Review of Charlemagne

Author: Mr. Temba

Reviewer: Giant Squid

[Historical/
Middle Ages]

Charlemagne fills the need for Middle Ages scenarios as well as I could hope for, and has only a few flaws that keep it from perfection.

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Overall / Playability / General Care / Art & Originality / Concluding Notes

Overall Rating

26/30

COMMENTS: This scenario was G-R-E-A-T. The only thing that I really didn't like was the high difficulty level and the problems with units values (see below). This scenario is about as good as they get, and I don't think anyone has ever done better in this difficult time period.

Playability Rating

8 / 10

COMMENTS: I wish I could give this 10/10, but it was just a little too difficult. Conquering cities, especially those of the Lombards, was nigh-on-impossible. In the original version I tested, it was possible to use warships to shore bombard, but Temba later disallowed this, restoring it to its former difficulty. After getting the barbarian cities and 1 or 2 from the Saxons, I find it hard to get anywhere. This takes away from some of the fun, because I enojoy seeing the size of my empire change reflecting how well I do. On the other hand, the well-made map, variety of units, and tech tree made this deserve at least an 8.

Level of General Care

9 / 10

COMMENTS: This was a strong point of the scenario. Almost everything I can think of was changed to reflect the atmosphere, and it was done flawlessly. The tech tree, despite being about a third as large as the normal Civ2 one, had no errors (that I could find). The units were all done appropriately. The one thing I'm taking off for is that the game responded rather badly to the high unit stats, and apparently no effort was made to compensate for this (like lowering the unit stats...hello?).

Art and Originality

9 / 10

ARTWORK: This scenario has more original artwork than almost any I can remember. While a bit was taken from the High-Res modpack, that's a great source, and the rest of it, like cities and the Frankish infantry and cavalry was new at least to me. There were original ideas as well. Enter a northern Great Hall and you get a Berzerker. Go on a whaling expedition and you can earn some extra money. Best of all, it includes some squid! What I took off for here was that the cities don't appear to match, as well as that it was a little too dark. But I know I couldn't do any better here, and I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who could.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: None.

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