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Fictional Scenario Reviews

Playability Rating

3 / 10

COMMENTS: A text message popping up at the beginning of each turn stating, "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out", not only sums up atmosphere of the scenario, it is also the sum of the events file. One text message, that's it, no other events.

The author's effort to balance movement on the scenario's oversized map, a whopping 150 by 120, resulted it a several out of balance units. The Eurofighters, a supercharged version of the stealth fighter, are incredible slaughter machines with a generous 25 movement. They have no trouble strafing a half a dozen ground units and making back to base in time for tea. Oddly though the Eurofighters lose to the bombers in air-to-air combat about 60% of the time.

Railroads linking together the cities of every civ combined with the high movement values of the ground units relegate warfare to a hyperactive kill or be killed war of attrition devoid of the tactical complexities we have come to expect from civ scenarios.

The ease with which a player can manipulate the AI through diplomacy in this every AI for himself environment voids any strategic challenge that this scenario might have offered. After taking two or three AI cities in a single turn with three movement, rail transported Howitzers the AI sued for peace. Acceptance, of course, eliminated any threat of an AI counter-attack.

Level of General Care

1 / 10

COMMENTS: The downfall of this scenario is the level of care put into it. It seems the author invested no time insuring that the scenario was realistic or playable. Every city had a power plant, a hydro plan and a solar plant. The land locked cities each had harbors, port facilities, and offshore platforms. Many cities started the game with starvation and none produced enough income to pay for all the improvements in them. Fortunately the designer had the foresight to supply an ample treasury.

Patches of hills and forests punctuate the otherwise vast expanse of grasslands on this oversized map of England. Very little of the land surrounding the swollen cities of thirty plus population had been improved with roads or irrigation.

The tech tree was an unmodified version of the standard civ2 tech tree. The variation incorporated by the author was that the entire tree had already been discovered at the beginning of the game leaving only future technology for the player to research.

Art and Originality

2 / 10

COMMENTS: The unit artwork was all changed from the standard Civ2 game and most of it was borrowed.

The ground units had appropriate artwork borrowed from USA2010. Navies on the other hand were completely confused -- the battleships looked like aircraft carriers and aircraft carriers looked like cargo ships. The terrain files were absent, as were all the other gif files including the title gif.

Of the original ideas presented in this scenario, we find an exhausted tech tree, AI civs all at war with each other, fighters with twenty-five movement points, and grasslands with a base food output of four. Few of them were good ideas.