Summary
This map allows a maximum of 10 players who will experience the lives and hardships of the renown Warlords during this chaotic time. Each Warlord has their own unique advantage, whether it may be income, position, special units, heroes, events...etc. Players will need to decide on their own diplomatic relationships in the game, and slowly expand their lands until the entire China is unified into one single colour. Different regions will offer a different set of Generals to be recruited, as well as unique special units to be enlisted. Thus, one will need to capture additional lands to gain access to more advantages.
Units
This map features 30 unique units that can be trained; however as mentioned above, you will have to conquer the entire China, in order for all 30 unique units to become accessible. Each individual unit in the map can be countered, and this is assisted by tooltips present to guide the basics of the unit counter system. For instance, Pikemen counter Cavalries, Imperial Guards counter Archers, Ranged counters Artilleries.. and so on.
Heroes
The heroes in the map is divided into 6 different classes: Leaders, Strategists, Ranged Generals, Melee Strength Generals, Melee Agility Generals. Each hero class has an unique set of abilities. The hero abilities are made quite straightforward, and mainly fall under auras and passives. In addition, to make each hero much more unique aside from the unique custom models, most heroes have their own unique default passive. Efforts were made to avoid active damage spells for balancing sakes. The hero attributes are scaled based on the stats provided by the game, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII.
Income System
Like many strategy maps in Wc3, the main income source is based on the numbers of cities owned by the player. Similarly, different types of cities will provide a slightly different amount of income. There exists 6 different types of cities: Minor City < Developed City < Major City < Capital City < Imperial Palace. The type of each city is determined based on the prosperity of the cities during 190AD in China, which also mimics the game, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII. In addition to city income, players can also train tax collectors which are available from marketplaces of each city, to collect gold from vaults. Other income options also include capturing Sea Control Points, investing in Farmlands/Trade Markets, or simply trading resources at marketplaces.
Terrain and Structures
As this map takes place during the 190AD in Ancient China, it is essential for players to instantly get a very strong feel of the traditional Chinese culture, when they enter into the game world. Hence, extensive model searches were done in attempt to mimic the Ancient Chinese World, which include specific tree doodads, buildings, units, and historical landmarks.
Events
As a gamer myself, I do notice that simply producing armies, capturing cities and warring against enemies do get boring and repetitive at times. So, a key feature of this map is the Special Events that are not commonly seen in traditional RTS custom maps in Wc3. These events are present to serve a few purposes such as introducing additional objectives for players to complete, encouraging players to follow the historical paths, and adding depth to the complexity of the map. There are three different types of events that can occur: Random Events, Historical Events, Player-Specific Events. Random and Historical events will occur naturally and does not require player intervention, while Player-Specific Events require specific players to satisfy a given condition, in order to trigger the event occurrence.