Best Scenarios of All Time

techumseh

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Well, I'm sad to say that I think Scenario League is in its twilight days, so maybe it's time for a little retrospective. What do you think are the five best Civ 2 scenarios out there? Here's my list:

1) Lord of the Rings by Catfish.
2) Mongols by Harlan Thompson.
3) Red Front by Captain Nemo.
4) Napoleon by Tootall.
5) Justinian the Great by Carl Fritz.

At the risk of being immodest, I will add one of my own: Operation Market-Garden by techumseh.

I would be very interested in what scenarios others think deserve to be on the list.
 
I did not play in the scenarios, however, I carefully studied how they worked. My top5:

1.Classical Antiquity (AC2MPV1p1)
2. Hannibal2 (CurtSibling)
3. Greek Colonization (Soaring MP v1p3; McMonkey)
4. Komnenai (Heresson)
5. Scenario of the First World War. I don't know who the author is. The scenario plays out on a very large world map.

These scenarios impressed me primarily with their graphics and clear goals and rules.

6. I consider TRON to be the best scenario released during the entire existence of Civ2. This is a very strange scenario, with primitive graphics and rules. However, in my opinion, he is the only one who managed to embody the entire essence of Civ2 in the form of a separate scenario. This is just my personal opinion.

Also, I’ll add the Millennium mod to the “audience award”, it’s really excellent.
 
Five is too few - I'm rewriting the rules for myself and giving you my favourite 10 (not necassarily the best 10 ever!). In no particular order:

Imperium Romanum - Berndt Brosing
Brown Man's Burden - Carl Fritz
Caesar - John Petroski
Colonies 4.2 - John Ellis
Komnenai / Fading Lights - Heresson (meh that's two, but they're similar themes and I can't choose)
Napoléon - Tootall
Of Celts and Iberians - Jesús Balsinde
OMG - Techumseh
El Aurens - Boco
Reformation - civ2units

Actually 10 isn't enough. Rewriting the rules again to give me 23

Red Front - Cap'n Nemo
Germanicus - John Petroski
The River War - Allard Höfelt
Boneparte - John Ellis
Justinian - Carl Fritz
Sengoku Jidae - DarthVeda
100 Years War - John Ellis
Hellas - John Ellis
Warlords of China - Techumseh
Dictator scens - CurtSibling
Battle of Italy - Tootall
The French and Indian War - Carl Fritz
TES - Dadais
 
Spartacus: The Quest for Freedom by Alex Mor and Captain Nemo is an interesting one. There's a series of event changes for it, and the gameplay changes over time. Early on in its release it tried to be a sort of a paid mod or shareware, which was interesting.

Harlan Thompson's Mongols and Vikings are both hugely influential for me. Mongols is the first scenario I played that has memorable hero units, and I love the amphibious assault gameplay of Vikings. It influenced me a great deal when making my Fictional Americas doggerel.

I'm a sucker for Roman history. Bernd Brosing's Imperium Romanum is one that ranks highly on that topic.

Kull's Seeds of Greatness is an excellent Mediterranean ancient history scenario, both in the total conversion modpack experience of 3500BC and more of a final battle deathmatch experience of 1200BC.

I had a delightful time with curtsibling's Bitterfrost scenarios recently, but it's hard to choose just one, so I will go in a sideways direction and nominate the official Master of Magic Jr scenario from Fantastic Worlds. I like how small it is.
 
The Mines of Moria by Favoured Flight
First Strike by Eivind IV
New World Order by academia
Battle of Australia (creator uncertain)
Warlords of China by techumseh

This list is based on my own personal enjoyment, relatively, with playing them, I'll be fully transparent.
 
Seems pretty hard to define "the best" on my side with somehow about a decade playing without internet.

The original wwii scenario, despite its issues, shall forever hold first place in heart.

That said, while I missed the golden age of modding, I still got impressed by some scenarii in most recent years.

Napoleon and Battle of Italy by tootall,
Colonies by John Ellis,
Germanicus and Hinge of Fate by John Petroski,
Sengoku Jidae by DarthVeda,

gave quite a slap in my face per exemple.
 
Just spent the whole day in small claims court for a case we had to present to the judge, as a former administrator of my condo, against 2 different owners whose leaking showers had caused damage to the building's infrastructure. It was not a particularly pleasant experience. I don't recommend it as a pastime! :lol:

All the same, I felt the need to reply to techumseh's post to cheer him up a little and let him know he's not alone in still caring for our beloved pastime.

In no particular order here are some of the scenarios that I played over the years that provided me with a great deal of pleasure:
  • 2194Days by Captain Nemo was the very first Civilization scenario I ever played and has always left a particularly good memory.
  • The War of the Ring by Catfish
  • Moria by Favored Flight
  • OMG and Burma by Techumseh
  • Korea Redux by Patine and McMonkey
  • Germanicus on the Rhine, Caesar and HoF by John Petroski
  • Second Front and Red Front by Captain Nemo
  • Operation Herbstnebel by Darth Veda
  • The Rape of Nations (aka TRON) by Koyabashi
  • Bitterfrost and the Dictator series by Curt
In a class by its own as a mod but definitely worth recommending, Medieval Millennium by Knighttime

And if I may be so bold, a particular favorite of my own design was "A House Divided" which I remember with great fondness not only in playing it but during the whole design process.

There are many others, which are not listed above, which I also had a great time playing. So if you were one of those designers who's not mentionned above don't think your work wasn't appreciated as I know from personal experience how much work, love and determination goes into making a scenario! :thumbsup:

Cheers to all!
 
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Honestly I've only played a very few scenarios until its end.
In a non particular order I would list these three scenarios which I played until its end:

Overlord by Curt
Cold War by JPetroski (This scenario gave me a huge inspiration to design the Reformation scenario and showed me, whats all possible with LUA)
1937 by Techumseh (This scenario gave me the push finaly to make a new strategic orientated AWI scenario, which I'm currently working on)

Like @tootall_2012 wrote, every scenario ever uploaded or released here is a masterpiece.
 
Considering this as scenarios I've replayed a lot...

Red Front (far and away top)
Mongols
Dictator 7
Bonaparte
2194 days of war

Too many others competing for 6th, but the above are standouts for me. I've played probably most scenarios since 1997. I generally prefer historical and avoid fantasy while most sci scens never looked or worked right for me. I'm also surely forgetting something as I write this. Long Live Civ2
 
Considering this as scenarios I've replayed a lot...

Red Front (far and away top)
Mongols
Dictator 7
Bonaparte
2194 days of war

Too many others competing for 6th, but the above are standouts for me. I've played probably most scenarios since 1997. I generally prefer historical and avoid fantasy while most sci scens never looked or worked right for me. I'm also surely forgetting something as I write this. Long Live Civ2
Long time, no see, voltar.

And, if you're still living Toronto, as your avatar says, a Happy Belated Thanksgiving I gave everyone else among Canadian posters, here!
 
Five is too few - I'm rewriting the rules for myself and giving you my favourite 10 (not necassarily the best 10 ever!). In no particular order:

In order to keep some of this beautiful work from the Scenario League alive, I've been considering bringing some of it into a mod for Unciv, an open source remake of Civ 5. While Unciv's graphical capabilities are pretty limited by design, I think some of the scenario art would do fabulously in it. Could I publish an Unciv mod leveraging the art? Of course, I would attribute all of the artists involved (Fairline, Tanelorn, etc).

This is a sample of what it could look like...

Screenshot_from_2024-10-29_21-11-56.png
 
Long time, no see, voltar.

And, if you're still living Toronto, as your avatar says, a Happy Belated Thanksgiving I gave everyone else among Canadian posters, here!

Heyo, I am still regularly checking civfan for scenarios :) (New Overlord when?)

And yeah, still in Toronto so thank you kindly.
 
In order to keep some of this beautiful work from the Scenario League alive, I've been considering bringing some of it into a mod for Unciv, an open source remake of Civ 5. While Unciv's graphical capabilities are pretty limited by design, I think some of the scenario art would do fabulously in it. Could I publish an Unciv mod leveraging the art? Of course, I would attribute all of the artists involved (Fairline, Tanelorn, etc).

This is a sample of what it could look like...

View attachment 708013
Go for it! There's a long tradition of borrowing, remixing, and mashups in Civ2 scenario design. Giving credit is all the better, of course
 
In order to keep some of this beautiful work from the Scenario League alive, I've been considering bringing some of it into a mod for Unciv, an open source remake of Civ 5. While Unciv's graphical capabilities are pretty limited by design, I think some of the scenario art would do fabulously in it. Could I publish an Unciv mod leveraging the art? Of course, I would attribute all of the artists involved (Fairline, Tanelorn, etc).

This is a sample of what it could look like...

View attachment 708013
As Leo says, go for it. I'm interested in the state of Unciv - is it a wip or playable now? Is there scope for scenario design?
 
Great! Thanks a lot. I've started setting it up over at https://github.com/RobLoach/Fairline . Let me know if there's a better name I should use for it ;)

is it a wip or playable now
Unciv certainly is playable, but there are missing features compared to Civ 5, and it's not pretty to look at. It is great if you're looking for a quick game on your mobile though. I'm most impressed by the Mod Support, which is a bunch of JSON files defining the buildings, tech tree, nations, units, etc, all distributed through GitHub repos. You're able to enable and run multiple mods in the same game, and there are already hundreds out there to play around with.

Is there scope for scenario design?
It does have support for scenarios. They're essentially a set of custom mods, a base Ruleset, and a save file.

Can you think of anything I should consider along the way? Been trying to encorporate some of the nation colour masks so that the units are noticeable when beside other nations...
Screenshot_from_2024-10-31_22-32-20.png
 
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