Campaign Name: Conquests of Carthage- Invasion of Italy

Current Version: 1.0   (30 Sep 98)

# of Scenarios: 3

File Size: 269 kb

Author: Mark Stoker

Difficulty: Very Hard

Description: This campaign was the second-place winner in Age of Empires Heaven's campaign design contest. It contains three scenarios about Hannibal's invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War. Here is a review of the campaign, written by Frank Steidel: This Campaign tells the story of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. It begins with Hannibal crossing the Alps and ends with the Roman attack on the African mainland. It is written from the Carthaginian point of view and has the player taking the role of Hannibal. Scenario one is called, "Crossing the Alps". Hannibal starts the game in New Carthage, which is modern day Cartagena and is Hannibal's base of operations for this scenario. The Carthaginian Army is nearby. After locating the troops, Hannibal must find a way across the Alps, avoiding both the hostile tribes in the area as well as the Roman Army. Your goal is the Roman city of Placentia and destruction of the barracks located there. Hannibal must be careful not to wander into any of the traps hidden along the way. Avoiding unnecessary combat is the order of the day. This scenario is of medium difficulty. The second scenario covers Hannibal's rampages on the Italian Peninsula and is titled, "The Battle of Cannae". There is no actual battle of Cannae represented, the scenario rather covers a longer period in a more strategic time frame. Hannibal's forces start in the open field and must locate resources and a base to build up and defend from. Your ultimate goal here is to capture the government center in Capua and build a barracks in Cannae. It might be quite a while before either goal can be accomplished, I found the most pressing goal to be simply to survive the constant Roman attacks. Hannibal's army can't last long out in the open. That was one thing with this scenario. It was extremely difficult. It took me over 5 hours of AoE time and at least double that in real time to finally win this one. I had to resort to many previous saves and reload many times. When it was finally over I had 541 kills, 233 razings, and made 187 conversions. This scenario is only for those players that want a real tough challange. Any one else is liable to get quite frustrated with the difficulty. In the last scenario, "Escape", Hannibal begins the game under attack in Italy and must return to Utica, on the African mainland to command the defence of the city. To get there, Hannibal must first build up enough of a navy to allow passage to Africa. Once there, he needs to protect the government center located there. Time is of the essence in this scenario as Utica is under attack from the start. Take too much time and you may find the scenario ending in defeat without you ever even seeing the city. Once Utica is secure, your mission is to capture the Numidian Stable nearby. This scenario has a very challenging start. You begin under a heavy attack and must retreat off the mainland. The hints say to move along the coast and build a dock and transport to the south. I tried this at least ten times and could never last long enough to finish the dock and transport before getting killed. The Roman Centurians followed, hot on my trail, like a pack of bloodhounds. The key for me was a change of strategy. I won't give anything away here, but once I implemented the new plan, I was able to escape without much trouble. Once off the mainland, your problems aren't over. You must build up a naval force to allow the transport to get through the Roman blockade. It is imperative that you get to Utica soon. The introductions are well written and the bit maps are of good quality. I like the accurate quality of the map right down to the many islands on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. The written histories that accompany the introductions are spot on and make for some interesting reading. The author took the time to do his research and it shows. The playing fields are all very well done. The author made good use of accurate terrain types. This shows up in the final scenario where Italy is made using mostly Grasslands based tiles, Africa is desert based and the east coast of the Adriatic is all hilly. The one thing I thought could have been improved is the area where Hannibal crosses the Alps in the first scenario. The way the terrain is laid out is like a canyon sided by cliffs. I think this area could have been given a more Alpine feel by using more actual elevation changes and switchbacked mountain routes. The cliffs should have been stacked 2 and 3 high. These are the Alps after all. The creativity in this campaign was high. While the victory conditions were straight forward, you are nearly always in a situation that was carefully and finely crafted. This overall creativity shows up especially well in the second and third scenarios. Balance and playability was good if and only if, like I mentioned before, you want a difficult challenge. At first I was going to really knock down the balance and playability scores, due to my frustration at having to continualy reload the game. On further reflection, after completion of the campaign, I decided that this campaign is meant to be hard and with that in mind I gave the author a 4 on each. Overall, "Conquests of Carthage" is a bang up job and gets a definite download recommondation if you want to be tested to the limit. If thats not your cup of tea, without a doubt, look elsewhere. Overall Score: 4.2 / 5