Not long back I bought Settlers 3 from GOG, which gave me more stuff to play with than the normal version I had previously. This collection gave me the Amazons, extra missions, and a groovy map editor, which I had to jump right into using. I wanted to make a map that promoted massive battles but also could be played in a much shorter time. To that end, I set up everyone's guard towers, mining and food industry as part of the map, leaving players the simple tasks of building their smiths and residences and getting stuck in. At least that was the plan. I tested the map out with CPU players, and it didn't go quite as I hoped...

As reds, I teamed up with blues and yellows against greens, cyans and oranges. It did not take long for all 6 teams to build up a considerable force of soldiers. Then I played a waiting game. A very loooooong waiting game. All I wanted was for something to happen, for either my allies to attack or the enemy teams to attack. I knew if I went in at the enemy alone I would be wiped out. But nothing happened. For hours. Literally.
Eventually, I couldn't be bothered any more. As all 5 CPU armies shuffled around nervously, I grabbed all my little guys (by this time around 1000) and sent them forward. Seems like the blues had also been waiting for the chance, deciding to follow me in, and we crashed into the enemy defences. Unfortunately, the yellow team defiantly sat in their territory, and the enemy armies battered myself and the blues into submission in short order. The sheer volume of soldiers on the screen during this engagement was something I'd never seen before in this game.

Now things had kicked off at last, the enemy counter attacked. With all my soldiers gone, and few blues remaining, the yellows finally had to step up and were able to hold them off. After the first crazy engagement, every attack that followed from the CPU players were small ones, easily defended from both sides. I wasn't quite sure how the game was ever going to end, but then I realised to my concern that both the blues and yellows had stopped creating soldiers. They had used up all their stone supplies building dozens of buildings they didn't need, most of which I'd already supplied them with by default. Stupid CPU players. This meant they couldn't build any more residences. By contrast, I'd not even used half of my stone yet.
I realised this was probably true of the enemy players as well, so built up another large force and sent them in. Joined by the remaining yellow soldiers, I was finally able to punch through the enemy forward defences, and rolled through the entire cyan settlement. My final army was then easily able to take out the oranges and greens with little resistance. Phew.

The map definitely promotes huge battles, but needs more tweaks in order to be played faster. Oh, and human players. Always helps, that.

In other news, pretty much still just playing LoL a couple of times a week, but no other gaming has happened for a while now. I gave up Star Trek again. Game is just too much of a dull grind fest. MMOs I guess.

With my brand new PC having yet more issues in the shape of a dead hard drive, it fell to my good old Mac and laptop to help entertain me and my bro today. We slapped on our first game of Settlers 3 in a very long time. The game was a 4v4 involving 6 AI teams. As usual, our allies did very little, leaving us to fight the four enemy teams pretty much on our own.

The game started with us on the defensive while we were trying to get our economies up and running, with the blues attacking JIK's oranges, and my blacks being targetted by the pinks, greens and yellows. Luckily the pinks had to go through JIK's territory to get to me, and he was able to cut off most of their soldiers as they tried to pass through. I had mostly been waiting to upgrade my soldiers before recruiting any new ones, and when the greens and yellows swarmed into my settlement I lost several towers as my defenses struggled to cope, but luckily only lost a few woodcutters. Thankfully at this time, one of our allies, the cyans, chose this time to charge out and attack the enemy blue team. The cyan army crossed the path that the yellows and greens were taking to get to me, and stopped their reinforcements, giving my guys a breather and chance to regain all the ground I'd lost. The cyans battered the blues and pinned them back, giving JIK the opportunity to concentrate on the pinks and annihilate them.

By now I'd rebuilt my forces, and my soldiers joined JIK's, creating an army of blacks and oranges several hundred strong. We marched into yellow and green lands and wiped them out easily. The cyans had stopped to sunbathe or something after their single attack, and we had to finish their job of taking out the blues. Though at least they had done something. Our red allies sat up in the top corner of the map, and did not take part in a single battle in nearly 5 hours. Thanks guys.