Epic Forty: The Hittite Cosmonauts

[Griselda]

Epic Forty: The Hittite Cosmonauts has been announced, and will open Monday, April 5. Epic Forty will feature a new Conquests civ, but will be revisiting an older variant to see how things play out in Conquests. Please note that this Epic will be played in Conquests version 1.15 (the beta patch), although a newer patch is available. This is a small-map Epic, and I hope that will give players an opportunity to complete the game before patching if they choose.

-Griselda

[Griselda]

Epic Forty is now open!

I also realized that I neglected to put any scoring information on the main Epic 40 page. I've added it now, but for what it's worth results will be ranked by fastest finish, with victories scoring ahead of losses.

-Griselda

[bihary]

Is it allowed to CAPTURE an enemy city if it overlaps with one of my cities? (I understand it will be just a suburb).

Thanx

[Caesar_Augustus]

Originally posted by bihary+Apr 6 2004, 06:28 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (bihary @ Apr 6 2004, 06:28 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Is it allowed to CAPTURE an enemy city if it overlaps with one of my cities? (I understand it will be just a suburb).[/b]

Yes you can, provided that A) you haven't reached the 14 city limit B) you're not #1 in territory in F11. At least that's my understanding of the rules. I checked out the info thread for Soyuz Epic 15 as well, and saw this exchange:

Originally posted by -Kylearan@September 25 2002, 5:49 AM
One question, though, as I'm a bit confused about the city rules: We are allowed to capture (and keep) a city which has overlap with another (foreign) city, right?

Originally posted by -Sirian@September 25 2002, 7:26 AM
Yes, you can capture enemy cities that have overlap, and if they have no overlap with your own cities, they could have their own worker. You are only allowed to attack if you are not first in the world in territory, though, so... no matter how you slice it, if you're capturing, you'll be at best slightly ahead of the next rival. If you out-expand the AI's, you could achieve a larger territorial advantage than would be possible via military acquisitions.

<!--QuoteBegin--Sirian@September 27 2002, 7:44 PM
If a city you capture has no overlap with any of your own cities' tiles, it's a full city, even if the AI's are impinging on it. [b]If it has any overlap with any of your cities, it's a suburb.

Suburbs may not have their own workforce. They may only "borrow" the worker of one of your cities, and only from cities they overlap with.

If you capture two AI cities overlapping one another's borders, they could have only one workforce between them. The city you choose to use to train the worker then becomes the "city" and the other the "suburb", which you cannot reverse later. If you capture a third city overlapping territory, if it overlaps the suburb, it would be a city in its own right. If it overlaps the city, then it would be another suburb. See? Once a city, always a city. You can't "downgrade" a city to suburb class just to shift workers around or increase the number of worker-eligible cities.

Another example: you settle a city out in the open. AI's then settle all around it, three other cities each with some bits of overlap with your original city. If all three flip to you, you have three suburbs. Even if, landwise, you could make the center city a suburb and have three full cities from the flips, you can't do that. YOUR workers and cities and national pride come first, and seniority in this means everything. Russian jobs are never to be put in danger. Immigrant cities play second fiddle unless you somehow annex ones that have no overlap with your own cities.

Obviously, you'd prefer full cities to suburbs. Yet you also would prefer suburbs to having less than 14 total cities. How to manage this balance is up to you.


One more thing to keep in mind: although no doubt some folks will push the letter of the rules to the limit, in spirit this is meant to be a space race. If you have an unfortunate start, you may have to fight to get a fair share of the land, but in any event, you will have to stop at 14 cities. Technically, if you manipulate things to where one AI has a lot of territory, you could stay at war and try to win via warfare. I realize now that I miscalculated, and SHOULD HAVE also included in the rules that once you get 14 cities, you cannot continue blazing a path of destruction through the enemy's lands. There's a loophole in there by which one could effectively wipe out most of the competition, then bring the last rival down to size. This was not intended. I believe I was clear enough about the SPIRIT of this scenario concept, but I also realize that relying on perception in place of rules is ill-advised. In any case, it's too late now to further alter the rules. We'll just wait and see how it turns out.[/b][/quote]

[bihary]

just a little tidbit. As I am playing, I am renaming my workers so I know which one belongs to which city. You can rename with shift-N when the worker is active (flashing)

[Yom]

Are we allowed to build a city that does not overlap with any of our cities but DOES overlap with an AI's city?

[Caesar_Augustus]

Originally posted by Yom@Apr 6 2004, 09:31 PM
Are we allowed to build a city that does not overlap with any of our cities but DOES overlap with an AI's city?

No, not if an AI city is already there. From the Rules Page:

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, [b]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.[/b]

[Caesar_Augustus]

A question for the sponsor - why was the rule from Epic 15 regarding Communism (must immediately research + revolt to it) removed from this Epic? Because of the Difficulty level increase? To allow the player more strategic options? Just curious.

Also another thing I thought of. It would be easy to eliminate all but one of the civs in this game - just conquer and then immediately gift cities to the civ that is #1 in territory, until everyone but you and the biggest civ are gone. Then attack the big civ until you pass them in territory. However, this loophole is not in the spirit of this Epic, and I point it out only as an example of what not to do.

[Griselda]

You're right. That's exactly an example of what not to do. Anyone who chooses to do so might get big numbers, but I suspect their reports would not be well received. So, I don't know what would be in it for someone to even bother.

As far as Communism, in Civ3 1.29f there was a general sense of "anything but communism" as far as governments go, but the choice is not so clear cut at the moment. I'd prefer to leave the decision up to the players, after removing the two "traditional" space race govt.'s.

-Griselda

[Caesar_Augustus]

If we disband a city that has already built a worker, does the worker have to be disbanded to? Or can it accompany the disbanded city's settler to the new city site and improve the tiles once the new city has been founded?

To me, it doesn't seem outside the spirit of the rules to do this - why wouldn't a worker accompany his fellow townspeople if they decided to pack up and move to another spot?