Warcity Scenario Review

                        Warlords II Scenario Review

WARCITY.ZIP 169,695 bytes: WarCity 1300, 8 players, 100 cities, 40 ruins.
"Scenarios in about an hour..." and it shows.  "This one is simple, took
about that long with no new city set nor army set, but has a new map and
potential for entertainment."  Not really.  Author: 'John Silverbeard'

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          2 (Spectra army set unmodified)
 7 Map design        2 (everything touches everything else)
 5 Army pics         4 (Spectra set, creative but not very easy to see)
 5 City pics         9 (default Spectra city set)
 3 Background info   1 (nothing)
 2 Cities/ruins      1 (pure random drek)
 2 Items/heroes      3 (defaults)
   OVERALL RATING  110 (a new record low)

One small island in the middle of the map, with 100 cities on it.  If your
neighbor's turn is before yours, you lose.  That's regardless whether you
play it with quick start or not -- I tried it both ways and owned half the
world on turn 5 both times.

There's nothing at all to give it any flavor -- all the cities and ruins
names and descriptions are random, the sides and items and heroes are the
defaults you get with a random game, and there's no background info to
speak of.  (I quoted more than half of it above.)

The Spectra army set is difficult to see when used with the Spectra city set
(how ironic), especially armies in the green cities.  I liked these army
pictures in the Dante scenario because they fit the descriptions and added
to the flavor of the scenario.  Here, there's nothing to "add to" so they
don't add anything.

Normally the army capabilites of the Spectra army set would be reasonable
(though not excellent), for example in a random game.  But combined with a
map like this, they become junk.  There are no forests, hills, mountains or
rivers, so all the movement bonuses of the armies are pointless, including
flying.  The only thing you care about is strength in a city and turns to
produce.  Even movement speed hardly matters since the whole island is one
big road.  Therefore, there's only one unit type worth buying, and you sack
every city you take, same as in other bad scenarios.

I can't think of any options you could use to make this map into a decent
strategic war, and there's really no reason to bother trying.  The SZP file
would be considerably smaller if it didn't include the Spectra army set
that everyone with the Scenario Builder already has anyway.  Those without
the Scenario Builder MIGHT want to get this scenario, not to play it, but
just to have the army set for random games.

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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
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