Scenario/Modpack Review Scenario Title: New Civilization Modpack Author: LeMay Reviewer: Blackclove Fictional scenario/modpack. This is the first time I've seen a "new standard" Civilization rules set that not only worked, but blew me away. With minor changes, it could be the best modpack ever made. Download Now!

Overall Rating 27/30 COMMENTS: I highly recommend playing this innovative mod/scenario. Unlike other "new standard rules" mods it doesn't just make a few minor changes to the units, adding some kind of stupid thing like ninjas or stealth penguins. The author has totally redesigned the technology tree and altered the flow of the game. The modpack replaces rules, terrain, all technology advances, governments, units, improvements and wonders. It carries you through the maximum possible Civ2 game length (all the way from 4000 BC to the end of CIV2 time). Included with the modpack is a scenario that takes place on a photoreal map of Earth.

Playability Rating 7 / 10 MAJOR CHANGES AND THEIR RESULTS: Almost everything has been done right in this modpack and it is worth describing the way the changes affect gameplay as compared to a normal Civ2 game. First, the terrain is lovely and adds a realism that is absent in regular civ2. This adds greatly to the atmosphere, and you feel you are playing Civ2 but with enhanced realism. At early tech levels, military technology is very important. Early units have increased attack as well as defense, making early wars more profitable. The phalanx, for example, is a 2/2/1 unit with increased hit points as compared to the warrior unit. This tends to lead to the creation of large empires right from the start. In the default scenario, the author has not turned on the "don't restart" flag so small, new empires appear in the trackless waste as old empires are destroyed or conquered. He also picked extremely aggressive tribes for the starting ones, so expect imminent attack. The technology tree is just as large as that of standard Civ2, but the tree is more branchy and less linear. The result is a satisfying ability to differentiate the scientific achievements of different civilizations. Rather than having everyone follow the same branch, different civilizations know different types of things, making trading and war more profitable. At higher tech levels, the military units continue to get tougher, but they don't get powerful enough to make the technology race produce a definitive power imbalance. By the time everyone has modern firearms, there will be little more conquest. City walls and good defense, coupled with a total lack of units that ignore city walls, makes attacking grind to a halt. Part of the fun is following the very long tech tree and finding out what is and is not good. It gives an element of uncertainty to research that is absent in the normal game. Some extremely innovative things have been done with the improvements. Perhaps the most interesting is the use of the hospital as the "granary" type improvement. The result is that getting medicine technologies turns out to be very valuable, as in real life, to increasing city growth. It also slows initial city growth. By replacing communism with absolute monarchy, the author allows monarchy to exist longer successfully just as it did in our world. However, I question the elimination of communism, as it has been extremely important to our own world. FAULTS AND BALANCE: There are several critical bugs that need to be repaired (and that prove this should have been playtested before submission to the League). First, there is at least one unit (a kind of musketeer) that goes obsolete from the wrong advance. The result is that you have a period where you can produce no soldier units to defend your cities. Leo's workshop also fails to upgrade your soldiers to the next proper soldier type (I believe it is musketeers to riflemen that is the problem here). Second, because pollution reducing improvements are so hard to come by, you reach a stage where pollution is a major problem that requires lots of micromanagement to deal with. I wound up building railroads on every square and having an army of settlers to handle the job. Third, bombers do not ignore city walls which makes them useless against cities. There is no effective unit equivalent to the howitzer from regular Civ2 that ignores city walls, either. The result is a significant reduction in the value of using airpower. Air units are helpful for exploration and movement interdiction, but other than that are not so hot. I suggest improving air power considerably, especially bombers. Fourth, there is a new type of settler unit called pioneers which, while a cool idea, cause unhappiness when away from cities under republics and democracies. This means that you may topple a democratic government if the pioneers unit is automatically created by Leo's Workshop. Some kind of warning needs to be included for this. Fifth, there are two units on different tech tree branches, the legion and the pikeman. They are the same cost and have equal firepower and hit points, but the legion is 3/3/1 while the pikeman is 3/3*/1. I suggest altering the units to differentiate them. Sixth, the absolute monarchy government has no corruption. I think that corruption ought to be included at a low level (say, 10%) by altering the rules.txt file. This would make it more comparable with the republic as things stand. Seventh, I found pollution hard to see on mountains and some other terrains (it and mountains are the same color). I recommend using a yellow or other primary-hue icon for pollution so it stands out better.

Level of General Care 10/10 COMMENTS: The author did a fairly good job of taking care of details. Cities.txt has been expanded, there is a readme file that covers terrains, and pedia.txt is included. I marked the modpack down in this category largely because there were bugs in the game, as mentioned above. In the scenario, Carthage is located in Australia, which is quite strange.

Art and Originality 10/10 NEW IDEAS: There are more new ideas here than I can list. A few important ones include the use of modern medicine as the force that allows fast population growth (by making hospitals, which have the granary ability) and altering many of the wonders in creative ways. ART: The art is excellent. The terrain pictures in particular are wonderful and based on real aerial photographs. I was also quite partial to the M-16 wielding "modern infantry" unit. Other art was taken from various sources, but the choices were all good.

NOTES: None.

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