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Historical Scenario Reviews

Playability Rating

8 / 10

COMMENTS: Outremer is, as far as historical accuracy is concerned, close to perfect. I'm not an expert on the crusades myself, but the almost too detailed chronology file included, the impressive bibliography list, and the scenarios entire atmosphere indicates a realistic piece of work. In my opinion, the main problem is that it's to long: It's 465 turns, about as much as a normal civil game, and in this scenario your enemies are very strong, numerous and evolved right from the beginning.

The realism and nice graphics considered, the atmosphere is fine. However, I would suggest that a couple of details be changed: Peasants have paradropping ability, which is fine by me, as I can see these as local peasants hastily formed as a militia - but the action should probably be called something else. A bit more serious are the sounds: None are provided with the scenario, and although it's okay that some units don't have sounds associated with them, it's surprising to hear fanatics attacking with machine guns. This is easily changed but copying e.g. the Swordfgt.wav file to Mchnguns.wav in the scenario's sound directory, if one doesn't have programs for creating new sounds.

Outremer is, in certain ways, very challenging: Like in real history, I was able to conquer a number of coastal cities and defend them with relative ease. Conquering inland cities was also possible, but defending them, however, proved very challenging. The Egyptian standard unit, Mamelucks, ignores city walls and has a move of 2, so it's almost impossible to defend yourself from them. Of course, I didn't complain about my Knights templars having the same abilities ;) Luckily, you start the scenario with a number of the extremely effective defensive unit Citadel in your coastal cities.

One piece of advice to players of Outremer: Look out for enemy Branders. These missile like ships crippled most of my navy, before I learned to keep them in port.

Level of General Care

6 / 10

COMMENTS: The map is nice: Since it's quite large, there are space for details, and again, it seems quite realistic. It even included flooding of the Nile delta, which caused serious problems for the Fifth Crusade. Perhaps, however, the terrain in some places isn't as arid as I would expect it to be.

The documentation is okay. It is very detailed, regarding historical facts, and some might see this as a bit too much, especially in the civilopedia, where some wonder descriptions are so long that they don't fit in the window; they should probably be in a separate readme file. Also, some of the wonders lack descriptions, although these can be found in the readme.

The tech tree works, but probably should be tidied up a bit, since e.g. Egyptian military appears five times. I was also surprised at, playing Antiochians, being able to steal technology from conquered Moslem cities, despite conquering technology seems generally forbidden.

In the beginning I was confused by two of the Christian civilizations, namely Jerusalemians and Antiochians, both being white (although they had different flags). Preferably, they should have different colors. I also wondered why some events takes place in e.g. turn 2113, long after the scenario has ended.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

COMMENTS: The artwork is nice. Except for the Crusaders unit (from the original game), and the Flood unit (made by the designer himself), the units are taken from various sources, credited in the readme (called Outread), but it's nicely made. The same goes for cities. Terrain and icons are mixed up of some old, and some new, also taken from various sources. My only complaints are that loaded "West Gallerys" has a small graphics defect when moving. Also, that background graphics in text boxes sometimes makes it hard to read the text.

The idea about caravan robbing as a money source for the crusaders is a nice idea, and I think it adds to the realism of the scenario (it seems that the crusaders often were just as interested in plundering as in fighting for religion, as the sacking of Constantinople show).