Zhan Guo

All
but three by Civilization II original provided units have been changed
by Prometheus to be used in the scenario. There are different units
with different functions, and often each civilization has its own
version for a certain function. A good example is the defensive units
that cannot move: There are several types of Towers, each used by a
different civilization. But even with the whole bunch of units one can
choose from, the player will probarly build just four or five types:
diplomat, one of the towers, heavy infantry, an offensive horseman and
another defensive, cheap unit. Some people probarly don’t even build
the offensive horseman, for it has a lower movement than the heavy
infantry and has the same strength. The unit’s special abilities aren’t
used fully, in my opinion. Most units with abilities have 2x defence
strength against Horses, and some units have the Alpine ability or 2
space visibility. Some units have the Amphibious Assault ability, but
that has not been used in the scenario at all (not by the reviewer). So
some units certainly have special abilities, but to say that there are
innovative combinations is too much.

The barbarians are
a different thing. Their activities concentrate mainly in the south of
the map, and a bit in the north as well. The northern empire (meant to
play) have little trouble defeating the few barbarians that attack the
cities, because they have the Great Wall wonder in one of their cities,
and most southern cities are equiped with City Walls as well. Both
terrains in the north and south are filled with stationary barbarian
units though, and killing for example a horse, makes a few new
barbarian units appear, which will try to attack a city, because they
are angry you killed on of them.

Well,
I can be very short on this one. The tech tree is limited to the
special techs for one civilization, that cannot be shared or conquered
by others in another way than stealing through a diplomat. Research is
slowed down artificial in the scenario settings and it is abvious that
the scenario creator doesn’t want the player to research anything. I
know it can be hard to design a good working tech tree, but even a
small one would have been sufficient here.

Because
there is no game.txt, most non-event in-game messages haven’t been
changed. Now most don’t need a change, but putting the messages ina in
this case ancient chinese perspective would have added to the game.
There is a pedia.txt included, but to be honest; I couldn’t find out
what the creator changed in it except for the word ‘triremes’ for the
Lighthouse description is changed to ‘ships’. The creator forgot to
edit some words, for example it still says that the ‘Tavern’
(Colosseum) can be enhaned with Electronics, and it still says that the
Workshop (Stock Exchange) is cumulative with MarketPlace and Bank.

The
terrain used in Zhanguo, looks nice. All kinds of terrains got a new
graphic from creator Prometheus, and new resources were invented to
create the right atmosphere. The terrain was a bit chaotic sometimes
though, but that didn’t cause any trouble.

The one
thing that troubled me was the historic accurasy. It’s true that this
civil war happened, but the date used in the scenario is totally wrong.
The scenario starts in 230, and after playing a few turns, you see that
you are in 228, meaning that you are in the B.C.’s. The creator tells
about the fall of the Han-dynasty, so no mistakes can be made. The
Han-dynasty ruled over China from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220. The civil war
this scenario is about went from A.D. 220 to A.D. 589. This scenario
takes place in only one part of the scenario (20.5 years): the
conquests of the Ch’in. My encyclopedia tells me that the conquests of
the Ch’in happened from A.D. 280 to A.D. 317. This is in my opinion a
very large error, and should, no must be
improved in the next version. About the geography, though, I couldn’t
find real mistakes. Every language writes those city names different
(Bejing or Peking, Ch’in or Tsjin, Mao Tse Tung or Mao Zedung) so I
didn’t pay much attention to that.

I am happy about the
looks of the cities, fortress and terrain improvement. The look nice
and fit in the terrain used. A full point for that.

No
documentation was given at all, except for the pre-scenario
information. I think that isn’t a good thing at all, because most
people do not know anything about this time period in China. A small
Word document or just some background information in the very short
readme file would be enough. It’s too bad that there is such little
information, now. That is something the author might want to change in
the future versions he might be planning to making.

An other point, which is
sufficient, is the eventsfile. The file isn’t too large and provides
the scenario with an acceptable amount of events, mostly used to tell
about the death of an important leader or to enhance the AI. The best
events are the ‘randomturn’events: the creator has put in the
possibility that a certain civilization declares war at the player.
This adds a nice extra thing to the scenario and forces you to never
weaken your defences at the borders. For example, you are on the edge
of a full-scale-final-battle attack on the three eastern civs. All your
units are there and are in the middle of an important battle, when over
sudden, the civ south of you declares war at you and takes over all
those size 10 cities without proper defence. You don’t want that to
happen.

The icons used in the scenario are chosen well
and look nice enough to give a full point for it. Prometheus had put a
lot of effort in making this scenario and did a good job in my opinion.
Prometheus is not a newbie on the scene and knows his part of scenario
building, which he has proven in this one.