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An example of the kinds of things that detract from playability: in most games, the barbarians are not very powerful. They're more of an annoyance. On the contrary, I found myself buying barbarian units left and right rather than building my own, because they were so vastly superior to anything I had for attacking my neighbors. Appearing out of the sea, they would often land and capture a city the same turn with no warning. This is not a real problem for the human player, but I found that they were destroying other civilizations near the sea with alarming frequency. Sometimes the other civs would be half gone and I would just step in and buy half their nation with diplomats. There is a dragon unit that you are supposed to kill to get a reward, but you're never told this. Most of the other barbarian units were there to be bribed, but the powerful-looking dragons have no movement and are there to be slain. Of course, once you buy one you can't kill it. Some kind of warning was needed for this. You spend a lot of time building new cities and roads because your cities are placed relatively far apart. You have little production with most civilizations, which gives the computer a big advantage when building Wonders (they just cheat and complete them in a random turn). The most glaring problem is that there appears to be something causing global warming. Yet, there is no story reason for this as far as I can tell, nor anything you can do about it. Is someone detonating nukes somewhere or something? At least a hint that something bad was happening, using text events, would be helpful. Even just a message saying, "The tribal priests gather together one evening and inform the head lizard that the gods seem displeased." Add in some hints as to what can be done about it and you have a grand quest rather than an inexplicable bad event. At one point, one civilization gets an event that says they have "gone against their commandments" but you were never told what the commandments are. I was unsure why you are not allowed to change governments. At least as one of the republics, you can cause your government to fall and then you can switch into another government (monarchy). |
The documentation is long and does its job. The only thing lacking here is a more thorough description of the various cultures in the game. Also, given that you can bribe barbarian units, I wondered why their stats were not included as well. The tech tree was quite good, involving strategic changes to the existing tech tree. I noticed only a few problems. Some military units like dragoons become available before the thing they make obsolete (crusaders). The author gets extra credit for the extensive art modification. Terrain, city pictures, icons for discoveries, wonders, etc., etc., are all there. The opening text box is too wide (looks like a typo). In general, though, I had few complaints here. Pedia.txt is included, cities.txt works well, and the author has made a great many changes. |
ART: I can see how some people wouldn't like the art, but I really liked it. It is somewhat cartoony but it works well with the theme. And there's a lot of it. Basically, he turned every existing civ2 unit into a lizard equivalent. The orange seas and the cute giant lizard pic are especially nice. The only one I would work on a bit is the "turtles" terrain - it is monochromatic. I was surprised to find that some minor recoloring, like with the technology advance icons, went a long way towards enhancing the look of the scenario. OTHER ORIGINAL IDEAS: Look - you're a bunch of *lizards*. If that's not original, I don't know what is. Mr. Temba does a great job of carrying the theme through with the artwork, units, and tech tree. |
| NOTES: None. |
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