Scenario Review Scenario Title: Israeli Independence Author: Yahav Nussbaum Reviewer: Blackclove   Historical scenario. Israel fights for her independence after the Second World War. Download israeli.zip from Apolyton.

Overall Rating 17/30 SYNOPSIS: The rich but young nation of Israel begins after the British pull out of the area. As the scenario begins, a number of Arab nations launch full-scale attacks on the fledgling nation.

Playability Rating 7 / 10 COMMENTS: This is a pretty fun scenario, but bogs down at the end. I could have won by space if "total war" wasn't on. You spend a lot of time pushing engineers around. It is a nice change from the usual total war scenario, though, because you do need to found a lot of cities. He did a good job of creating a long list of city names (so you don't find Naples in Israel). Israel has it a bit easy after a while because the Arabs don't stay at total war. The author did try to keep them angry, though, by making them all hate you. I liked the idea of having Israel have an "Atrocious" reputation, which pretty much sums up how the Arabs feel about them. The personalities of the leaders also seemed appropriate. Jordan kept forcing my democracy into a cease fire, rolling tanks up to my cities, and then breaking the peace, while Egypt, initially really nasty, eventually made peace with me (after shooting down all their bombers and capturing Gaza). It was also a good idea to make the other countries' main regions be represented by huge cities instead of lots of little cities, I thought. Simplifies the map a bit. The major playability problem had to do with giving Isreal $15,000 at the start of the game. Although this is good for buying military and constructing the nation, it was a mistake to allow diplomats if you're going to have that much money floating around. I bought half of Jordan and crushed the rest with bombers. Taking the spies and diplomats out would probably have made the scenario more realistic.

Level of General Care 5 / 10 COMMENTS: The map is good, although I didn't realize the Middle East was so green. A new terrain.gif file would have helped; there are, as far as I know, no buffalo in Israel. The documentation left a lot to be desired. It didn't explain what the wonders do, and some units have changed without comment (in particular, airplanes were greatly improved, yet there is no mention of this in the documentation). The documentation also wrongly indicates that you can change governments when you discover communism (you can't). The tech tree worked although not much changed. I liked the addition of "American Support" and "Soviet Support". It would have been better if a pedia.txt file was included for Fantastic Worlds users. Given that terrorist activities played such a large role historically in starting wars that gained Israel territory, I was surprised to see no "terrorist" unit or at least a greater role for the fanatics unit. It also strikes me as strange to see mech inf in 1948. It seems a bit too early for them to be showing up. In general, I would have liked to see more about the history of Israel and its neighbors popping up in an events.txt file, as well.

Art and Originality 5 / 10 NEW IDEAS: Synagogues and Mosques instead of temples and cathedrals; when you get "American" and "Soviet" support techs you can build really nasty air units and tanks. ART: The art is fine, mostly taken from other sources. Liked the synagogue picture. There was a lot of default art used, which isn't always a bad thing, but I would have liked to have seen more changes to the units. Harlan has a great WW2 icons pack that would have worked well here. OTHER ORIGINAL IDEAS: The challenges of war as a democracy make the scenario kind of fun. Quite historical to have Israel attacked and then have them claim territory. Leads to many short wars. You're also forced to make peace a lot, which seems to fit with "world opinion".

NOTES: None.

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