Hi Everyone,
Welcome to the final AoE: DE campaign review - The First Punic War, which was first featured in the demo version of The Rise of Rome expansion and covered the exploits of the Carthaginians during the said war.
As always, the review focuses on the changes to the map, objectives and starting positions and historicity compared with the original campaign.
Some of the scenarios have been renamed so the original name has been added in brackets where applicable.
Spoilers ahead - you have been warned.
1. The Battle of Agrigentum (Struggle for Sicily) - The original scenario was effectively a tutorial and has been completely redone.
You now start in bronze age with a walled town in the eastern part of the map with most of your resources (albeit not very many) being located across a river that can only be accessed with transport ships but it keeps them safe from raids. You also start with a few hoplites and a war elephant - likely not coincidental as Carthaginians get bonus HP for both of these units types.
You will be facing two enemies, both called Romans, one to the west and one to the northwest of your base. They also start in the bronze age with walled towns and some military so early aggression is guaranteed. The objective is to destroy both enemies' government centres.
The map itself is fairly open and most of the resources are in no man's land so early expansion is quite crucial. You will also find some gaia cavalry in the west corner of the map described as your Numidian allies though they may not prove useful at all as they are stuck behind a forest and will have to wait for the enemy or yourself to cut through to let them loose.
In the original mission you started in stone age with a TC and 3 villagers while your enemy started in tool age with a small base and a few axemen and slingers. The objective was to kill all enemy military units. Very simple mission but it was the tutorial after all.
Overall a very positive change and a necessary one as there already is a whole tutorial campaign. As a sidenote, the Carthaginians have lost this battle historically speaking.
2. The Battle of Mylae - The map has been completely redone, but the objectives are still the same - to bring the two enemy artifacts back to your base.
The map now seems to resemble the Strait of Messina (between mainland Italy and Sicily). Your starting position seems to match the real life location of the town of Mylae, the Romans (red) are located across the strait in Italy and Syracusans (yellow) share the island with you but you are completely separated from them by cliffs and you can only access their side of the island by water. There are also a few small islands to the northwest controlled by the Romans.
You start in the tool age, just like in the original but with a somewhat larger base and fewer resources. Once again, the resources in vicinity of your base are quite scarce and you will need to secure the small islands for extra wood and gold. Romans start in bronze age with their main base concentrated on the southern tip of Italy and a huge resource deposits to the north of their base. Syracusans now also start in bronze age, as opposed to post-iron age but they are now a fully functioning opponent, so to speak, instead of having a just few units and towers and no production buildings guarding an island with extra resources and the artifact.
Overall, this is another positive change with a more detailed map that resembles the real life location which I think is always good to help with the immersion. The difficulty has been increased somewhat due to now facing two players and having immediate access to fewer resources, though the islands more than make up for that. In mid-late game as you explore more of the map you may be quite surprised that one of your enemies was right in your backyard the whole time and you may panic before you realise that they can't get to you. That is a nice touch, but things sure would be more interesting if those cliffs weren't there to protect you.
As a sidenote, the Carthaginians also lost this battle, but hey you are here to make Carthage great again... right?
3. The Battle of Tunis (Battle of Tunes) - Well this classic and many people's favourite may seem largely unchanged on the surface but there are a few quite notable tweaks:
At the start of the game your view is now centred on your navy rather than your base, which helps but interestingly enough the enemy navy does not engage you save for a couple of ships and returns totheir docks. This happens even on the hardest difficulty, so something must be wrong with the AI here (I restarted quite a few times to test this) unless they are trying to lure you within the range of their towers.
The layout of your base is virtually the same except some houses were relocated, the decorative trees around buildings were largely removed and you no longer have paved roads inside your city, in favour of what looks like dirt roads, which is a bit sad.
Regulus (red) now starts with almost no military save for a few broad swordsmen. Most notably there is now no cavalry on your side of the river which would usually attack you quite early on. Romans (yellow) have perhaps undergone the most changes - the walls that were protecting their base from the flanks have been removed, save for a part of the eastern wall that is placed inside a forest and does not block access to anything except... more trees. The forest to the north now has a few pathways which lead to extra resources. Lastly, the area to the east, up the cliffs with gold and stone deposits near the gaia army has now been claimed by the yellow player and contains a small base protected by towers.
Speaking of the gaia army (Xanthippus' mercenaries), the two catapults have been removed and the heavy cavarly unit was replaced with Hero Xanthippus (centurion hero unit) with a rather impressive 35 attack and 250 hp, but no upgrades as it is a gaia unit in this case. You still get 20 phalanx units as before. Consul's Guard (brown, formerly Colosseum Defenders) now have more units at their disposal - a few legions and centurions along with the siege and priests that they had in the original.
The map itself was also changed slightly - the southern landmass is now more arid and the northern island's coastline has been altered somewhat, but nothing major and likely to help solve some pathfinding issues. As already mentioned the map is now richer in resources, especially near your enemies' bases whereas your resource deposits seem to be about the same as before.
Overall, while the enemy now has access to more resources and the gaia army will have a harder time wiping out yellow's base I would say the mission has still been made easier as the threat of an early invasion on land has been removed completely and that's what made the original mission so exciting. Even later in the game the enemies were not particularly threatening, though I would put that down to the AI at that point.
Now to break the pattern here, Carthage did actually win this battle but they still lost the war of course. Feelsbadman. Nah, that's what these Punic dogs deserved. Roma invicta!
Conclusion
Quite a short campaign which mirrors Reign of the Hittites in a sense that two missions were redone completely and one was just tweaked somewhat, in both cases my personal favourites were the ones that only received tweaks so good call on Forgotten Empires' part. The first two missions were definitely a positive change on virtually all fronts whereas Battle of Tunis was made a bit too easy I feel but maybe once the AI becomes more competent it will be even more challenging than the original scenario... but in the meantime just give some units back to the red player.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Well I guess this is it, we now covered all campaigns except the tutorial where there isn't all that much to talk about. I hope you enjoyed reading my reviews as much as I did writing them. If this has encouraged you to play through the campaigns or learn a bit about the history then all the better.
Thanks!
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