Sponsor: Sullla
Opening Date: Monday, February 25
Duration: Five Weeks
Map Script: Hemispheres
Sea Level: Low
Climate: Temperate
Game Speed: Epic

Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: America
Leader: Lincoln
World Size: Standard
Opponents: Five
Victory: Any

Version: Beyond the Sword v3.13

Scenario: In Epic One, Sirian wrote this about the Honorable rule set: You will see them again! Time to live up to that promise with an open-ended Epic game. You are charged with leading Honest Abe and the Americans to victory, in a game where the ends never justify the means.

Rules: We are using the "Honorable" variant rule set for this game, with a few minor changes from the original game. The complete list is reposted below:

1. Every civ has a right to defend itself. A just war is one in which you are not the aggressor. If any civ attacks you unprovoked, you are entitled to remain at war with them and to take retaliatory action upon their units and lands for as long as you wish, up to and including their unconditional surrender. (You may conquer that civ if you please. This is known as the "You Have Chosen Unwisely"™ rule!)
2. You are not allowed to run Slavery, Theocracy, or Police State civics. You must adopt Emancipation (and stay there) once you have the option. Please note that this is a change from the original Epic One game, which allowed Slavery civic. Honest Abe refuses to hold men and women in bondage!
3. You are allowed to refuse tribute demands. You are not allowed to issue demands of your own.
4. You are allowed to sign Defense Pacts.
5. If a friendly civ requests your aid in time of war, you are allowed to join them in the war.
6. If you joined an ally in a war, and they have made peace with the enemy, then you must also make peace with that enemy if the enemy requests peace (unless they are demanding compensation for peace -- you do not ever have to submit to tribute demands.)
7. You may not choose to raze a captured city that the game would allow you to keep. (This includes barbarian cities!)
8. Giving away captured cities is only honorable if they are given to an ally who owned them when the war began. (If you "liberate" an ally's city, you MUST offer to give it back!)
9. You must do all in your power (within reason) to feed the people under your care. No forced starvation!
10. Your Spies are only allowed to observe or conduct counter-espionage, not to sabotage or carry out other aggressive missions. Note that this rule will actually have some teeth to it in Beyond the Sword!
11. Pillaging land improvements in neutral territory, to deny them to a rival or enemy, is dastardly. No bandits on the highways, please.
12. You are not allowed to fire first with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may only be used honorably in retaliation vs a civ who has launched a "First Strike" nuclear attack, and then only with a "proportional response": you may honorably return fire with as many shots as were launched by the enemy, but no more.
    

Copy the Rules!
We strongly urge you to copy and paste the variant rule set to your local machine, to a text file in a location where you can access it while playing, in case you need to check the rules.

Scoring: There is no scoring for this game. However, results will be listed by victory according to fastest finishes, with defeats listed in reverse order (those who survived the longest listed first). Those who wish to do so can unofficially compete in this fashion.

Closing Day: Monday, March 31. Reports due by the end of April 1, your local time (and no April Fooling!)

Download Epic Eighteen!

Read Epic Eighteen Results.