Not sure really. It's so long since I've made this map. You can try if you can open the map in the editor and then reduce the army sizes

Hi!
Is there any possibility to reduce the armies by myself?

You might even get lucky by catching the leader with a small army outside of the city for an easy battle. By turn 25, you've knocked out a major opponent. The end game phase (aka the less fun phase) starts pretty quickly thereafter.

I suggest rebalancing the map. This option can take different forms like reducing army sizes, changing the geography by making unpassable barriers/bottlenecks, or creating quests that would provide more incentive to keep the starting armies at home instead of going Gengis Khan through the world. The decision is yours, mapmaker.

Lastly, and most importantly, more unique items please ;).

Partaholic, here is my updated review: I want to congratulate you on developing an excellent map. Everything from the lore to the map geography to the specialized leaders is impressive. This scenario achieves the mapmakers quest--replayability.

However, I agree Sullu that the starting armies for Xander and Stryker are too powerful. I would take it an even step further and say that all starting armies are too strong. I have played this map as Xander, Stryker, The White One, Eric the Red, and Icaros with all AIs on emperor difficulty. Even at that level, there is little disincentive to immediately march your starting armies and heroes to the main opponent's (i.e. Xander to Icaros or Icaros to Xander/Stryker) throne. Your heroes gain items, pick up resources, and level up to become even more unstoppable. Further, you can capture a few of the opponent's cities before attacking the throne so you can cut off his resource supply and set your self up nicely for the next opponent.

Sullu Thanks for your comment. The two main characters have a strong army and lots of strong heroes because they don't have any cities at the begining. All other players have cities and their defenders in the begining. The independent cities in the close areas around the starting location are there to give chance to spread the players territory and also to strenghten the story around the scenario. I have a game with a friend that has been going on for about 45 turns and we already have very complex diplomatic relations with neutral AI players (Nord, Eric the Red and The White One) and also have to defend out starting territory against other players.

The scenario is built as a large empire building type of a map and that's why the first twenty turns may feel a bit slow for someone. I've also noticed some small balancing issues againts the independents and I will propably work on that in the next update. =)

Gilafron I've played the game and kept all AI's on lord- difficulty except Icaros as a king difficulty. The number of heroes and others settings it's all up to you on how you prefer.

Hey, I played this map in coop with a friend (Orc and Highelf), first of all: the map looks very nice and we felt us as the saviour of the diabolic empire. :) After the beginning we had this very big army with all this heroes (4+ a new one). So we hoped that a lot of enemies with hard (manual) fights wait for us! In the reality we found some single grey T1 units and some small city´s with very weak T1 defenders. All fights we did only automatically, because we have of so many units… We came to fight versus the light and we found only grey coward.

After 20 rounds we have to give up, because the boredom was a too hard enemy for us… we have also the whole army from the start and our heroes were level 7 and higher, furthermore we have 4 -5 cities… (ki was emperor)

We think that the balanced of the map is too easy..

-to many units
-to many heroes, which level is too high
-to many cities
-we missed some enemies at the beginning

Partaholic, I'm about to start a co-op game with my brother as a PBEM, playing blind. We've played one round, but may restart. Those are some big starting armies. My question to you is, what should default settings be? For the AI? For other settings, like number of heroes? Thanks! Looks like a fun scenario.

Thanks everyone who has commented, rated or subscribed my map so far. Please do rate the map honestly after you have played it and have an opinion on it. Thumbs up of down everyone :)

That solved my problem. Thank You very much.

clong666 when you open the launcher you have to go to user conternt and then enable the map. That might solve your problem

I'm having trouble playing the map as it doesn't show up after I subscribe it, did I do something wrong?

nice map, thx

Very nice map, clearly a lot of hard work has gone into making it. I have almost finished it playing as a Necromancer, and the general structure of the map amazed me throughout the game. As a minor tip for improvement, I would add slightly more resource structures around all cities. Aside from that, I'm tempted to say it's the best player-made map in AoW.

Looks nice, going to try it out tomorrow.

Well Sir_Thomas if you want to try multiplaying the map via PBEM sometime send me a message and let's give it a go. :)

But yeah, i got some tips for you.

1. Well the map editor isn't the most user friendly, but it's not hard to do a basic map like mine if you study a bit. http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/leveled-scripting-tutorialsresources/ you can find very useful basic info over there.

2. Also, rememeber to keep many different saves (I had like 10 saves, just in case). The editor crashes sometimes so save often and sometimes it crashes while saving and that leads to the corruption of the save. That's why remember when you save always use "save as" and save your new progress over your oldest version of the map (or a completely new save).

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3. And then there is this neat tip I picked up on a forum - http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/hint-how-to-check-custom-leader-appearance-in-editor/ That helps a lot if you do custom heroes and leaders.

4. Item making is a bit complex and it takes time, but it's not hard - http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/how-do-i-create-my-own-items-in-the-editor/

5. And then there are some nice detail tips here - http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/tutorial-terrain-tools-for-everyone/

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6. And then when you create an independent stack and want to make them behave in a certain way you must create a group. A group is like a behaviour thing you create for every stack. So if you want one stack to raid on a 10 hex radius in location A and another stack to raid 10 hex radius in location B you must do two groups - one for each stack even though their behaviour pattern is the same.

When I was creating the map I sometimes had some great ideas for the map and then I tried to search the forums on the ways how I could make those ideas into reality. So I kinda learned how to make the map while I was making it. And you know, just let your imagination fly :)

My message was too long so I had to cut it in three parts :D

Single player, and I would like to learn how to use the editor myself. Any tips on how to approach it?

I'm glad you like it Sir_Thomas, it did took like 60-70 hours to make, because first I had to learn how to use the editor. :) Are you playing on singleplayer or multiplayer?

Hard work. The more I get into it, the more I love this map!

I like the map, but one thing I noticed right away is that there are very few good locations to found new settlements. Look forward to the promised unique items:) Thanks for all your hare work.

There are a few unique items hidden in the map for players to find. The hero of Shargoth Black hava a unique item at the start though. But I'll promise to add some more items in the next version of this map :)

Seems like a fun map with interesting heroes. The starting items are standard, however. Providing unique items at the beginning would enhance the game and make it feel more polished.

The map requires both expansions (Eternal Lords and Golden Realms)