Sponsor: Sirian
Opening Date: Thursday, July 18
Duration: Two Weeks
Map Generation: Random

Difficulty: CUSTOM (Between Emperor and Deity)
Civilization: Egypt
World Size: Ultra Tiny (50x50)
Opponents: Greece
Terrain: Archipelago 70% water
Climate: Standard
Barbarians: Roaming
Rules: CUSTOM (See Below)
Victory: Domination, Space, Cultural, Histogram

Variant Rules: This is going to be like a boxing match, Good vs Evil. You may not land any units on the Enemy continent at any time. (Bombardments from sea or air are allowed). The enemy, of course, will not be observing these boundaries.

Also, you may not trade techs with the AI (nor accept tech as part of any surrender terms or any other deals). You MAY trade resources and map information, and you may sell or give away techs to the AI if you desire. Since the AI trades to its favor anyway, and you do not have multiple AI's to trade one with another, it wouldn't pay to conduct any tech trades with the AI. All it would do is speed the overall total progress up the tech tree, giving away advantage to the AI in trade for speed in reaching "fastest finish" goals, and this is not what is intended. So... no tech acquisitions from the AI, period. Whether or not to trade resources is another question. In any case, you are going to have to do your own research pretty much the whole way through, and in this regard it's going to feel a lot like Epic Six.

Finally, you may not acquire or settle any cities on the enemy home continent. Not through peace deals and not through culture flips. All other lands, however, are fair game.

CUSTOM RULES:
* The enemy has costs at 70% of yours (halfway between Emperor's 80 and Deity's 60).
* The enemy starts with three workers (like Deity) but still only one settler (like Emperor).
* The enemy starts with an extra defender (hoplite) above the standard Emperor bonus.
* The enemy starts with additional "free unit" support bonuses, to match the surplus units.
* Optimal city count has been set to 20. (This means you must have 10 cities to get FP).
* Because of lower corruption, research rate has been set to equivalent of Small maps.
* No other rules or settings have been changed. All other difficulty rules are that of Emperor.

CUSTOM MAP:

Using the altered ruleset above, I had the editor generate custom maps of size 50x50. I tried first with Continents settings but the maps always came out with both sides on the same landmass, which doesn't allow for the "no invasion of the enemy continent" rule. I gave up on the continents settings and went to Archipelago, and I still had to run through about half a dozen randomly created maps before it produced a suitable one. Nothing has been changed or altered regarding the map randomly generated by the editor: it is as the game made it.

Since I want to play in this one, I scanned the maps as little as possible, looking for the start locations and seeing if they were on different land masses, and of roughly equal size. I tried to "tune out" all other observations, but nevertheless I did notice a few details, and I will reveal them all up front so that all players will have the same info that I have.

* Both civs have their own continent, roughly equal size, each representing about 30% of the total landmass. (This should allow for domination without touching the enemy home soil).
* The two start points are as far apart as they can be.
* There are dyes northeast of the player start.
* There is a tiny jungle island just southwest of the player start with a coal resource.
* There is a horse resource just northwest of the player start.
* There are wines on the western part of the player's continent.

That was all the information I noticed in my very brief scan looking for start points and land mass sizes. (There's no minimap in the editor, so I had to scan manually). When you have explored the range of the starting continent, the enemy continent is of the same size and the two main continents are not adjacent.

Scenario Goals: Diplomatic is out, obviously, so it's disabled. Conquest is also impossible under the rule of no invasions of the enemy continent. Domination may well be the easiest victory condition of those available. All you should need to achieve it is control of all (or nearly all) of the neutral islands. Space could be another matter, as it could take a long time to research your way to the modern age under these conditions. Cultural is an unknown. If you concentrate on the early wonders at the expense of expansion rate, you may be able to pull a one city 20k victory. 100k seems more than unlikely, in that the AI with its bonus rate is sure to have more than half your culture even if you can get to 100k. The histogram win, thus, represents the "tactical challenge" here. How can you stop the enemy from launching, for certain, without the ability to attack his homeland?

Domination, Space, and Cultural victories will be ranked in separate categories by fastest finish. Histogram wins will be ranked by fastest to possession of All Tech or by ranking of the amount of tech known.

As an ultra tiny map with only two civs and little land to manage, this epic earns the distinction of special exception to the three-week-minimum duration rule. You have two weeks to play and report.

Closing Day: Monday, August 5. Reports due on August 5 or 6.

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