Stenovita Dolina
By EaglePrince
The Rocky Valley map
This is a, pretty much balanced map if you fight in teams 4v4 - lords on one side of the river, against the ones on the other side. On the other hand, this valley may be pretty much hostile to you if you have no allies; then you will have to fight for your resources which are not so much close to your castle - you would have to watch over your iron mines and stone quarries not to be burned down by enemy slaves, and you would have to watch after you villagers not to be killed by enemy troops outside your castle.
One can play it in multiplayer, I believe I putted it enough stone and iron for AI lords, but it is also not too much - if you play a multiplayer.
I'd also like to thank to our friend Duc Vautour, cause he is the one who gave me the idea for this map through our conversations, and through our joint work on several maps. First he sent me one his map, which I was willing to edit a little, which I started doing some time later. Then I continued to edit the map he sent me, and that is how this map emerged! This new map is a lot different than the one he sent me, but it this one wouldn't be there at all if there wasn't our joint work on those maps. I also hope you will be able to see the newer version of the original map he sent me.
A very good looking map that i must say. I'm really glad that we have that conversation because our little conversation gave birth to this gorgeous map. This map is definetly gave you a pretty good fight and the landscape is gorgeous even when you played it on original crusader, it still looks good(just like most of your Europe map). I like the idea of mixing scrub and thick scruub to distinguish the oasis. Good job!
Thanks, Duc Vautour. I hope our conversations will bring up some more even better maps!
Oh, and speaking about my ideas how to make the map look better and more natural - it's all thanks to Lord Vetka. My maps were whole lot simpler before I started playing Lord Vetkas maps.
Thanks EaglePrince, you are to kind, I do like to make natural looking maps though, the new SHC2 editor is starting to look pretty good, the 3D makes the maps look real good and natural.
You did a great job on this map, good blending of the grasses, and it plays well, a good game should be had by players allied 2 or 3 against the other enemy castles.
I'm not too king, that's for sure!
By the way, in Stronghold 3 map editor one can add grass, but not only like a pattern - he could put a grass grass. I hope you understand what I want to say. I mean, when I place a building into that grass - it doesn't look like it was build on a completely flat ground - one can see the grass on the edges of the building, and that grass can reach the windows. Also, if you send a soldier into that grass, he the grass could reach his knees for example. Here you can see one example of it in our Gallery. Is it possible to put a grass like that in Crusader 2 as well? It would look really great if we would be able to put grass like that in oasis.
Thanks for your compliments about the map!
I know what you are talking about, I used grass like that in SH2 all the time, but in Crusader 2, no, only palms and cactus, the grass is ground cover only, same with leaves, it's very dumbed down.
Your welcome, you deserve the compliment!
I did notice that. It makes Stronghold 2 maps look way better - without it they can look too flat - only some flat grass and thees... In a way, a grass like that could be even considered as necessary for creating natural landscapes.
That's too bad... I do realize they were reducing the lots of thing to make the game optimized as much as possible, but I don't things that would get much CPU power, or GPU power... Also, if they did introduce that, they could have given us option to turn that on or off.
I personally don't have some powerful machine, but I'm kinda used to that - a game comes out, I can play it, but performances are not so much great, BUT I do know that it would be better if I had a better PC, and that it will be better when I get that better PC.
Still, I hope we won't suffer much because of that - Crusader is located in a desert, and most of terrain will be dry. Also, I know we can count on you to find some ways to make great looking oasis even without that, and from what I've seen - you're already doing it really great. :)
The tall grass is definitely needed to finish the detail on a map, I feel the C2 maps need a little something more to be complete and tall grass would help.
My PC is a little low on power for C2, but I see other people complaining about lag and stalling and closing and some of them have better newer faster PCs than I do, I think it has a lot to do with how you have your PC setup and what type of programs you have running in the back ground.
Thanks, Two Cities is done now, you can see what I did there when it's posted, Arvend looks pretty good for a small map.