I've been playing a custom campaign of Raven's Realm, because that's rather challenging, and I have some thoughts on that map.

  • (Subjective) The third story campaign map (Raven's Realm) is badly designed in my view. Here's why:
  • Story-wise, it's really f'ing bizarre that suddenly and inexplicably, the Act 1 map is connected to another island through a land bridge that didn't exist at all in map 1. There isn't even a little tile of ocean that you have to use Transports to cross, which might have made that easier to swallow.
  • The existence of the land bridge makes for boring gameplay. After you control all your Act 1 territory, you're faced with a long march in country after country, in a straight line, with no opportunities to flank or be flanked, save the sea. There's no strategy needed there, just pile all your units into one big ball and push it on the straight line to the next country.
  • The land bridge makes the enemy's huge air and sea advantage somewhat irrelevant, because you can ignore it and bypass them completely instead of having to cross water.
  • The land bridge makes the islands to the north strategically worthless to conquer. They're not on the way to the capital, and it takes a while to ship units that far north. The enemy capital would have been better situated up there, to give them a point.
  • I agree that a campaign map force of only air and/or sea units shouldn't be able to capture hostile territory, but they can't do anything to it, which is a bit odd. It night have been interesting if air and sea units (not Zeppelins or Ironclads) could destroy buildings on the country if left on there for 2 or more turns. It would be some kind of consequence for letting enemy air/sea units to perch on your undefended countries. As it is now, you can safely leave your capital completely empty. The enemy can park their entire navy and air force on it, as long as they have no ground units on it. EDIT: Okay, you probably shouldn't do that, because the enemy will actually eventually send Transports to land on your capital.
  • In an RTS match on an island map, I sent some Imp fighters (with bombs) to attack some fully upgraded Bombers Balloons, Zeppelins and Juggernauts. The enemy didn't use the Zeppelin's firebat skill, the Balloons didn't use air mines, even though I was in range for them, and the Juggernauts only launched a single Imp Fighter. The only other thing they did to try and stop me was to build Warlocks, but they only used their normal attack, not even cloaking or polymorph.
  • EDIT: The AI doesn't build and use enough Transports (and other Air/Sea units), and this map is particularly problematic for it, because large numbers of enemy forces are built on islands well out of the main linked islands, and never reach the main islands. They are not positioned well to attack my side of the map, or defend their own capital - especially the northern island force.



Last edited by Stabbey; 05/12/13 04:36 AM. Reason: some corrections