Scenario of the week club 2

[Stefan Härtel]

I chose "Red and Brown Baltic" by Paul Leone. It's a good scenario about a Finnish civil War during the times of the russian revolution. I should note that it is a pre-FW scenario without any events.
Download here: http://www.civ2.de/szen/redbalt.zip

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Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong.

We who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices can't be heard
We just want to scream it louder and louder:
"What the hell are we fighting for?"
"Just surrender and it won't hurt at all"
-Brian May (Queen)

[Paul Hanson]

Got it. What I do like about early scenarios is that they don`t take long to download

[techumseh]

An oldie but a goodie!

[techumseh]

I played as the White Finns and defeated the Red Finns, but was then attacked by the Freikorps. I switched all production to ski troops. There was little use making any other type of unit as they were of less value in any category and not much cheaper.

The map is good and the subject is exotic. But historical alliances are inadequately portrayed, leaving fascists allied with reds and fighting other right wing regimes.

In general this is a good game for it's time, but the lack of events is a big drawback for me. The readme could have filled in more of the history from this fscinating but little known conflict. I think this is a great historical subject which should be redone using more modern scenario techniques.

[Hendrik the Great]

I played also as the White Finns and on Deity level.

First the bad things:
-All the wonders were availible for construction leading to a race for the wonders which I lost.
-Almost all white finnish cities went into disorder in the first turn forcing me to make peace with everyone and build colloseums in all cities.
-No events leading to several consequences but it's an early scenario so that can be excused.
-Only a few units were worth being built in the short time.
-With one or two exceptins there were no factories meaning I had to built up an industry first.
-Research was either not intened to be made or if it was it was very hard to achieve.
-No offensive capability for the White Finns at the start.
-Unaccurate diplomatic relations as far as I can determine.

Now the good things:
-Quick and fast scenario. lots of action once you get started.
-Winning is achievable in the allocated time but hard.
-Nice new units considering when it was made.
-Really good map!
-Diplomatic intrigues and actions are to take to make it easier. That's good as far as I'm concerned.
-Topic not often seen. Good choice!

Even though there are some things to critizise I like the scenario. It allows for a fast paced game with a lot of action if one diseres.

My game started out badly with almost all cities going into revolt.
I lost Parkano fast to the Reds and made peace with them. I built up my economy and happiness and prepared to go into the offensive having no idea how much time I had left. i mostly built tanks, machine gunners and Alpine Troops along with some spies.
While I built up me forces the Freikorps took all of the Finnish south coast including Lahti but failed to erase the Reds.
Preparing to attack the Reds i made an alliance with the Danes and thuse got into war with the Freikorps instead.I advanced against them and took Turku, Helsinki, Hango, Kotka and Lahti. Freikorps counterattaks were not existing or were defeated. I never built a single ship btw but bought one from the freikorps.
Getting the Swedes involved with the Freikorps I managed to hold of their strong fleet. By now the Freikorps had taken all of Denmark with only Kobenhavn, Korsor and Rodbyhavn left.
While removing the last reminants of the Freikorps I attacked the Reds and re-captured Parkano. After a few uncoordinated attack of the Reds at various points I moved against them and besieged Mikkeli. I sold many of my cathedrals because I had Micheals under control and bought Viipuri with the money. Then captured Mikkeli no more Reds. Seeing I still had not enough points to win I decided to attack either the Swedes or the Sowjets whatever force of mine would arraive first. I attacked the Sowjets and took Reval.
End of scenario...

To conclude I must say I actually like the scenario even though it had some flaws. Really good!

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Mathias' Civ II Page
http://members.xoom.com/thalys/index.html

[RobRoy]

Surprisingly good, considering it's age and the lack of bells/whistles (e.g., events). I particularly like the map. I wonder if that map has ever been used for any Swedish/Danish scenarios?

I played the White Finns, also. Since it was a republic, I decided to try to the diplomatic/trading approach to victory, making peace with the reds early, and selling off a lot of extraneous improvements to fund my reorientation (boats, starter caravans). It was effective, once I had enough ships to get a regular route to Copenhagen, and a few spies. But that strategy requires much micro-management and can become rather tedious. And I think it violates the spirit of this scenario, moreso than most. I just wasn't sure I could easily win a straight military contest against the communists without a nice money stream and an army of spies. I suppose that might've been a better way to play this scenario, but I'm easily tempted to take advantage of any situation the rules allow.

Events, of course, would undoubtedly help maintain historical alliances, shore up the AI, and generally spice things up. But there were a few other areas that were a bit disappointing: the starving city and massive unrest on turn one; basic settlers and spies were way too cheap; city growth was too easy (you could reach size 15 without an Aqueduct and size 30 without a Sewer System); tanks seemed anachronistly cheap and ineffective; a lot of the cities seemed to have identical improvements (it's nice when designers try to vary city qualities and strengths with different improvements, especially if there is some historical basis for that); and there were an awful lot of wonders available.

Does anyone know the historical basis for the Freikorps? I'm familiar with some Napoleonic era cavalry companies going by that name (sort of Central European Cossacks), but I hadn't heard of anything by that name after WW1. At first I was assuming it was a neutral "civ" that was supposed to represent anarchic Germany/Poland/Russian territories after WW1. But then the that civ started attacking its neighbors fairly effectively, particularly damaging the Red Finns.

Along those lines, I was also curious about the absence of cavalry. I thought it played a large role in WW1's eastern theaters and in the Russian Civil War; I would have thought that it played one in the Finish Wars too (as opposed to the tank), but I don't really know.

Looking through my comments, I sound too negative, considering I enjoyed playing the scenario. Unlike many modern scenarios, it was actually quite playable in a reasonable period of time.

[Paul Hanson]

An interesting little scenario, although I don`t quite understand the lack of events (the readme says 1997, which isn`t that long ago, certainly not for events).

It is absolutely imperative that you play as one of the recommended civs on this one, otherwise the game was slow and tedious. I`ve tried it with three of the recommended civs; White Finns, Freikorps and Swedes. I played each on Deity, and noted these points:

-The Swedes offered the most challenging game
-The Freikorps was a little too easy (Denmark was easy to conquer and gave me plenty of resources to capture Russia with. I reached Narva before time ran out).
-The White Finns offered the most interesting of the three games. On Deity, I was just able to wrest control of all the Red Finns cities before time ran out, and all the Freikorp cities in Finnland were gone too. And then I ran out of time.

Sadly, this scenario did suffer from some design errors. The fact that all the wonders could be built from the start hampered gameplay slightly, as the computer wastes it`s resources on the obsolete wonders, while you build the useful ones (Darwins Voyage is the best one to go for, as the tech paradigm is so high that building it gives you a lead in teechnology that no-one will catch up with). Some of the unit graphics were a little dodgy (I`m thinking specifically of Marines here).

Like I mentioned before, playing as a civ that hadn`t been recommended for play made the game tedious and uneventful. I tried it as Denmark and Norway, and gave up after about 10 turns because I wasn`t getting anywhere.

One last point: On Deity, alot of cities went into disorder on the first turn (except in Germany, which during that time was in great civil disorder). The only thing the author did to simulate the disorder in Germany was to place a barbarian unit outside Kiel (representing the sailors riot which broke pout in the port after the war).

In answer to yor question RobRoy, the Freikorps were ex-German servicemen with extreme right-wing political affiliations. The Weimar Republic (the German government setup after the war) employed them to put down the Bolshevik uprisings in Germany that were threatening the weak government. The funny thing was that the Weimar Republic was left-wing, and was using right-wingers to put down a rebellion that was trying to implement a government that was just more left-wing that it was!

[Gothmog]

Here's my experience with Red and Brown Baltic. First, I have to say that I never even knew there was a Finnish Civil War, so I was induced to read a little bit about it.
I played the White Finns and achieved a marginal victory, conquering Finland
and a couple of Russian cities.

The Good Things:
~Well balanced: you just have barely enough time to take your objectives
~Nice Map
~Not too many units at start. This is good, because you don't have to start fighting all out on turn 1 and you have time to get into it.

The Bad Things:
~All those wonders!
~ Too many units to build. Many of them should be obsoleted.
~Only Fundys could build the cannon, which was in the Fanatic slot. I doubt this what the author intended.

LOL: a message the game produced:
"The Bolsheviks have undertaken a great project: Adam Smith's Trading Co.!"
Maybe THAT was Lenin's New Economic Plan.

Judged by the standards of its presumed time, not too bad.