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What is the "greatest snow level"? From my perspective, a "greatest" snow level should impact gameplay, have some sort of narrative reasoning behind its existence, and, of course, create a unique aesthetic through visuals and sound that is centred on snow. In these three aspects, I think that one level stands out in terms of "greatness" and its strong resonance with the idea of "snow", though perhaps it is not entirely appropriate to call it a "level"...
This is Endless Legend, by Amplitude Studios, and its greatest snow level is Winter.
In the backstory of Endless Legend, the various fantastical races of the planet Auriga were wracked by natural disasters and wars waged among a primordial race called the Endless. In the wake of this devastation, the planet recovered and its peoples grew stronger through exploring the land and exploiting its bounty. However, the aftershocks of past conflicts on Auriga make themselves known through a long and cruel Winter, which can cause an empire's growth and development to slow to a crawl as its people and armies struggle under freezing winds and merciless hail.
As a game mechanic, Winter (also called Dark Season) was originally part of the base game, and became much more complex and intricate with the release of the Shifters expansion. Winter occurs at semi-random intervals every 30-50 turns or so, and generally lasts between 5 and 15 turns. Each time Winter occurs, it imposes debuffs on the empires of the world, typically cutting food, production, and dust (the game's currency) values within the cities, and causing armies movement and sight penalties.
The exact time Winter hits is also unknown at the game start (see the range indicated on the top right), as the game presents a turn counter until the next Winter that only covers a range of 20 turns (though the range narrows with technological developments and certain city constructions). The exact timing of each Winter's end is also unknown, and as the game continues, the intervals between Winters become shorter, and the Winters themselves become longer.
Consequently, Winter was seen as a rather unpopular mechanic as it mostly served to slow the game pace. It forced empire expansion to slow arbitrarily, and some players saw it as merely making an already time-consuming game artificially longer. Shifters, however, introduced a few additional mechanics to Winter to make sure that it does not simply decelerate the game's pace, but rather forces the players to make decisions and plans so as to avoid the worst negative elements of Winter and take advantage of opponents that fail to make similar preparations.
Post-Shifters, every time a Winter occurs it seeds the world with unique resources called Pearls. Acquiring Pearls is as simple as moving a unit on top of them, at which point they can be spent on Winter-related features such as unit upgrades and buildings.
Getting access to these upgrades requires the construction of a unique district (tile-sized city expansion) called the Altar of Auriga, which upon construction opens a menu for Winter Blessings and Prayers.
Winter Blessings are unique upgrades unlocked with a Pearl cost, and the upgrades themselves also cost Pearls. Many of them are for upgrading cities to resist the effects of Winter, and some of them produce year-round effects as well. Some Blessings are more powerful than others, and can only be unlocked after the passing of several Winters. In the image above, the Blessings in the innermost ring cost 10 Pearls each to unlock and can be unlocked after the first Winter, the middle ring costs 15 each and can be unlocked after the second Winter, and the last ring costs 20 each after the third Winter.
Prayers are offered to Auriga through Pearls in order to modify the effects of upcoming Winters. Each Prayer has a Pearl cost that increases by 1 with each passing turn, and the Winter condition that has the most Prayers globally when the next Winter hits is applied. In the event of a tie, the selection is randomized between the winners. It is generally to your advantage to skew the results towards debuffs that will affect your operations least in the long term, but your ability to do so may come at the cost of a limited resource that will ultimately be used for other Winter-related activities. It is also worth noting that debuffs provided by Winter tend to worsen and stack upon themselves with each instance of Winter, thus it is important to remember that every penalty applied will persist through every Winter thereafter.
Once you have ways of counteracting the worst effects of Winter, there are other ways for you to skew it to your advantage. Construction of the unique district tile called Winter Boroughs allows you to make use of special bonuses during Winter, and other buildings such as the Chapel of Auriga and the Abbey of Anomalies allows you to make resource gains year-round that more than make up for a stall Winter may impose.
Additionally, high-level Heroes can potentially gain the ability to nullify the effects of Winter on military units or cities they lead, meaning that under the right circumstances, Winter may not even slow an empire at all.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Shifters expansion included another Winter-focused gameplay twist in the form of a new empire type, the Allayi:
Though they may look like vaguely anime fox-bats, the Allayi are a faction that specializes in exploration and advance scouting at the cost of a slower, measured empire development. However, Allayi are particularly resilient in Winter due to their ability to see Pearl clusters through fog of war and also gain bonuses to the overall number of Pearls they get, even outside of Winter.
They also have the ability to transform from a defence-focused form during the rest of the year to the stealth-bomber-looking offence form during the Winter, which grants movement speed and attack bonuses with which to better strike at opponents weakened by Winter.
The Allayi also have access to unique Winter Blessings, one of which is available from game start. This, combined with their ability to gain pearls through means other than purely Winter expeditions makes them one of the most effective races for exploiting the full range of Winter Blessings.
It is also worth noting that while you go through a Winter, the game's interface makes a few subtle changes in order to reflect the season, including not only the changes to the tiles, but a subtle little snow effect on the game's zoomed-out strategic view, as well as a transition to an icy colour palette full of pale blues and grays.
Endless Legend OST #8: Geology
Endless Legend OST #19: Coriolis
The game's fantastic musical suite also has a couple of songs designed around the change to Winter, which serve to convey the mood of desolation and hardship that each Winter brings.
Finally, the reason that Winter is the "greatest" snow level is the fact that its presence bears long-term implications on the story of the Amplitude game series, and here's why:
The planet Auriga also appears in Endless Space 2, a sequel game made by Amplitude currently in Early Access. The planetary systems in each game are randomized, and as a little throwback to their previous series, Amplitude included Auriga as a planet that may appear in some games. Here is what it looks like:
Irony of ironies, this is one of the darker definitive indicators of a canon in the Amplitude series. For the time being (as not all Endless Space 2 races and backgrounds have been revealed yet), it seems as though no native peoples from Auriga managed to escape the wrath of its Winter before it was reduced to a completely frozen planet, thus implying that regardless of who actually survives the conflicts of Endless Legend, they will eventually be starved by their legendarily desolate Winter. As though to add insult to injury, the technological advancements made apparent in Endless Space 2 allow for a population colonizing Auriga to turn it into a food-rich planet. Such is the wrath of Winter, quelled only by literal alien science.
Winter in Auriga is among the most prominent and grandiose examples of any winter, spanning two games and theoretically responsible for an apocalyptic conclusion to the story of Endless Legend. It adds twists and turns to the gameplay formula and is truly a force within its own story, to be treated with both reverence and dread.
It is the greatest snow level.