What is Daemonia Epic?

Daemonia Epic is a cooperative-competitive experience set in the age of fantasy, magic, swords, and demons. Players control a Magister, a powerful wizard-lord, as part of a greater Empire, each representing one of 5 rival kingdoms. Players must work together to complete quests, build up their kingdom, foster diplomacy, and explore Hell to power up their hero, all while combating the ever-growing demonic invasion. This game combines elements of RTS, RPG, and Diplomacy all in one. As players succeed or fail Quests, the demons grow stronger, pressuring everyone to cooperate before it is too late. The map is fully playable, though development is ongoing and I intend to finish the remaining Quests to complete the story.

Daemonia Epic is the spiritual successor to the original Demonic Invasion, which itself inspired at least one remake, Demonic Invasion II by Excalibur, built using EUD extensions. Daemonia Epic goes far beyond its predecessors, however: mechanically it is a wholly different beast, boasting over 17,000 triggers and entirely new systems, including a full Quests campaign and a Perk upgrade system, not even imagined in the original.

Except for the terrain and locations, the entire map is built in Python using RichChk, a library I made to help build this map. With over 17,000 triggers, writing them by hand in ScmDraft or any GUI would have been unthinkable. Unit settings are stored in CSV files for easy rebalancing without touching code. I may release the full map codebase in the future for anyone curious to see how it all works.

Why did I make this map? My goal is to craft an experience that can tell an epic story, one that can be different each time. William Faulkner believed that the only thing worth writing about is "the human heart in conflict with itself." That idea is the soul of Daemonia Epic. Every game tells its own story, shaped entirely by the decisions players make under pressure. Do you abandon the Quests to further your own kingdom, leaving your allies to struggle alone? Do you exploit the chaos of the demonic invasion to seize territory from a neighbor? Do you descend into Hell to hunt bosses and grow powerful, knowing the demons grow stronger while you're gone? Or perhaps you answer every call for help, not out of loyalty, but because Quest MVP rewards are too good to pass up. The map is built around conflict: cooperation versus self-interest, ambition versus survival, trust versus betrayal. My goal is to let players decide how each game should unfold.

Tileset: Jungle
Players: 2 - 5
Genre: Cooperative-Competitive RPG / RTS / Diplomacy
EUD: No
Hypertriggers: Yes

What makes Daemonia Epic stand out?

Quests System
The game features a set of 14 linear quests culminating in a final battle for the fate of the world. All quests are timed, displayed on the Countdown timer, and players must complete each one before time runs out or face automatic failure. Success rewards all players with Perk Points, and the MVP, the player who contributed most to the quest, earns a bonus on top. But failure has real consequences: the Demons become permanently stronger. At least 2 more quests are planned to complete the plot line. Players win the game by completing the final quest successfully.

Current quests:

• Introduction
  
• The Bandits and the Bees
  
• Trouble in Paradise
  
• Caravans of Doom
  
• March of the Damned
  
• The Gift (Part 1)
  
• Lost Souls
  
• The Gift (Part 2)
  
• Civil War
  
• A Hero Rises
  
• Peace in Our Time
  
• The Accuser
  
• Endgame
  
• Above the Burning Sky
  

Perk System
By completing quests or obtaining the rare Flag item, players earn Perk Points which can be spent on permanent, stackable upgrades to their army and economy. There are 8 perks to choose from, each with 10 to 25 levels. The two air perks are locked until players unlock air units through a late game quest.

• Max Army Size
  
• Improved Garrisons
  
• Farming Efficiency
  
• Melee Infantry Health
  
• Ranged Infantry Health
  
• Vehicle Health
  
• Max Fleet Size
  
• Fleet Health
  

Demonic Invasion
Demon Lords plot to take over the world and slowly build up their forces on Earth. At first the invasion is weak and easy to ignore, but as the game progresses the Demons grow stronger, fielding more powerful units at higher health. Failing quests accelerates this process. When the demonic forces reach a critical mass, they organize and begin targeting each player's capital one by one, before finally marching on the Imperial City itself. If all capitals fall to the Demons, the game ends in defeat.

Portal System
The world is divided into two dimensions: the familiar lands of Earth and the infernal plains of Hell. Players can travel between them using the Portal spell, which summons an Observer at the Magister's location. By moving the Observer onto buildable ground, a one-way Warp Gate is created. Any unit that steps through is transported to a random location in the opposite dimension: a portal opened on Earth leads to Hell, and one opened in Hell returns to Earth. Players must journey to Hell to complete certain Quests, defeat Bosses, and ultimately confront the source of the invasion.

Boss System
Powerful bosses roam the plains of Hell and can be optionally hunted for random item drops. Item drops use a grid system to guarantee spawning reliably -- a problem that plagued the original map. Bosses are not passive: they can cast spells and summon powerful elite demons to defend themselves. There are currently 3 bosses implemented, with at least 6 more planned.

Item System
Each player commands a Magister (Tassadar Templar unit). Initially quite weak, the Magister can be greatly strengthened by acquiring items dropped by bosses in Hell. There are five items in total, each permanently improving one stat:

Daemon Heart [Young Chrysalis]: increases max health. Can be acquired up to 18 times.
Sage Stone [Khaydarin Crystal]: increases max mana by 100 per pickup. Can be acquired up to 9 times.
Tear of Gardos [Khalis Crystal]: increases mana regeneration. Can be acquired up to 10 times.
Shard of Aegis [Uraj Crystal]: increases shield regeneration. Can be acquired up to 19 times.
Lost Aquila [Flag]: grants +1 Perk Point. Can be acquired virtually unlimited times.

Items are randomly dropped by bosses and are hotly contested. A stronger Magister is a powerful asset late in the game, so hunting bosses in Hell is always a worthwhile gamble.

Army System
Most Terran and Protoss buildings automatically produce units for the player over time, each with a small upkeep cost per cycle. Players never train units manually -- army building is handled entirely by the spawn system. This keeps the macro element simple while still giving players meaningful choices about their composition over time. Units spawn in at 50% health initially, but with enough Perk upgrades they can reach full strength at spawn.

Income System
Players earn income automatically by controlling Towns (Supply Depot), Castles (Power Generator), and Capitals (Nexus), each paying out periodically to keep macro simple. In addition, players can station up to 3 Farmers (Terran Civilians) at each Town to boost its income, adding an optional economic layer for those who want it. There is also a Perk dedicated to increasing farming income, giving players a path to wealth that doesn't require fighting neighbors.

Pop Culture References
The map is packed with dozens of audio clips as homages to iconic literature and games. You will hear voices from Dune, Warcraft, Diablo, Halo, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and more woven throughout the experience. These are personal tributes to the works that inspired this map and that I grew up enjoying.

Holy shit! Seth! This is great! I wish you woulda told me you were workin' on it! I can't wait to play this with the guys. You should join us.

This looks cool How long do games run?

Great to hear from you! Yah I didn't want to anounce anything unless I actually made most of it, because I was worried then I wouldn't finish it

Yah it'd be great to play with you sometime, I think we're friends on Battle.net already? My name on US West is also "sethmachine".


So far games take about 1 hour 15 minutes. But length can depend on how your group plays: more cooperative game should go by faster, less cooperative the game will be slower.

The game is done after you complete the last plot quest but there's two more I plan to add after that one for a true finish.

17,000 triggers is not unthinkable I wrote over 40,000 triggers with The Architect RPG using just SCMDraft 2 and Notepad Plus.

I will assemble my team to check it out, but based on what I am reading is it like a Knights of the King style UMS?

I did a similar thing for my past maps but I found it way too hard to go back and make changes or fix bugs. At some point the systems can get complex and entangled, I mean how do you search your triggers to find out where to make changes, with just plain String search? And no syntax highlighting either? And other practical considerations: how do you keep track of which death counters you've already used in previous triggers so you don't accidentally use one that's already being used, re-use existing conditions/actions so you don't have to repeat yourself, etc.

Here's what I mean for organization. Each package/module itself contains thousands of triggers organized by functionality:



Also, how do you keep track of versions of your map? I use GitHub/version control, so if I introduce any bugs, I can just rollback, or watch how the map changes over time and release any version.

I saw someone else also mention Knights of the King map. Before that I've never heard or played it, so I will have to check it out to see how it compares.

And thanks, I appreciate any feedback or play testing!

I'll need to find a way to keep the download link pointed to the latest version rather than the static one I shared.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 20 2026, 3:01 pm by sethmachine.

I tracked DCs and switches with a notepad file, used comments in SCMDraft (recycled strings). Version control I just save separate files with the date on filename. Github didn't even used to exist for most of SC mapping history.



We played but we didn't have a great time I mean I don't know if we just don't understand the game or it's bugggy as hell or bad game design or what.

Btw this is the second game we also played another game where I just warred my buddy for 2 hours straight and we ignored every single quest.

In this game was tried to play PvE but that is the issue this map doesn't seem to know if it wants to be PvP or PvE. It almost seems like you are going for some hybrid thing like at some point we even get quests that attempt to force us to PVP but since the ultimate goal is PvE, this just made us play in a non-PVP manner. So it's a very 'confused' map from a game design point of view as far as I can tell.

There was also another bizarre situation where purple in mid became our enemy, and objective is to crush purp in mid, but the VERY next quest purp becomes your ally and you have to DEFEND purp. So it's actually BAD play to do the quest to fight purp coz ur just stripping purp of the defences that will be useful in the VERY next quest. Again just extremely bizaree bad game design decisions unless I'm just missing something completely or it's a bug.

Anyway as you can see ultimately we got locked out of victory at the end none of the gates to hell would go down we couldn't figure out how to get them down.

Also everyone complained how they couldn't get their vespene past 100-150 and so couldn't progress their upgrades.

The perk system seemed undertuned; whether this is bug or we're doing something wrong I don't know. But you have all these perks, all these levels to the perks, and scarcely any points to spend on the perks. In addition, the perks themselves were not particularly interesting to me.

Some interesting ideas here but the overall gestalt experience was poor for us.

First off thank you so much for getting your friends together and trying out the map two different times, and recording it! I will need to check those out and see what I can learn to make the experience better, as you're the first to have tried it out without me being in the game to guide things along.

The map is still early in production so I appreciate you playing it in spite of numerous bugs and other issues.



Thanks for this feedback. I'm definitely still trying to figure out how to shape the game so players can go between PvP and PvE as needed, both for themselves and also narratively (e.g. driven by the quests). But yes I do want to go for a hybrid approach where the game can shift between the two. I guess it's challenging to accomplish--do you know any StarCraft Map that does this well? The best example I can think of is the Dragon Throne which definitely is an inspiration for me. Only one player can win as emperor, but the vassal kingdoms need to cooperate to stop the Barbarians, because Barbarians will just kill everyone so you won't even get a chance to be emperor. I do want something similar to that, but obviously not exactly and I think in 2026 is too hard to rely on a human play to play the big bad villain (Barbarians are human controlled in Dragon Throne), so that's where I lean on the PvE / computer to fill this role. This is the biggest weakness of Dragon Throne in 2026.

My design is also influenced by the board game Archipelago, which is a quintessential competitive cooperative game. Players are colonizing islands inhabited by natives. If the natives get too powerful, the colonies revolt and all the players lose. But at the end of the game there's only one winner. So players need to balance winning with avoiding the natives rebelling, because then you all lose. It creates very interesting scenarios and negotiations. And secretly one player can be the Separatist, who wins if the natives revolt.

Third influence, think of Game of Thrones. There's the White Walkers which narratively force everyone to unite once they become a real threat, but as soon as they are defeated, it's back to the wars for the Iron Throne. The Barbarians from Dragon Throne are essentially the White Walkers.

So why not pure PvP? All the PvP maps in StarCraft customs tend to approach StarCraft melee--players develop a meta and demand a perfectly balanced game (look at March of Sauron or Helms Deep maps, etc.). If teams aren't fair, the whole thing falls apart immediately. This is too heavy of an investment in 2026 and also it doesn't interest me to create a "fair competitive game"--if you want that, StarCraft melee is the best option (Blizzard has spent decades on balancing it!). PvP relies on making a new community within a community that is already too small, and it excludes new people by definition.

Pure PvE is also a bit stale, because the AI/Computer is limited (maybe less so with EUDs) and players will quickly get bored. BUT PvE is nice because it includes everybody on the same team, so it's friendly to beginners. Nobody wants to play a competitive game and be a noob or have to be on the weaker team.

So I want to balance both options: the fun of a human opponent, but also the beginner friendly aspect of completing Quests and protecting the Empire together.

Originally PVP was only available between Quests, but players found this confusing so right now you can PvP almost anytime.

I am still iterating on if the final goal/quest results in one winner, meaning you are building up to a final battle that only has one victor. And I re-worked some of the PvP quests to be a bit more clear on what to do. And/or I add the hidden traitor back in for a plot twist at the end. Still thinking about this.



You are referencing The Accuser quest. My goal was something like the Protoss Civil War, and also something like Cenarius from Warcraft III. Tassadar is forced to destroy the heart of the Conclave in midst of the Zerg Invasion of Aiur, only for the Conclave to later admit they were wrong soon after. Here though the quest aims to expand the world--you think you are doing well, and then one of your insane peers (The Accuser) seizes power and declares a witch hunt against you in spite of the demons invading from Hell. And the quest should make you think--how much of the Empire should destroy/take for yourself while stopping the Accuser? The Demons decide to take advantage of your recent civil war since this is when the Empire would be weakened most, and to boot, you just killed one of the most powerful Magisters for them!

Purple should only become your ally if you defeated the Accuser. Otherwise purple remains your enemy until that happens.



Yes I haven't added the final quest for victory, once those are added this should be more clear.



Yes I need to communicate this better. Yellow bosses in Hell can drop crystals that permanently increase vespene gas/mana cap.



Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any interesting ideas for perks? Unfortunately I am bound within the means of a non-EUD map.

But yes I need to tune this, so the feedback is very helpful!

Btw one bug that's easy fix I remembered: Carrier interceptors all died - then they are useless hunks of metal. Solution: allow player to rebuild their interceptors or make interceptors invincible.

I haven't played any hybrid PVP PvE maps. I think it may be possible they are a 'failed idea' that just doesn't work out from theory to execution - ultimately game collapses into PvE or PvP. But maybe not.

I don't have any experience on designing this type of map. So I am only speculating.

But what I will say is you are embracing the ultimate challenge. By doing this you are having to overcome big game design challenges, perfectly balancing game mechanics because you have to overcome the ultimate force in the universe: human nature.

I think it is helpful to strip away all talk of the 'lore' or 'narrative' or 'theme' and just look at the problem of purely game design, game mechanics. That board game you cited, I haven't played it, but that would be a great place to look at carefully how they tackle the below issues, because they may have already done all the hardwork of designing around these problems and you just have to copy their homework. I haven't played that Dragon Thone map either.

MAJOR DESIGN TRAPS
The Hell Baron Final Boss - If the ultimate goal is to kill the Hell Baron or the final hell base (a PvE goal) as the sole route to victory, you have killed your PVP element. Human psychology will choose the path of less resistance and players will turtle up mass armies and march together for the shared victory - to do otherwise would be unoptimal play, what benefit do they gain fighting each other, if all it does is delay their ability to win the final battle against the PvE opponent?

Possible solution: Alternate win conditions. Examples:

Highlander - easiest way to guarantee PvP is to make the victory ONLY to the player who fights the killing blow. This will create a treacherous environment, people turning on each other at last minute, people attempting to go the boss solo, etc. Certain players may still just ignore this fact though and work together, even if all but one of them gets the defeat screen, they could still just play in a cooperative PvE manner though.

Strict resource starvation - if you make it like only after you get say, 20 farms, do you unlock a super ability to deal damage to the otherwise invulnerable hell barron, this forces players to fight each other and conquer territory to get to the 20 farm limit. Again, players can game this, willingly ceding territories to work toward the PvE goal though.

Hidden traitor mechanic - if you randomly give one of the players a hidden win condition to be on the Hell Baron's side, this unlocks a whole suite of behaviours where players are analysing other players behaviour looking for someone who is behaving in a traitor-like manner, pre-emptively attacking them, possibly attacking the wrong person etc.

Free Rider Problem - If the ultimate goal is to kill the boss, players are incentivised to turtle up, hoard, let their neighbours do all the PvE fighting, then sweep in to clean up and take the glory. Inevitable result: nobody attacks the PvE hell base because the first one to do so makes themselves vulnerable - game turns into a boring stalemate.

Possible solution: Exclusive PvE rewards to make the risk worth it. YOu kind of already do this with the unique item drops. If Player A does big heavy lifting on the PvE, they could get a demon artifict that gives them more mana or attack ups like you say. Now the other players CANT just turtle or they're missing out. Problem here is fine tuning of balance. If the rewards aren't worth it, the incentive doesn't work.

Scaling / Math Issues - If the Hell area requires combined DPS of 5 maxxed armies, but 3 players have already killed each other, the remaining 2 mathematically can't win. After 2 hours this is obviously very unsatisfiying, which is what happened in first game where 2 of us just warred all game and the other 2 struggled against the PvE without us and couldn't progress and were largely just annoyed with us for PVPing the entire game. Possible solution: This is where you are tying your hands behind your back not using EUD. Major drawback of EUD is losing ability to save game, but since this game is shortish 2 hour game, that should be fine. With EUD you can do some fine tuning of scaling. You can still do this without EUD though just a bit less options. So what you would want to do is implement player detection or army detection, and then lower the final boss / waves HP / amount accordingly. So it's like a rubberbanding difficulty where the difficulty is adjusted based on what is the state of the players at the final point. Obviously this is a massive balancing challenge but it is in theory doable.

Early Player Elimination Issue - If it's 2 hour game of 5 players and one player is wiped out in first 15 minutes by a backstabbing neighbour they are not going to wait around to see what happens they are going to leave. GRoups of friends are going to not want to play the map in PVP because of this also. Result is this map is not going to be very popular. Possible solution: When a player is defeated, have them now be on the hell team. Give them a small warband or a minor hero unit that will always respawn with the waves if killed, allowing the player to now participate with his new win condition of defeating the players / working with the traitor if you do traitor mechanic. Alternatively, could offer buy-back options - the alive players could gift some of their farms or money to let the player 'buy back in' and keep playing.

I looked at Arcchipelago board game with LLM, here's wat it's doing and that actually aligns with some of what I've said above:

• Shared Doom mechanic - I think you're already doing this
  
• Extortion of Leader - crises of famine or resource shortage occur that push rebellion (more waves? trakc up) players have to collectively pay resources to solve the crisis. But because contributions are not equal, it creates weaponised diplomacy. If player A is currently winning the game, player B and C can say, well, we're already losing, so we don't care if the rebellion wipes us all out - so you should pay up if you want to lose your gauranteed win. This allows the weaker players to bleed the strongest player economically by using the PvE threat as a hostage - prevents one player from snowballing. Far as I can tell, you don't have this mechanic at all.
  
• Hidden victory conditions - each player is given a secret objective card "player with most gold wins, player with the most ports wins". At the end of the game all secret objectives are scored for everyone, but only you know your own. Because players never 100% sure know who is actually winning, it breeds constant paranoia. Players might attack someone ecause they think they have too much gold, only to realise later that gold wasnt even their win condition. You don't have this mechanic either.
  
• The Separatist (hidden traitor) - one of the hidden victory cards is a traitor card. This means there isn't ALWAYS a traitor, but there is a CHANCE there is a traitor in your game. The traitor wins if the rebellion happens, and that breeds all sorts of goodness.
  

Anyway I hope that helped. We can check out the release version one day. I think right now the game is in a very poor state (my opinion) but with some deep thinking and careful game design decisions and strict balancing I think it could be elevated to something epic. I think you are on the money with trying to look at another already successful PvPvE, Archipelago, but you just have only partially copied them and thus resulted in a poor experience. It's like the vision is there but you havent executed it properly. I think the hidden traitor mechanic especially would elevate the game big time, as well as win conditions.

I think if you just keep looking at Archipelagoe and keep drawing inspiration from them you can't fail, because they have already perfected the concept. So it just becomes a matter of execution, of translating that to SCBW.

I will echo Oh_man in saying this is not a great experience. I will detail as best I can.

-Opening the map with a tutorial of all the simple shit while making the rest of the map / quests a figure-it-out-as-you-go is the reverse of how it should be. Do not start the map with a tutorial, and explain everything else better.

-Not being able to click or get help from the name of any beacon or DT to know what anything does in the console is frustrating and stupid.

-This has none of the charm of the original map, and all of the pain. Bases are still super uncomfortable, spawns are inconsistent and as buggy as the pre-hyper version, and all of the sound work that you meant to be atmospheric or endearing is just jarring and silly and repeat-slop.

-The original struck a unique lightning in a bottle balance between RPG and tactics, between PvE and PvP. This has none of that balance. Its uncomfortable, unintuitive, and unenjoyable.

-The quests are strange, poorly explained, on a timer no one can see, and overall a lot of distracting noise as you just try to get your bearings. And this is coming from a lobby of experienced UMSers and map makers who have played the original to death.

-Quests forcing fights or conflict and then in the next quest trying to undo it / make you defend an objective you just decimated feel really bad and stupid.

-Our lobby never understood where the first half dozen quests were directing us to, even when we were scouring the entirety of Earth and Hell trying to figure it out.

-Having quests trying to force us to go to places while our army is in Hell trying to help collect powerups so we can upgrade/keep up with Hell felt extremely bad and frustrating.

-Quests forcing players to change alliance status and the entire idea of 'phases' of alliances is dumb and does not feel satisfying.

-There are so many nooks and crannies for Hell structures to get dropped in that are super infuriating to get to to kill. Doubly so for some of the castles/garrisons. Everything about the map is an exercise in frustration.

-Units in Hell can shoot into the console, both players shooting unspawned Hell structures and Hell sunkens hitting unspawned player Portals.

-Randomly using names from Oblivion, Game of Thrones, and other media was a dumb idea and detracts from the map.

-We desperately missed the simplicity of the Traitor, the Earth vs Hell, and Magister self interest that guided the original map's design and player decision making. In this, nothing felt organic, everything was forced, and none of it was enjoyable.

Overall everything you added was a detractor and I think you would be better served remaking the original with consistent systems than trying to shoehorn quests on top of it. After playing it, it feels like you have a poor understanding of why the original was good and why people played it for many years even with its multitude of problems.

I was really really really really excited for this and I am now only disappointed.

The DT was the help button for the perks, did you miss that?


I could see the timer, could you not?


I liked this map more than I think everyone else did, but agree with a lot of the feedback.

I actually disconnected partway through the game and ended up playing alone for the most part, but I had fun. I'd definitely be willing to give future versions a try.

Excalibur, I felt like I ruined your Christmas D:

This map is still in production, and I wanted to release the soonest playable version to get feedback. I appreciate you trying it out and sharing your thoughts with the hope that your goal is to help me make a better map and experience.

If you have ideas on improvement too let me know!


Do you have any suggestions for how to communicate all this information?

I put all the Quests info in the Mission Objectives. Did anyone in your group read these? They get updated for every Quest/every time a Quest changes.


Bases are meant to be constrained to force you to acquire different land and build elsewhere. I want to avoid players turtling up in a single base with all their infrastructure. So acquiring defensible areas outside your base have some meaning.

Which spawns are inconsistent? Each spawn has upkeep (mineral cost) and specific unit limits (perhaps you ran into those?). I can add notifications letting a player know if they've maxed out on Tanks or Goliaths.

As for the sounds, I think it's a vast improvement from the original. I even added sounds for the boss spells, letting players know what's going on and learning what each boss can do.




The countdown timer is fully visible at all time. The game explains each quest is timed. Did the countdown timer not show up for you?

Do you have recommendations for how to explain each quest? The map repeatedly tells players to read Mission Objectives. I also added periodic reminders that tell players what to do during each quest. I'm guessing those didn't help your group?


Same as above, did Mission Objectives help here or you didn't find them useful?


That's the intention though I apologize if it's frustrating, it's meant to be tricky to both help towards the Quest and also power up your hero. It shouldn't be possible to do everything, then the game is too easy. So you have to multi-task/balance between what you want, maybe you end up giving up on some Quests for example.


I tried to make the terrain more interesting but yes I am not an experienced terrainer. I'm open to help on improving/fixing the terrain if you have any ideas.

The Castles and Garrisons are meant to be difficult to capture and not convenient most of the time. The original map had many of them simply sitting on flat ground with no interesting features, I want them to feel closer to real towns/hamlets, so every Town must have unique terrain around it. No objective requires taking a Castle besides the first PvP quest, and it's meant to be annoying because winning a 1 v 4 is hard. At least that's my intention.


Yah I can fix this. I held back on the invincibility triggers to avoid any bugs in this very initial version, but I can make the console buildings invulnerable until they appear in the overworld.


I think this depends on who is in your group. The issue with the first game is that a lot of people didn't know what to do, it was unclear if you just PvP or work together on the PvE part. Some people gave me feedback it was boring and undirected.

If your group is ultra experienced then you don't need the structure or narrative that the Quests imposes.

The traitor unfortunately suffers a problem where if you don't have a good Traitor, the map is a bad experience. Or if the Traitor is helped by his friends, the game is kind of pointless--this happened to me a few times too. I don't want a good map experience to depend upon a single player having to play well as the Traitor. But again if everyone in your group knows what to do, this wouldn't be a problem. But I don't want to make a map that depends upon a meta developing, this isn't a triple AAA game nor is it meant to be competitive/fair.

I have some ideas on how to get back the Traitor mechanism though!

Not Ex, but opinions:


I'd give each part of the interface its own dedicated, repeatable "help" button. Let the player discover at their own pace.

I did read the quest objectives, it was just often unclear where things were. Maybe some kind of clairvoyance ability could center view or ping the current objective on the minimap.


I ended up floating all my buildings around in a pile, so probably not what you were intending


I didn't notice any problems with my own unit spawns but the enemy spawns definitely went a bit off the rails at times. I remember the cultists causing a lot of error messages.


I never played the original, but the sounds were pretty distracting. I didn't catch that they were coming from the bosses, so they seemed kind of arbitrary.



The WHERE was the big problem for me. As an example the caravan quest - I had no idea where to find the caravans or what they looked like.

You did a bit, but we'll get through this. ;o


Remove starting tutorial entirely. The basic premise of economy/unit spawns is not something you need to explaim.
Re-do the entire console with CLICKABLE beacons. Rename DTs and use specific units that tell you what area of the console it is.
Re-format all text for readability over cosmetics. This is something I struggled with as well in my maps. Redo it until it reads clean and easy in SC. You may need to try multiple formats until something clicks.

Objectives were helpful 10% of the time. The problem is we never knew where the island / caravan / objective was outside of when it was literally the center castle. Why was there no X Island Castle building? Why was there no QUEST: Caravan of Cursed Grain unit? Why was everything so disjointed as if different people did it instead of one maker? Why did that maker assume anyone knew what he was talking about?

Also: No one enjoyed the emperor/imperial faction and everyone was pissed at how much land purple owned that we couldn't take from him until a specific quest let us.
We spent so much time going 'man I wish the map would just let us play'.
Get rid of all imperial held holdings immediately or scrap the map.


Dumb objective, dumb reasoning and no one cares what you want if it makes the map uncomfortable. Buildings are expensive and then impossible to defend. Make bases bigger and more comfortable and if you want less turtling figure out something that is more satisfying like more/wider base entrances so its less turtle-able. I lost 20k in buildings built up against the walls of my castle that I couldn't defend because, as i forgot to mention yesterday your observer and critter system is still abysmal and they patrol the same areas constantly. So as the 'Westerland' player i was constantly having Hell structures spawned near me while Inferno in the north got barely any because the obs didn't gravitate that way. This was a problem in the original.

You need to balance the amount of buildable terrain around each player and around each holding or the map becomes inherently imbalanced and unfun. Had the same issue in the old map.

Either learn EUDs and adapt a true randomized system (a lot of work I know), or conversely, break the map into quadrants (4 on Earth, 4 in Hell) with their own observer and critters and have triggers set to keep them in their quadrant but keep them moving with junkyard dog so the map does not unfairly fuck people.

Maxes on units is dumb, don't do it. Let people be limited by economy. If you want to limit something make the upkeep higher and do it in a way that feels nice. Spawns are inconsistent in that even with money I would routinely see my jimmy rines spawn more often and more consistently than other units. Because of the way you do it that's as specific as I can be.

Some of them are good ideas to add to queues so people know whats happening or to add a little flavor. But its way too much right now. The number of times I had to hear Thanos was stupid and grating. You need to edit and show some restraint. Sounds where they're needed, not every 30-60 seconds.


Everyone expects and understands the counter to be for unit spawns/income, not quests. You need to decouple them. Either remove timer for unit spawns/cycle, or stop using timer for quests. Since SC can only support one timer, make it only do one thing.

Mission objectives was fine and was helpful when we understood what it wanted. But we have no idea what some of these locations and things are, or what to look for. How do we know what so and so island is? How do we know what the caravan unit is? We don't, only you do. Same tip as above with readable text, use more pings, perhaps have a unit players learn is the 'current quest marker' like a flying unit that can always be above the objective?


Dumb idea that makes the map get in its own way. Quests have to be much more spaced out / sparing if thats how you want it. Look at how RE:RC did missions with each spaced every 10-15 mins. The map is overcrowded with constant quests. Any quest that is designed for you to 'give up on' is a bad quest. Any quest that you immediately change gears after and do the opposite is a bad quest. Do better. Maybe audit the quests you have for what is actually interesting/useful.

I think around mid left of the map there are specific spots where Hell buildigns can get shoved inbetween some custom cliffs and raised jungle. Get those spots filled in for sure.

Pic: https://i.imgur.com/nvAEnhm.png

This is fine, but consider attacking armies from 8 directions around each thing and go 'is SC unit pathing going to figure this out or are my players going to say wow map is shit I'm never playing this again?'


Overall I think you're trying to do too much in the wrong areas and too little in others. Start tweaking and maybe this can be salvaged into a good time. I'm still skeptical if it can be a better Demon Invasion than the original tho.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Aug 23 2026, 8:18 pm by Excalibur.

Here's my recording of the map which might demonstrate some of the issues I want to highlight. We mostly focused on playing this map PvE. We were on voice chat which I didn't record but we were able to get through the quests pretty quickly because one of us would figure out what to do and then tell others so it wasn't as much of an issue for us. Keep in mind most of my feedback and feelings on this map is with the PvE aspect in mind.



Make the tutorial at start optional for people that replay the map. I will note that the people I played with did appreciate the tutorial but it should be optional.

Make it so you can rewatch the tutorial or parts of the tutorial. Everyone forgot what spell does what for example. People forgot that civs get more scvs/probes. I forgot you need 2 of them. The portal system needs to be explained better. I had to open up this post up and read through it so I can tell everyone else how to access hell.

The pathing on some areas of the map is atrocious for a map that doesn't give you any massers and expects you to have 100+ units near the end. For example. trying to move to fair island makes units path into the little gap above the depot before they move back out and continue. If you have 2 people going to fair island this makes units get stuck as they have to go into a crevice before units try to go out, causing blockage. In the mission Caravans of Doom the purple civilians can block the tank from reaching the depots. Heavy eye candy is okay in RPG maps where you control 1 unit. When you have to control 100+ units all the 2 tile gaps and bridges create for a frustrating experience. In my opinion you can remove most or all the "building" eye candy around all the supply depots and this will solve 70% of the pathing issues.

The perk spawn area is too small. Everyone's units would block each other.

It would be nice if there was a way to turn off spawn of units, specifically the civilian.

The player color indicators are off? Just swap player 4 and the purple empire colors.

The description of the farmer perk is confusing because AFAIK nowhere in the game directly tells you that villagers are farmers. You could make the inference, but why not keep the naming consistent. Change villagers to farmers or change the perk description to include villagers/civilians to clarify.

Your hero being a slow HT makes some missions very annoying. I believe it's the quest Lost souls you have to go into hell and have to touch civilians with your hero. Civilians move faster than HT so this gets very annoying. My suggestion is to give players a shuttle, make this purchasable or a spell or something. Or if you use EUDs you can avoid this issue entirely. Or you can add a mounting system with a hero vulture.

During the spawn system seemed too random to me. Sometimes units would produce out of all my buildings. Sometimes it only produces out of only a few. I warped in a gateway and then I would only spawn from buildings to the left of it until it finished causing me to lose out on a few early game troops. I would get paladins from only 1 starport one cycle, and then all of them the next. This mechanic needs better explanation. How much is the upkeep? How much does it cost to spawn? Does the upkeep/cost to spawn happen before or after income tax? Is it on a separate timer? You clarified there is a unit limit for goliaths and tanks, this was never mentioned anywhere. Consider putting this information on the building/unit name e.g. Paladin (500M) or however much it costs, or Paladin (30 Max) and Cathedral (-500M a turn), something like that. I'd rather there be no unit type limit though.

In the mission March of the Damned, the cults spawned late for the middle right area, which caused him too send units to help someone else instead. And then when the cults spawned on him his army wasn't in a position to defend himself.

You should mark which areas will spawn buildings that destroy the buildings you have built. We had a player that had most of his production in the spot where buildings spawned for quests and he did not have a good time as a result. Meanwhile other players that by pure luck didn't build in a spot where stuff spawns just ended up in a better position.

The quest The Gift (Part 1) is confusing. In my game it just went straight to blue right away, no time to check mission objectives. I looked at Oh_man's video and same thing, it went right away to orange before he could check mission objectives. You should consider displaying the mission in game text as well as in mission objectives. I replayed the map by myself and when I got the mission I basically just got the castle without needing to do anything and my magister then auto teleported to that castle afterwards instead of doing the objective of visiting that castle. I think the 2 gift quests suck and need reworking.

In the mission a Hero Rises, why are there 2 stronghold on the left side of hell that are 10x harder to assault that on the right side of hell?

In the mission The accuser the spawned purple ghosts in the middle weren't shooting.

Im gonna disagree with Oh_man's assessment of the crush purp then defend purp missions - I think the conept itself is fine and he probably had a much harder time due to missing a player that could've helped. If you choose to not do the mission to get an easier time on the subsequent mission you lose out on the rewards. I think all of us focusing on PvE aspect made the subsequent mission much less frustrating. The pathing was way more frustrating during that quest than having to defend a fortress I just assaulted.

I have to agree with Oh_man that the perks seem underwhelming. More than half the perks are just 2% hp increases for a specific unit type and this seems very weak compared to just getting more army size. It was also hard for me to tell how much more money I was getting from maxing out the farming perk. I had more money at the end but I think I was also the only person to hold a castle for a large duration of the game and the only one to really use the farmer/civilian system.

I also have to tack on the item system as feeling too limited. You give player access to a 500 gas ultimate ability. Nobody had enough gas for it. I spent a good chunk of time hunting in hell and didn't get 500 gas. Other people were also complaining about the lack of gas since it's a requirement to research past 2 upgrades. Maybe when you add the additional bosses there will be more bosses to kill so it'll be easier to get these items.

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I think an issue is the game length - you have 14 quests in about 1 hour and 15 minutes of game time, and I think that's too much quests for that time span. There's not enough time for diplomacy. In the dragon throne map, there aren't a ton of events happening so players have a lot more time to actually do diplomacy and communicate. The map length needs to be increased to something like 2 hours, or the number of quests reduced. Or you can have less quests and randomize the quests that appear in the mid game for some replayability. Randomized quests might mitigate the issue of experienced players getting an advantage by "preparing" early for certain quests that newer players don't know about.

You should consider having the quest with relevant information pop up and occupy the center of screen for like 10-20 seconds so it's directly in the players face. Here's an example from one of my favorite maps.



The text is up for 10 in game seconds and overrides every other text for the entire duration, and it constantly pings the objective while the text is up. So it's quite hard to miss the quest objective. You could also coonsider adding something to the middle area that allows players the recheck the quest as well as ping the relevant location.

In terms of PvPvE most sc maps I've seen do that usually start off 100% PvE and at the end is an optional PvP and there's probably a good reason for why those maps are set up that way.

Personally I'd prefer you'd lean even more into PvE since that's what me and my friends mostly play. I actually prefer this over demonic invasion because I don't really like UMS pvp maps. Those usually end up heavily favoring over whoever played the map more as map knowledge gives an insane advantage, so you need players to replay the map many times to get any actual good games on it, and if I wanted good pvp I'd play melee/bgh/fme or any other competitive game. So we were able to somewhat enjoy the PvE aspect of this map. Throw out the PvP part and you basically have a coop diplo style map with RPG elements and I think that alone is good enough of a concept to make the map stound out. This also makes cramming in more quests more tolerable, or allows you to increase constantly spawning threats between quests. You can also make the quests harder too. If you make this map more PvE that'll also open up room to rehaul the perk/item system into something that is more fun to interact with.

On terrain, might I suggest you get some inspirations from existing PvP big army maps? Here's a Korean map maker that's released quite a bit of PvE and PvP maps with large armies https://scmscx.com/search/firefunch. Pathing hasn't been too much of an issue of his maps, but even he had to give up aesthetics at times to open up some areas for the sake of gameplay. And players almost always have access to speed shuttles to make moving stuff around easier, as well as a masser, so movement is even less of an hassle.