02-11-1999 06:27									#1
	Time Threat Scenario: Reviews Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Well, I haven't actually finished it yet but I have only one thing left to do (I think): take the Fabian capital city of Utopia.

Alright, basically this is an excellent scenario. There are some new graphics and even some new animations (which I suppose one could *ahem* borrow for other scenarios ;-) and even new sounds.

The plot is very well developed and interesting. And the game progresses very nicely. Although the Fabians didn't really seem all that interested in conquering the worlds, once they do attack, you'd better duck and cover. There's alot of text messages to explain what is going on in the game. In fact, so many instructions are conveyed by text, its too bad CivII doesn't have some way to "page back" and reread old messages. I wasn't sure what to do in the industrial world because I didn't pay close enough attention to the text message.

On one downpoint: You are supposed to focus on bribing Fabian and Industrial cities to come over to your side. But sometimes they will switch over to Democracy and you'll be sitting there for years waiting for a revolution. This isn't so bad with the Fabians as you can build military units and go through a portal and kick some serious butt. However, with the Industrial lands, it isn't that easy to get reinforcements to that place until you have at least one city.

There are a few suprises in the game as well. The events script just doesn't react blandly to your moves. Not to give anything away, but don't get too relaxed and cocky in the primative Industrial world...

As an XCOM fanatic, I get a big kick out of seeing the venerable Lightning II XCOM interceptor (the graphic for the E Interceptor and used in the SciFi game with TOT). Its from XCOM Interceptor and I have logged many hours flying one. I can imagine actually having to fly some of those missions I send them on.

All in all, this is a great scenario (I haven't played the sequel which is included yet, but it looks simular).

Hint for the far future world: If you find a city in a village, disband it immediatley! They will starve to death unless they are next to the mire (what is left of the oceans) or next to a rare waterhole (blue circle thingie). If you build an engineer and disband the city, you'll be able to use them to found a new city or explore. The city will perish within one or two moves if not next to a waterhole or coast. Even then, next to the mire, build a harbor and grainary fast. They won't become a huge city but they'll survive.

It would be nice to see if John Possidente could ask Mick Uhl (the author unless I am mistaken) to do a little interview about the scenario and post it here, in the same vein as his discussions in the "Complete Guide to Scenario Building." I would be very interested in hearing how he took advantage of the new TOT features in making his scenario.

	02-11-1999 19:49									#2
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

The Fabians should never have democracy. This was corrected in the patch before the scenario was released. Since you probably loaded the patch before the scenario, you will need to reinstall the patch again to fix the problem

	20-12-1999 04:49									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Firstly, "yes" - the patch does need to be reinstalled. I made this error and wasted about four hours before realising this.

I enjoyed the scenario a lot too. It was very innovative in terms of a theme and the extensive use of inter-map relationships made it pretty intensive at times.

My 'strategy' was to work hard at building up the financial base of my tribe - the Asians - early in the game, which served me very well throughout. Life was pretty tough until I started getting a few of the futuristic technologies, and at one point I lost Beijing while Hong Kong was looking pretty shaky too. It was crucial to get these advances, as well as the 'offshore platform'-type improvement given so many of my cities were coastal.

Ultimately I stuck with the 'Somewhere in Time' game rather than making the switch, which I think would be the better choice in most cases; if you've taken all of the Industrial World and Utopia, you must be playing with a pretty good set-up.

The end game was hampered by the ease of bribery, as I was pulling in about 4,000 or 5,000 gold surplus every year, and the 'toughest nut to crack' was the capital - ultimately beaten by plonking lots of reasonably tough 'sitting ducks' on the edge of the city that the Fabians had to attack, which ultimately wore them down to the point where I could finish them off.

Congratulations again to the designers.