Sponsor: Sirian
Opening Date: Monday, September 23
Duration: Four Weeks
Map Generation: Random

Difficulty: Monarch
Civilization: Russia
World Size: Small
Opponents: Five
Terrain: Continents, 60% water
Climate: Arid, Flat
Barbarians: Raging
Rules: Cultural Link disabled
Victory: Only Space Ship is enabled

Variant Concept: We've had a lot of very high difficulty epics lately. I want to ease up a bit here with a moderate difficulty Monarch variant following very unusual restrictions even by Epics standards. I'm such a mad user of heavy loads of workers in the game to speed my growth curve that I wondered what it would be like to have my worker access restricted. This would take on an even greater significance for a space launch game, too. And what's the one civ whose history involves both successful space pioneering -and- a culture where the workers enjoyed (at least in theory) the highest levels of "protection" from the government? Russia.

The Soyuz manned flights in particular were a great achievement. The Russians cut a few more corners than the Americans, but both programs suffered accidents and deaths in their race to space. The Russians suffered more, but they also made some great achievements and were first with several notable accomplishments. Your goal in this game is to focus on the space race, within certain restrictions.

Each city has its own pride and protectionist laws. The tiles around a city may only be improved by the native workers trained at that particular city. That is to say, each city has its own self-trained workers, and these never migrate. There will be no tile overlap in this game. Worker jobs are guaranteed for life, with fixed wages, complete job security, etc. Also, Russia will shun all representative governments. Despotism, then Monarchy (optional), then Communism (mandatory), will be the way of the game.

Variant Rules about Workers:
* Each city must produce its own workers, and only those specific workers may improve its tiles.
* Your initial worker "belongs" to your capital city.
* Each city is allowed to produce only ONE worker unit.
* Each city that constructs a Hospital improvement may train a second worker unit.
* Only workers native to a particular city may improve its tiles (including pollution cleanup).
* Your workers must remain within your cultural boundaries at all times.
* Any worker is allowed to improve tiles (within your borders) that are "neutral": tiles not within usable range of any city. However, only one such worker at a time per "neutral" tile.
* If escorted by military units, workers may leave your cultural boundaries ONLY for the purpose of founding a resource colony -- they are also allowed to build roads up to the colony site. You must keep track of which city's worker was used on the colony, so that you can determine which city is allowed to train a new worker unit.
* If a city's worker is captured, you may train a new one. If the captured worker is liberated from enemy control AFTER you have trained a replacement, you should immediately meld one of the two back into the city ("join city").
* You are not allowed to make use of the workers of any other civilization. If you acquire them, you must sell them, or merge them into your cities as population, or disband them.
* You may not automate any of your workers by any method at any time. Even pollution control must be handled manually, as only the native workers of a given city are allowed to work on its tiles. The game will not keep this straight, so you are required to handle it.

Variant Rules about Government:
* You are not allowed to enter Republic or Democracy, ever.
* Once you arrive in the industrial age, you are required to research Communism first (and Nationalism before that, if by chance you get an oddball result and the game gives you a different tech to start the third age). You should also conduct your communism research at your best available tech rate: no dragging your feet to postpone it.
* The moment Communism is available, you must revolt, enter Communist government, and remain there for the rest of the game. Take care not to be running too much budget deficit at the time or you may end up in a real pickle during the anarchy period.

Variant Rules about Cities:
* You are allowed a maximum of fourteen cities (the "ideal" number for a small map). If you already have fourteen, you may only acquire another if you abandon one of your current cities.
* You are never allowed to found a new city that would have ANY tile overlap between its native 21 tiles and those of ANY other currently-existing city. (We don't want competition between workers in disputed or shared regions. We want protected jobs! A new city has to plant itself far enough way so as to not infringe on the territory of existing cities).
* If the AI's settle aggressively, causing overlap or potential overlap with any of your cities, there's nothing you can do about it, except that you are urged to do your best to maintain cultural dominance in the area, if at all possible. However, your city MUST be founded first in that situation. If the AI's settle first in a spot that would conflict with your planned site, you must change your plans. You are not allowed to found any of your cities in any spot that would overlap, even it means a chunk of tiles are inaccessible to you. (With 40% land, there will be enough land available that you can afford to waste tiles and still win). Keep in mind that verifying whether your city was founded before a conflicting AI city would be a simple matter: to check the "date founded" for each in the city screen. So take care with this one, we may opt to verify results in some save files.
* If an overlap city founded in the gaps (by the AI) offers to flip to you, you are allowed to accept or rebuff it as you see fit. However, any such city is NOT allowed to have its own workers. It is to be considered a "suburb" of your native Russian cities.
* Suburbs do not have their own workers. They may "borrow" a maximum of ONE worker at a time, and only from Russian cities with which they overlap. (Can be more than one, which could get very confusing, so... one borrowed worker at a time. Try not to mix them up).
* Suburbs DO count toward your fourteen city limit, so if you already have fourteen cities, you are REQUIRED either to rebuff the rebels or to disband one of your cities by the end of the turn, so that you remain at fourteen (your choice as to which).

Here's a "dotmap" drawing below. If you start with the green dot location, then the white and purple locations would be illegal. You could not settle there, because of the overlap tiles (shown with the red X's).

On the other hand, if you had settled the white and purple locations (above) and then the AI settled the green location, then if the green city flipped to you, it would qualify as a "suburb" of both the white and purple cities. The green city could then "borrow" a worker from either white or purple, but only one at a time. AND you would be responsible for tracking your workers, so that you don't come back later, see that White has no worker, and train it a new one, when in fact its worker is busy doing subcontract work for Green Suburb.

Below you see the "optimal" legal configuration of cities. Note that a few tiles are still wasted. This is the best you could do. You are required to avoid overlap. If you need help figuring out where to legally put your cities, you can turn on the grid by selecting Tutorial from the preferences list. You can also take screen shots with the grid active, then paste into an image program and fiddle around with drawing your own dotmaps if you like.

That's not the only way to fit your cities together, but all other legal patterns waste more tiles. Even if you try to match the perfect pattern, though, the game will throw a wrench into your gears: a mountain the wrong spot, fresh water access, AI moves, the shape of the coastline, etc. You'll have to adapt as you play.

Variant Rules about Warfare:
* You are NOT allowed to attack any rival cities (by any means) if you are listed first in the world in territory (F11). (This game is supposed to be about the space race, NOT about early conquest and then milking the already-won game into the modern age to launch).
* Also, no sandbagging on the cultural improvements just to "control less land" so you have a loophole that will allow you to attack for longer.
* You may attack rival cities ONLY until such time as you take the lead in territory. Then you must stop. (You can remain at war if you like, attacking units or pillaging tiles).
* If you have less than fourteen cities, you may accept an enemy city that offers to flip and create a new suburb with it, even if you are already number one in the world in territory.
* You are allowed to raze AI cities, rather than capture them, but remember that you are no longer allowed to continuing attacking more cities once you are tops in territory.
* You are allowed to pillage enemy resources during any war, and even to run a military blockade of such resource tiles while at war, but if you are number one in the world in territory, then you are NOT allowed to pillage at will, as that constitutes an "attack" against an enemy city. Your military may play a pivotal role in this game, but will not be able to win the game for you.

Variant Rules about Espionage:
* You are not allowed to conduct Propaganda if you already have fourteen cities.
* You ARE allowed to conduct Propaganda if you have less than fourteen cities, even if you are tops in the world in territory.
* Keep in mind that communist spies are "veteran" and thus more effective.

This is a long list of variant rules, but they all tie together once you "get" the idea, that this is to be a space race game with restrictions on cities and workers, and restrictions also on warfare and government that support the main theme. Each player should copy the rules to their local machines for reference. I wanted to go with fewer rules than this, but the concept had a lot of loopholes and I wanted to head them all off in advance.

Closing Day: Monday, October 21. Reports due on Oct 21 or 22.

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