Recently, I completed a wonderful map: Epic; author - Philip Karlovic. In terms of genre, it is a classic strategy that does not force any specific path to victory or development method upon the player. Its name perfectly reflects its essence: after some time, both your and the enemy heroes will become strong enough that warring becomes difficult and interesting.
The map's design is natural and very good. The terrain is densely packed with obstacles (forests, mountains), and since monsters are also placed quite frequently, clearing one's own zone takes a lot of time, making the initial period of the game last relatively long. The player does not reach enemy territory quickly: my first combat encounter with an enemy occurred only at the beginning of the 3rd month – later than ever before!
The Plot is practically non-existent here, as in many typical strategy maps; there is only a brief description. The Victory and Defeat Conditions are also standard.
Not all races existing in Heroes are represented on the map, but only 5 (Castle, Rampart, Fortress, Tower, Necropolis), though there are several neutral cities of other races. All 5 opposing sides dwell on the surface, while the same dungeon contains only neutral cities and winding paths full of monsters and treasures.
The difficulty of completing the map is due to a specific author's decision, in addition to the accelerated development of AI enemies compared to the player: Town Portal is forbidden, but Flight is allowed (it can be learned in towns) and there is a Dimension Door (only in the Air Magic Book and Wizard's Hat). In my opinion, it would have been better the other way around: Town Portal allowed, while Flight and Dimension Door forbidden. Especially since there are Border Guards here (almost all of them in the dungeon).
Here I decided to play as Fortress (Orange player). After some thought, I chose Expert difficulty, and later became convinced that this was the right decision: on Impossible, I would have lost. There are plenty of resources scattered everywhere on the map, but monsters are also numerous, so from the very beginning, exploring the territory becomes not a walk in the park, but a constant struggle. There are many artifacts as well, although at first one cannot complain: they too must be fought for from the monsters!
The map allows one to see how much the pace of the game depends on the number of troops, which primarily depends on the number of cities of one race each player has: there are as many as 4 here!
The witch Andra was chosen as the main hero, and her outstanding intellect allowed for the active use of high-level magic in battles, since this requires a lot of mana! To my great regret, Andra was unlucky with skills: having studied water, fire, and air magic, she did not receive earth magic! :( What is noteworthy: this has happened to me for the first time in recent years; usually, earth magic would drop sooner or later, or it could be learned in a witch's hut or university. This made the game very difficult, but I had to continue: when Andra's eighth skill slot was filled, it was too late to change the main hero; a newcomer would have to be "leveled up" for a very long time, and the enemies will not wait! In addition, almost until the end of the game, no previously defeated enemy heroes appeared in the tavern for me to hire as warriors. However, even when such heroes did appear, it turned out that hiring them was impractical: the AI again approached skill selection strangely, and even leveled-up heroes had neither wisdom nor a free slot to learn it! More often, the AI "leveled" attack and defense, betting on brute force.
Already from the second week, by the message about the arrival of the imp/devil week, it became clear: there is an Inferno with the Fire God somewhere on the map. I immediately thought of the pleasant side of this fact: one does not have to fear the terrible month of Plague; it will never come!
Probably, the author overlooked some factor affecting balance somewhere, because quite soon Brown (Necromancers) began to increasingly outpace the others in development. The second thing that was strange to me: two usually most successful races – Castle and Rampart – were weaker than the rest and soon dropped out of the game.
While all opponents were still present on the map, according to Thieves' Guild statistics, I was an average-strength player; after the death of Green and Blue, I became the weakest. The Necromancers were the strongest, followed by the mages (Tower). However, after a few months, almost every player visited the lands of their opponents on the surface, and armies became partially mixed. I gradually captured the human lands in the southwest and began to add archangels to my army: they gave me the ability to attack first in most battles, and more importantly, they allowed for resurrecting the fallen, and with the Clone spell and expert water magic, I could repeat resurrection as many times as necessary. Necessity is the mother of invention. You've got to be flexible to survive! ;)
Viewing the land showed that, unfortunately, my neighbors turned out to be Necromancers; however, we were separated by neutral central lands full of monsters. But around the 4th month, enemy heroes finally invaded my lands, and since I was still far inferior to them, I had to retreat, heading west through the dungeon to the human lands. The enemy captured all my cities, but I did not waste time, making a campaign into distant lands (Ramparts in the center, Necropolises in the east) and collecting archangels with secondary heroes. When the necromancer finally left my swamps, I recaptured my cities and continued to gather troops.
The turning point in the war occurred after I captured the Sphere of Vulnerability – on this map, as on most others, it is one of the most important artifacts! After that, I saw that the main necromancer, Claivus, no longer sought to attack me but, instead, avoided me. Well, enemies, hold on tight now! :smile10:
At the beginning of the 7th month, I saw that one strong hero each for Brown and Red had started flying! This, of course, made them much more dangerous: moving across a map with such jagged terrain is not fast at all, and Flight accelerates movement many times over! However, this time the enemies were flying on perfectly legal grounds: Flight dropped in the Mages' Guild of a couple of cities. And when I was finally able to reach Claivus after many days, among other trophies, I took the Wizard's Hat from him.
Besides that, there was also a Tome of Air Magic on the map (in a secluded place and under serious guard by azure dragons). Although, having the Wizard's Hat, I could do without it, for the sake of experience and for a second strong heroine (Nella), I captured it as well! After this, the absence of Town Portal was partially compensated by the ability to make 4 jumps per day across the map, which accelerated the course of the war many times over.
The surface Cartographer opened most of the world to me, and then I found and visited the underground Cartographer.
By visiting obelisks, I gradually uncovered the location of the Grail, and soon realized where it should be sought. However, one of the enemies had already made a hole there. Could he have beaten me? But no city has the corresponding special building. Fortunately, I still dug up the Grail: as it turned out, the enemy had dug a hole 1 cell to the northeast of its burial place.
Having captured the last two neutral cities in the dungeon (Inferno, where the Fire God stood, and Dungeon), I completed all main objectives and could now finish off Brown and end the game. At the same time, quite a few treasures and monsters in the dungeon remained untouched, but there was no longer any interest in them.
The last enemy castle was captured on the 9th month, 2nd week, 2nd day. Result: 233 days, 388 points.
Unfortunately, there is 1 non-critical error here: the blue border guard in cell 93,48 of the dungeon is placed such that he does not block the passage and can be bypassed. True, with Flight and Dimension Door, border guards lose their meaning – but those spells still need to be acquired!
To sum up, I must say that this excellent map has only one noticeable (but also non-critical) flaw: a forbidden Town Portal while Flight and Dimension Door are allowed. After all, by acquiring one of these two spells, a player can fly over gates, guards, garrisons, and passage guards. Therefore, searching for and visiting keymasters' tents with Flight is no longer necessary; this violates the author's design, according to which reaching cities and dwarven treasures in the dungeon should be very difficult; however, it is not mandatory for victory.
Interestingly, on this map I had to kill the same strongest enemy hero (Claivus) as many as 4 times: the necromancers hired him again every time!