TBS Age of Wonders series: user-made maps and campaigns

[octavius]

The Sleeper Awakens

An XL, Single Player map of three levels. Both regular and Warlock's Rules versions. I played the WR version. You play as the Elves and the Big Sleeper is Undead.

This was an enjoyable map, despite some shortcomings.

First of all, it's described as a Hard map, which it is not. There are relatively few roaming indies. Most of the aggressive indies are guarding, of which one group includes a Syron+. The other players are too weak to be of any threat, either to the player or to each others, so the map is not very dynamic. But it will make a perfect introduction to a newbie wanting to play a good SP map.

There are custom heroes and items, but the other faction leaders have names like Human, Dwarf and so forth. Many of the ruins and lairs are already Explored; not sure if it is intentional.

The map is very nice looking, but not too intricate or detailed.

The map starts out with something resembling a story, but it soon peters out. This is understandable, since AoW is not very suitable for these kinds of maps. But the messages not correlating to what my units do is more of a problem; it's like the map assumes you don't use scouts or do things in a certain order.

But I had fun playing this map, and in the end that's what really matters.

 

[octavius]

The Fall of Gondolin

An XL map of three levels using Warlock's Rules, this is an extremely exhausting map, with lots of enemy doom stacks with combos of mega Red Dragons and mega Death Reapers (the 45 HP variation). Combined with not a single item that gives Death Immunity, it becomes a real slog, but an enjoyable slog. Although I got a bit pissed off in the end, when I had defeated Morgoth, and there still was more castles in his "backyard", and some units that could only be reached by clearing the way with a Divine Storm spell. Why not just set the victory condition to capture Morgoth's castle, instead of prolonging the game this way?
In the end it took me 1.5 months to complete.

Apart from that, a great map. It's like The Mirror of Galadriel (by the same map maker) on steroids, and you really have to be on your toes in the beginning to avoid being swarmed by Dragons and Incarnates. The Highmen troops totally dominate this map, since Avengers have Death Immunity, Titans have Fire Immunity and Valkyries can easily deal with Incarnates. You also get one Mega Valkyrie that eats Black Dragons for breakfast.

Lots and lots of unique heroes and items. You can waste hours just making the perfect hero and item combinations.
Tuor and Earendil are the best heroes, and became unstoppable lvl 30 über heroes at the end. But Turin and his black sword didn't get a chance to deal unto Morgoth his death and final end, being controlled by the Elven faction, which of course refused my alliance proposal, so Earendil massacred them all. Damn, I hate this diplomacy design in AoW and Civ which is solely made for prolonging the game. But in any case Turin and his sword would not have been very effective, since Morgoth could Fly and could only be damaged with Holy Strike. So the Mega Valkyrie got the honour instead, since there's no items that give the Fly ability either.

Apart from the background info, there's no text in the game itself.

Quite an intricate map, and I liked that it doesn't try to be a simulation of Tolkien's story, but instead is heavily abstracted, which in practice works much better IMO.

So great map, but not for the fainthearted. Definitely play Mirror of Galadriel before attempting this one.

 

[G.O.D]

Shameless self promotion ahead, but what is the point if nobody plays it:

I updated my one and only map Dastardly because I was in the mood for some good old AOW:SM.
It's nothing special. No scripts. No story. Just plain tactics... on a giant map.

Go ahead. Get some:

Link

http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloa...wP3N0YXJ0PTAmYW1wO3NlYXJjaD1kYXN0YXJkbHkiO319

*Edit:

The map got another update on May 31 '23. This will be the final update.