Apolyton Civ2 Page

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Historical Scenario Reviews

Overall Rating

15/30

MAP SIZE: 30x120

LENGTH: 78 "Days"

NEW STUFF:

(Units): SA-6, SA-7, SA-13, Infantry, Special Police, APC, Arkan, Tank Mig-29, Armored Jeep, Howitzer, Militia, Refugee, KLA, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F-18 Hornet, F-117 Nighthawk, A-10 Thunderbolt, B-52 Stratofortress, B-2 Spirit, Cruise Missile, Recon Satellite, Submarine, A/C Carrier, AH-64 Apache

(Improvements): Military Base, Grain Silos, Mosque, Shopping Center, City Defenses, Stadium, Landfill, Freeway, Naval Defenses, Hi-Tech Training, Wartime Production, CIA, Nationalism, Domestic Support

Concepts/Tricks: No land units for the player character, a solely supportive role from the air.

Playability Rating

2 / 10

COMMENTS: I will start off first by commending the author for an absolutely wonderful idea. It is a shame it wasn't carried through as wonderfully. It suffers tremendously in playability. Allied Force is a challenging scenario, and I must say it isn't easy to protect the Kosovars. This is almost certainly because they happen to be dumber than doornails. The same can be said of the Serbs, and if it weren't for the grossly unbalanced unit statistics, the scenario wouldn't be a challenge at all. I'll point out to the author that a few MoveUnit commands wouldn't have hurt in the least bit. I thought it was interesting that the Serbs were more interested in my cities rather than the Kosovars. That brings up another point: the impossibility of defending NATO cities. The author could have included a defensive unit with no movement value for NATO. He did not, which leaves me wondering if he meant for the Serbs to take NATO cities with little difficulty. He may have meant for the player to find the units before they get within striking distance, but loads of invisible super-units make that not very tempting.

Who could blame the Serbs for going after my cities? My cities had the full load; I took a peak using cheat mode, and the Kosovars were only building industry (and never seemed to finish it). The tech for industry should have been restricted. They never built a single military unit and if it had not been for refugees, they would have never taken a city.

I would have liked to see some point to the individual air units. The B-52 and B-2 were practically synonymous, while the F-16 and F-18 were basically the same. The F-15 was badly portrayed, as I found myself using it more often to strike ground forces rather than air forces. Perhaps if the bomber style units had a low defense, and the F-15 had a high defense to escort the bombers, that would be more appropriate.

Three points that greatly affected playability were the sheer number of units, the annoyance of the unbalanced (and sometimes invisible) SAM ("surface-to-air missile"), and the monotony of it all. The game starts with roughly 60 or 70 units under NATO command. Since many of them are missiles, the player loses about 20 units in the first turn. They may prove useful in the first few turns, but after the player annihilates the first wave, the computer gets very weak. Every unit the Serbs own outclasses the Kosovars. This is especially true of the SAMs, which have a psychotic firepower of 20! This was obviously meant so that the player (NATO) would have a bad day if a plane lost to a SAM. What the computer ends up doing is using this to its advantage to completely outclass the Kosovars. The same effect could have been easily achieved through use of attack/defense values and certain flags. Perhaps it is creative that the author also created (practically) invisible SAM sites to disturb the player. At first this seems interesting, but ends up just being annoying. It is easily out-done with a flick of the wrist (I won't reveal how though).

Level of General Care

6 / 10

COMMENTS: Fortunately for the player, it seems that some care was taken in constructing this scenario. The map is fairly nice, and the history provided is quite substantial. The history, however, did not need to take up the entire beginning screen. The author should have remembered that all civ'ers are not gifted with the power of 1024x768 resolution. I couldn't read half the information on the start-up screen.

The cities were named properly, the author had at least a clue about what should happen and when, and I was certainly glad that the Serbs didn't land on Alpha Centauri. (I imagine the rest of the world is glad too).

Art and Originality

7 / 10

COMMENTS: I thought the units looked fairly nice, and the scenery was fabulous. The author admits that many of his graphics have been borrowed. Honesty wins points with me I guess.

I liked the concept of fighting as only one branch of the armed services, but I believe the author could have done so much more with this scenario to break the monotony. Individual missions would have been very cool. I would have like to have seen a different events file for each week. More history blurbs would have been appropriate for this scenario. A mission a day with its own rewards would have been very interesting. If the player had to choose the right aircraft for that mission, it would have been more than entertaining. The author needed to fire up his audience. As the scenario stands though, I was much more excited watching the actual events unfold on TV than I am in playing this scenario.