Sponsors comments: Epic 23 - Focal Point
The initial idea for this game came from a comment from T-Hawk when reporting Epic 20 - Bakumatsu. He said ...
For the second game in a row, the sponsor wildly and fatally misjudged the level of difficulty. We can handle one choice from the variant menu of stagnated economy, lunatic rivals, and screwed diplomatic relations (the Christianity lock-in). Two of those would be a challenging variant. Three was unplayable."
Thus I wanted to see if I could put together a game that had several strong challengers but provided some unique opportunities.
Firstly, the challengers:
- no horses
- no copper
- no iron (in easy reach)
- Opponents to fight: Montezuma (Rome), Boudica (Holy Rome)
- Opponents to compete for Wonders: Louix XIV (China)
- Opponents to compete for Religions: Isabella (Spain)
- Opponents to compete for Tech: Mansa Musa (America)
- Opponents to compete diplomatically: Alexander (Russia)
- Opponents to compete via spying: Sitting Bull (England)
- Opponents for fun: Julius Caesar (India)
My hope is that these challengers will cause problems for the player. The one main problem that I would like to happen ... a nasty war with a Montie that has a UU that can really hurt. BTW - the above leader / civ combinations where all explicitly selected ... yes, even Isabella of Spain!
Now, the advantages:
- Trait: Expansive for quicker workers and faster growth (granary)
- Trait: Protective for free promotions for the units that the player can build - archers
- Map: A round map broken into segments by mountain ranges, the player can completely control AI to AI contact / access
- City placement: There are 9 city sites specifically selected for the player cities, all on plains hills (extra hammers and defense). The center city for the capital and the other 8 city sites to block the AIs completely in their slice of the map
- Iron that is just within reach, providing that the player techs to iron soon enough (ie before the AI) and is quick with an aggressive city placement
- Resource-less Unit: I think I stuffed this one up, I was trying for the resource-less axe replacement but I seemed to have got the resource less spear replacement - hopefully people still found him useful
