Review by: Pete Hines
Published: April 30, 1997

In a remote corner of the galaxy lies a planet called New Haven. A fierce and nasty alien race, called Taurans, has decided that it is going to take this planet for its own. Fourteen of New Haven’s provinces lie essentially helpless in the path of the Taurans. One province, called Haven, is prepared to defend itself to the end and has the resources and ability to do it. In Fallen Haven players can either take the role of the Taurans and try to destroy the other inhabitants of New Haven, including humans of Haven, or play as the Humans and keep the planet in your race’s hands. Either way, it’s going to be one hellish war.

There are two campaign maps to play in Fallen Haven, the standard mission and a second, more difficult one, called The Last Hope. In the standard mission, each side begins on equal terms with one province. In the other campaign, the enemy controls all of the provinces but yours and you must prevail against these overwhelming odds. In either case, your goal is to capture your enemy’s capital province. Your success will depend on the efficient use of resources and an ability to expand your control by overtaking neighboring colonies. These provinces can be neutral or controlled by the enemy. In addition, some neutral territories have special, one-time missions that can be attempted to gain extra resources or units.

The three important resources are energy, credits, and research. Energy is used by each structure that is created within a given province. There is a per turn cost that reduces the total available energy for that province. Credits are essentially monetary units and are used to pay for the costs of creating all structures and units. In addition to the up-front costs of creating a unit, units have upkeep costs that must be paid every turn. Research is necessary to improve the strength and ability of the units and structures. There are six different technologies that can be researched. Energy must be used in the territory in which it was created while research and credits are shared among all of your provinces. Each resource is produced by a particular structure that provides a certain amount per turn. Power plants provide energy for the territory, mines generate credits, and laboratories produce research. Every territory receives a rank for each resource which indicates the level of that resource being produced. For example, if Haven has a “rich” rating for research, this is an indication that it will discover technologies at a fairly rapid pace. A “poor” rating would mean little research is taking place there.

In addition to the three resource-producing buildings, there are structures that produce troops, armored units, and dropships. Dropships are transports which can move combat units between provinces. Other structures include missile bases, nuclear silos, and radar sites. Missile bases can shoot down incoming missiles, nuclear silos can launch deadly attacks on neighboring territories, and radar allow players to investigate nearby territories to gain information on how many combat units it has and what levels of resources it contains. Building roads is important because buildings can only be constructed if they are next to one. Walls offer protection for structures and units in case the province is attacked and can also make it difficult for enemy dropships to land. Damaged structures can always be repaired and unwanted buildings can be recycled to regain credits and use them to build something else.

Each race can produce 10 types of units. Units are comprised of different levels of action points, armor, speed, and weapons range and strength. Most of these are self-explanatory except perhaps for action points, which are an indication of how much a unit can do in a given turn. Each unit has both light and heavy weapons. Light weapons do less damage but use less action points and usually have a longer effective range. Heavy weapons do much more damage but use a lot of action points and have limited range. Technological advances can increase the levels of the units you produce by making them more powerful, giving them more action points, or providing them with tougher armor.

Play in Fallen Haven is broken into turns. Each turn consists of two modes, a strategical and a tactical. In the strategy mode, you decide what buildings and units you want to build, where you want your units located within each territory, and whether you want to attack an enemy or neutral territory. Movement of units within a territory is unlimited during the strategy mode. This allows players to arrange their units defensively in case of attack and change their mind as much as they want. Any units that are produced during the strategy mode are not available until the next turn.

The tactical mode comes into play whenever you attack another territory or one of your provinces is attacked. Attacking is accomplished by moving units into dropships and sending them to an adjacent enemy territory. If an attack takes place, it will continue until the outcome is decided. Then, you will proceed to either the next tactical mode, if there is another attack, or else the next strategy turn will begin. Now that you’ve got some idea of how to play Fallen Haven, let’s see how it scored . . .