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Fantasy Scenario Reviews

SUMMARY: I am unsure what to make of this scenario. It gave me mixed feelings. Visually stunning, the scenario is a treat to look at, but playability suffers. It looks like someone translated this from their Dungeons and Dragons campaign into Civ2, and that a lot of richness was lost in the translation.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: The story centers around several nations that, while initially allied, may fall to squabbling amongs themselves. They are all against a single powerful enemy, Kalou-Na, whose evil-looking armies plan to conquer the world. All of the other nations are preparing to stave off this attack. The evil lord has decided to open the gate to the spirit world and restore his own form. To that end, you build lots of gateways to the spirit world and other related necromatic structures. This could end up destroying the world, though, so beware.

Playability Rating

3 / 10

FLOW OF PLAY: Where this scenario really fails is in the playability department; it is passable elsewhere. However, to improve the play will require an almost total redesign, which may be more effort than the author wants to expend. The problem is that there is really nothing interesting for you to do as most of the playable tribes.

The worst offender is the map, which makes attack almost impossible. Cities are placed in round clusters that define nations, which means defensive units can be quickly moved to the front from anywhere in the empire. All the cities are protected by city walls and are not even vulnerable to sea attack. Most of the units are too weak to penetrate these defenses because everything is walled and has about the same offense as defense rating. This means that most of the time you will splatter dozens of units against a city in order to capture it. If you fail, you will probably want to reload to avoid spending another 10 turns to rebuild your army and try again. It also means that "getting lucky" is very important; you need to score those occasional points of damage against the defenders to whittle them down.

The exception to this rule is the evil tribe, which can churn out powerful wraith units after a few turns. The wraiths are the equivalent of fighters and bombers, and are not really vulnerable to counterattack by most of the tribes. Add to that that the difference in attack factors is usually 3 to 1 or better for the best evil unit versus the best good unit, and you have a recipe for disaster. Only as the evil tribe can you conquer your neighbors, and as the evil tribe it's a bit too easy. This leads to an unpleasant stasis in the game.

Even worse, many of the good nations are really far away from the evil one, which means that they have nothing to do for a long time. It's very dull to move units towards a front that is turns away. Some more drama needs to be there in the opening portion of the game.

Research matters for evil, but not for good. The tech trees are very short, which means that research is not going to matter much and will only give you a single good unit of power. Even that single tough good unit can be killed by evil's potent wraith units, though.

There is no exploration as the entire map starts revealed.

Most of the cities have already built all the improvements you need, so there's no construction going on. There aren't any wonders to speak of.

To sum up, there's nothing worth doing except as the evil guy, where conquest turns out to be just a bit too easy. The evil guy does get a bit of research going on. In fact, evil's main problem is pollution, which is kind of neat. The author changed all of the factory and power plant improvements to more scenario-relevant "soul rifts" and "spirit gates" that produce immense production, but also immense pollution (renamed "soul rifts"). This is fun but once you figure out what is going on you can stop it by slowing your production down (adding scientists in the process) and researching "channelers" (=engineers). Channelers allow you to undo the damage very quickly. Beyond that, though, it turns into a "churn and burn" scenario.

MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS: All of the "good guys" start allied, but negotiations are on, which means the alliance usually dissolves in a few turns. Either dispense with the pretense of alliance or make it harder to break. I would prefer getting rid of it and creating some more tension among the tribes.

Level of General Care

4 / 10

GENERAL: My feeling is that this score could be dramatically increased very quickly by adding a readme. The total lack of a README file is more of a disaster for a fantasy scenario than for any other type of scenario. I found it hard to understand what was going on with the tribes other than the main evil tribe. What is their motivation? And what are those units they have? Somehow, "stop the evil lord" was not enough to get me to play one of the faceless tribes. Also, what are those units? I have no idea what these things are supposed to be or how to use them.

The tech tree is effective but it is way too short. Either the tech paradigm should be greatly increased, or there should be more to gain through research. The author has created very short tech trees for each of the playable tribes, which leads to very few new things becoming available.

The events.txt file is fine as far as it goes, but it is sparse. Much more is needed here, especially in a fantasy scenario. The only real events are getting or killing one of the immortal lords of a nation. These immortal units are heroes that are extremely powerful and dangerous.

City improvements are well-done and fit the theme. The author has also done a nice job modifying most of the other graphics, including the people.gif. Labels and game .txt files are included and they convert things appropriately.

THE TERRAIN AND THE MAP: The map is a unique combination of terrains, featuring everything from a frozen wasteland, to an inland sea, to a dark and evil swamp. The entire region is ringed by ocean, which allows fast ships to move troops. Some of the cities are clustered together, while others are spread far apart, especially where food is scarce. As with much in the game, the map is nice to look at, but is not completely functional. Because the entire map is revealed, you don't get to explore at all, and this means less surprises as you plan your attacks.

Art and Originality

9 / 10

ARTWORK: This is clearly the strong point of the scenario. The units look nice and are well-rendered. Even better, the terrain is lovely, and the "airbase" is an awesome looking temple. I found that overall the author did a great job making the game look good. It's worth the download if only for the art!

ORIGINALITY: The author did a really nice job with the premise and the scenario is quite original. Most impressive is the conversion of pollution to "soul rifts" that appear as a result of creating too many production-increasing "soul gates" and so on. Only the really potent evil tribe has problems with these, but they can create global warming and really make a mess.

The idea of making the powerful evil units be the "fighter" and "bomber" dressed up as wraiths was also a nice touch. It allows undead fighting units to appear that get "x2 vs undead".

CONCLUDING REMARKS: As I said at the outset, I had very mixed feelings about this scenario. It is really beautiful to look at, and worth downloading for the artwork. On those grounds alone it could be considered a good scenario.

On the other hand, I found it dull to play. My suggestion to the author would be to carefully consider what makes the game flow so poorly and to rectify the situation, as this has the potential to be one of the best fantasy scenarios out there. I have made more specific suggestions in the playability section.