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THE CHALLENGE: Everyone who loves Star Trek and plays Civilization is sure to be looking for Star Trek scenarios - I played the scenario Wormholes by Brrrakkaaaa (sounds Klingon doesn’t it?). To begin, I would like to say that building a Star Trek scenario is one of the hardest scenarios to build because it demands a lot of attention to detail and facts that one might come across which is irregular trivia or simply not invented. I say this because the parameters of Star Trek don’t always fit the needs of Civilization and that calls for a load of creativity on the part of the author. |
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THE PLAY - Enjoyment: The beginning of the scenario started with a title.gif that was a bit dark but readable. It is a shot of a wormhole and I thought that was fitting for a wormhole scenario. I noticed a few minor details that could have added to the Star Trek atmosphere, such as the “difficulty level” text box still offered “Chieftain” instead of “Ensign”. One thing the author could have done to spice up the beginning would be to customize a “menuloop.wav” file that would play some simple repetitive Star Trek sound. As I began to play the game, I explored my cities to find that the wonders offered to build were pretty good. City improvements on the other hand, could be made more interesting such as changing the granary to a “Replicator Facility” perhaps. A recycling center could become a “Molecular Station” just to name some possibilities. The price for building was cheap and that was a plus, so I built everything. I’m not sure if that’s what players want to see but I thought it was cool and a nice change from high prices. The sound played for the completion of building a unit, improvement or wonder was too short (the pos.wav). Many graphics, including the graphic for shields, were greatly improved. I would like to congratulate the author on this achievement. Pollution got out of control pretty quick with the growth of the cities, but there were plenty of “colonist” units already included to take care of that. I really liked the events but they seemed pretty much out of my control.
The effects in the rules were changed appropriately for the scenario, such as: no loss of science for fundamentalism, slowed down tech discovery and so on, which made all the governments more appear more equal. In the game, the Borg were given a tremendous amount of technology to begin with and it was a little difficult to keep up with that. No government switching was allowed in the scenario. The text box where astronauts bring back pictures of the Earth didn’t quite fit. I have to admit though—I think I’ve overlooked that one a million times on my own creations simply because I was programming at 2 a.m. The length of the scenario just seemed too long. Perhaps it was what the author intended, but it is my personal preference that scenarios should only be as long as needed to complete story line. |
Mostly,
it was scenario about the Borg taking over and attacking vessels which
became later became
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Before I started, I did something that I always do with scenarios which was to open all the *.gif files first. I checked the look of the icons, units, people, terrain, and cities to get a feel for the author’s approach. The icon.gif had many improvements in the borders and icons themselves that enticed me to play the scenario. I decided ahead of time to play the Klingons. I also observed and familiarized myself with the *.txt files such the rules.txt, events.txt and the city.txt. There seemed to be quite a bit work and attention that went into the construction of these files as well. THE
TEXT - Readability As the scenario started, I noticed from the beginning and throughout there were mispellings—for example:
THE TECHNOLOGIES - Logical Flow I noticed that some of the techs didn’t seem to fit the paradigm of the scenario such miniaturization and radio; I thought it was the 24th century? |
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For the most part, the units looked pretty good. In the early days of pioneer Kevin Gilbert, you were pretty much on your own if you didn’t want to use his Star Trek units. Brrrakkaaaaa did pretty good (better than some I’ve seen) but there some units that really were too dark to see against the space background. The “Carrier” unit was great. I liked it because it was so different. The unit for the Borg android didn’t seem to look much different than the other units. The Borg Drone looked like a military station instead of a Drone. The aggression of the Borg seemed to work well for the units offered. The Borg cube was effective as expected for assimilation and hard to kill, a definite plus. A better graphic could improve the cube unit though. I quickly learned that the Husknock ship was effective against Borg cubes. The Husknock ships helped me to conquer the Borg. The labels for trade goods should probably be enhanced. Basically, they don’t seem like they reflect Star Trek as much as they could (I did not count this in the score the scenario is most certainly playable and at least the author was careful to remove “hides” from that list!). I
really enjoyed the design of the tile scanner. Its graphic looked trekkish—nice
touch! THE CITIES - Presentation The city names were pretty good. I for one know that typing city names into the city.txt file can be quite a task. Then again, having to make up the city names can be even worse when you are trying to stay consistent with the spirit of a theme. I’m not even going to take the position to say anything except that Brrrakkaaaaa is a real trooper!
I really have to say that the map was one of the better ones I’ve seen. It’s has good play and planets (islands) big enough to actually put two or three cities on. Of course in the scenario, most techs are already given so the cities grow really fast with improvements (I enjoyed that!). The effects were changed so that a city had to grow to “10” before requiring an aquaduct (good change).
Many of the sounds were very good, but there were what I call “inappropriate sounds”. These are sounds that don’t fit the unit combat that occur when units engage each other. Unfortunately, in a Star Trek scenario, sounds play a more crucial role in the rating than in other scenarios simply because you can’t have androids making the mounted dragoon charge and expect it to make you feel like your playing a Star Trek scene—it just doesn’t work.
The events seemed to be timely; they started from the beginning. I enjoyed getting right into the story line. However, the scenario would benefit greatly from a longer more detailed text at the beginning offering a better mission than “…run!” I’m not being nit-picky when I say that I simply have to assume that the scenario is another “bloodlust” game and go from there. I give high scores to scenarios that transcend bloodlust and elicit participation or modification of strategy by the player. In effect, if I have to discover a certain tech or build a certain unit for some particular event to occur that changes my strategy and causes me to play a different kind of game. If you tell me to kill everyone (in so many words), I’ve done that before and I can do that very well in any Civ game. In all fairness, I must say the creativity of the dialogue for the events was very interesting and fitting. It was a plus for the atmosphere of the scenario. |
THE
MAP - Presentation|
Finally, my final score playing the scenario was 82% (Chieftain Level) with a score of 2050 points. As far as my rating system goes for the scenario, the scenario scored 56.5 points out of 80 possible points (anticipation score is not counted) or on a scale of 1 to 10, a strong 7. I know the author probably spent two months working out all the details for this scenario, but with a couple weeks of work, this scenario could be a 9 or even a 10. |
