|
Playability
Rating |
|
6 / 10 |
COMMENTS: The scenario is more of a modpack, using no events
and simply letting you start growing from a single city in the
usual Civ2 fashion. The play balance is thus pretty good, allowing
for an interesting mix of high-attack/high-speed units at the
outset. The wayfarer unit is particularly interesting - high
attack, high defense, and high move.
 There are some unit balance problems,
especially later on. The first problem is that defense units
are just as expensive as assault units, but they have few benefits.
Most defense units have the x2 defense vs. cavalry benefit, which
has the paradoxical effect of making the wayfarer unit better
than most of the other (move 2) cavalry units, even though those
cavalry units are gained later.
After a
while defenses just get too good in general. You get a lot of
units that have stats like 9/9/2, which are good on defense but
hard to attack with. It makes assaults quite difficult. I found
it helpful to get some veteran cannons and stack them under high
defense units (which rarely can be killed) when attacking cities.
Some units
appear to be completely useless, like trolls. By the time you
can get them, they are already too weak to be useful. In general,
the units need some tweaking as far as stats, and some should
probably be deleted or moved earlier. Also, higher attack to
defense ratios would be helpful. A lot of the time you get nearly
equivalent units from a cluster of technologies; these could
be spread out more.
The governments
are quite cleverly named. They "work" well with the
scenario. |
The
city graphics (the ones shown on the world map) were recycled
and could have been better. I find myself wishing for some new
fantasy city icons these days.