Is less in scenarios better?

[Panda]

The thought occurred to me while making my new scenario that you can go too OTT in terms of improvements, especially in cities.

How many scenarios don't allow for any, or only limited research? How many don't allow for any or only limited new city improvements? How many scenarios have fully improved terrain in the city radius? How many, in short, are not about resource management anymore but a simple "build lots of units and fight the enemy" scenario?

Probably not many in recent times. But which is better, or where does the perfect balance lie?

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"The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on"

[BeBro]

I thinks there is no right answer for your question. I like scns with lots of new things to research and to build - not only units, also improvements and wonders. But this is my personal view. However, in my own scns, I don´t care what other people say, and so there are always many techs, improvements, but also units

[Michael Daumen]

As a general rule, I figure the shorter the time period, the less you need techs. But beware, the computer always researches them faster than you think. And as far as improvments, wonders et c, they make a good scenario complete.

[Mao]

I think the wonders and improvements etc. add to the atmosphere of the scenario, they help, but I'm more interested in tanks and planes

[Paul Hanson]

Personally, I want my scenarios to offer something more than the original game, and if that involves copious amounts of unit building rather than the careful resource management that the original game involved, than so be it.

[Prometeus]

I think that all wonders and improvements must be suitable to scenarios. It's not the "less or more ?" question, it's more close to "suitable or unsuitable ?" question. I mean, it's useless to improve natural resources and then allow factory building in scen ... do you get the point ?

[Ted Bundy's Volkswagon]

My scenarios are usually limited to building units and attacking

[Mao]

Hey Andrew, do you have the site for your new scenario ready yet?

[Captain Nemo]

I guess the conscensus is: "It depends"

Red Front has a lot of development, city building, wonderbuilding, terrain improvements etc. and a pretty large tech tree...
Some people played it as a tech/development scenario others just as a war scenario...

I got complaints that there was too much management involved but also the reverse: not enough technologies and not enough city improvements to build.

I think you can't win either way! But realism should be respected. For example in my new scenario "Second Front" where the entire timescale is 10 weeks I don't allow any improvements to be built except things like "Command Post", "Field Hospital" and "Fuel Depot" which realistically were built by Allied troops in a short timespan. City management is almost nil (Although there are about 200 cities) and tech research is strictly given by events (City captures, enemy units killed). Appearance of new types of units is very limited as not much changed in 10 weeks and all terrain improvements are disabled (Patton didn't spend much time irrigating fields in Normandy on his way to Paris...)

This scenario is the complete opposite of RedFront in that area... Hopefully both approaches will work.

[Case]

I think that you can also go over the top with the number of cities in a Scenario. Having too many cities slows down the scenario by hugely increasing the micromanagement the player needs to do each turn, and makes the enemy more formidible then they should be. To my mind, the best example of huge numbers of cites damaging a otherwise great scenario is John Ellis's 100 Years War scenario.
[This message has been edited by Case (edited August 03, 2000).]