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Historical Scenario Reviews

Playability Rating

5 / 10

COMMENTS: There are a number of flaws that make this scenario less interesting than some others we have seen by this author. The main problem is that the scenario is too easy.

On the one hand, the author has used a very good mix of different types of units and has made use of events to grant many of them (Hessians, for example, cannot be built). Particularly interesting is the use of the "buccaneer" unit to represent American privateers. The unit is a submarine-type unit that is granted to the Americans via events. On the other hand, the balance is clearly in favor of attack and given the small map size this can lead to relatively rapid victory (in terms of turns, not years). Ships are extremely good units given that they ignore city walls, which makes them useful for attacking most of the important coastal cities as well. A possible solution would be to include coastal fortresses as "fortified harbors" or something in Philadelphia and Boston, and possibly New York.

The "role" of some units is set incorrectly so that the computer often plays even more poorly than usual (defending with defense 1 units, attacking with infantry).

Cities are often too small to be attacked with land units. I found myself destroying a lot of cities.

Although the scenario uses the objectives system for scoring, 50 objectives are needed to get a "marginal defeat". There are only 21 objectives in the game.

Level of General Care

3 / 10

COMMENTS: In general it isn't major problems that hurt this scenario, but rather the lack of details. It does have a number of strengths. For starters, the flag graphics and some of the terrain graphics are very nice. The author has renamed some of the city structures in an intuitive way, and they look good.

A few simple campaigns are simulated, including Benedict Arnold's attack on Ticonderoga, by setting the units in the proper places at the start of the scenario. More of these happening later would have been great. Likewise, creating other important revolutionary figures might have been fun. As it is, Arnold, Washington and Cornwalis are the only personages to make an appearance.

The author has NOT included pedia.txt.

It would be nice to add more events other than creating special combat units. In particular I would like to see more historical events that explain something about the revolution and its main figures.

It would be nice to see a longer tech tree and slower science rate. I ran out of things to research fairly quickly.

There are few wonders included in the scenario. Perhaps a few more wonders could be added?

The map is adequate but could be larger and more detailed.

The author has some spelling mistakes. Philadelphia spelled Philidelphia and chief spelled cheif were among the more glaring ones. In the introductory text screen, Caribbean and expeditionary are both misspelled.

The introductory text screen is too long to be viewed properly, and needs to be shortened.

The turn length is set too long, and I found the revolution stretching on into the early 1800's despite lasting only a few years. Moving to a monthly scale would be an improvement.