Rules

"A little onward lend thy guiding hand to these dark steps, a little further on. For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade."

* We value legitimate, cheat-free gameplay at Realms Beyond! Game actions are classified as either Honorable, Dastardly, or Exploitative. Honorable actions are moves that are within every civ's right to undertake. These are always welcome in any Realms Beyond Civilization game. Dastardly actions are moves that betray, cheat or prey upon other civs, but within the context and spirit of the game. These are allowed by default but may be disallowed in a given game. Exploitative actions fall outside the context of the game and are not welcome in any Realms Beyond events. The current evaluation of Known Tactics is available here. For quick reference, you can see the list of exploitative tactics here.

* Because of the no-spoilers nature of tournament events, when in doubt over a situation or rule, use your best judgment (bearing in mind the value we place upon non-exploitative gameplay), and mention this in your report. Hopefully, the ensuing discussion will help to clarify this for future events.

* Any variant rules established for a specific game must be observed.

* The use of any bean counter, trainer, or other program designed to give you an advantage or some information not otherwise available in the game is prohibited. This includes utilities such as Mapstat and Apollo.

* No restarts, and no reloads. (with exceptions; see below)

* There are exceptions to "no reloads". A misclick, causing a unit to do something you did not intend, may be cause for reload. Reload from a save on the same turn (autosave, if nothing else) is OK. We're not here to measure how flawless your clicking and control-interface skills are, but the results of your strategy. Likewise, if you make note that a city will go into revolt, or that you need to change the build orders on something vital or address a military threat, but then forget to do deal with it anyway because the game has become involved, it would be OK to go back to the end of previous turn and correct it. Again, we're not running a memory or attention test, we're playing a strategy game.

Reloading to recover from strategic error is not permitted. If something occurs between turns that you did not notice and then forget about, or did not anticipate, you should eat the mistake, including city revolts, deals expiring, or AI surprise attacks. We trust you not to reload to get do-overs. These very limited conditions for reload are intended to free you from perfectionism in having to triple-check every minute detail and click all the right buttons all the time to carry out your intended orders. Your results should be based on your decisions, and we trust you not to abuse this reasonable reload policy.

Random seeds will always be preserved in Realms Beyond Civilization games, so if you do reload to fix a misclick or a forgetful moment, do your best to duplicate exactly the series of events and moves up to the problem point, to make it as if nothing went awry in the first place.

* Players should keep their game's final save file. Although file submission is not standard for Epics games, the game's Sponsor or an Epics organizer may request files from players for verification purposes. In addition to the final saves, players may want to keep save files from earlier points in the game to enhance discussion. Sponsors may choose to require saves at particular points in the game, although this is not standard for every event. If earlier saves are necessary, this information will be provided when the game is announced.

* Absolutely, positively no spoilers allowed until the game is closed!

On legitimate play and rules enforcement