Fairy Tales

By Scrowe
simon_crowe@excite.com

Players: 1 human / 2 computer
Size: Small
Difficulty: Expert
Victory Condition: Defeat the Snow Queen
Loss Condition: Fail to win in 5 months


BACKGROUND:

Once upon a time...

...there lived a cruel but beautiful witch who called herself the Snow Queen, and lived in a large castle up in the White Mountains. She was very vain, and each day she would turn to her magic mirror and say,

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?"

To which the mirror would always reply,

"Oh my Queen, it is true. No-one is as fair as you."

So one day after she had put her make up on she asked the mirror,

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?"

To which the mirror replied,

"Oh my Queen, it is true. Another is more fair than you. That girl's name, I will tell. She's from the village, her name is Belle."



NOTES:

Fairy Tales is a bit different from most maps. For a start you don't build buildings or recruit creatures at creature generators. Instead you pick up creatures as you play from events and so forth. (If you've played the map 'Hail to the King' you will be familiar with what I mean) This means there are a few things to note.

1. The main problem is some thing entirely out of my control. As you know each new week on HOM&M3 is called the 'week of...'. Most of the time this is a harmless gopher or lizard or whatever. However some weeks it will be week of the gog, or lizardman or another creature. This can cause those types of creature to appear on the map. The trouble is that this ruins the flow of the story, and even worse with the forces you will have it may make the map unplayable. The only solution to this is that whenever a new week begins as week of... a ceratin type of monster that could appear, immediately load the autosaved game. This should take you to the end of day 7 so you can start the week again and it should be a different creature. You may have to do this a few times till you get week of the condor or mongoose or whatever. It is slightly annoying but necessary.

2. Due to the way the level has been made some skills are pointless. These are: Diplomacy, Estates and Scholar.

3. Difficulty. Fairy tales is designed to be played at impossible difficulty and has been balanced accordingly, on easy or medium by the end the level it will be no challenge. The observant amongst you may have noticed that since resources do not matter, there is no difference between playing on hard, expert or impossible - since the computer performs to the best of its abilities in all three, so play on impossible, it will give you a greater score.


SUPLEMENTARY NOTES:

I had a lot of fun making this level, I hope you have fun playing it. I would really like feedback. So if you have anything to say, if you enjoyed it or not or if you are stuck please email me at:

simon_crowe@excite.com

I have noticed one bug whilst playtesting. This has only occured once but if it does it makes the level impossible. (I'm hoping the latest patches will solve it) One of the seers' quests is to kill a particular hero, but once when I played the level it did not acknowledge my victory and refused to give me the reward at the seer's hut. Just cross your fingers that this doesn't happen to you. The only thing I can suggest is that as soon as you have defeated the hero to go directly to the hut and check if it has worked, if so he will give you the reward. If not... well you're a bit stuck really.


TIPS:

Expert level in at least one magic school (preferably water) is essential, two or more if possible.

There are one or two secret passages... don't miss them.

Chose your fights carefully.