The Fall of Atlantis
Author: Milan M. Cirkovic
Link:
http://www.maps4heroes.com/heroes3/maps.php?keywords=The+Fall+of+Atlantis&type=&size=&difficulty=&sort=3After stumbling upon a description of this famous map by one of the players, detailing their playthrough, I finally decided to try it myself. And I succeeded. It's been almost a year since then, but the report was left unfinished. Finally, I'm finishing it and posting it.
Plot: This world has been ruled by the Atlanteans for time immemorial. But one day, a cosmic catastrophe occurred: aliens descended from the heavens, calling themselves Elementalist, overthrew the Atlanteans, and established their dictatorship, imposing an unbearable tribute on the inhabitants. You must drive out the aliens and restore the former order.
Now I will start from the end and immediately name the main advantages and disadvantages of this map, so that you can decide whether you want to play it. In general, after getting to know it closely, it becomes clear that the author created it specifically for experienced players, so that it would be very difficult for players: "pros" usually complain that it is easy to play against "stupid" AI and that the final stage is also very easy, when you have plenty of everything and your advantage over the enemies is obvious. Therefore, most of what I will call disadvantages is largely done intentionally, and is not a random oversight.
Advantages:
- high replayability, contributing to its popularity, expressed in two aspects:
1) the ability to choose one of 4 factions for the game;
2) a large number of random factors, making each playthrough different;
- many powerful monsters and enemies, allowing you to greatly upgrade your hero.
Disadvantages/features:
- the downside of having many random factors is a noticeable dependence of your success not only on your skill, but also on luck;
- asymmetry of respawns - not only of the terrain and objects on it, but also of the entire initial situation; as the author himself writes, each race has its own advantages and disadvantages, but I will be the first to throw a stone at those who dare to claim that the map is balanced: it is unlikely that it will be possible to balance the existing "mix"; compare, for example, the external dwellings of level 7 for each of the 4 factions (location and quantity). Therefore, each player must rely on their own "brains" and luck;
- although, at first glance, there are plenty of resources around, but during the game you realize that this is only a compensation for the following features (which I said above that the author introduced intentionally);
- there are almost no mines on the starting respawns: a sawmill, a mine, a gold mine, and one "profile" mine for your castle (for example, for Blue - a sulfur mine);
- events that take away many valuable resources occur periodically;
- some resource piles are seriously guarded, which you only find out when you try to take them;
- in many places you are ambushed by a large number of troops;
- for the above reasons, the map is not suitable for beginners: you can start, but soon it will become difficult, and when strong enemies come, you will have nowhere to go.
Actually, because of all this, I myself hesitated for a long time to start playing it, as I was not sure that my level of play would allow me to win. But, in the end, "to know the taste of a dish, you have to eat it" (although some dishes turn out to be cacti).
I recorded my playthrough in quite detail, but in order not to tire you, I will only give a brief analysis, name the most important stages of the playthrough, and the main interesting moments of my game.
From the reviews of other players, I know that
it was possible to complete the map for each of the 4 possible factions, but both my analysis and the analysis of others lead to the conclusion that
Red (Tower) and Blue (Dungeon) have the greatest chances of success, Orange (Castle) and Brown (Stronghold) will have a much harder time. The most unfavorable position is for the Barbarians: they have less land than everyone else, and there are fewer objects on it, and besides, it is sand, not stones. Another point that makes the game for the Barbarians more difficult: despite the general symmetry of the map, the Blue player has two cities located in the southeast of the largest ring of land in the center of the ground world, and this corner is most likely and often attacked by them (which I was convinced of during the playthrough).
Key tasks:
* Freeing prisoners from prisons. They are useful not only in themselves (the main hero cannot be replaced by anyone), but also because they have valuable artifacts and troops.
* Obtaining the Resurrection and Town Portal spells.
* Going out to sea and capturing cities in other lands. You can consider this stage the most important: if you can do this before one of the strong enemy heroes attacks you, then you can say that you have secured your survival. Try to capture 1-2 neutral cities in the northern seas. Then go and beat the "ordinary" enemies living in the other 3 corners of the map.
* Obtaining the Sphere of Vulnerability.
* Obtaining the Dimension Door or Flight.
* Capturing Valhalla (Conflux with Rainbow).
* Obtaining the Grail.
(about my playthrough)
The preview gave me the idea that I should try playing as Orange. But then
I did something that, perhaps, no one else has done before: I created starting saves for players of all four colors and started looking at what the beginning of the game looks like for each color. And what I saw, I didn't like, and I haven't heard about it from anyone yet.
So,
the inequality begins on the very first day, or rather, night.
If you play any color except Blue, then when the turn passes to the "diplomatic arena", his hero, Borman, will inevitably attack you and defeat your hero. And no wonder, because he also has all the combat machines and the Meteor Shower spell in his spellbook! And when I played as Blue, no one attacked him, and soon, when the Turquoise player came out of the monolith, defeated the elementals and left, Borman was able to jump around the monolith exits, see his castles, visit the upgrade sites, capture an abandoned mine, and only on the 10th day was he defeated by the Turquoise hero, and he ran away and was hired in the tavern.
I appreciated the skills of the Blue heroes, and I liked them very much.
As a result, I started playing as him. Getting ahead, I can say that Blue has a chance to survive in the worst situation, because the Fortress in the southwest of the swamps can become a refuge that enemies will not reach soon, and there is also a Sanctuary nearby. And the sea area nearby will allow other heroes to escape on boats. And we also have Veil of Darkness to mislead the enemies.
I defeated all the enemies, except for one weak Green heroine, Henielle: she hid in the Sanctuary. On day 744, she died, and I was declared the winner.
Outcome: 193 days, 393 points. The Grail was dug up and placed in one of the Dungeons. I did not capture 3 neutral cities (Heaven, Hell, Mafia HQ): fierce guard, they are not valuable, and two of them are also on cursed land.
For those who liked this map, there is another map by the same author, "Astral Venice", which I have not yet played, but, according to the description, it is close in key features to "The Fall of Atlantis".
Lider1
