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SYNOPSIS: The divided lands of Norway are faced by the revolutionary Harald Fairhair, a leader intent on bringing the Norwegian people together to form a united monarchy. Resistance is encountered from the neighbouring fylkes (kingdoms) in this conquest-oriented scenario based in the early Medieval Ages.

PRÉCIS: This scenario with some terrific new artwork, however suffers from a few playability problems and lack of surprise or distinction. Greater player direction, a more engrossing start, and a more imaginative events structure would compliment the solid foundation that's been laid.

Playability Rating

5 / 10

COMMENCEMENT: There are no hitches from the outset, with an impressive Medieval battle pictorial introducing the scenario at hand. While the 'read me' advises that the Vestfold tribe is the one designed for play, this has been omitted in the preliminary pop-up window text box.

The Vestfolds begin with three medium-sized cities one with the equivalent of The Colossus (Kaupang). Furthermore, there are some tribe-defined 'personality' units. They are locked into Monarchy, and there is an oppressive technology paradigm that effectively nullifies any advancement by research.

The tribe is described as having a "pathetic" strength - hardly the start you'd ask for in a conquest-oriented game! Furthermore, reputation is "poor", which makes establishing peace treaties difficult to say the least. The Vestfolds are in contact with all other tribes.

MAP: The map is only partially revealed, and the focus does not extend beyond a few perimeter enemy tribes at the start. Naturally enough there are lots of defensive terrain types - hills, rivers, and mountains are prevalent. The full map of western Scandinavia appears to be custom-created by the author, and there are very few favourable spots for settling new villages. In total there are about forty cities placed amongst the seven tribes, most carrying an 'objective' flag and protected by city walls.

GAME OBJECTIVE: The scenario uses the 'objectives' system. There are 36 objective cities to take in 161 turns. Frankly, this is one of the troubles of this scenario in that the starting position is particularly constrained with so few units to begin with and expensive unit building costs needed add more troops to your forces. Taking out a city at an average rate of less than one every five turns is a challenge at best, and infeasible at worst.

The widespread establishment of city walls plus the absence of a 'decent' two-move unit has made city capture an arduous task. Despite being able to muster troops onto mountain squares on the periphery of several enemy city sites, a stack of at least six is often required to have a chance at taking the city, plus you run the risk of being wiped out the preceding turn by the Veteran Berserker inevitably residing in the village. If you are able to send up some Skald (Diplomat) units to initiate some industrial sabotage, you might (if you're lucky) bring down these city walls. Regardless, being able to produce stacks of that size, get them from Point 'A' to Point 'B' unharmed, and then have the necessary success twenty or thirty times in 161 moves is 'a tall order'. Just to add insult to injury, if you lose your King, the game abruptly ends.

There is one approach that may yield some success, and that is by adopting naval and amphibious warfare on enemy coastal villages. This is one area that the AI is notoriously bad at implementing itself. With about four boats with a total of eight Viking units (Veterans if at all possible), there may be some victories to be had. Attaining Veteran status for ground units may be achieved by having them defend cities before they set-off. Your Capital of Tønsberg is usually the target of skirmishes from the Vingulmark tribe (light blue) to your north-east, and even non-Veteran units fortified behind the city walls will generally not lose to these attacks, where they are likely to pick up Veteran status sooner or later.

Building a sound economic base to establish a winning position through bribery is a largely fruitless strategy. It requires plenty of time for not very much reward to get your tribe to make any serious money. Trade routes can yield bonuses of over 100 gold, but usually don't, and despite the effect of your Wonder, it can take half a game to get the coffers to 2,000 gold - about enough to bribe three enemy cities.

FINANCES: As noted above, there is an opportunity to get your cash flow going - but it requires quite some effort. Merchants (trade units) are on the build list, but as all of the cities are on the one continent and about half are within 20 tiles' distance of the core of the Vestfold tribe's area, the bonuses are generally pretty unremarkable.

On the plus side, there are no financial troubles really to speak of, just not a lot of scope to make much progress with Skalds. The Kaupang Wonder certainly helps to ensure that money matters stay at least on an 'even keel'.

BALANCE: Game balance is somewhat of a dilemma. Even though cities are founded on grassland or river-grassland, the triple defensive bonus enjoyed by city walls makes conquest very tough going. There is only one horseback unit, and its light attack statistics make it essentially ineffectual. As such, land-based battles tend to be fought with stacks of one-move units, and unless fortified, even on mountains these may be toppled by stray high-offence enemy units.

The "poor" reputation of the Vestfold tribe is a mixed blessing. While your reputation is not something you need to protect in this case, other tribes are very prone to 'sneak attacks', which can further complicate attempts to either establish trade routes with foreign non-coastal cities (given the vulnerability Merchant units), or convoy your attacking force through the land.

GOVERNMENT: The tribe is locked into Monarchy, but this suits the theme of the game and ensures that any potential for scientific advancement is well kept in check. Usually the decision to confine a player to a single form of government is a move that constrains strategy and dampens a scenario's intricacy, however in this instance it is a most sensible decision for both thematic and practical purposes.

GAME DURATION: As previously argued, the game duration is too short given the number of (difficult) objective cities necessary for victory. The author has opted to run with quarterly turns over a forty year span, however two-monthly or even monthly turns would be fairer.

Level of General Care

6.5/10

COMMENTS: The general care taken is by and large pretty good. Putting aside the difficulties of the game objective, there are very few technical matters that might need a second look, such as extending the 'read me' to include strategic advice, and further development of the theme.

REFERENCE: A 'read me' file is included, and briefly points to the mythology of Harald Halvdansson Fairhair, the first King of Norway. Notes on installation, the intended tribe, units, and the source material are all included, albeit very briefly. Given the arguably very difficult game objective, there is a clear chance to explain some of the loopholes and pitfalls for the player. No credit has been offered with regard to artwork, so it is assumed all graphics are either original or have been taken from official Microprose scenarios.

The pedia.txt file is included, and it makes easy reference for the player. Given that there is essentially no opportunity for technological progress beyond the starting technologies, the author may have tidied this file up a little by removing superfluous Wonders and technologies (although this is a small point). There has been no attempt to customize the pedia.txt file, with the 'bare bone' descriptions left in tact.

SUPPORT FILES: A city.txt file is not included, which means that any newly founded city names come straight off the default Civ2 lists. This oversight is unfortunate, as clearly there has been some effort in establishing a good series of names for the starting cities.

Other files suitable for customization have not been amended - game.txt is not included, while labels.txt is included but has not been modified.

THEME: The theme generally is reasonably well embraced. Throughout there has been some effort in places to support the Viking theme - 'sacrificial places' for temples and 'shipyard' for 'port facilities' are typical examples of customizing the game. As noted in the next section, the events file also lends something to supporting the plot, although there is plenty more that could have been included.

It is a little disappointing that there do not appear to be any tribe-customized units beyond the few 'special personalities'. For instance, the AI tribes' Kings could have at least received a small make-over to give them some diversity. There are some barbarian units that appear occasionally during the progression of the game, although one that has slipped in is the out-of-place Chariot unit from the default game.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

GENERAL: The artwork is one of the notable strengths of this scenario. As there is no credit given for artwork, it is assumed the author created all changes that differ from those seen in official scenarios or the default game.

While not the first Viking game to hit the 'net, the particular theme of Harald Fairhairs' Saga is original.

UNITS: There are a few good things done with the units, not the least of which being (what appears to be) totally new graphics. Generally the images are of high quality for an independently produced scenario, and these lend a great deal to the feel of the game. The naval vessels are done in 2-D profile, which does look a little awkward, but by and large the total effect is good.

From a game play perspective, the Vikings unit with an amphibious assault is a very good idea, and does place a greater emphasis on the potential of seafaring combat.

Another good addition is the inclusion of a few customized 'personality' units. The author has taken pains to ensure that these are unlikely to be bribed by boosting their production cost to 160 shields in some cases, while foreign Kings have a build cost of 1,270 shields.

ICONS: There are a few new icons that have been created for this scenario, although there is also a mix of default icons and images taken from other scenarios. Again, their quality is commendable.

OTHER GRAPHICS: Terrain graphics have received a lot of changes that feature the olive-green spectrum of colours for some of the land tiles, and the aqua colours of ocean. The special resource images for mountain squares have been removed without explanation. Irrigation has thoughtfully been represented in the form of ploughed fields, (although these could be mistaken for roads in some instances).

Perhaps the best of the artwork comes in the form of city images, which have a distinct Nordic wood-cabin feel about them, and very much add to this scenario's identity.

The default flags and colours have been used.

EVENTS: There is an events file, but discouragingly it is under-utilized and would benefit from a surge of ideas and concepts to further strengthen the plot. In a nutshell, it covers the 'schism' issue, a number of 'if unit killed then text + create unit' events, and the random appearance of barbarians.

The defeat of the various Kings and other personality units is a glimmer of the sort of thing that is 'crying out' to be included here. Given that the author has put so many constraints on the scenario in various ways (no technology advancement, limited diplomacy, ect.), there exists tremendous scope to offset this through adding to the plot by engaging in more of a 'story-telling' approach. The scenario is founded upon mythology and legend, however this is only partially communicated. There is no hunt for Wonders or hidden units, there is no interaction at all with the technology tree, and there a few rewards in the game for making positive progress. The events file is the best mechanism by which the scenario unfolds, however in this instance the player's experience is limited to a few brief text boxes and the occasional creation of a unit.

TECHNOLOGY: There has been placed a 200/10 paradigm on the rate of technological development, and as discussed, no technology-based events. The default technology tree has been retained, although the prerequisite advances for some city improvements have been amended. Science-based city improvements (other than one Wonder) have been removed.

By and large this is disappointing, as the growth and direction of technology is one of the more interesting aspects of Civilization II play. While the Vikings were not renowned for their technical achievements, some technology progress would have added a little extra dimension to the scenario, even though it only covers a forty-year period.

SOUNDS: Generally the scenario runs with the default sounds, although four files have been included to correct any oddities.

OTHER: It should be noted that there have been several other minor tweaks here-and-there to the scenario's set up, such as the lifting of the population capping level for aqueducts from eight to twenty citizens.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS: The game has a number of good points, but arguably suffers from difficult and rather uninteresting playability -

There is very little room for expansion by any technique other than through conquest, which in itself is very difficult. The poor reputation of your tribe puts diplomacy largely out of reach, with AI tribes having little regard for their pledges to the terms of cease-fires. There is no natural technological advancement, and the events file does not dabble with the 'give technology' action at all. As developing trade routes or initiating 'spy activity' are barely worth the effort, the scenario does become a "churn 'em and burn 'em" affair.

On the other hand, there are some high quality graphics - particularly the city images. The theme, while not explored as far as it might have, is original. There have been some pretty good approaches taken, such as the amphibious attacking Vikings unit, and the map appears to have been customized by the author. The basics have been covered - inclusion of the pedia.txt file, bug free events and rules, and the inclusion of a brief but generally adequate 'read me' file.

The scenario could benefit with the implementation of a more realistic game objective (either reducing the number of objectives for victory, or making objectives just a little easier to secure), an extended events file that drives the theme harder, and a researchable technology tree that may lead to new units. The artwork is already good, but there remains the opportunity to introduce further new images to the files (notably several city improvements) in preference to the default game's images.

NOTES: Version 1.0 of the scenario was reviewed on Emperor level.