Contest 41: Highway-Team Contest Audition: Introduction

Welcome to the contest pages for Contest 41: Highway-Audition. This is a Caesar 3 Team contest and should be played with Caesar 3 version 1.0.1.0. Use the link below to download the starting position:

Highway-Team Contest Audition(Normal Difficulty)
file is in zip format

After downloading, PC players should open the archive with a suitable programme (e.g. Winzip), and then extract the contents to the directory in which which C3.exe is located (by default C:\Sierra\Caesar3). Macintosh players, for whom the procedure of installing contest files is a little more complicated, can find detailed instructions here. If you have any problems, please ask in the Forum.

Before you start playing check the difficulty setting; it should be normal. If necessary adjust the difficulty, select load game and reselect "Team Audition Normal". Now you can play. As this is a special type of competition a number of special rules apply. So, read everything very carefully.

Highway-Team Contest (Parva Vallis-Small Valley): The Story

You sometimes wish you'd kept quiet when the Proconsul said, "It's my way or The Highway!" However your inherently stubborn nature wouldn't allow it. Had your infinitesimal successes in the past been flukes? You were determined to prove that you weren't a nine day wonder. And where has it landed you now? You thought you would be discharged from service and were looking at possible alternate occupations along the lines of politics but the Proconsul was alluding to a a project going on in the middle of nowhere. A project to build a highway from Rome to the farthest reaches of the Empire. The briefing ran as follows:

The Briefing:

There are two valleys, large and small, in an especially swampy part of the empire, where the construction work has been hampered by the terrain of swamps and deep water holes, strange natives and ravenous wolf packs.
The work has been long and arduous and the Parva Vallis is to be your first destination, your audition if you will, for greater things to come. One thing about this audition though, you get to play a part in something great whatever the outcome.

Succeed and you'll get to govern the Magna Vallis and a prominent position of favour in the Emperor's view. Fail and you'll be on a one way highway to the Coliseum dungeons and a prominent place in the Emperor's view, in the arena with the gladiators and wild beasts.

Time is short. The Emperor isn't known to be infinitely patient and you have four years to prove your worth or you automatically land a role in the Coliseum pay-per view event, "The King of the Jungle and I."

You have your impertinence to thank for the stiff goals. You must build as large and prosperous a city as you can in four years. At the end of this time, you performance will be reviewed and your fate decided. Good news though! With all your troubles with wolves and the terrain, you need not bother with providing food...because there's no fertile land in the small valley and no! Rome won't be providing any either...

The lack of good quality timber rules out fishing as well. You must trade for food but be warned, the wolves love the occasional donkey for a change from the tough and skinny natives and rest assured, delicious Romans will be on their diet, what with all the wine they drink...

May the Gods bless you for you'll need their blessings. Since their favour is especially required, only large and splendid marble temples will do here but atleast the marble is locally available. You might even make a small profit by exporting it to the traders who sneak past the wolves.

Ave Governor!

Signed,
The Proconsul.

A personal note from the Proconsul:

You have achieved good things in the past my friend and I admire your courage for accepting this mission. While I do not feel I was extremely harsh in sending you here, you might feel so. I can only convey my good will through this note. For heaven knows what reason, the local Britons covet this land and might try to get rid of you. Keep an eye out for them.

Good luck and fare thee well. We shall see you in four years, hopefully in one piece rather than in the stomachs of those wolves for we will either be losing a great Governor or giving the gladiators in the Coliseum, some practice.

Signed,
The Proconsul.

Highway-Audition for the Team Contest: Rules

CC - Audition save December 3 AD, the last month on the countdown.

WC - points are scored like this:

Audition map, 1 point per head of population
plus 200 points x each prosperity rating point.

plus 2 points per unit of pottery as listed by your trade advisor

plus 4 points per unit of Furniture as listed by trade advisor.

Highway-Audition Team Contest: Designers' Advice

There are special rules:

General Team rules:
1) In order to enter the team contest you must submit an "audition" valid entry.

2) The audition score will not be used for the final score in this contest and the audition scores will not be made public until after the contest has closed.

3) The teams will be made up by the design team (with help from any non entrants they wish to ask for advice if needed).
The teams will be made up from a selection of expert and novice players based on past contests as well as the audition score. For first time players or newer players that we don't know so much about their skill level, the audition score will be used to place them. So an expert player not getting much time to submit a great audition score will still be placed based on their past record. The main aim is to make the teams even on skill level. And to get as many players as possible.

4) The main idea behind team events is for newer and less skillful players to learn more about the game. This certainly happened in exile and we hope it will continue in this event.

5) The team score will be an average of all players in a team so that in the event we have 23 players all can take part in a team with say 3 x 5 members and 2 x 4 members in the teams. This eliminates the need for anyone to miss out. If the numbers worked out like this then this would be taken into account for the make up of the teams. This average will be i.e. 12,345 points. If necessary it will be taken to a decimal point to split teams. Using an average is better than a total as it allows different sized teams. The very best players will always be placed in the larger teams.

6 ) The audition scores would be listed from 1-23 using the above figure. Any player not sending in a final contest entry would score the average final contest entry of the player above and the player below on the audition list. The number 1 audition entry not sending in an entry would score the same as the number 2 audition entry and the number 23 player not sending in an entry would score the same as the number 22 entry. This score would be their contest score. So as no one on any team would know where they ranked on the audition list no one would be able to drop out as a tactic. Now it is possible that someone ranked say 18 not sending in an entry might profit from players 17 and 19 both finishing a lot higher up the contest list. Equally they could finish far lower.
If we use this method then it is too the advantage of every player to send in as good an audition score as they can to rank as high on the list as possible in case of RL stopping them from sending in a contest entry. So the audition will also mean a lot to the expert players who will want to rank in the first 3-4 players.

Players are advised to peruse the remainder of the contest pages (links to which can be found at the foot of the page)

Highway was created by Caesar Clifford and was beta-tested by Henrium and Caesar Clifford. The story was created by Aditya.

This contest closes Tuesday, November 18th, at 11 PM EST, 2003.
This contest has ended.
Good luck and have fun!

Caesar Clifford

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