Competition: Fayuum

– by Granite Q

Introduction
The competition closed at 12 midnight Sunday 2nd March 2003, US Eastern Time, ET(US) – that’s Heaven Games forum time, should you wish to calculate the closing time in your own time zone.

This game was designed by Granite Q. The beta testers were Elf and Srooc9, their suggestions were particularly helpful and much appreciated.

Fayuum (Easy Difficulty)
Fayuum (Hard Difficulty)

Rules
Players are advised that the Pharaoh Heaven Competition Rules and Pharaoh Heaven Pharaoh/Cleopatra G a me Features page apply to this competition.

Mission briefing
The Fayuum is a large fertile depression containing a great lake connected to the Nile by a small tributary. The area was inhabited from early times, and is believed to have been the most heavily populated area of Egypt during the period of The New Kingdom.

There were a number of settlements in the Fayuum area, three major ones close to the great lake itself, Dimai, Qasr Qarun and Batn Ihrit. A number of temples were constructed here; the large number of crocodiles in the area made it a centre of worship for the crocodile god, Sobek.

Your task is to recreate the high point of development in the Fayuum, the great temple to Sobek is to be represented by the construction of a Mausoleum from local sandstone, and the settlements by a large population in as many fancy residences (or better) as you can build.

Competition criteria
Your competition entry should be a saved game as follows:
December AD6 at Easy Difficulty (that’s seven full game years)
December AD5 at Hard Difficulty (that’s six full game years)

Please ensure there is sufficient time to pause your saved game and view it (at 10% speed) before the turn of the year.

The minimum criteria that your saved game competition entry should meet are:
Culture 40
Prosperity 50
Kingdom 70
Population 4000
City not in debt
A fully staffed Palace

Please note that the Overseer of Ratings page shows a requirement of 999 fancy residences. This is an artificial requirement to prevent premature winning when all other criteria are met. You should ignore this requirement.

Winning criteria (Easy difficulty)

The highest percentage completion of the mausoleum (as recorded by the Overseer of Monuments) at the time of your saved game competition entry (December AD6). (No burial goods are required).
The highest Prosperity Rating. Please note your saved game competition entry will be run on ‘hands free’ until April AD7. The lower value of prosperity in your saved game competition entry in Dec AD6 and April AD7 will be the value taken for your entry.
The highest total number of Fancy Residences and Manors in your saved game competition entry (Dec AD6)

The second and third criteria respectively will be used to separate entries which are tied in criterion 1.

Winning criteria (Hard difficulty)

The highest percentage completion of the mausoleum (as recorded by the Overseer of Monuments) at the time of your saved game competition entry (December AD5). (No burial goods are required).
The highest Prosperity Rating. Please note your saved game competition entry will be run on ‘hands free’ until April AD6. The lower value of prosperity in your saved game competition entry in Dec AD5 and April AD6 will be the value taken for your entry.
The highest total number of Fancy Residences and Manors in your saved game competition entry (Dec AD5)

The second and third criteria respectively will be used to separate entries which are tied in criterion 1.

Designer’s Advice
The start date for this game is 0AD. You must submit a game saved in December AD6 at Easy difficulty, or in December AD5 at Hard difficulty. Remember to make a manual save in December of every year. You will get a message informing you of an increase in the price of granite (which plays no part in the game) as a reminder to make these saves.

As is usual in competitions, this game has been programmed so that events which happen as a direct result of some action (for example a trade route becoming available after meeting a request) have been set to occur at a fixed time after compliance. Some players, however, seem to observe some variation in these set timings, for which there appears to be no directly attributable reason.

Please note that the Overseer of Ratings page will apparantly show the number of ‘fancy residences’ you have in your city (at the top of the page) compared with the artificial target of 999. In fact this total is ‘fancy residences and all better quality housing (in this case, manors) in your city’. If you played with Cleopatra, this will be the number taken for your entry in assessing WC3.

However if you played Fayuum with Pharaoh, there is an anomoly whereby the Pharaoh game multiplies the number of fancy residences by two and manors by three (the length of one side of each building), and thereby exaggerates the number of houses present as shown on the Overseer of Ratings page. The game entry assessors will load your submitted game into Cleopatra to gain access to the correct number of houses for your WC3 entry.

In this game you can only place shipwright(s) and dock(s) during the period of the annual flood. Please note that this is an intentionally designed feature of the game. At other times you will get the ‘This inland lake has no access to the sea’ message.

Sea/River trade can only take place during the period of the annual flood. Trade ships which become trapped in the Fayuum when the flood recedes, will either sink or wait for the next flood before moving to the dock to trade or leaving the Fayuum.

You cannot place a ferry route if it crosses the route of a ferry already in place. For example, if you have a North-South ferry, you cannot place an East-West ferry if its route crosses the original North-South route.

You can find more locations to place the monument by rotating the map.

Have fun!!
Granite Q

Results

Hard

Winner: Martinu
% Mausoleum (#1): 100
Prosperity Rating (#2): 100
# of Fancy Residences (#3): 74

Easy

Winner: Shaun
% Mausoleum (#1): 100
Prosperity Rating (#2): 79
# of Fancy Residences (#3): 19

Runner-up: TNT
% Mausoleum (#1): 100
Prosperity Rating (#2): 77
# of Fancy Residences (#3): 31

Links
Official Announcement Thread
Full Results and Discussion Thread