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SYNOPSIS:

It is the height of the Pax Britannica.  While Europe's continental empires scramble to check the British Empire in Africa and the Pacific, England's greatest fears are becoming reality in one of the most desolate spots on the globe.  For Russia has expanded swiftly across the eastern steppes, and if she finds a way across the roof of the world, the shining jewel of India lays before her.

PRÉCIS:

This is a major rewrite of Michael's original Civ2 Great Game scenario. This is a fun little scenario, which has captured a good flavour for the intrigues and intricacies of the era. It plays as two quite different games dependent upon whether you play the Russians, the protagonists, or the English, the other major power trying to contain the Russians.

I enjoyed playing this scenario. It's set in an interesting period of history that might at first seem a bit obscure for a civilization scenario. I think this is part of its appeal in that it captures the atmosphere of  this era surprisingly well - agents disguise themselves as local natives and scramble through mountain passes exploring the remoteness of this area, Indian native sepoys rebel when they discover that the new breach loaded weapons they have been issued are greased with cow and pig fat, and English engineers actually transform the desert to build one of the wonders of the modern world; the Suez canal.

Playing the two different civilizations recommended by the designer, Michael J. Daumen, the Russians and the English lead to two very different games. The Russians, as the protagonists, play a very expansionist game while the English have to play a much more diplomatic and cautious game.

Both provide a reasonable challenge. Russia has to struggle to bring its armies through those tortuous mountain passes of the Caucacus to enable it to reach those key cities. It has a huge amount of ground to cover with attacks on several fronts to co-ordinate in order to actually achieve anything better than a stalemate in the time allowed. England, on the other hand, has a very different hand to play being fenced in by the extremely fierce and warlike Afghans on one side and the huge and impassable Himalayas on the other.

I liked the historic setting messages that pop up every now and again and feel they add a lot to the atmosphere and can even be quite interesting and educational. Did you know that Richard Burton, one of the discoverers of the source of the Nile, also disguised himself as an Arab and was the first white man to see Mecca? This was truly the era of great adventure.

My main fault in this section would be that it is too easy to win as the English if you use one simply trick... If you give all of your technology to the Ottoman Turks then they will have a fairly easy time of containing the Russians for you. I think this should be considered a cheat. The English of the era would certainly not have been interested in boosting the Ottoman Turks up to their own level of technology. The English had desires on the region as much as the Russians and wouldn't have wanted to replace one adversary with another. I think this could be resolved in the scenario by changing the winning criteria of the scenario. At the moment it is a simple objectives scoring scenario with a time limit. If this was changed so that both the Russians and English had expansionist objectives then there would be an incentive not to give all your technology away.

My other gripe on the playability front would be that the events aren't very evenly balanced between the two major sides. The English seem to get all the major interesting events, the Suez canal, the sepoy rebellion even the Crimean war is a share English / Russian event. The Russians however get very few, a few randomly created Cossacks join your side and at one point the Tzar declares emancipation for the serfs. The latter is not explained and I still have no idea what impact this actually had on the game.

This imbalance could have been addressed somewhat by letting the Russians, as well as the English, build the Suez canal if they captured the relevant city. I know this is not what happened in history but surely this game gives us a chance to do better than the real antagonists did. It would also give Russia another way to the Indian sub continent and would therefore open up extra strategic possibilities.

Finally it would also have been nice to have been able to have built some wonders. A few already exist in the game, the Taj Mahal and, funnily enough, the Pyramids, however you are not able to build any new ones.

Unfortunately this is where the scenario falls down. Let me first say what is good and then I'll tackle the problems.

The map is excellent. Although presented at a strange angle so that North is not straight up the map, it is an excellent representation of the area. It can be quite exciting to struggle as the Russians to capture the vital city of Istanbul (I wonder if this should have been called Constantinople, my history is not good enough) to allow your ships access to the Mediterranean or, as the English, to see that Suez canal suddenly open up and give you access from your Mediterranean bases to your Indian colony.

The tech tree has some nice touches and gives a good progression through the technology of the era. It adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game. It appears to have a sensible order and allows a steady progression through the strength of units allowed.

Unfortunately this is a scenario desperately in need of a little completion.

No new sounds have been supplied. This is a real shame as it means that the great atmosphere built up by the lovely units is spoiled as soon as they attack, the canon sounds like the old catapult and the Cossacks roar like war elephants.

There appears to be no extra city names supplied so it not uncommon to get unnamed cities or even two cities with the same name. This is a shame and can lead to situation where you get messages like 'Ambush near .'

There is also a fault in the events used to trigger the Crimean war. For a start it is too easy to avoid the war entirely with a number of tricks that I won't put in here as it will spoil the game somewhat. Secondly you can get Crimean war messages when killing English units even if the Crimean war has not been declared.

The art work is good. Each civilisation has a number of its own units that really help differentiate the civilizations. This scenario lends itself to this with such diverse civilizations as the English, the Persians and the Indians involved. As far as I could see all the units have been re-done for this scenario with none of the originals appearing. This definitely helps to create a separate feel from the original game which is one of the keys to a good scenario.

I particularly liked the map. It really captured something of the area and again was quite educational. Michael has made excellent use of the new impassable terrain type supplied by Test of Time. The huge mountains of the Himalayas and the Caucacus ranges block your progress and turn those remote mountain passes in to vitally important strategic locations.

Unfortunately again the game has been let down somewhat in this category by its lack of finish. The graphics are great but not all have been changed. The small graphics in the city improvements list have been changed in line with the new improvements but not the larger graphics. This leads to situations where you complete a cathedral that looks like a Greek temple and then a mosque that looks like a cathedral.

On the positive front I liked the use of the cruise missile abilities to create native units that have ambush abilities. These units have large ranges so they pop up all over the place, launch their ambush and then die. Suicide attacks, nice touch!

Concluding Comments and Suggestions:

As a final conclusion this is a good scenario that Michael has obviously put a lot of work into and is most enjoyable to play. Unfortunately it just needs a little more completion work and then it would really be able to score. Sort out the sounds, the city names and the city improvement graphics and I would be happy to give it another couple of points instantly. In fact I would have liked to have given this scenario more points because it is a good scenario and fun to play.