This is the story of my game of Epic Twelve from Realms Beyond Civilization.
Difficulty: Deity
Civilization: Zulus
World Size: Small
Opponents: Five
Terrain: Continents, 70% water
Climate: Cold
Barbarians: Roaming
Rules: Standard
Victory: Any
Sirian writes: Variant Rules: Our first Deity Variant, this one is going to be crushingly brutal. After the results for Epic Eight, a new round of discussions broke out about the Epics tactics. If all of the controversial subjects from that debate were removed entirely from the game, how would the game play? I wondered about this for the sake of argument, but we don't have to rely on theory and speculation. Let's find out.
* No purchasing workers. No workers through diplomacy by any means, including peace.
* No upgrading units. Ever. You build a unit, it remains that type of unit "for life".
* You may not pillage your own lands. (Includes no disconnecting your own resources).
* No trading away of your last unit of any given resource. You must keep one for yourself.
* No scrolling through cities during the production phase, "between turns".
* No prebuilding of any kind. No placeholders. Ever. You are NOT allowed to change projects. Or rather, if you change city projects from one to another, you MUST wipe out any shields stored in the box by first changing to Wealth, which will erase all but one shield, then (and only then) may you assign a city to a new item.
Well, well, this one will certainly be a challenge.
There's exactly one way that I'll be able to compete, and that's to get the Great Library. The AIs don't always research Literature quickly. I can't prebuild under the variant rules, but if I can beeline there and get Literature ten turns or so before an AI does, and have the capital ready to go optimized for shields, it just might happen.
I didn't have a whole lot of time to play this game, so I decided if I didn't get the GL I wouldn't bother to play it out. So here begins the Great Quest for the Library...
