Contest 22: Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl: Introduction

Welcome to the contest pages for Contest 22: Dust Bowl. This is a Pharaoh game; it must be played with Pharaoh and not Cleopatra.

Use the links below to download the starting positions:

Dust Bowl (Easy Difficulty)
Dust Bowl (Hard Difficulty)

To download the mission, simply click the appropriate link. The file you receive will be in a zipped format. After downloading, decompress the file (using, e.g. PowerArchiver or Winzip). You can get Winzip free from their website at www.winzip.com.

Then place the unzipped file in your family save directory (in the Pharaoh root directory, Save, [YourFamilyName]; by default C:\Sierra\Pharaoh\Save\[YourFamilyName]\).

To play the game, start Pharaoh, go to your family, and select "Load Saved Game". You will find Dust Bowl Easy or Dust Bowl Hard as a saved game. It should be preset at the appropriate difficulty level.

Please make sure you play the game from the start at the correct level of difficulty. Select Options, Difficulty and check it. If necessary adjust the difficulty, select new game and reselect the Dust Bowl saved game. Now you can play.

All players are advised to peruse the remainder of the contest pages (links to which can be found at the foot of the page), as well as the General Rules and Pharaoh/Cleopatra game features.

Dust Bowl was created by Granite Q.

The beta-testers were Cartouche Bee, Aditya and JuliaSet; their patience and helpful suggestions during the making of this game are much appreciated.

This contest closes at 11pm EST on 31st August 2002

Dust Bowl: The Story

Pharaoh wishes to define the current southern border of Egypt on the edge of the Eastern Desert by building a highly prosperous city there.

He has sent out architects to survey the land and they have identified a small bowl shaped area of land, which they say is ideal. It has a water supply and some meadow farming area, suitable for a small range of crops.

There might be access to clay at this location, but the architects have warned that although initially a clay pit might be stable, eventually continuous extraction of clay would almost certainly render it liable to progressive repetitive collapse.

Pharaoh requires this city to be of a significant size and it should display some of the finest attributes that Egyptian cities can to the natives of the area. Its prosperity should be close to the maximum that is achievable with the resources that Pharaoh has provided for you.

Most importantly, he wishes this to be completed quickly. He has allowed you only 4 years to complete the task.

Dust Bowl: Contest Rules & Designer's Advice

First, competitors are reminded that the normal CBC Contest General Rules apply to this contest. Competitors are also advised to peruse the list of Pharaoh/Cleopatra game features.

Special Rule: You are required to make a manual save in June and December of every year of the game.

The game to be submitted as your competition entry should be saved in December of the fourth year (AD3) when the countdown in the top left corner shows one month remaining.

The mission goals (minimum values) that your saved game should have are:

Culture:50
Prosperity: 20
Kingdom: 85
Population: 1200

Elite housing levels cannot be achieved in this game. The requirement on The Overseer of Ratings page for one Palatial Estate is there to block premature winning of the game. You should ignore this requirement.

Please note that getting the victory screen doesn't necessarily qualify the game as a valid entry, you should check for yourself that all the the mission goals are satisfactorily met in your submitted saved game.

The valid entries will then be ranked according to the following winning criteria:

1: The highest prosperity rating
Please note that the game will be run forward 'hands free' to April AD4 and the lower value of prosperity at December AD3 and April AD4 will be the value taken for your competition entry.

2: The highest number of citizens in the December AD3 saved game

The second criterion is only applicable if the first criterion produces a tie.

Designer's advice:

This is a Pharaoh game; this game can only be played with Pharaoh. If you play this game with Cleopatra, the assessors will not be able to get the victory screen in January AD4 and run the game on to April AD4, your entry will therefore be void.

The start date is 0AD. You should submit a game saved in December AD3, when the countdown in the top left corner indicates one month remaining.

You are also required to make a manual save in June and 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. You should not submit these saves with your entry, but should make them available upon request.

Clay pit collapses/flooding are programmed events. They commence in AD1 and become almost continuous later in the game.

This game contains flax meadow farms. Some players in earlier CBC competition games have reported that flax farms do not produce a cart pusher at harvest time even though cart pushers should be able to take flax directly to a weaver. However others have reported this anomaly does not appear to happen if there is space in a storage yard to receive flax.

You must play the mission at the correct level of difficulty throughout the game.

Granite Q

This contest closes at 11pm EST on 31st August 2002

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