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Realms Beyond Civilization

Epic 39 – Division of Labor

Celts

Scenario concept: To try out the new and improved Specialists in Conquests. (For the detailed rules, click here).

Opening Strategy

After giving the variant rules some thought (and taking into account the advantages of the Agricultural trait), I tried to identify some of the implications. Obviously, without the ability to mine, shields would be at a premium, whereas food would be relatively more abundant. Whipping could be a significant source of shields, effectively converting food to shields, as long as I could manage the happiness. Part of the design was to use the new specialists, but the two shield-enhancing ones (police and civil engineer) don’t appear until late in the tech tree. Initially, they would just help our economy, offsetting the lack of Republic. Some practical conclusions I came up with:

	Forests would be valuable, as my primary source of early shields. Don’t Chop!
	My agricultural ‘extra food’ bonus would only help if on fresh water, so I would want to settle on as many fresh-water sites as possible.
	Granaries would not be a priority this time. A granary basically allows you to invest shields to increase (effective) food production, while I most likely be in a high-food, low-shield situation. Unless I found a perfect “4-turn settler factory” site, which would be tough without mining, I thought I would be better off just getting multiple food-bonus cities building settlers.
	Normally, plains and grassland are pretty equivalent, as an irrigated plains has the same value as a mined grass (for a couple extra worker-turns). But since mining the grass wasn’t an option, plains became far more valuable. Grass could still be irrigated, but that wouldn’t help in despotism.
	A couple early bonus tiles (plains-wine, plains-sugar) also couldn’t be improved until we were out of despotism.
	Hills would eventually be my main shield supply, but they also were fairly limited payoff until we were out of despotism.

Taken together, one key theme I saw right away was that I wanted to get out of despotism quickly, even more so than a normal game. Since Republic wasn’t an option, a beeline to Monarchy made the most sense. I also would focus on getting as many good cities on fresh water as I could, and get a decent core. Being religious, I expected to whip a few cheap temples as needed to get forests in range and connect borders.

At this point I was still undecided about victory conditions. I was considering a 100K cultural, since that would give me a good chance to utilize some early cultural whipping, and a large empire would be the perfect chance for lots of specialists. I could put some of my RBC10 SG (Cultured Communists) lessons into practice! However, as it was late in the month before I got started, I wasn’t sure I would have the RL time for a long, drawn-out game, so I was also considering a quick domination. The map would dictate a lot of that, and actually, as I thought about it, the opening wouldn’t be much different either way, as even for a 100K game, I would want to expand and grab as much territory as possible, at least my starting continent.

Time to Start Playing!

Game Announcement Page: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/civ/epic39.html

Scenario concept: To try out the new and improved Specialists in Conquests.

VARIANT RULE: Any tile that can be irrigated may not be mined or have a forest planted on it. This would apply to grassland, plains, and desert. Hills, mountains, and tundra are free to be mined, and tundra can be forested. If you acquire rival territory that has such mined tiles, your cities cannot use them until you convert the existing improvements to irrigation.

VARIANT RULE: You may not switch to Republic or Democracy.

Scoring: Ranked by fastest finish in each victory type.

Sponsor: T-hawk
Opening Date: Monday, March 1st
Duration: Four Weeks
Map Generation: Random, Edited

Civilization: Celts
Difficulty: Emperor
Map Size: Small
Opponents: Five
Land: Continents 30%
Climate: Arid, Flat
Barbarians: Roaming
Rules: Standard
Victory: Any
Version: Conquests 1.15 beta
Cultural link and Respawn off

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