Scenario Review Scenario Title: History of Mythology Author: Reismark Reviewer: Blackclove   Fantasy scenario. The followers of five ancient religions duke it out in an alternate Europe. Download hismyth.zip from Reismark's site.

Overall Rating 17/30 SYNOPSIS: I had mixed feelings about this scenario, which is in some ways reminiscent of the "Atlantis" scenario. I rated it pretty well because I had fun playing it, but had to mark it down on General Care because I felt that more work should be put into it. The scenario cries out for a version 2.0 that would expand upon the original and fix the problems with the map. The game takes place in Europe and North Africa, and features five ancient mythologies dueling for supremacy. The Celts, the "Teutonics" (Norse), the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Africans each have their own unique heroes and faiths. Each starts with a good number of cities that are clustered together and improved.

Playability Rating 7 / 10 COMMENTS: The scenario is surprisingly fun to play given the silly seeming premise. You have a good base of cities at the start, but not a huge number. Turns are short, but there is enough happening that you feel you have some input. Others should study the start positions in this scenario carefully if they are interested in seeing what a reasonable start looks like. Everyone is a fundamentalist government, which makes sense given that you are supposed to represent the followers of a pantheon of gods. This works out well as you can build a lot of military units without worrying too much about support. It also eliminates all the happiness control that goes into a typical game. The only play balance problem that arose from this was that after a while I was generating thousands of gold coins per turn. Once I squashed a tribe's capital, it was just a matter of paying out a few hundred per city to "buy" control it it with diplomats and "druids" (spies). This could be easily fixed by getting rid of the spy units. Play is fairly well-balanced to begin with. I found that the computer players quickly built powerful Wonders that made them tough to deal with. The Greeks built Magellan's and had lots of ships, all moving very quickly. They also start with they Olympic Games, which is kind of like the U.N. Greece used their advantages well, attacking or buying cities and then immediately forcing me to make peace with them. Likewise the Teutonics had some tough hero units floating around as well as the Great Library. Only the Africans were easily crushed. For some reason the entire map is visible at the start. I think it was a mistake to use Europe and then reveal it, as huts are enabled. That means the human player will quickly start scooping up huts and achieve monetary and technological superiority. Worse, there are large areas in Asia that are very fertile and are going to be claimed by the first to get there. This means you can easily get a huge empire going by claiming Asia as the human. These problems could be solved easily by filling Asia up with another tribe, or better yet by not using the Europe map. After all, it is a fantasy scenario, so why not use a fantasy world? The scenario really only has one set of events. The events create a barbarian horde of dragons, which attack the Teutonic people. Over a few turns it also creates powerful heroes for the Greeks, Celts and Teutonics to fight the dragons and each other. I can foresee problems with the dragon horde if a player starts using diplomats on them. The dragon army could quickly become a player's dragon army. In sum, I would use a new map and leave it hidden at the start. I would also eliminate the diplomat units given the huge amounts of cash around.

Level of General Care 4 / 10 COMMENTS: The scenario fell short in this area, in my opinion. The terrains are the same old boring ones, and the author copped out a bit by using Europe and leaving a big gap in Asia. The scenario used the objective system, but there are only 15 objectives in the game and you need 18 for a stalemate. This is an obvious bug that should be fixed. The readme is too short. Much more is needed on the tribes and the units. The tech tree is OK, but it is a bit short. A few more advances should be included to round out your options. Some of the units are really clever. I particularly liked the new cultists unit, which is a fundamentalist that moves 2 squares. They are more expensive than the regular fundamentalist to compensate for their power (more than twice as much). I also liked the use of "advanced" versions of knights and crusaders that have one better attack and defense. The only problem with the units is that some very good units appear early and then go obsolete. Hoplites, for example, come with Iron Working and are one of the best defensive units in the game. They have 3 attack and 5 defense, DOUBLED against move two units! A few of these behind city walls will quickly make a city invulnerable. Oddly, though, they go obsolete at some point and you can't make them anymore. Your new best defense unit is the fundamentalist (attack 4, defense 4). This should be repaired. There are also some units, like some of the infantry types, that are strictly worse than other units (worse stats and more expensive to build, plus developed later). The scenario would really benefit from new terrain and city graphics. Most of the wonders were changed and they fit well. A few were anachronistic or weird - why do we get monotheism if we're pagans? Bach's Cathedral??

Art and Originality 6 / 10 ART: The art is nothing to write home about. Most of it is very familiar or stolen from various sources. If you play scenarios solely for the art, you will want to stay away from this one. Most of the units are OK, but they are definitely not great. Some of the hero units look downright bad. NEW IDEAS: The author's theme is clever, but more should be done with the mythology, in my opinion. I would have liked to see more new units based on the specific mythologies - maybe jackal headed guards for the Egyptians called "Anubis Guards" or something. In general, the game plays very well but more new things are needed. Why not put interesting sites in the desert? Quests ala Midgard? Something is definitely needed to spruce this up.

NOTES: None.

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