Olympia Scenario Review

                        Warlords II Scenario Review

OLYMPIA.SZP 154,858 bytes, Battle for the Throne of Zeus (loosely based
on Greek mythology). 62 cities, 8 players, 25 ruins (incl 4 temples).
Author: Clayton Capra.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          2 (very unbalanced, most army types worthless)
 7 Map design        5 (not bad, but not good, some places unfinished)
 5 Army pics         2 (I got sick of looking at them)
 5 City pics         6 (default Roman city set)
 3 Background info   1 (none at all, no points)
 2 Cities/ruins      2 (mixed mythologies, most names/desc are random)
 2 Items/heroes      5 (good items, left hero names default)
   OVERALL RATING  112 (LOWEST score given so far)

Lots of people want to do scenarios based on mythology, and the two that
people think of most often are Greek and Roman.  This scenario is supposed
to be Greek mythology, and the map is of Greece, but the author didn't
bother to research anything, and apparently doesn't know that Neptune and
Mercury are from Roman myths.  That's for starters.

This scenario has no outstanding features; its highest rating is for using
the fairly good (but not great) Roman city set included with the Scenario
Builder.  The army pictures are modified versions of the Roman army set,
and they are crude and difficult to distinguish.  The capabilities of the
various army types leaves you little choice: Hermes runs through hills and
forests at 42, and is produced in 1 turn.  It's stupid to produce any of the
slower-moving longer-to-produce units, and you just go around sacking every
city you take.  Only Achilles (cancels city bonus) and Sirens (-2 to enemy)
are worth producing in spite of their relative slowness.  (And for some
reason, the author thinks Sirens can fly.)

The map wasn't finished in some places, there is no background info to
speak of, and most of the cities and ruins are random drek like Hunin's
Tower.  The ones that aren't are flaky: why does Ares need a tomb if he's
a god?  Why a temple to both Poseidon and Neptune?

Praise for having some good item names and reasonable powers.  Since no
hero names were changed, praise for not including the hero files.  (I had
to say something nice.)

Skip this scenario.  Life is too short.

===

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
--