Warlords II (and/or deluxe) in all its incarnations is one of my all time favorites. This game was written/published in 1995 by SSG Strategic Studies Group Pty Ltd for DOS.
Nowadays I play it only now and than (using DOSBox), but once upon a time I used to play it on end, especially drawing upon the feature of “Hot Seat” and play with a friend.
What is warlords? 
- It is a fairly simple strategy game, where you play a nation and try to conquer all other nations (or at least half of all cities).
- Usually each nation has its own set of available troups.
- You can have heroes, which can be equipped with special gear and which can do quests and get rewards.
- There is no resource management – since there are no resources (other than gold).
- You basically conquer cities (cities can not be build, they are fix for each map), produce troups and conquer more cities (and defend the ones you have)
- There are special sites (temples, ruins etc) where you can find special troups, or hero items
- There are different difficult settings, AI levels and you can chose to have a fog of war (or not)
Why do I mention it today?
Because this weekend I found a file that I thought I lost, namely: “CHRIS1.SZP”
This file is a scenario (a map) I made for Warlords II!
In my many years of playing and programming there are only very, very few games where I bothered to make a map, or level or the like. The map I did for Warlords II was very aptly named “Chris1” (there is NO Chris 2 🙂 ). It is a map with many cities, 8 different starting locations which are quite balanced (except the dwarven nation in the north west, take this as a starting location if you want a challenge).
Despite of knowing that level very well (since I made it) this one was my favourite map for Warlords II. It is IMHO very playable and quite challenging. It playes quite differently depending on the starting nation. It has custom made cities and custom made armies (although some I reused from other map makers).
An image of my scenario:
Here it comes: CHRIS1.SZP
(remember, unpack the SZP file with the scenario editor, otherwise you can not play it!)
Zufällig bin ich auf deine Seite gestoßen. Bin selber großer Warlords 2 Fan der ersten Stunde. Ein Kumpel hatte das damals auf seinem Dos Rechner. Ich hatte keinen, deshalb haben wir es immer nur bei ihm gespielt.
Habe mir jetzt vor einigen Wochen die Gog-Version gekauft und von der ersten Sekunde kamen gleich die ganzen tollen Erinnerungen hoch, wie wir das im Flur seiner Eltern gespielt haben (da stand der Rechner).
Deine Map sieht jedenfalls fantastisch aus, man sieht, dass viel Zeit investiert wurde, allein wenn ich das Sumpfgebiet rechts oben betrachte. 🙂
Ich werde mal versuchen, ob ich es schaffe, sie zu entpacken.
Viele Grüße