Warlords II Scenario Review
SHOGUN.ZIP 179,252 bytes: Feudal Japan (700-1868 A.D.), 6 players, 85
cites, 25 ruins. Author: Paul Fields.
"OBJECT. To conquer the other five daimyo families and declare yourself
(or your heirs) as the uncontested SHOGUN - military dictator of all of
Japan and its most powerful ruler."
Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area Score Comments
10 Army set 9 (excellent balance and fitness to scenario)
7 Map design 3 (rather too crude in many places, redundant ports)
5 Army pics 1 (LOSE the stupid numbers, puhleeeeze!)
5 City pics 7 (very good, razed cities are a bit crude but ok)
3 Background info 10 (another perfect score for Paul Fields)
2 Cities/ruins 9 (complete but some are a bit terse)
2 Items/heroes 10 (another perfect score for Paul Fields)
5 SHIELD SET -20 Special category added JUST for this scenario.
OVERALL RATING 119 (would be 219 without the shield set)
Paul Fields shows his strengths and weaknesses in this scenario just like
in Rain Forest War. He thoroughly researches his subject and spends a
great deal of time and thought writing background information and making
the army set well balanced and appropriate for the scenario. Then he goes
in and fiddles with the bits that the Scenario Builder doesn't want you to
touch, and screws something up, and releases the scenario without fixing
the damage. In Rain Forest War it was just random "droppings" cluttering
up the display as a result of him editing the flag images. In Shogun,
it's much worse.
I got so frustrated trying to play this scenario that I quit in the middle
of it and never restarted it. It was that bad. I have no idea why, and
I didn't believe it at first myself, but the SHIELD SET that Paul created
for this scenario causes Warlords to take TEN TIMES LONGER to display just
about anything. A battle between two stacks of armies can take 30 to 40
seconds, plotting the explosion, erasing it, plotting another, while you
sit there twiddling your thumbs in annoyance. Moving an army takes two
seconds per step. When you bring up the Triumphs display, you can count
out loud as it plots the shields for the different sides. Save the game,
edit or delete SHOGUN\SHLDNAME.DAT, restart the game, and all the stupid
delays magically disappear. It took me a lot of trial and error to find
the cause of the problem; I was afraid I'd broken Warlords itself.
[Some people have told me that they experience no noticable slowdown when
playing the Shogun scenario with the shield set it includes. More power
to them, they probably have a machine fast enough so that it makes no
difference, but on mine the difference is VERY noticable and irritating
to the point where the scenario is unplayable with the shield set in use.]
But deleting the worse-than-worthless shield set doesn't make everything
wonderful, he screwed up the army set also, editing things the Scenario
Builder doesn't allow, with the result that the movement indicators --
normally an empty black circle and one with an X in it -- are instead some
kind of green blob and another almost indistinguishable green blob. Who
knows what they're supposed to represent, but they are strictly a pain.
As in the original Rain Forest War, Paul put useless and redundant ports
beside every coastal city (and that's most of them, since this is Japan).
Hopefully he's learned better for any further scenarios he does, since
version two of RainWar had that problem fixed. Overall, even ignoring the
extra ports, the map is badly done. Entire ranges of mountains stick up
out of the plains with no foothills whatsoever; huge expanses of plains
lie there featureless; off in the corner is "Credits Island" which should
keep people in a hidden map game busy wasting their hero's time exploring
it for no gain. He can do so much better, that this map is disappointing.
The army set is a real mixed bag. Let's forget for a moment that he broke
the movement path indicators and try to judge the army set on its merits
instead of its demerits. A great deal of thought went into creating a
balanced and playable set of army capabilities, and he's done an excellent
job. The flying scout that Warlords insists on having takes three turns
to produce and doesn't fly fast enough to break the game. And it isn't
so weak as to be worthless once you have it. The rest of the armies are
also well balanced, and almost the entire set has a place and a reason for
existance. Plus, they are named (and described fully in the background
info) and fit perfectly into the scenario. Paul scores most of his points
for the creative thought that went into the army capabilities.
The pictures of the armies would be just fine, though not perfect, if they
didn't have those stupid useless numbers stuck into the corner of every
one. The numbers are supposed to represent the strength of the unit,
which is automatically wrong if it's produced in a city with a different
strength, automatically wrong as soon as you bless the unit at a temple,
and irritating and redundant even when it's accurate. One of them is even
wrong from the very beginning, saying 9 for a strength-8 unit. I don't
know if Paul "learned" this from Colin's army pictures in version 2 of
RainWar, or if Colin put them in because he saw Shogun first, but I hope
he "unlearns" it for any following scenarios.
[Some 4 people 6 don't 5 mind 4 numbers 7 stuck 5 on 2 every 5 army 4
picture 7 so 2 if 2 this 4 applies 7 to 2 you 3, then 4 my 2 rating 6
of 2 the 3 Shogun 6 army 4 set 3 should 6 be 2 raised 6 to 2 8 1.]
The Shogun cities are well-done Japanese buildings of various styles,
and are agreeable, if not exciting. The razed cities at least match the
normal ones, but the "explosions" (if you can call them that) are crude.
(I realize there's no option in the Scenario Builder to copy the picture
from normal to razed, so Paul must have some other utility to let him do
this. For that matter, SSG must use some other utility also.)
Overall, I think this scenario is a waste of download time. The map isn't
worth the trouble, you can easily find better city sets for random games,
the well-designed army capabilities are linked to screwed-up movement path
indicators and irritating numbers on the pictures, and that shield set
is best when deleted on sight. If you already have it, and you have the
SB, you *might* want to install it then delete it (addscen then delscen),
delete the shield set by hand, edit the army pics, and play a random game
using the cities and the edited armies (turn off razing cities). Even
then you're stuck with green blobs while moving armies.
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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