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Historical Scenario Reviews

MAP: The scenario takes place on a 75x120 square map, of which about half is made up of ocean squares, counting the shipable rivers in. About two thirds of the land part are made up entirely of Plains squares, propably because of the author's desire to represent the South American Pampas (see below).

GENERAL COMMENTS: The scenario is not at all bad, but needs a lot of polishing to become good or even great.

Playability Rating

2 / 10

COMMENTS: The scenario is very slow-moving and for a major portion of it, you're just moving your units (of course you do that in every scenario, but in this one, you're pracitcally doing nothing else). There is little to no action here, and it took me three turns to reach an enemy city, basically because of the lack of infrastructure in the scenario. I played as Paraguay, and found they have far too many units. The author gives a reason, but there's too much to move. The massive number of units also makes this scenario a cakewalk in many respects.

Level of General Care

4 / 10

COMMENTS: The author seems to be familiar with the conflict, but this only shows up in the readme. Here, he also gives excuses for the lack of roads, which terminates durability and motivation in this scenario. My suggestion to the author would be to make a smaller map and improve road building, even if it's historically inaccurate.

Speaking of the map, it is not as nice as it could be with a bit more effort. Almost two-thirds of the land part are made up of Plains, which gives little or no excitement. A chain of hill squares and another one of forests in the north try to give a little change to the whole thing, but you might even never reach that. Beyond these frontiers stretch grasslands, which make up a well part of the map. I suggest more diversity for the terrain. Modify the terrain file if necessary, but make the terrain more interesting to look at. (Also, should there really be buffalo here?)

Small cities, placed somewhere in the middle nowhere are supposed to be objectives, but reaching them takes a lifetime. The lack of good defenses make conquest of them easy and thus the scenario boring.

I could keep picking on the lack of infrastructure and the incredible distance of cities, but I won't. I'll only suggest the author to a) make a smaller map, or b) improve the infrastructure or c) make the units faster (an optimal choice would be all three together).

I could remark the lack of an events file, but actually this doesen't really matter. It's nice to find a scenario which depends on your own brainwork and not on the events file. Yet, it could have been handy in some areas.

Art and Originality

4 / 10

ORIGINALITY: A scenario taking place in South America between South American states without European intervention excited me, especially because the sad fact is that there are hardly any scenarios taking place on the continent. This scenario however has absolutely no new ideas. Thus, originality isn't very high. Sad because there's a lot of exciting stuff that could have been used here.

ARTWORK: Most of the artwork has been borrowed, the units file taken directly from Tim Smith's High Resolution Modpack with a few self-produced units added. Fact is that he didn't properly credit the author. Actually, nobody was credited in particular, only this line was added into the readme: "Second I would like to thank the people who made all the stuff I used to make it, like icons, units, etc."

On the other hand, however, the author insists that, if someone modifies his scenario, his effort should be acknowledged.

The low score doesen't count for Tim Smith, who did a tremendous job with his HighRes modpack, but to the author of the scenario for the lack of his own artwork and the missing acknowledgements.