Although the Apolyton Tournament dried up eight months ago, I remember it fondly. It was the first Civ III tournament I tried, and I had fun participating. Around the time it became clear that the Apolyton tourney was dead, the players from the Realms Beyond started thinking about running our own tournament. We discussed the details for a while before we got around to taking action, but our tournament has been running for almost half a year now, with regular and growing participation.
Realms Beyond Civilization
RBCiv Forum
Realms Beyond offers a Civ III tournament, averaging about three games per month. The scenarios involve high difficulty, or variants, or both. There's a list of "off limits tactics" aka "exploits" that are banned from use, and a strict no-spoilers policy, but if you are looking for gameplay and scenario variety, there's no better offering out there. It's the place to go for in-game challenge.
RBCiv's Epics are run as independent scenarios. There is no universal system applied to each game, thus no global rankings or ladder listings: scoring/ranking is per game, and not every scenario is scored. Yes, sometimes we play "sandlot" games and do cool things for variety, just because they sound interesting, like you might do with your friends in your back yard or living room.
To be honest, players recognize a well played game when they see it. Civ III's scoring system only records a tiny fraction of the gameplay results and does so awkwardly even in those areas. It has some merits in measuring results, but it is also prone to all sorts of gimmickry that has nothing to do with the concept of the game or the contexts of history, production, and technological advancement. The RB games generally have tailor-made scenario scoring or rankings/recognitions. You'll never have to "milk" a game there; the scenarios reward playing the game, not rushing through rapid conquest via every available rules loophole, then halting at the doorstep of victory to sit around extorting the scoring system for a couple hundred turns.
There are a lot of games played at Realms Beyond. The tourney has only been open a few months, but Game 17 starts on Monday (Oct 21) and there are more set to open in the near future. There's a steady and growing participation, a tradition of detailed reports, and a system where all results are revealed at the same time, meaning no advantages to those who delay starting to wait and see what spoilers others will post to help them out. There is (generally) no submission of saved games. You write your own report (helps if you have your own webspace, but that's not required) and unless something fishy turns up that raises questions (hasn't happened yet) we take you at your word on results. Most reports involve some screen shots, so that verifies a lot of things anyway. We find that our players WANT to talk about the details of their results, what they did, what they faced, what they achieved, and it helps that everyone is doing this on a routine, with a specified reporting period, all surprises and comparisons revealed at once.
The Realms Beyond games seek to remember what difficulty and uncertainty mean to the outcome. With some of the exploits and shortcut tactics off the table, our tournament goes beyond the mundane. All you need is a love of challenge, a willingness to play through mistakes or setbacks, to "play from behind", and a real passion for Civ III gaming on the whole. We believe that the best way to improve your gameplay is to subject yourself to the rigors of challenging competition.
The Realms Beyond are not for everyone, either. Some folks don't care to submit to stringent rules -- and those folks should stick to other tournaments. Some are intimidated by the difficulty of the games (both the difficulty level and the scenario designs) but there's no need to be. RB is "newbie friendly", supportive of our players, and open to all.
Most of our core community springs from the Succession Game subforum at CivFanatics, where detailed reports and intense discussion of game tactics, plans, and coordination of strategies is par for the course. Realms Beyond players have been organizing succession games at CivFanatics since a few weeks after Civ III first hit store shelves in 2001, and we still are. The Realms Beyond have been around for years, beginning with the original Diablo. It took us half a year to learn Civ III itself in sufficient detail to carry scenerio designs beyond the pale, into territory nobody else had covered yet. Some of the tournaments that have been around longer were organized at a time when less was known about the game. We tried to learn from them, both their successes and their problems, as well as to apply our own creative energies to explore new areas. We've kept a low profile, mostly, but we welcome new players to our community.
One of our game concepts is called "Potluck". This idea was made possible with the 1.29 patch, which allowed specific civs to be assigned to specific start points in the editor. The game sponsor creates a map, selects the civs and assigns them to the start points. Then a separate 4000BC start file is created for each player, with the civ selected at random by the game each time. Everyone plays the same map, with all the civs in the same locations, but nobody knows WHICH civ they will be playing until their game file is emailed to them. "You play the hand you are dealt", and then when the game closes, everyone compares results. It's a load of fun!
There will be a new Potluck tournament game opening on October 28. This one has a special twist, which you can read about
here. Anyone is welcome to sign up to play. New players will need to familiarize themselves with our rules. The rules are there to ensure a quality experience for all, and we're proud of the stability our rules have created for our community.
If any of this interests you, please stop by and check us out. You can read about ongoing or upcoming scenarios, get information about our tournament rules, or check the results and read the report threads from previous events. With so many detailed spot reports from skilled players playing a variety of challenging situations (including deity games), there's a wealth of information about strategy that is unavailable anywhere else.
Realms Beyond Civilization
RBCiv Forum
- Sirian
