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Thereunto: 7) Never leave a spot on the map that is a single hex surrounded by only impassible rock in the underground or depths. There are ways to get your leader into that spot and sit there forever.
Speaking of which: double check the alters, and decide whether you want other players to be able to claim them. I managed to claim the Azrac altar, and I had a plan for claiming the Dark Elf altar when I had the time to get over there and implement it. I didn't evaluate the Elf or High Man altar, so I can't comment on those.
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Thereunto: 3) It becomes possible with long ranged attacks to micro damage indie stacks by shooting and then leaving battle (wash and repeat), if you have two or more hexes that you can attack from. If you limit access to important locations by only allowing 1 hex entry, you make it more difficult to micro the stack.
This is also a somewhat important note, and it seriously helped my conquest of the surface in both games. It is entirely possible to do with a single stack, but you need something that can pull the bad guys into range of your waiting artillery (I think I might have used a hasted ballista first game, and just attacked from multiple hexes later when I could).
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Thereunto: 4) If two indie stacks are touching, race relations can sometimes be used to force the stacks to fight each other.
This is also important. There are a few locations where I claimed something by simply having one set of indies kill the other.
Post edited December 08, 2019 by Bookwyrm627
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Bookwyrm627: Speaking of which: double check the alters, and decide whether you want other players to be able to claim them. I managed to claim the Azrac altar, and I had a plan for claiming the Dark Elf altar
How?
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Bookwyrm627: Speaking of which: double check the alters, and decide whether you want other players to be able to claim them. I managed to claim the Azrac altar, and I had a plan for claiming the Dark Elf altar
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southern: How?
Azracs: The nearby shipyard was still guarded when I arrived, so I parked a boat next to it and the rock and I summoned a boar.

Dark Elves: This was trickier. Iirc, I finally looked at digging south on the right side of it, then I'd disband something on the hex just north of my new space and summon a boar. I think I needed an 8 stack in the hex with me, but I'm pretty sure it would have worked.

I'm pretty sure that when summoning, the game starts at the center hex, then checks the next ring of hexes starting at the top hex and circling clockwise, then goes to the next ring, etc.
Post edited December 08, 2019 by Bookwyrm627
Just downloaded the latest version.

If I were going to claim altars, I would...

Azracs: Very simple. Disband a unit on the space NE of the Shipyard, then cast from the Shipyard.

High Men: Not too hard. Fill a boat, place it on the water closest to the altar. Disband someone on the mushrooms to the south, on the grass dirt just north, on the hex currently occupied by an indy mole and gold, and the hex two spaces north of the boat position. Takes a filled boat and 4 more units.

Dark Elf: Easier than the High Men. Sit on the Air Node, and disband a unit in the one open hex adjacent, then disband in the two hexes north and NW of the inner ring. Takes 8 units on the node and three to disband. Can be done any time.

Elves: Simplicity depends on whether the person controls that two hex town and the earth node. If a summon can't spawn in those three hexes, then you just park north of the node, and disband a unit next to the node and where the sandworm is set.

However, that's an unlikely scenario; presumably those sites will be conquered by the time a non-Elf shows up. In that event, the easiest method is probably placing an 8 stack on the unicorn mine, digging out the dirt one hex south of the mine, then disbanding in the three hexes starting with the giant gold and going north.

Undead: Requires a lot of units. You need to fill the Death Node, cast from the spot SE of the Death node, and disband 5 units on each of the remaining open hexes surrounding the casting spot. The wolf rider mine doesn't matter.

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To prevent people from taking these altars, just give each player a Battering Ram on their altar. When they die, the ram turn indy and stay parked on the altar's hex, preventing anyone from landing anything there.
1.) Remove mines from both maps' central arena, nodes are enough
2.) More guards for both arenas, and cancel the hireability on Xelm II's centre guards. And that one tower of dwarves.
3.) Nerf Mimo. He is too strong, clever, and has too many special abilities, he can tell too much of what is going, and gets everywhere before you know it.
4.) Add more charlatans so undead and highmen can use their basilisks in Xelm II
5.) Fewer item-granting dungeons.
6.) Redo the item set using Arnuz's excel sheet to be less OP
7.) enable cheats and run an air galley through all the swirlmount teleporters to check they are going the right places.
8.) Rework the Swirlmount central region so that it is larger, with fewer nodes, and more guards. Add a secondary access point per player. Make the signposting state ''The river of a gazillion mana'' instead of ''The Flumen Arcana''
9.) Rework the starting level of Xelm II to have bridges and diggable earth leading all the way around the edges of the map, and maybe more/easier access to the other levels, so things are less decided on the first level.
10.) Rockwall prisons on the river side
11.)Nerf the highman vision+nightvis item
12.) add some shoreline to the subterranean rivers in certain places where summoning out of a bout across a carven wall would be undesirable
13.)Possibly move the central Xelm II caves to the outside of the mana arena, or at least add diggable cave walls next to them for partial water access.
14.)Can't pre-install warships sadly. But I could add recruitable Galleons (per alignment) which are trapped in a dead end behind a couple of Sea Serpents.
15.) review city upgrade levels.
16.) xelm II, more 1-hex entry points for attacking indie guards, so they don't run forward to attack, thus making them harder.
17.) check to avoid adjacent indies
18.) Consider wizard schools with 'Call Hero'
19.) make lava flames permanent instead of 3 days
20.) check that there are attack routes against the orcs, dwarves, and lizardmen via teleporter, like there sort of are for goblins and azracs.

Yeah..... I'll definitely get around to it eventually.
Post edited December 11, 2019 by southern
https://i.imgur.com/zFnEjW4.png

The reworked central area of Xelm II. Haven't placed guards on everything, but I will.
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southern: 2.) More guards for both arenas, and cancel the hireability on Xelm II's centre guards. And that one tower of dwarves.
Making the guards unhire-able is a decent idea; in our second test play, I continually hired friendly mine guards and used them to kill unfriendly guards, giving me both mines. My new hires either died (freeing upkeep to hire the next batch) or survived (and participating in the next battle). I swept the mine guards in the middle pretty quickly that way.
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southern: 4.) Add more charlatans so undead and highmen can use their basilisks in Xelm II
I'm not sure I made my concern about this clear. Charlatans can't swim, so they don't solve the problem of "Azracs can send their basilisks and turtles to go freely sink boats, while Undead have to put their basilisks and turtles on boats so the guards can keep them in line". I was able to keep my basilisks in line, but they could never stack up and go out on their own to fight.

Not to mention that Charlatans get really, really pissy once you start converting human towns to a more pliable race.
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southern: 8.) Make the signposting state ''The river of a gazillion mana'' instead of ''The Flumen Arcana''
This made me laugh. XD
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southern: 11.)Nerf the highman vision+nightvis item
Or just give them a different item.
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southern: 14.)Can't pre-install warships sadly. But I could add recruitable Galleons (per alignment) which are trapped in a dead end behind a couple of Sea Serpents.
Remember that Sea Serpents hit hard, and some races have trouble fighting water battles.
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southern: 19.) make lava flames permanent instead of 3 days
Beyond being pretty, what does this do? I guess it means Fire Halo'd boat passengers can still be burned, but any thing that can travel on lava won't be hurt by the flames, will it?
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southern: https://i.imgur.com/zFnEjW4.png

The reworked central area of Xelm II. Haven't placed guards on everything, but I will.
Oh good. I looked at the picture before reading the post, and I about panicked at all those nodes guarded only by lava. :)
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southern: 14.)Can't pre-install warships sadly. But I could add recruitable Galleons (per alignment) which are trapped in a dead end behind a couple of Sea Serpents.
I sent you an email just now with a sample map. You can pre-install units (drills, boats, etc), but so far are limited to just one pre-installed unit per structure.
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Thereunto: I sent you an email just now with a sample map. You can pre-install units (drills, boats, etc), but so far are limited to just one pre-installed unit per structure.
Thank you, I will use this a lot! How'd you do it?
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southern: 6.) Redo the item set using Arnuz's excel sheet to be less OP
I suggest to remove healing items - they can be used infinitely both in tactical and in fast combat, and construction - it simply doesn't work.

I have come around to trying the constructor hero.
Just updated both Swirlmount and Xelm II quite extensively. Also the item set is now the much more sensible new one I made.
Post edited January 10, 2020 by southern