Sponsor: Sirian
Opening Date: Monday, November 18
Duration: Four Weeks
Map Generation: Random, edited slightly

Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: Egypt
World Size: Standard
Opponents: Seven
Terrain: Continents, 70% water
Climate: Wet
Barbarians: Roaming
Rules: MODIFIED (see below). Cultural Start and AI Respawn disabled.
Victory: Any but Diplomatic (which is disabled).
Version: 1.29f

Scenario Concept: When ideas for epics were being floated around, KingBob suggested we try a game with food consumption set to one per citizen. I thought that was a good idea, but that there would need to be rules modifications to keep it interesting, otherwise there would be a food glut and the game might grow boring.

Getting the rules right for the One Food Mod proved more difficult than I first anticipated. I put a great deal of care into it, then playtested and learned that I'd overlooked a few things, resulting in a broken system that rendered forests into an ubertile, among other things. (It would not have been a good thing to have folks planting forests on every single tile!) So I had to rework the rules again, and rebalance several terrain types again. With just a few options, you might think there would be limited ways to do this, but there are apparently a lot more ways to do it wrong than to get it right enough to be fun to play.

Terrain Modifications:

Flood Plain: 1 food, 0 shield
Grassland: 1 food, 0 shield (bonus gives +1 shield).
Plains: 0 food, 1 shield
Hills: 0 food, 1 shield
Forest: 0 food, 2 shield
Jungle: 0 food, 1 shield
Coast: 0 food
Sea: 0 food

Resource Modifications:

Game: +1 food
Cattle: +1 food, +1 shield
Sheep: +1 food, +1 commerce
Oasis: +1 food, +2 commerce

Worker Task Changes:

Flood Plains: Irrigation increased to +2 food
Desert: Cannot be irrigated
Hills: Irrigation +1 food (Mining still +2 shield)
Mountains: Mining reduced to +1 shield

If I didn't list it, I didn't change it. Everything else remains standard. Note that harbors still add +1 food to coastal and sea tiles. Rails add +1 food or shield to any tile with irrigation or mining, as applicable. Also note that your city center tile will have one food regardless of the terrain on which you settle.

The editor generated a map for this game. I took the first one it churned out, but I did handpick which start location the player would get, then edited a few tiles here and there to improve balance for several of the start positions -- no Epic 14 Dud Starts(TM) this time. As a result of my map work, my own results will not compare fairly, and will count only as a shadow game. I do intend to play, though. This one is going to be... different. :)

Strategy: Food is going to be more scarce overall. High food areas will be more prized. Many city sites will not be even minimally functional until workers have improved some of the tiles. The workers will be crucial, so I made sure to choose an industrious civ. If the mod gets high marks, perhaps we'll try it again some time with another scenario.

Scoring: None. This is the last Epic of the year, just have a good time.

Special thanks to KingBob for suggesting this scenario.

Closing Day: Monday, December 16. Reports due on Dec 16 or 17.

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