Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

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cjleeagain
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Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby cjleeagain » 18 Jul 2021, 13:44

You can get this map here
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opini ... 890&game=3

It's by the renowned Maygwan. I'm playing it now.

Requires HOTA 1.6.1 to play.

So far it is pretty well made.

That said, I'm slogging through it now. Really can't make much progress. It is getting tiring to keep playing the same few sets of boring fights against the undead. Map is nowhere near easy enough to do this using autoplay, so apart from the initial few fights against zombies, you have to enter every battle manually. Which means constantly fighting the same morons (undead) is really getting too much for me, even before one month is up.

I'll keep updating this along the way.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby cjleeagain » 02 Aug 2021, 21:09

I've restarted this game twice. Why? Realized that all my heroes have to move fast if I don't want to lose them. The central area (Alexandria) gets attacked pretty early, so I have to liberate Rozita from prison before more powerful undead come by.

Still quite lost. I think I have finished no more than 2% of the map so far. There's a lot to do and many battles to fight. As the author points out, he deliberately made this a melee map. So none of the traditional 'cast slow and shoot nonstop' boring stuff. You do have to exercise good judgment and tactics if you want to keep your melee troops alive versus huge undead armies.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby cjleeagain » 11 Aug 2021, 20:11

Just to update, I'm a few months into this map. Now that I roughly know how the opening plays out, I moved quickly to rescue Rozita.

This is a must for anybody hoping to survive. Making a beeline for Rozita (I won't provide a spoiler by saying exactly where she is, since she's not hard to find) is a must. After which you have to rush to open up the only area that Rozita can get into without too much difficulty. Then you grab the garrisoned troops in the only garrison where you can remove the troops - and this is not an oversight. Maygwan intended this.

It is a testimony to the difficulty of this game, that the garrisoned troops number nearly 5 legions - and are still not enough to fight most battles. You have to do a lot of running around, avoiding other enemies, and choose to fight only the battles that you can do currently with your 5 legions of Castle troops.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby Pitsu » 17 Aug 2021, 16:01

Well, intrigued by your posts, I gave the map a try. The first week was interesting, then it started to slow down for some characters. Although I usually avoid it, considering the setup and the constant need to go back a few days or weeks because of learning by trial and error, I also studied the map in the editor. Made to month 3 and now I am unsure whether to continue. By reports from others it can be completed and I seriously hope that also without the cloak of undead king. Nevertheless, I feel that before I end up in a wheelchair due to old age, there are better ways to spend my life.
After week 1 the battles are quite one-sided. Either I win or the enemy wipes me off in turn 2 at latest. Events like "500 goblins in Alexandria" do not seem to make any impact, because the only war-worthy stack I have is 80k cerberi. The main strategy is to outrun enemy main heroes and guerilla war. Considering the shrouds and portals everywhere it is a challenge. Not impossible with save and reload, but the balance between fun and tediousness tends to be towars the latter for me. Of course, I have never loved micromanagment in any game and my skills in homm may have became rusty in last 35 months 6 days and 22 hours. Thus, without completing it, I would conclude that the map shows promise, but does not deliver the fun for me.

Edit: my greatest puzzles so far have been why does Maggie specialize in a skill she doe not have and how is Merle supposed to deal with dragons (azure or ghost or whatever).
Last edited by Pitsu on 17 Aug 2021, 16:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby cjleeagain » 23 Aug 2021, 14:27

Hey Pitsu

Thought I'd respond to your post.
Maygwan's Walking Dead map does have the problem of slowing down and gradually becoming bogged down in tons of the undead.

When your enemies are basically this type of undead, or that type of undead, and everybody is just a vast shambling army that outnumbers you many times over with minimal tactical challenge, it gets boring fast. Apparently there are many aspects of The Walking Dead storyline inside, but since I gave up pretty early in the series I don't know these.

I didn't want to criticize Maygwan on the Maps4Heroes site, but yes, I do think that his Maggie Green character was flawed. What's the point of having a skill specialization that she doesn't have? Might as well be specialized in Mysticism or, HAHA, Eagle Eye.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby Pitsu » 23 Aug 2021, 18:10

Since there are days with nothing much better to do, I completed the map with a lot of reloads and editor checking help. 169 days (month 7 week 1 day 1) on the directors cut version. At some point things started to get interesting only to become boring again. Planned to do without cloak of undead king, but that would have been very tedious. The most serious bug might be that this version of the map becomes impossible to complete if Merle dies before taking his first town. The towns are owned by enemy an no-one else can enter his area from outside as far as I saw. And Merle is likely to be abandoned. My guess is that a creature who was supposed to join him, does not and he cannot do much anything in first months.
As said earlier I still think that the game would be more fun if insanely strong armies would not be as insane.

Below some strategy *** SPOILERS***
The first week is quite clear what one needs to do. Next to Alexandria are view air and earth which are hugely important as they give you the location of enemy heroes and towns and some landscape. Then things slow down until Rozita is freed and Ezekiel arrives. I did abandon the central region and went underground.
To kill a zombie one need to aim for the head. So the plan was to take enemy towns until they are busy exploring my home. "My" towns produce little troops compared to theirs so, it should be a good trade. Hunt for tents takes time, but you have it a lot on that map. There are town portal structures in underground, thus Maggie went with some troops to help Michonne with Candy. Eventually she found earth tome somewhere. Ezekiel took two left side necropolises and some weeks later also right side ones. Pink central sanctuary fell as well when main Negan was away. The two other necropolises had ultrastrong heroes, but due to stationary nature they just were there not doing anything. A single tome of earth and a town with town portal spell meant everyone had access to it.
The plan was to try without raising liches or using any undead at all. This did not work out sufficiently well as there are too many ultrastrong heroes. Leveling up Abraham as firemage with orb of vulnerability,berzerk, clone and whatnot did some nice battles, but there are some which need raw might. So dropped this plan, went to an earlier save and last months of gameplay were Michonnes solo with nothing else needing much attention. And it was not cakewalk even with 100k+ liches.

Edit 1 was typos mainly
Edit 2: do not forget that 7 days with no town erases even overpowered heroes and one cannot capture a town from an ally.
Last edited by Pitsu on 24 Aug 2021, 17:15, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Maygwan Map "The Walking Dead"

Unread postby cjleeagain » 27 Aug 2021, 03:23

Edit 2: do not forget that 7 days with no town erases even overpowered heroes and one cannot capture a town from an ally.
Your last line was really the most important line.

I've realized that unlike other maps, Maygwan maps do leave this possibility for you to win the game. Whack the castles and wait out your enemies to wander around, get lost and time's up.
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