Scenario Review Scenario Title: (What If?) Cold War Author: Unknown Reviewer: Julia Sasson Fictional scenario. The Soviets defeated the Germans in World War II, alone; now they are bent on world conquest. Download from Apolyton: ussr.zip

Overall Rating 9 / 30 SYNOPSIS: Hi, this is Julia and here's my review. This scenario starts in 1946 and is played on Earth. The protagonist is the Russians (aka Soviet Empire) who are trying to conquer the world by getting enough objectives. The Japs, the Yanks, the Brits, the French, and the Axis are all trying to stop them. The plot was that the Soviets crushed Hitler's armies all on their own, while the British and Americans voted to stay neutral. Pearl Harbor never happened so the USA couldn't get an excuse to fight. The scenario is done OK but it is no prize. It was written with CiC I think but there are no events.txt's included. The art is OK too but it was taken from all over the internet.

Playability Rating 4 / 10 COMMENTS: If you like big modern battles on air, land and sea you will like this scenario. Otherwise... let's just say you will be bored if you don't like to fight, OK? Not all of the civilizations are of equal strength, but that is alright given the premise. The Ruskies are really tough. I played as the Japs and as the Brits, and found the British were much easier to win with. The Japanese start on islands and have a tough time getting their troops into the fight. Plus their production is so low that it is tough to get enough units to beat off the Soviet horde. There are quite a few new units but not all of the units are play balanced. I would make submarines better, for example. They either need to be a lot faster or they need to be stronger on offense and defense - rulers of the sea, as it were. The most glaringly bad was the 45mm flaker gun, which has a really high hit point and firepower rating. On defense these things are lethal. I found them able to take out even my best tanks, for example. The stats of most units are pretty standard, and you will find there is no much here in the way of surprises. One good thing is that science plays a big role. You get kewl stuff from doing research. Of course research depends on civ size so the Russians, English and Americans get the fastest science. I think he should have removed the penalty to science for Fascists given that they actually had quite good tech in real life. As it is it is reduced to 30%. On the other hand, there are not many technologies that are new (maybe 5). World Wide Web is one, which was clever. The author uses the Fascism patch so that there are Fascists instead of fundamentalists. This seems to work OK. I liked how you get a stormtrooper unit if you are fascist. Maybe it should be faster, tho, as it seemed just like every other kind of infantry. City placement is competent and there are a lot of cities. Overall though this is another big WW2 scenario, just with different city placement initially. Without events, it gets tedious fast.

Level of General Care 3 / 10 COMMENTS: In general there is just not enough done here. I know from experience that placing tons of cities is hard work and so I think he/she just pooped out. About the only good thing I can say in this area is that the cities are mostly in the right places and there are a lot of them. But, there aren't new wonders or much in the way of city structures. The tech tree is not much different from usual. Terrain is just the standard. The pedia.txt is not included. City.txt is not included, which is a problem for the Axis who have no city names now. I hate it when people leave that stuff out. I'm being nice here to just three-of-ten them. I should maybe two them.

Art and Originality 2 / 10 ORIGINALITY: A few things are original, like the new units and the use of fascism to replace fundamentalism. But mostly there is not enough novelty here to really make the scenario a great one. I think the first step should be to add much more detail. Events, new civilization-specific units based on history, maybe niftier terrains, just something to make this stand out. The plot is mildly clever. ART: The unit art is credible but not very original. There is no other new art.

NOTES: A solid scenario that just didn't change enough to make it exciting. That's it for my review. (_!_) <- Consider yourself e-mooned. --Jul.

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