Warlords II Scenario Review

VULCAN.SZP 138,112 bytes: "Fight for the Vulcan Cities" it says.  Whatever
that means.  8 players, 90 cities, 40 ruins.  Author: Kai Hortmann.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          8 (quite well balanced and adapted for an ice world)
 7 Map design        8 (diabolical with a few flaws)
 5 Army pics         3 (lousy for an ice world, crude with many flaws)
 5 City pics         8 (SSG's excellent ice cities)
 3 Background info   1 (none whatsoever, only ONE signpost)
 2 Cities/ruins      1 (ONE description, ONE name, out of 140 places)
 2 Items/heroes      1 (some ok items, 1 hero name changed per side)
   OVERALL RATING  198

By virtue of its well-balanced army capabilities and interesting map, this
scenario scores a tolerable rating in spite of being so very aggravating
in so many other ways.  First the aggravations.

I almost always play a scenario with hidden map the first time.  As soon
as you select the Vulcan scenario, it shows you the entire map in the
scenario picture, complete with city locations.  AARRGH.  What a lame
excuse for a scenario picture, and what a way to wreck the suspense.

There's no background information whatsoever, not one single thing to give
you any idea what this scenario is about.  Vulcan?  Well, this sure isn't
the planet Vulcan from Star Trek, which I suppose most people would think.
Not one single one of the capitals, or any other city for that matter, has
a reasonable (non-random) name or description.  Precisely one of the ruins
has a description -- it "guards the pass to the vulcan".  With no other
context to give it meaning, it may as well be random.  Warlords has a very
nice feature -- signposts -- which this author is obviously aware of,
since he put one in.  But he didn't bother to put in a second one, let
alone enough to give some clues about this world.

The author did the exact WORST possible thing with the hero names -- he
changed precisely one hero name in each file, thus forcing Warlords to
duplicate 792 hero names for essentially no benefit.  I'm surprised he
didn't change one pixel in the city set and include that, too.

The army pictures alternate between crude and invisible, with only a few
clever or amusing ideas to give them any merit at all.  Since it's an Ice
world, it's an Ice army set, with Snowballs and Snowflakes and Icebears
and so on.  Great, except they don't show up well against the snow, and
the movement markers (the "shadows") are utterly invisible for most of the
units.  These pictures need some extensive editing to be good.

Ok, now the good points that will make you want to play this scenario
anyway -- eventually.  The army capabilities in combination with the map
make what could have been an excellent scenario.  The basic theme (as you
would see in the picture as soon as you selected the scenario, so I may as
well tell you now) is a central island (is this the "vulcan"?), almost
completely mountainous, with winding roads between isolated cities.  The
eight sides start out on the land around the island, isolated from each
other by mountains, and the race is to take your weak starting cities and
go for the powerful cities on the island before your enemies get them.

Only one unit type flies, and it's not very fast or strong, and it only
comes with heroes or quests.  This keeps the strategy on the ground, and
makes the mountains useful.  (I wish Warlords had a mountain type that
flying armies couldn't fly over, but that's another matter.)  The rest of
the armies are fairly well balanced for cost and speed and bonuses, so
there are only a few useless unit types.  The set is basically an altered
version of the standard armies, but with some deficiencies corrected.

This is a scenario to play only after you edit the army pics, and only
after you've played all the better ones.  Diplomacy optional, quick start
should be Off for sure, and hidden map is pointless after it shows it to
you anyway.  Quests should probably be On, since there are plenty of ruins
to go around.

===

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