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Historical Scenario Reviews

Overall Rating

23/30

COMMENTS: Generally, I like this scenario very much. It is well balanced and offers lots of medieval atmosphere. It has also many historical accurate elements. The conflicts between the Pope and the German kings are included, as well as the Barbarian raids from Vikings or Magyars that really occur in the early middle ages.

You can play as Saxons, Franconians, Swabians and Bavarians, and your goal is the capture of all cities before 1250 AD. But this scenario is not only a war game, research is very important and you also have to build up your empire, like in the real history.

Playability Rating

10 / 10

COMMENTS: Playability is definitely the strongest point of Holy Roman Empire. Every recommended civ is very playable, but, due to the different start positions, each offers also a little different challenge. There is enough room for city founding, and this is exactly as in reality, because there aren't many big cities in Central Europe in the early middle ages, many German cities, for instance, were founded between the 10th and the 12th century.

The atmosphere is excellent. In the beginning, you have only weak units and Barbarians are really dangerous in this period. Only a few Knights are available via events in this early part, so you have to use them wisely. Later, you can research stronger units and this shows perfectly the growing strength of the medieval realms from the dark ages to the high middle ages. Depending on which side you choose, you can also have a special Emperor unit, which is very powerful.

Another good feature is the return of the goody huts from the original civ2, here as villages.

Research is also great, nearly all techs are changed into medieval advances, the only exception is Industrialization, but this is, in my eyes, not really a big problem.

Level of General Care

5 / 10

COMMENTS: This rating was very difficult for me. In this field, many things are also very good. The map is great, city names are correct, the tech tree works well and the same goes for the events.
But, on the other hand, there are some serious problems:

When you start the scenario the first time, you'll find out that text boxes are nearly unreadable, due to the changed background graphic. I replaced this graphic immediately with the standard grew civ2 background pattern.

Also, the author has no pedia.txt included. This seems to be a standard for scenarios and the author is not a newcomer, so this is not easy to understand for me. It spoils the atmosphere completely, when the standard civ2 civilopedia pops up in the 10th century...

When you start as Bavarian, some of your units can't be supported, and so they are disbanded in the first turn.

Finally, I would like to have a little bit more information in the readme file, but this is my personal point of view.

For an update, I would suggest that the author thinks about these points. This scenario could achieve a better rating easily, with only a few changes in the described fields.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

COMMENTS: The artwork in this scenario is good. Your first units have the right look for the early middle ages and later, the units have these nice colorful costumes that are known from the high middle ages. The author also gave every civ their own colors, for instance Bavarian units wearing white/blue costumes, as it should be.

I also really like the resources in this scenario. You see foxes and wolves in the forests, sheep in the plains and little ducks on the rivers, very nice.

The cities are also nice, but some more different styles would be better, despite the fact that all cities are in Central Europe.

Most of the other artwork, as flags, icons or people, is also changed, but many graphics are also "borrowed" from different sources. This is credited in the right way, and therefore it is not a problem, but most of these graphics are not new, which affects the rating.

The scenario isn't really innovative, but it is, despite of some weaknesses, are very good constructed scenario and, most important, it is really fun to play.