Warlords II Scenario Review RAINWAR.ZIP 150,491 bytes: Rain Forest War (version 1), South American Power Struggle, 8 players, 100 cities, 40 ruins (4 temples) -- the maximum possible of each. Author: Paul Fields. RAIN2.ZIP 162,285 bytes: Rain2, 8 players, 60 cities, 33 ruins (4 temples). Authors: Paul Fields, edited by Colin Glassey, re-edited by Paul Fields. Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10: Wt Area Rain1 Rain2 Comments 10 Army set 6 6 (some good ideas, too many useless units) 7 Map design 6 7 (different problems with the two maps) 5 Army pics 8 3 (in my opinion, editing made it worse) 5 City pics 6 5 (rather bland, razed cities are very crude) 3 Background info 10 10 (very detailed, no one can improve on this!) 2 Cities/ruins 10 10 (complete in every way) 2 Items/heroes 10 10 (all new items, 800 different hero names!) OVERALL RATINGS 242 219 "South America finds itself in the worst time of economic depression, joblessness and poverty it has ever experienced. Governments topple every day to be replaced by military juntas or groups of revolutionary visionaries under this banner or that." This review covers both the original RainWar scenario by Paul Fields, and version 2 of it, as edited by Colin Glassey and sent to Paul Fields, who made a few more changes and re-released it. As you can see from the scores above, I think overall the changes were for the worse, although there were some changes that were improvements. The map is a very detailed view of South America, about as detailed as you can expect in the Warlords scale of things. The original map has 100 cities, and the western coastline is jammed so closely the cities nearly touch. It has a road, the Pan-American highway, running the full length, which would be fine if the cities defended it instead of letting enemy armies go by on the road without stopping them. It also has ports placed beside every coastal city, which is unnecessary. As Colin wrote in his designer's notes, "I don't think it is reasonable to use the port facilities unless you already own the city." I agree. Another thing I dislike, as far as strategy goes, is that there are numerous ways to sail ships from one side of the continent to the other without ever setting foot on land. Up by Panama there are apparently three separate canals, not just one that would be something strategic to defend. Other rivers flow through the middle of the continent from west to east non-stop. Yet another problem is the cities, temples, and ruins that can only be reached by flying, which screws up the computer. The new map cut out 40 of the cities, so the clutter is gone, which is an improvement, and it eliminates all the redundant ports, another improvement. Unfortunately, Colin likes to use half-bridges instead of ports, so every place there was a reasonable port there's now a goofy-looking road sticking out into the water. All the "stuck" cities and ruins are fixed, but all the cross-continent rivers are still there. Overall, I think the improvements are enough to make it a better map, in spite of the goofy half-bridges. I really LIKED Paul's orignal army pictures, especially the A-10 and A-8, and the tanks which were well designed so you could tell them apart easily from the number and angle of the guns. Colin's new army pictures look bad in comparison, though I suppose I might have liked them if I hadn't seen the others first. No, I don't think I would have, because of the attempt to label the units with the strength. What's the point, when the strength can vary depending on the city producing them? Besides, the numbers are too puny to be legible or else they take up too much space better used for an image. The new army picture set is far worse than the original. I LIKED the guerrillas in the moonlight, which Colin eliminated. As for capabilities, the new and the old set each have their offsetting defects, for no overall improvement or loss. The original has no unit with minus to enemy strength, which I missed having. The Railed Guns were too fast, especially in combination with the roadways running unobstructed the full length of the continent. Many of the unit types were just plain not worth the time they take to produce -- why spend 3 turns on National Guard at strength 2 when you get three Reserves with strength 2 in the same time? Rangers, Commandos, etc, all move too slow or are too weak to be worth their cost in turns. The new set of army capabilities has its own problems, such as the starting production type of several of the capitals, the M1-Abrams, having nothing special about it at all. It keeps most of the useless types of armies, rather than fixing them. Paul created a complete set of city pictures, including razed cities and encampments, so I'll give him credit for the effort. The encampments look like boxes, and their flags don't match the flags on the cities, so you can't tell whose it is. The razed cities, sorry to say, are very crudely done. He would have been better off keeping the defaults. The cities themselves are fairly nice looking, if a bit two-dimensional, and since that's what you see most of the time, this city set will do nicely. Colin made some changes to it, by removing the "terrain" that Paul had in front of each city. I have no idea why he did this. His cities are not as good. The first version uses the Star shield set from the Scenario Builder. The second one uses (and has packed with it) the General shield set. Apparently if you install the Warlords update patch disk, it doesn't create the SHIELD directory, nor does it install any shield sets, so Warlords always uses the default shields. If you don't have the Scenario Builder, create directory "SHIELD" in your Warlords directory before installing any new scenarios. Now, as for the General shields -- bah. They're blank, which was the whole idea I suppose, but they're bland. Edit file SHLDNAME.DAT in the scenario directory, or delete it, so you get something interesting. Somehow, I don't know how, Paul edited the flags that show how many armies are in a stack. This isn't an option in the Scenario Builder, so he must have used a trick somehow, and didn't quite get it right. The flags leave tiny streaks and glitches as you move armies around. Colin tried to fix it, but the problem persists in the second version also. The finishing touches were perfectly executed, and I've scored them all with a perfect 10. Every city and ruin is researched, named, and described -- he even went to the work of adding signposts beside each city to give even more information. He took the time to think up 39 new items fitting the scenario, and he took the time to come up with EIGHT HUNDRED different and original names for the hero files! Great work, Paul! Then, not content with that, he wrote a long, detailed, and excellent description of the scenario, with the background, design notes, and so on. Great work, Paul! When you go to play this scenario, my advice is to play the original and skip the sequel. In spite of its problems with a few unit types, extra ports (they really don't hurt anything), and too many cities, it's better. Turn off quests because of the inaccessible ruins and temples, turn on diplomacy, play with a hidden map the first time, and have fun! === 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