Scenario Review Scenario Title: Colonization Author: Gary Reviewer: Blackclove   Historical scenario. Conquer the new world as one of the major European powers. Download at CivWorld

Overall Rating 19/30 SYNOPSIS: This scenario has the seeds of greatness in it, but the author needs to fix the many bugs and playability problems before it can rise to its true potential. I really hope the author takes these comments seriously and produces a new version. I played it for quite a long time and there are some very inventive aspects to the scenario. I found it hard to rate because there are many very good things here that should be applauded, but also an uncommonly large number of major bugs.

Playability Rating 6 / 10 COMMENTS: The scenario is quite fun in the early years. The basic premise is much like Alba de America, with more civilizations fighting to conquer the new world than in that scenario. The native Americans are much weaker and so the race is mostly to capture as many of their cities as possible. The author did a good thing by allowing random creation of settlers in the capital. I found this quite nice and the text events that accompany them are also entertaining. There are also some other surprise events that are quite clever. There are several major playability problems. First is the overall strength of advanced defensive units. You can build a unit called a "fort" (which in and of itself is a good idea) that has a defense of 6. Unfortunately the best offensive unit is artillery, which has an attack of only 6. The fort behind a stockade (city walls) would have defense of 6 + 3 (fortified bonus) + 12 (city walls bonus) = 21, making it possible to make a city almost invincible to landward attack. By the later stages of the game, most European nations are defended like this. They are vulnerable to sea attack, because the ship units have attacks as high as 7 and the computer rarely builds coastal fortresses. In any case, something needs to be done about this if land wars are to become feasible. Another problem is that the natives are set to be peaceful and not expansionistic. The result is that they build hundreds of caravan-like units that when killed yield 100 gold. This may have been the author's intent, but I think the game would be improved by making the natives more aggressive in their warmaking and less willing to just give their enemies money in this way. The technology tree is too short and it does not connect to future tech. I ran out of advances to research by the early 1500's. Either the technology rate should be slowed down, or more advances should be added. I would recommend both. When I ran out of advances I was able to go to total war mode and conquer a number of my neighbors before they were able to build many forts. Also, the improvements that allow you to advance science, while cleverly named (printing press, newspaper, etc.) are never needed! I think the game is too long; perhaps setting the turn increment to a higher number would be reasonable. Some kind of winning conditions should also be set. Wiping out all other civilizations is not feasible as the game stands. Playability is also badly hurt by another problem that makes me wonder if the author has played his own scenario - happiness. Churches (=temples) and cathedrals require particular advances to make them work properly, which the player does not have. There are only two happiness wonders in the game and getting both of them becomes a priority. Fortunately you usually have so much money from killing enemy caravans that you can just buy them in one turn after they become available. Still, this is a major bug and should be easy to correct (just make the correct advances available). For whatever reason, the author has made grasslands less good than the plains squares. Perhaps this is historically accurate, but it leads to obscenely fast growth rates on the great plains. I think plains squares should be toned down a bit. The Spanish and the Dutch colors are too similar to tell them apart easily. The fact that forts can move is a bit fishy to me.

Level of General Care 5 / 10 COMMENTS: The map is fine. The terrain works against you in all the right places. I think the Aztecs need a larger empire. The cities.txt file is very long! I was impressed by the number of city names it had in there. Bravo! Pedia.txt should be included in the package even if it is not changed for Fantastic Worlds users. The tech tree was nice but it was too short (see above). A number of important advances are missing, especially bridge building and the advances that make happiness improvements actually work (Ceremonial Burial for temples, and Monotheism for Cathedrals). Right now you can build those structures but you can't get any benefits from them.

Art and Originality 8 / 10 NEW IDEAS: The coolest idea the author has is the use of events to randomly create "European dissidents" who serve as settlers. They appear in the home cities of Europe and you can ship them over to America. He also has used the "kill things and get bonus cash" idea, and has a fort unit that looks like a little stockade. ART: The art is good. I was particularly impressed with the use of nice flags (from the existing flags collection) and the irrigation icon (it looks like corn). The author also used civilization-specific units and the artwork reflects this. It might have been nice to see more new icons for improvements and perhaps some new terrain. OTHER ORIGINAL IDEAS: The names of the improvements are very clever (e.g., printing press for library) and go a long way towards enhancing the mood.

NOTES: Minor edits were made to this review to correct errors in the previous version.

HTML Design by Blackclove and Monk

Back to Fictional Scenario Reviews