Warlords II Scenario Review

BAY.SZP, 141,074 bytes: San Francisco Bay, California.  Tongue-in-cheek,
politically INcorrect look at the San Francisco bay in Warlords II format.
"Please don't be offended, it's all in good fun!"  -- Frawsty Schneemann.
It includes 40 ruins, 77 cities, and the following 8 sides (listed as is):
Yuppie Scum, The 'Hood, Chinese, Computer Geeks, Greenpeace, Homosexuals,
Commuters, and U Cal Liberals.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          7 (funny (or insulting!) and well-balanced)
 7 Map design        5 (reasonable but has serious problems)
 5 Army pics         8 (good mods to Landlord army set)
 5 City pics         7 (so-so mods to Spectra city set)
 3 Background info   1 (none -- read the papers, I guess)
 2 Cities/ruins      3 (all named well, almost no descriptions at all)
 2 Items/heroes      4 (mostly good items, very few heroes)
   OVERALL RATING  197

If the previous description offended you even slightly, you'd better not
play this scenario, or even read this review.  Even so, there's probably
something in this scenario to offend just about anyone, if you don't take
it as a joke and just laugh at it.  As for me, I was offended that a Sexy
Redhead is only +1 to command, when a Buxom Blonde is +3.  NO WAY!

I was disappointed that the map didn't extend as far south as Santa Cruz,
since there's a vitally important town just north of there, especially for
the Computer Geeks.  The general layout and terrain on the map is quite
good, but the serious problem that keeps it from being a really good map
is the relative location of the green, orange, and blue sides.  They are
almost on top of each other, and two of them will almost surely be wiped
out in the first couple of turns.  (Quick Start would fix that, except you
get such a mish-mash that it spoils the scenario in a different way.)

The city pictures are just very slight modifications of the Spectra city
set, and the modifications don't add enough to be worth including.  They
look good because the Spectra cities look good, not because of the mods.

On the other hand, the army pics are modifications of the Landlord army
set from the Scenario Builder, and the modifications are nice, funny, and
fit the scenario excellently.

If you're from a different country (or even live nearby) and don't know
the San Francisco Bay Area very well, you'll be disappointed that there's
no background information whatsoever, very few signposts, and for all
practical purposes NO descriptions on any of the cities or ruins telling
you what they are.  (Out of 117 cities and ruins, the only one with a good
description was Candlestick Park.  All but 10 were completely blank.)

You can tell this is a Frosty Schneeman scenario.  A quote from my review
of MEDIT fits BAY quite well also:  "There's no background info included at
all, and you can't pick up the flavor of the scenario from city or ruins
descriptions, since every last one of them is completely blank -- almost
no effort at all in this area.  (I scored it better than 1 only because
there aren't any randomly-named cities or ruins.)  The hero names are new
in the first 8, then they duplicate 92% of the ones included in Warlords."
The items are ok, except there are too many flight and speed items and not
enough of the normal ones.

In this scenario, Frosty created an army set with much better balance and
playability than in MEDIT.  I believe it was because he started with the
excellent Landlord set instead of the flawed Roman set.  Now you'll have
to think about what to produce, what to buy, and how to combine them for
the best effect.  One major complaint about this army set is the huge
difference between the "normal" army types like Hippies, Yuppies, Gayboys,
and Homeboys, vs. the aircraft units.  Sure, a jet fighter flies a lot
faster than a yuppie can walk, sure it can blow away all the Nerds in
Cupertino with no risk -- but that doesn't make it a good combination in
an army set.  It would have been improved by leaving all the aircraft out
of the scenario completely.  Instead, when I owned half the world and had
165 armies, half the cities I owned had been taken by just 7 of those
armies (all Jet Fighters).

Overall this is a decent (INdecent) scenario you'll enjoy if you can take
a joke.  It's not a great scenario, due to several bothersome problems.
I recommend playing it with quick start OFF, diplomacy ON, quests ON.  For
a better game, disable two of the green/blue/orange players.  One-sentence
sermonette: when you finish playing this scenario, and you're back in the
real world, please treat real people with tolerance and respect.

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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