Realms Beyond Civilization 

Epic 40 – The Hittite Cosmonauts

Scenario concept: According to the Civilopedia, "The end of the Hittite Empire came around 1100 BC, when mass migrations from Europe and the Caucasus caused the Empire to dissolve into dozens of small, semi-autonomous city-states." In this game, we're going to see if we can make better use of a semi-autonomous collection of city-states. Can you guide the Hittites to a Space victory?  (For the detailed rules, click here).

Outline of the Special Rules

In this game, each of your cities will function somewhat autonomously. Each city is very proud and fiercely independent. As a result, the tiles around a city may only be improved by the native workers trained at that particular city. That is to say, each city has its own self-trained workers, and these never migrate. The workers would not want to cheapen themselves by improving the tiles of another city, and the cities would not lower themselves to using non-hometown labor! Also, there will be no tile overlap in this game. Each city demands the right to be in complete control of all of its tiles! The only hope for the Hittites, then, is that the city-states can be held together by the firm hand of a strong leader. Thus, you may not switch to a representative government.

Additionally, there were some specific restrictions about cities and city placement.  We were limited to a maximum of 14 cities.  Those cities also had to be placed such that on founding, there would be no overlap between the 21-tile radius of workable tiles, and the 21-tile radius of ANY other existing city, whether our own or the AI.  If there would be overlap, the city could not be founded.  If a city (within that 14-city limit) was later captured or flipped, and had overlap, it could be kept but would become a "suburb" of the overlapped city.  Not only that, but as long as we are rated first in territory (per the F11 screen) we could not attack any enemy cities, even if we were below the 14-city limit.  For all the specific rules, click here.

Opening Strategy

Well, this would be the ultimate in OCP (Optimal City Placement).  My normal playing style always tended toward minimizing overlap, as I like to build larger cities later, if I'm going for a space race.  Interestingly, my Epic 38 game turned into a Space victory with a limited number of large, spaced-out cities, so I thought this would be similar, except for the worker restrictions.  I didn't realize initially, however, how much the worker restrictions would slow development, particularly in the rough terrain we would be facing.  Anyway, my plan, especially after seeing the FP-Wheat at the starting location, was to go for a settler factory and expand to fill in my limited number of slots, then try for early contacts and peacefully broker techs to get in the tech lead.  I was actually considering going for Feudalism, which seemed to fit the "theme" of the scenario, but with a limited number of cities, well-spaced, I expected them to grow large and therefore lose out on the unit support advantages, so Monarchy would be the better choice. 

Time to get the Scouts out!

Game Announcement Page: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/civ/epic40.html