Warlords II Scenario Review

PIRATES.ZIP: 8 players, 90 cities, 39 ruins (including 4 temples). 156,153
bytes or 335,423 bytes, depending on whether or not you get the one with
the useless PCX file (175k extra to download for nothing).  Eight flavors
of ruthless pirates battle for control of the world -- and they're not all
native to it!

Author: John Silverbeard.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          2 (it's too crazy to make a balanced system)
 7 Map design        7 (original map, pretty good, but unbalanced)
 5 Army pics         8 (excellent with minor flaws)
 5 City pics         8 (excellent! creative and well done, but incomplete)
 3 Background info   2 (nothing about the theme of the scenario)
 2 Cities/ruins      2 (random drek except for capitals -- no points)
 2 Items/heroes      5 (excellent item names, basically no hero names)
   OVERALL RATING  169

The impressive part of this scenario is the amazing images of cities for the
different sides.  They are all excellent.  Unfortunately, several of the
pics for razed cities are very disappointing -- almost blank.  Also, the
whole set of "encampment" pics are just towers of the same design.  I can't
help but wish that the creative genius had lasted long enough to complete
the entire city set.

The pics for the army set are also excellent, though some are a bit strange.

The entire map is original, and fairly well done, but gives Red such an
overwhelming advantage (especially in a hidden map game), that it spoils the
scenario.  Red gets dibs on 10 cities, 6 ruins, and a temple, that no one
else is likely to ever see.  If you use the Quick Start option, this will be
somewhat reduced, but that option is spoiled by four cities almost touching
each other in the northern continent.  Whoever goes first will own all four,
since all four are set to produce NO armies.

The army set -- the strengths, movement, and abilities -- is "interesting"
to say the least.  Two unit types cancel city bonus, three types cancel
hero bonus, and four types cancel non-hero bonus.  Three unit types are
minus to enemy strength.  Four unit types get both woods and hills movement
ability, and TEN unit types can fly!  (I'd expect that in an air warfare
game, but -- Pirates??)  Wizards fly at speed 50, and Ghostships fly at
96!  You can buy production rights for 2-turn units that cancel city bonus,
cancel non-hero bonus, and subtract 2 from enemy strength.  Then every 2
turns you have a juggernaut that rolls over everything in its path (except
heroes; the unit you can buy that cancels them takes *3* turns to produce,
and moves twice the speed of a hero).  This army set is so overloaded with
special abilities that only four unit types are "normal" (and three of those
are never worth producing).  In short, it's too crazy to be playable.  With
the stacks I could put together, I had 46 cities in 14 turns.

Even if the author hadn't admitted "I had begun to become impatient" and
"I haven't played the scenario through" in his notes, both would have been
obvious.  The city names and descriptions, ruins names and descriptions are
all random drek ("Thrikwood is a strange encampment, near an unexplored
tree" etc).  No effort was made to improve them, after all the effort that
went into the beautiful city pictures and the map.  Too bad.  I wish people
who create scenarios would release them when they're finished, not until.
It's not like there's a manager standing over them saying to rush it out the
door to meet a deadline, after all.

I have one more complaint.  The author created a picture for the title
screen, and it's excellent, like his other artwork.  But he was SO proud of
the original, that he packed it in with the scenario, adding an extra 175k
to the size.  I doubt very many people are going to be THAT interested in
seeing the larger picture, especially those unfortunate enough to have to
pay REAL money in connect charges to get it.

If you play this scenario with two human players, I recommend Orange and
Red, hidden map, and either no diplomacy or no computer players at all.  If
you want a real challenge for one player, play as Yellow, expert options
(especially hidden map, before you've seen it) -- and good luck!

===

This review is copyrighted by myself, but may be distributed in any
UNMODIFIED form as long as NO CHARGE is made for distribution (such
as a per-minute charge for online time) and it is not included in any
copyrighted "compilation" (such as claimed by certain online services
I will not name).  Dirk Pellett