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Fantasy Scenario Reviews

SUMMARY: The scenario is a good one, but it bogs down towards the end with one of the playable tribes due to the lack of effective attack units. There are also some other minor details that would improve the scenario. Overall, though, I enjoyed it quite a lot -- at least through the midgame.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: The plot centers around two playable tribes in a frozen land. The first tribe is Hrodur's Tribe, a civilized tribe that seeks to impose law upon the land. They get a lot of civilized city improvements, but their military units are relatively wimpy. Their arch rivals are the White Horde, a barbarian tribe kind of like Mongols with tons of military units and lots of great fighting techs. They have problems with happiness and more peaceful advancement, though. Hrodur wants to restore green to the land by finding the "secret of the north" whose magic will allow him to turn the land back from winter. The Horde wants to conquer everyone and will probably do so if allowed to go unchecked.

The secret of the north will require both research and exploration to discover.

THE LAND: The map is a frozen wasteland where most of the terrain produces nothing. You have a lot of "wanderer" units which are settler-types that can irrigate and mine the terrain. Irrigating produces +1 food, and roads give +1 trade, which lets you get a limited amount of stuff out of the frozen landscape.

Playability Rating

7 / 10

INITIAL PORTION: The scenario begins well. You need to expand, fight off your enemies, and transform the terrain around you into irrigated, roaded terrain. Periodically mammoths will appear that you can hunt with your soldiers. If you're playing Hrodur, this gives you trade caravans; if you're the Horde, you get really rude military units out of it. You have a lot of stuff to do between transforming terrain, building cities, researching, fighting a lone foe, capturing mammoths, and exploring the region.

City placement is important given the hostile terrain and occasional really awesome resource square. A few locations will allow you to build very good cities. Food is the main scarcity, followed by resources and trade. One great location for me yielded over 50 lightbulbs after adding roads, a science wonder, and the library and university equivalent.

Interestingly, the food cost of settlers ("eating") has been reduced to zero, which means that you can produce wanderers that cost only shields and a population point. This is important as irrigating the terrain takes a VERY long time without large work crews. It also means that a big production city can churn out large crews of settlers without starving to death.

In both games, I lost my leader which seemed to have no effect other than a quick text box. I think the author should add something to make this more traumatic for you.

One problem I encountered is that the AI will not build new cities because the glacier terrain *is* glacier. The author should consider swapping plains and glaciers to encourage the AI to build cities if he wants them to expand. The problem is especially bad if you play as the Horde. Your civilized enemies won't stand a chance.

MIDGAME: As the scenario progresses, you will find it is taking a long time to grow your empire. The hostile terrain makes expansion slow. Eventually you will find yourself running out of good land. There are impassible mountains between you and your enemy as well as an ocean. I found that bribery was quite useful at this point, as well as industrial sabotage against enemy capitals and even pillaging irrigation squares and stationing troops to prevent my enemy from using his best squares. Around this time your empire begins to really flourish, and you can use some of those extra caravans and coins to build wonders.

There are some other nice features at this point as well that I will save as a surprise. Suffice to say discovering the secret of the north is very helpful.

Once you finally get ships, they are mainly to get you beyond the ocean. They are super-slow, moving only one square per turn! This makes ocean travel useful only for getting troops to otherwise inaccessible places (of which there are several).

The magical barbarian units are too weak (1/1/1) and making the "secret of the north" somewhat more difficult to obtain would be a good move.

ENDGAME: The chief flaw in the scenario is the lackluster endgame. As the horde, you pretty much stomp everyone with your powerful units. As Hrodur, your conquests will stall because you can't get units with attack factors higher than 4 without bribing them. Eventually you can get a one-shot 18-attack flying unit, but that takes a very long time. You will find yourself splattering a lot of veteran troops against city walls in a feeble attempt to conquer the north.

My feeling was that Hrodur should be able to get some better troops eventually. Otherwise, the endgame just slows to a crawl. I also found it annoying that you never got faster ships. Conquering the "new lands" that you find across the sea is very dull without the might of your empire being available to you. I would strongly urge the author to allow faster ships to be developed eventually along with more powerful attack units (as Hrodur).

In general, something needs to be done to spice up the end. Long sieges are dull and don't make for good gameplay. Hrodur needs help. At the opposite extreme, as the Horde it's all too easy to wipe everyone off the map with your 6-attack units. Only if your foes get "realm heroes" are you in any trouble (6-defense behind city walls...).

My suggestion would be to add some more "secret things" to do towards the end to make the endgame exciting. What other secrets can Hrodur learn? (There is one other secret you can learn but it was somewhat of an anti-climax.)

Level of General Care

9 / 10

COMMENTS: Although city names are included, you run out of them quickly. Longer lists should be included.

I have already mentioned the problems with getting the AI to found cities. Fixing this requires moving some terrains around and repainting the entire map (sorry).

The map is fine, but more could be done with the eastern portion to make conquests there somewhat more interesting. I found the other tribes mostly lifeless and they play little role in the scenario.

The author's wonders, improvements, and technology tree are inventive and they work well. The tech tree is especially notable.

There probably should be more different types of units. I found that there were few available, especially as Hrodur's tribe.

The events file is not bad, but somehow something seems to be missing. There is too much concern with the AI players hunting mammoths and not enough with making Hrodur's quest and Brakan's quests more interesting.

I liked the unit choices for the most part, though there should probably be some more diversity in units. We need some attack units eventually as Hrodur.

There are a lot of nice touches, though, that make me rate the scenario high on this aspect, like the "no food" settlers.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

ARTWORK: There were quite a few nice things to be said about the artwork in the scenario. Most of the new units were nice, although many were borrowed. I particularly liked some of the half-naked viking warrior types and the mammoths. The author also made good use of the existing city pictures and some nice flags for the cities, which makes identifying the tribes easier. Although there are now some perhaps better choices for the cities, the ones that were used were not bad at all.

I felt that more could have been done with the terrain, which was a bit monotonous. I would have liked to have seen at least an occasional fir tree and something besides the walruses and caribou. The rivers, having green around them, also look weird. Perhaps they could be replaced with icy waters? I understand that later when you are converting the north to green some of the other terrains appear... but still, this could be improved.

There weren't many of the little details that make a pretty scenario look very different, such as new frames.

ORIGINALITY: The scenario scores a few extra points for originality. I particularly liked the use of the "port of the north" which is the Lighthouse wonder. The port lets you move your very slow ships across water safely; without it, you are likely to sink. Because you start on an isolated island with only two opponents, you will need to develop ships and get this wonder built to move across the water.

The hunting idea, though used before, was also nicely executed and the tribes mostly seemed distinct - which is important in a fantasy scenario.