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Author: Philipp Blanz

Reviewer: Mr. Temba
 [Historical/
15th Century]

The Royalists try to take back England from Cromwell's Parliament.

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Overall / Playability / General Care / Art & Originality / Concluding Notes

Overall Rating

14/30
COMMENTS: None.

Playability Rating

5 / 10
COMMENTS: The scenario was fun to play, for a little while. While seemingly well balanced it was rather monotonous with a total of around 30 units used. Each side had infantry, cavalry and artillery with a few boats.

Some other things, such as the Royalists being too darkly colored for their city names to be read without effort, the old graphics, and the general monotony of it all made this scenario only average in playability.

Level of General Care

4 / 10
COMMENTS: The major glaring problem is that technology can be traded and that the unique techs of each nation have their prerequisites set to nil, nil. This means that Scots can have Royal Tech, Parliament can have Scot Tech, etc., etc. This ruins everything very quickly.

Other problems such as the absence of Monotheism, Ceremonial Burial, and Theology, which make happiness improvements useless, and the "Archbishop" of the Scots, and the fact that scoring is already complete, would have made the score in this section truly abysmal if not for some very good points.

The sound set up utility worked well, there was a Pink Floyd song in the beginning of the scenario (YES!) and there was generally a good background.

I think that overall though this scenario is simply mediocre in its level of general care. I would recommend using the entire map by filling France with Barbarian cities that could be conquered, which would give incentives to expand south but at the same time not worry about French Invasions (except maybe through events). Also the events file was pretty skimpy and I think it should be enlarged.

Art and Originality

5 / 10
ARTWORK: There is some good artwork in this scenario, but too much of it is left in the original Microprose form. Ocean graphics, units, terrains, improvements, etc are unchanged from the normal civ2. I think this is a shame because there are many units out there that are better than the Microprose drawings, especially the "Dragoon" image.

ORIGINALITY: As for originality once again the score is around average level. The concept of giving each tribe their own Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry has long since become passe and some truly unique and interesting things should have been thrown in. The Royal Guard and King Charles units are a good start!

CONCLUDING REMARKS: None.

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