Scenario of the Week Club #3

[techumseh]

The next member to propose a scenario will be Hendrik. As usual,it should be posted on Thursday evening, about 20:00 hrs EST.

Unless I hear otherwise (and I'm hoping to) Phoenix (Mr. Temba) has withdrawn. He would have followed Hendrik.

The order of upcoming selections are: Paul, Coug, Mao, and Darth Veda. Then we'll start again at the beginning.

[Mao]

whoa...I'm almost up (kinda) *starts browser*

[Hendrik the Great]

I now this might be a bit too soon, however, I wont be able to get my hands on a computer in the next 4 days so I will just put a link to the scenario down now. I hope you don't mind.
The scenario I chose is Holy Roman Empire by
Jesús Muñoz.
Here is the Link; http://spanish.apolyton.net/hre.zip

For me the author is fairly unknown and I just stumbbled across the scn a few days ago.

------------------
Mathias' Civ II Page
http://members.xoom.com/thalys/index.html

[Paul Hanson]

Sounds fair enough to me. Jesús Muñoz has done a few scenarios before (he`s worked with Jesús Balsinde a few times) and he`s pretty good, so I`m looking forward to this one.

[techumseh]

Darn! This was going to be my suggestion when I got my second turn. Good choice!

[Jim Winchell]

Is it just me, or do the goody huts (ie "villages") in Holy Roman Empire almost consistently give you a free unit? Its like 80%, with 15% being a civ advance, and the remainder resulting in ONE barbarian appearing or the founding of a new city. Does this have to do with the location of barbarian cities near the huts, or has the designer discovered a way to tinker with the odds?

[techumseh]

Discussion of the scenario will start next Thursday evening (EST). Thanks.

[techumseh]

Well, it's Thursday night. What did people think?

[RobRoy]

Sorry didn't get a chance to play it earlier this week. Getting a chance to play it right now. Will comment next week. First impression of the map leaves me abivalent, though (Sicily?)

Guess it's good that we're only every two weeks, after all.

[techumseh]

This is Paul Hanson's report:

The first thing that strikes you when you play HRE is the graphics; they are really amazing, and most are taken from
the same collection and edited slightly, so they look good. The terrain is very nice too.

But on to more important issues; the gameplay in particular. I thought that it was a little lacking in this part, especially
as the Saxons and Franconians, who I played as. Once the nearby barbarian cities have all been captured, there`s very little to do but try to attack your neighbours, which invariably have built up a reasonable army and will badger you constantly with threats of violence (especially on Deity). And the large amounts of forest mean that warfare is
inevitably slow and can get fairly tedious outside of areas with roads or rivers. This may be historically accurate, but
I wouldn`t know.

On the theme of historical accuracy, there was one thing that seemed a little odd. As the Franconians, I managed to capture the Saxon capital of Minden, which split their empire up. Fair enough, you may say. But the rival civ was the Italians! The Italians now controlled large amounts of modern-day Poland and Germany. It seemed a little odd, but
the Italians had been wiped out by the Romans by this point, so maybe it wasn`t that strange really. (Just a small
glitch).

The good points were:
-Nice graphics for units
-" " " " " terrain
-Well balanced units
-Good AI (the Saxons managed to conquer the cities they were intended to, as did the Bohemians)

The bad points were:
-Slow pace
-Not much to do after the conquest of nearby barbarian cities
-Some dodgy historical accuracy(?)

[Hendrik the Great]

Well, I haven't finished playing yet but here are my first comments.

I'm playing as the Saxons and have slowly build up my Empire. I control every city north of and including the line Metz, Mainz, Frankfurt, Naumburg, Zeitz and Olomouc.
I'm the most advanced civ I guess having speeped up all the goodie-huts I could find and trading with other civs to get more techs. My army is currently advancing against the Franconians who will fall within a few turns. Otherwise I avoid war at all cost since my defenses back home are bad. Also I do not have a single wonder which however doesn't slow me down much.

The graphics are very beautifull especially the citie look amazing(I wish i could draw cities like that...). map is nice and it's fun to play so far. Balance is good too and traveling around is as one would expect in tjose times(I like that). There are some points that look funny. Several civs found new cities that have the identical name of other cities the civ already has. Some cities are in the wrong location I think, just a few squares though.
There was no Pedia.txt was there?

To conclude it is a quite nice scenario which do like a lot so far. Partially becasue I like the time quite a lot.

------------------
Mathias' Civ II Page
http://members.xoom.com/thalys/index.html

[Hendrik the Great]

Where are all you people? Or was there some sort of change of time I did not notice...?

The current game is progressing at a snails pase. But it's moving. Franconians are gone and the Swabians made a big mistake (although I'm wondering where the heck I'm suppossed to get all those units from I need). They lost Strassburg after they besieged Speyer but were driven off again there.
Brunswick, small town I founded somewhere on the Pommerian coast, was wiped-away by some stupid Vikings. Also I lost Metz tempararily to some Franks(Barbs) but I happened to have a Priest near by and bought the place again using all the money I could find by selling improvements.

[Mao]

I'm sorry, I was playing it and slowly advancing but then Red Front v1.4 came out...and...well...you know, I gotta play that!

[Archangel]

I played the scenario a little bit too. I can't really add anything new. I played as the Barvarians though. The Magyars are tough. I managed to take Gyor, but the Magyars took a city I had built nearby.

I'm having a tough time with the upper italian states. Outside of Verona I have 2 catapults and a strong pikeman i got from a hut. I can't take the city.