This section contains guides to the ten stand-alone scenarios that come with the original game. I have also provided basic guides to the two official downloadable scenarios released by Sunflowers in 2003 - The Marquess and Metropol. See Editing and Custom Scenarios for further details. In this section:

These scenarios can be played in any order. I suggest you try to match your level of experience with the game to star rating given. Some of the lower rated games can be quite mundane to a player that has already completed the campaign or has played a few harder continuous games. Likewise, certain higher rated scenarios are not suited to new players. These walkthroughs assume basic competence when building colonies. These walkthroughs primarily cover the things that make a specific scenario difficult - they don't hold your hand and walk you through every last detail.

Where relevant, I have included simple ASCII representations of maps. Maps are always aligned with North towards the top of the page.

Objectives are numbered in the order in which they appear. Normally the lowest numbered objectives need to be completed before others are shown. Where several objectives are given at the same time, they are shown with letters, for example 1a, 1b. If you do not know how to read the objectives as you play, see Can I see the current objectives in-game? above.

The in-game rating for each scenario is shown as 1-4 stars, where 1 star is easy, 4 hardest.

Since many do not enjoy the war aspects of the game, I have added a "war-o-meter" rating to each scenario, to give an indication of how important the war aspects are. The scale is as follows:

Here is a summary of ratings and war-o-meters:

Scenario Ratings and War-o-Meter
Scenario Rating War-o-meter
Hobson's Choice *** **/****
Ruthless Richard *** ***
Friendly Neighbors ** **
The Bet ** *
Playing for Time **** *
Settlement Recipe ** *
The King of Ore ** *
Many Small Islands ** *
Negative Influence **** **
Siege ** *****
The Marquess ** ***
Metropol * *

(While browsing through the game's files, I notice there are several extra scenarios listed. For example, 'Lessland', a goldrush scenario, one involving pirate hunting, etc. The actual scenario files appear to have been omitted, and only the text files associated with them can be found. I wonder what happened to these...?)