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Epic Thirty-six: Pax Americana

Sponsor: Sirian
Opening Date: Monday, August 18
Duration: Ten Weeks
Map Generation: Random

Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: America
World Size: Huge
Opponents: Ten
Terrain: Continents, 60% water
Climate: Hot, Wet, Rugged
Barbarians: None
Rules: Standard. Cultural Link inactive.
Victory: All Conditions DISABLED. Histogram only!
Version: PTW 1.27f

Yes, folks, the long-promised Huge Map MegaScenario has finally arrived!

Scenario Concept: Huge Builder Game lasting until 2050AD, where the scoring mechanisms are aimed at preventing collapse into militarism. The challenge will be to find a balance between all the options, with extremes in any direction designed to score less.

VARIANT RULES:

* You may not join workers or settlers to cities at any point.
* You may not sign military alliances, except with your Blood Brother.
* You may not sign mutual protection pacts.
* You may not give away cities at any time.
* You may not abandon cities with either method. (Razing is permitted).
* If your game ends with less than 18 tiles controlled per city, you are disqualified!

SCORING:

Base Score: One point per tile culturally controlled in 2050AD. Includes water tiles.

+1 point for each ten shields of Ancient Era wonders self-built. Oracle worth double.
+2 points for each rival civ with relations polite or better, at game's end.
+3 points for each city of size 36 or larger. (Size 36 for Epic 36!)
+4 points for each city of more than 10000 culture.
+5 points for each Future Tech discovered.


SCORING MULTIPLIER: The following bonuses and penalties are totaled, then applied.

Aggression Penalty:
0% Penalty - For invading your Blood Enemy.
-15% Penalty - One time penalty for invading any civ besides your Blood Enemy.
-10% Penalty - For each civ not your Blood Enemy whose territory you invade.

Survival Penalty:
10% Scoring Bonus - If no rivals ever qualify to become your Blood Enemy.
10% Scoring Bonus - Eliminating your Blood Enemy before you enter the Industrial Age.
5% Scoring Bonus - Eliminating your Blood Enemy before you enter the Modern Age.
0% Penalty - If at least eight of your ten rivals survive to game's end.
-5% Penalty - For EACH civ eliminated after the second. (Less than eight rivals left).
-15% Penalty - If your Blood Brother is eliminated from the game.
-25% Penalty - Failure to eliminate your Blood Enemy by game's end.

Nuclear War Penalty:
-5% Penalty - If you ever use Nuclear Weapons.
-2% Penalty - For EACH of your cities hit with a Nuclear Weapon.

Destroyed Wonders Penalty:
-1% Penalty - Each great wonder destroyed by any of your rivals.
-2% Penalty - Each great wonder destroyed by you.


BLOOD FEUD:

* You may only have one Blood Enemy.

* Only civs who commit war crimes can become your Blood Enemy. War crimes:
1) Launching a sneak attack against you.
2) Declaring war on you when you refuse to cave to threats.
3) Any civ who eliminates another civ from the game (the one who delivers the death blow).
4) Allying against you in the same war with a civ who has launched a sneak attack on you.

* You may choose your Blood Enemy at any point prior to entering the Modern Age.

* You do not have to have a Blood Enemy if you do not want one. You must decide before your civ reaches the Modern Age.

* If no war crimes are committed by anybody before you enter the Modern Age, you will not have a Blood Enemy.

* The first civ to capture any of your cities automatically becomes your Blood Enemy. If you let a city be captured or razed, you lose the ability to choose who will be your Blood Enemy.

* If you have already chosen an eligible Blood Enemy, further provocations by other rivals will not matter. You only get one Blood Enemy.


DEFENSIVE WAR:

You cannot control who will decide to declare war on you. There are no penalties associated with defending yourself. You may freely attack the units of any civ who has declared war on you, so long as you are within friendly or neutral territory. (Right of Passage counts as neutral territory). If you attack any enemy unit (land or sea) inside their borders, that is considered an invasion. If you bombard units or improvements inside enemy borders, that is considered an invasion. If you are asked to remove your units and you refuse, that is considered an invasion. If you have units inside the borders of another civ (with or without RoP) when they declare war on you, THOSE UNITS ONLY are granted exception to invasion rules; they may attack or defend against enemy military units, but they may not pillage, nor attack noncombatants, nor attack cities, or that is considered an invasion. Use of Propaganda is considered an "invasion" for scoring purposes. Cultural flips are not.

Aggression Penalties apply only once per civ, so once you have invaded a particular civilization, you have suffered the maximum penalty and are free to invade and attack that civ as often as you like with no additional penalty other than that incurred if the target civ is eliminated from the game (by anybody).

If taken from you by force of arms, recapturing cities that you founded or earned through a cultural flip is exempted from the "invasion" rule, as those are rightfully YOUR lands you are invading, to take back what belonged to you. This exemption is limited to the immediate area around the target city you intend to liberate. Don't fudge this one. Use common sense.


BLOOD BROTHER:

* You may only have one Blood Brother.

* When at war with your Blood Enemy, you may sign one (only one) other civ to a military alliance, to come to your aid. That civ becomes your permanent Blood Brother.

* You may never invade your Blood Brother, even if he later attacks you. Any cities lost to your Blood Brother in combat are gone for keeps, so keep him happy if you can.

* Once you have a Blood Brother, you may sign military alliance with him against any civ with whom he is ALREADY AT WAR. While an alliance with your blood brother is active, you are allowed to attack enemy units (even workers) anywhere on the map except inside enemy cities, and you are allowed to pillage enemy resources, WITHOUT these actions being considered as "invasion". You are also allowed to pillage any tiles under enemy cultural control directly adjacent to your Blood Brother's territory (his border with the enemy, if any). Anything beyond these defensive moves to aid your Blood Brother is still allowed (any warring is allowed) but will count toward invasion penalties in your score.

* If the alliance ends for any reason, normal "invasion rules" will apply once again.


SCORING EXAMPLE ONE:

1000 tiles controlled.
+20 pts for Great Wall self-built.
+8 points for four rivals Polite.
+9 points for three massive cities.
+8 points for two cultural cities.
+20 points for four future tech.
Subtotal: 1065 pts.

+5% eliminating Blood Enemy during Industrial Age.
-10% only six rivals left at game's end.
-1% Colossus destroyed in a war.
Subtotal: -6% penalty.

1065 x 94% = 1001 Points.


SCORING EXAMPLE TWO:

2788 tiles controlled.
+60 pts for self-built Oracle.
+40 pts for self-built Great Library.
+50 pts for ten future tech.
Subtotal: 2938 pts.

+5% eliminating Blood Enemy during Industrial Age.
-15% for invading someone other than Blood Enemy.
-50% for invading five other civilizations.
-15% for Blood Brother eliminated.
-25% for having only three rivals left alive.
Subtotal: -100% penalty!

2938 x 0% = ZERO POINTS!


SCORING EXAMPLE THREE:

2000 tiles controlled.
+30 pts for Hanging Gardens self-built.
+10 points for five rivals Polite.
+30 points for ten massive cities.
+20 points for five cultural cities.
+35 points for seven future tech.
Subtotal: 2125 pts.

-15% for invading someone other than Blood Enemy.
-10% for invading one other civ.
-10% for having five cities nuked by the AI's.
-5% for only seven rivals left at game's end.
Subtotal: -40% penalty

2125 x 60% = 1275 pts.

REPORTING:

To qualify for scoring, you must report your total tile count at game's end. To get this figure, check F11 on the final turn or during the replay and record the Land Area statistic. Each tile covers 100 square miles, so lop off the last two zeros and you have your Tile Count.

You must count your total number of cities (to meet the tile density qualification). You may want to do that from a list (F1, diplomacy, etc) rather than on the main map.

You should count your extra scoring (future tech, size 36+ cities, etc) for an accurate score, but this is optional if you don't want to do it. Your score will suffer slightly if you do not.

You must report who, if anybody, was your Blood Enemy and give some accounting of what they did to deserve your enmity.

You must report who, if anybody, was your Blood Brother, and the general shape of major events in this relationship. More detail is better, but at least some is required.

You must report how many civs remain alive at game's end, and how many (besides your Blood Enemy) that you invaded during the game.

You must record and report how many of your cities get nuked. Each city counts only once, even if a certain city is nuked several times.

You must check F7 for wonders. With the UN disabled, there are 24 wonders. (7 ancient, 9 medieval, 3 industrial, 5 modern). If any have been destroyed, you must report this.

Would be helpful if you do your own math to arrive at your final score, but someone else will take care of that if it's a problem for you.

STRATEGY:

Those who make too much war and those who make too little will both fare poorly in the scoring. Epics players as a group have little experience with playing all the way to 2050AD. Even GOTM milkers are used to reaching "domination threshold" early and riding the rest of the way in full control. Has anybody ever gone all the way to the end of the modern age with active, uncowed rivals running unchecked? What will a post-modern defensive war actually play like? The scoring for Pax Americana will reward those who maintain peace with most of their rivals over the long haul. How to best balance the competing interests is something you will have to sort out on the fly. Nobody has tried anything quite like this before. Here's hoping the scoring options keep it interesting even into the late game. There should be something for everybody here.

Also, keep an eye on your city density. With the help of water tiles, you can afford a number of cramped cities and still be above the 18-per-city qualification requirement, but you will not be able to operate with dense dotmapping across your entire civ. So be careful not to overdo it if you go poaching between cities in the wake of AI-on-AI warfare.


REMINDER: Copy and paste these rules to a file on your system so you can refer to them without having to log on, and in case the RB site is down at any point, you won't be stuck. Also be sure to keep a copy of your final save from 2049AD, in case any questions arise.


Closing Day: Monday, October 27. Scoring summaries due on Oct 27 or 28. Time extended on full reports until November 1, to give more time to report in detail on this behemoth.

Download Epic Thirty-six!

Epic thirty-six Scorecard

Read Epic Thirty-six Results

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