Posted June 06, 2009
I played this game few years ago and i cant remember to much about adventure mod, but i remember that i played it a lot in single player and multiplayer mode and had a lots of fun. So, when i saw it on gog, i bought it again, like many other old games which i liked and played much (17 games until now from gog).
After i search through game menu and played tutorial again, i may say i remembered few more things about it.
In this game, single player mode is skirmish mode where you can play against 1 to 7 AI. This mode concentrate more on RTS side of game with your heroes and units getting XP and lvls from fights or training. And you can find and wear different types of items too, which will improve you or your units.
When you start a single player game, you can setup a lot of things:
- map size (small, normal or huge), map type (small islands, large islands, continent, mountainous or mediterranean type), game type (elimination which i prefer more, score limit or time limit), world population (low, normal, high), game speed from low to fastest, starting gold and even season on map;
- you can disable/enable fog, caves, ruins, teutons tents, stonehenges, outposts and even wildlife;
- you can chose for every AI opponent a playing style like offensive (on easy, medium or hard) or defensive (on easy, medium or hard), you can chose a nation (gauls or romans) to play with for you and for AI and you can play against all AI or you can team-up with some of them.
Multiplayer mode is same with single player mode, only that you can play against your friends through local lan or gamespy.
I may advice you to begin with tutorial and use Pause/Break key on your keyboard to pause the game and read in-game help (F1 key). Here you can find everything explained (map, fog of war, resources, capturing, feeding, heroes, unit stats, special abilities, notes and objectives, units list, buildings list, items list, shortcut keys), everything explained with short descriptions for fast reading and enough to understand this game easier without boring you much.
Unlike many other RTS games, here you wont and cant build anything, but maps have lots of structures on them that you and your opponents can capture, destroy and repair many times during the course of the game.
Usually every side will start the game with 1 stronghold (town) and maybe a village near and other lots of neutral structures all over the map (like strongholds, villages, outposts, shipyards) that you and your opponents can capture.
There are 2 types of resources, food and gold. Food is produced in villages, gold is produce in strongholds. Food is used for population increase and for army support. Gold is used to upgrade structures, train and upgrade units, hire heroes, etc. The quantities of food or gold produced depend on the population of villages or strongholds, more villagers, bigger production.
The main advantage of a hero is ability to attach up to 50 units to him which will receive some of the hero’s experience like bonus to their own and you can arrange them in 3 formations, every formation with additional bonus when used with stand ground command. So my advice is to use more armies attached to heroes for a better survival, then armies with many units without a leading hero. And of course, don’t forget to get some mules with food with you to keep your army fed.
All units can have 1 attack type (slashing or piercing) and 2 types of defense, but usually all units (excepting heroes) have a better defense only against 1 attack type, while 2nd defense is lower or even 0 (zero).
As i said on beginning i played this game few years ago, so most of things i wrote here are from memories i recovered after i played tutorial again and from in-game help. And there are many other things i didn’t cover because i need to play and read game help more to remember all that things.
Like in any other game, you will need a little patience until you will learn how things are going and to get used with that older, but beautiful graphic and after this you will have lots of hours of fun with it, even if graphic is older (i tried many times when i played that tutorial to use mouse scroll to zoom camera in or out like in 3d games :) ).
After i search through game menu and played tutorial again, i may say i remembered few more things about it.
In this game, single player mode is skirmish mode where you can play against 1 to 7 AI. This mode concentrate more on RTS side of game with your heroes and units getting XP and lvls from fights or training. And you can find and wear different types of items too, which will improve you or your units.
When you start a single player game, you can setup a lot of things:
- map size (small, normal or huge), map type (small islands, large islands, continent, mountainous or mediterranean type), game type (elimination which i prefer more, score limit or time limit), world population (low, normal, high), game speed from low to fastest, starting gold and even season on map;
- you can disable/enable fog, caves, ruins, teutons tents, stonehenges, outposts and even wildlife;
- you can chose for every AI opponent a playing style like offensive (on easy, medium or hard) or defensive (on easy, medium or hard), you can chose a nation (gauls or romans) to play with for you and for AI and you can play against all AI or you can team-up with some of them.
Multiplayer mode is same with single player mode, only that you can play against your friends through local lan or gamespy.
I may advice you to begin with tutorial and use Pause/Break key on your keyboard to pause the game and read in-game help (F1 key). Here you can find everything explained (map, fog of war, resources, capturing, feeding, heroes, unit stats, special abilities, notes and objectives, units list, buildings list, items list, shortcut keys), everything explained with short descriptions for fast reading and enough to understand this game easier without boring you much.
Unlike many other RTS games, here you wont and cant build anything, but maps have lots of structures on them that you and your opponents can capture, destroy and repair many times during the course of the game.
Usually every side will start the game with 1 stronghold (town) and maybe a village near and other lots of neutral structures all over the map (like strongholds, villages, outposts, shipyards) that you and your opponents can capture.
There are 2 types of resources, food and gold. Food is produced in villages, gold is produce in strongholds. Food is used for population increase and for army support. Gold is used to upgrade structures, train and upgrade units, hire heroes, etc. The quantities of food or gold produced depend on the population of villages or strongholds, more villagers, bigger production.
The main advantage of a hero is ability to attach up to 50 units to him which will receive some of the hero’s experience like bonus to their own and you can arrange them in 3 formations, every formation with additional bonus when used with stand ground command. So my advice is to use more armies attached to heroes for a better survival, then armies with many units without a leading hero. And of course, don’t forget to get some mules with food with you to keep your army fed.
All units can have 1 attack type (slashing or piercing) and 2 types of defense, but usually all units (excepting heroes) have a better defense only against 1 attack type, while 2nd defense is lower or even 0 (zero).
As i said on beginning i played this game few years ago, so most of things i wrote here are from memories i recovered after i played tutorial again and from in-game help. And there are many other things i didn’t cover because i need to play and read game help more to remember all that things.
Like in any other game, you will need a little patience until you will learn how things are going and to get used with that older, but beautiful graphic and after this you will have lots of hours of fun with it, even if graphic is older (i tried many times when i played that tutorial to use mouse scroll to zoom camera in or out like in 3d games :) ).