[Strategy / Risk] Crusade over Europe

[SNIper of DARKness]

by S02

Introduction

Crusade over Europe is a Medieval themed Grand Strategy map that beside featuring the ordinarily found medieval arsenal and equipment will also have as a key element a Religion system which will contain Crusades and Jihads.

Another key and distinct component will be the Supply & Nutrition system which will test your logistic understanding, making it more valuable to master than Tactics and Strategies.
Supplies will be needed to fuel your armies march to the Holy Lands, making it harder for you to orchestrate grand campaigns without a plan.
Set your taxes on High while you set on a mighty Crusade!

Gameplay and Mechanics

You begin with a Settler which you will use to choose your starting location.

The location you choose will influence which Faction you will get:

• Factions:
  -Western Europe
  -Eastern Europe
  -Byzantium
  -Middle East
  Each faction has it's own exclusive architecture, units and upgrades and play differently from each other much like the Races in Warcraft 3.
  More so Each faction will have it's own Sub-factions which will burrow from their parrent faction Architecture and units but will have different units and upgrades along with unique units; France, England, Turks etc..
• Combat: will revolve around unit counters and powerful combination of units.
• Economy: is based around income gained from City Taxes and Ores and special events such as Crusades or Jihads.
• Public Order: will determine whether you will keep your recently captured cities or have them revolt against you. There are many ways to influence this, the best way being to set the taxes to low.
  There are also several events that can influence the amount of Public Order, Taxes and Population your City will have.
  
  City Modifiers

  
• Religion: There are 3 Religions: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam. Each religion has their own benefits and mechanics (such as Crusades for Catholics). Catholics will also have access to a college of Cardinal with the chance of having one of their bishops becoming the Bishop of Rome, Pope.
• Diplomacy: You can ally anyone freely but there will be penalties if you choose to ally someone of different religion or faction.

Terrain Screenshots

Balkan Peninsula & Anatolia

Scandinavia

British Isles

North Africa & The Sahara

Western Europe

Egypt

Italia

Iberian Peninsula

Mesopotamia

Gameplay Screenshots

Credits
One long project that has taken many years to accomplish.
Original map idea by Oranki , which still continues to support the map, @Shushpancheak for contributing most of the triggers and scripts and reviving the map.
Special thanks to Dog, @HerrDave, @Fingolfin, @Mike for supporting the map with resources, triggers.

One big thank you to the gameranger community for testing the map and providing feedback.

Join us on Discord


Download the map here Crusade over Europe v0.189 | HIVE

 

[MarcusMaxentius]

Looks promising, i'll check it out later.

 

[Kam]

I played similar maps in 2002-2006 and loved them. This terrain is outstanding.

 

[Wasabee]

Yeah I agree the terrain is lovely.

 

[bear_369]

@SNIper of DARKness
I've played the game only in singleplayer, I only used Human and Orc races for testing the map first.
Here's my opinion about your map.

• The ability, "Knowledge of the terrain", should be use a Passive BTN to avoid confusion that it's a active ability.
  
• It's really a good idea to spawn multiple units after training one. However, this can overpass the food limit.
  
• The appearance between the Swordsman and Spearman are probably the same. Maybe suggesting to change their model?
  
• The terrain is really great, making the enviroment more realistic.
• When choosing a race, Night Elf is the only one that has a gold & lumber cost.
  
• All Income Points are quite stayed unprotected. Maybe adding some of them a creeps that guards them or that would probably break the game.
  
• I like the gameplay. This could've be a great game if I played multiplayer.

Overall, the map is really fun to play(Maybe even fun if I played this in multiplayer) but there's only a lil' bit misleading details in it. Rating this to 4/5!

 

[Rufus]

I have to say that I don't usually play this type of game, so I don't know what is the norm of the gametype, which can make some of my notes inaccurate.

• Should you be able to see the other settlers?
• Beautiful trees!
• Nice use of tiles
• Nicely made europe template map. Better tahn most I've seen.
• The rolling shores are pretty edgy at many palces. This could be smoothened out.
• Elven Race builds human shipyard.
• Even buildings take a little damage outside the townhall aura. Should it?
• Building / training / repair times felt pretty slow. Perhaps this is needed though.
• Certain research times was even worse. Even with "Warpten" activated it took quite a while.
• In the quest dialogue, dwarwen and elven "quests" are exactly the same.
• I liked exploring the area. The supply horse was handy for this, and a nice addition.
• Not a lot of units and upgrades to keep track of, which is wonderful and really shifts the game focus to strategy of masses, instead of micro controlling.
• When making a unit that spawns more than one, when the training is finished, the food cost is 1 for each unit, even though the tooltip said it would cost only 1 food.
• The magic attack type has an ugly icon. It has the tier 3 human upgrade icon, rather than a normal attack icon with proper borders.
• Perhaps I don't understand what mana does, but the skirmishers has 250 manapoints, but no mana costing abilities.
• The tile you use for mountains is kinda ugly. you can see the tile borders on it.
• The icon used for the charge ability for pikeman has no DISBTN version imported.
• One upgrade was supposed to grant me higher ability tiers, but I noticed no difference?
• The great foundation was not considered enemies as the income circles.
• If I destroy my own wonder, I get the reward for it.
• I think that wonders went down quite easily, for being so hard to build.
• Also, the model used for the wonder doesn't have a death animation, so it just stays there awkwardly.
• The new great foundation didn't spawn under the destructed wonder, but about 750 units to the south west. I think this has something to do with the pathing maps changing.
• The Dismantle Camp ability is strange. You are not really sure it is doing anything, and then 10 seconds later the camp explodes. There should be some signal to tell you that the camp will be dismantled in a while. Or perhaps include it in the tooltip?

I guess it is hard to tell much about how combat and winning the actual is, when you don't have any others to play with.
It is also supposed ot be a long game. That I can tell from the research times and such. I can really see how great empires can get over this time, too, which can be really epic.

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

Thank you all for your feedback. There have been a lot of changed in the terrain and will upload new pictures along with some gameplay screenshots in the fantasy version.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

 

[GolluM_KoMe]

Maybe can I suggest you to use my Europe Template for your map ??
Not that your terrain is bad or anything, but it s less precise. Just a pick of the cropped map that kinda fit yours.

But perhaps the scale doesn't fit what you wanna do.

 

[BoleSrbin023]

Download link?Looks promising!

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

Some gameplay screenshots

Open

Join our Discord group for more updates: Discord - Free voice and text chat for gamers

 

[WarcraftLiterature]

It looks good. The map looks close to Europe, the fact that the Warcraft 3 maps are squares inside of diamonds helps with the natural feel of the continent. It looks to be a big project, but I wonder, will Africa be playable?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Is there a timeline? As in, Knights Templar only available from 12th to 14th century, the Mongols showing up in the 13th, etc.

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

will Africa be playable?

Assuming you mean if you can build or walk over the deserts in africa, then yes you certainly can but will be at a great disadvantage and suffering from heavy attrition loss and will die before you can reach Mali.
North Africa and the Upper Nile will behave normally and you'll be able to travel with no worries as long as you packed your lunch.

Is there a timeline? As in, Knights Templar only available from 12th to 14th century, the Mongols showing up in the 13th, etc.

At the moment the game presents such events as mere upgrades and researchables coming from the Feudal Age to the Gunpowder age as example, and will not feature a timer for when certain events will happen.
Though I can't say a plague or two could not happen while your off invading your neighbours.

 

[KILLCIDE]

Re-opened on OP's request.

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

Thanks.
About the Cities and population. All of the Cities are relevant Medieval Cities and have their population set according to historical sources. This is all done to create a immersive medieval experience.

 

[Pinzu]

I remeber having worked on a supply system some years ago might have it laying around still, though I'm not certain how finished it got. How far have you gotten in that department?

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

Well in all aspects I can say that my version of supply system works, is not cumbersome and very user friendly.

 

[Shushpancheak]

New version is out, guys! Stay tuned for crusade/jihad mechanics.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Tooltip are sometimes inaccurate (e.g. Gunpowder damage upgrade reads Arrows and Spears, Archer upgrade complete text reads Archer T1 and then Archer Tier 2, etc.).

There should really be a way to exchange lumber and gold with yourself. Maybe have trade units exchange one resource for another when dealing with your own trade buildings.

Buildings should show how far their auras extend.

Unit upgrades (e.g. Bedouin to Arab Infantry to Al Haqa) don't affect units already built.

What are Food/Iron/Stone for in the leaderboard? I captured two iron mines but it still read 0.

Maybe do something with the desert areas like having lots of mineral resources or respawning wild beasts there.

How do unrest-reducing buildings work? Do they need to be in the city's radius or is it a global effect?

Cities should be able to attack.

Settler should have long-range Blink.

Got the following message:
Error message: errpr - essage: Nullpointer exception when calling PlayerStats.getForceId

Units that can't attack some units should mention it (e.g. bombards only attacking buidings).

General tooltip says they can specialize, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Is that for a future version?

Settlement can't return resources, Motte and Bailey can.

M&B says it can build unique units, but can only build generals.

Support Beams aura doesn't explain what it does.

In lieu of an AI, maybe have NH armies that spawn near cities and go around attacking player-owned cities, wild animals spawning near lumber buildings and attacking workers, etc.

"May the God bless you, my lord" -> "May God bless you, my lord.". Also, the message sometimes plays to inform you that you've taken the city.

When in a group, Generals are always in the back as if they were ranged units.

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

There should really be a way to exchange lumber and gold with yourself. Maybe have trade units exchange one resource for another when dealing with your own trade buildings.

Buildings should show how far their auras extend.

Unit upgrades (e.g. Bedouin to Arab Infantry to Al Haqa) don't affect units already built.

What are Food/Iron/Stone for in the leaderboard? I captured two iron mines but it still read 0.

Maybe do something with the desert areas like having lots of mineral resources or respawning wild beasts there.

How do unrest-reducing buildings work? Do they need to be in the city's radius or is it a global effect?

General tooltip says they can specialize, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Is that for a future version?

In lieu of an AI, maybe have NH armies that spawn near cities and go around attacking player-owned cities, wild animals spawning near lumber buildings and attacking workers, etc.

When in a group, Generals are always in the back as if they were ranged units.

Thank you for your feedback.

1. You should try trading with other players, especially Middle Eastern ones if you seem to have too much Wood.
2. Buildings Aura is their line of sight.
3. That's true for most units, units don't upgrade globally.
4. Those features were scrapped but still remain. Ores are only used to improve your Gold income.
5. There are no plans to introduce wild animals, although the Saharan desert area will be used for interior and new continents.
6. They improve local public order of the City.
7. Yes, Generals will be able to pick from 3 Auras to improve certain unit types.
8. There's already enough death concerning Lumberjackers due to starvation, you should try playing in Eastern Europe.
9. Ideally you wouldn't want your General on the frontline, he is mostly used to buff your army and would be a shame if he got aimed down and murdered by a billhook.

Currently the project is on hold due to lack of trigger masters, it will most likely get a new shot once reforge drops.
I'll make sure to address the bugs reported for when that happens.

Thank you for playing.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Cannons should be able to capture cities.

Military workers don't get the lumber upgrade.

Apparently neutral cities improve their garrisons over time. Maybe have them spawn towers too?

Western ships don't have enough range to attack some coastal targets.