Apolyton Civ2 Page

Scenario League Page

Historical Scenario Reviews

Overall Rating

20/30

COMMENTS: This interesting scenario features lovely terrain and very well-done unit graphics, as well as a fascinating theme. However, it falls short due to problems in unit balancing and the lack of appropriate defenses for NATO-controlled territory. With some tinkering this scenario could be an extremely good one, however.

The scenario features NATO air units as defenders of an allied Kosovar civilization. The Kosovars are relatively ineffectual so allied bombers need to be used to stop the Serbian advance. The Serbs have extremely sophisticated air defenses, consisting mostly of invisible surface-to-air missile (SAM) units. The allies have lots of cruise missiles, bombers, and fighters.

Playability Rating

3 / 10

COMMENTS: The scenario plays relatively well for the first few turns, but even I found it extremely hard after a few turns had passed. The ready availability of roads and Serbian air defense units made it very difficult to stop the Serbs from moving troops in. I lost a lot of air units, which are fairly hard to replace, as well as using up many cruise missiles on SAM targets.

The main problem lies in the use of so many air-defense units that are mobile. The player should have been using bombers to strategically block roads and to strike at ground forces. Instead, bombers are mostly used to attack SAM units that are advancing on cities. The super-high firepower of some of these units makes them utterly deadly to both air units and Kosovar units.

Meanwhile, the player lacks any effective ground defense unit for his own cities, which means that the Serbs can occupy NATO cities relatively easily. Perhaps the player is supposed to destroy all incoming units before they can reach his cities, but this proves to be extremely difficult.

Finally, the lack of missions and interesting ground targets made the scenario feel rather bland. The author had plenty of opportunity to create interesting "ground targets" in cities and such that when destroyed produced various messages. For example, airports, bridges, and other structures could be simulated with units that can be "destroyed" by allied bombing, resulting in text messages and possibly financial rewards for more units. In real life, the allies spent less time bombing SAM installations and more time attacking various ground targets, including Serbian troops.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

ARTWORK: The units looked nice, and the terrains were amazingly good. I especially liked the look of the roads against the mountainous terrain. What would help here would be a SOUNDS directory. The colors in the title.gif file are also messed up. The author should recall that only a fixed palette can be used (see my tip on this). Many of the units are borrowed, but they look good together.

ORIGINALITY: The idea of using air power exclusively was very clever, but needs some more work. In particular, adding more ground targets and reducing the number of SAM installations, especially mobile SAM units, would be helpful. The scenario also suffers somewhat from a shortage of interesting events. Text messages and more interesting targets, especially "quest-like" targets, would spice up the scenario considerably.