Suspects' Rules

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Suspects' Rules
The Ususal Suspects' Extended, Expanded and Generally Over-the-Top Rules for Advanced Civilisation, Imperial Option

Map Changes

The map has been extended to the east to create three new start areas: Persia, the Indus and Arabia. The AST values have been changed accordingly (see JP's CIV Spreadsheet). The existing areas most affected by this are Babylon and Egypt.
The AST table has been removed from Africa and replaced by some extra one zones.

Rule Changes

We play the Imperial Option as defined in the Advanced Civilization Rules.
Three extra sets of counters have been added for the new civilizations on the extended map.
The owner of the house where the game is being played is the final arbiter of any disputes unless they are directly involved. In that case the dispute is resolved by debate and bribery.
Tokens must be kept in stacks (semi-serious suggestion to prevent long delays when tokens need to be counted).

The following changes are presented in the order of play as laid out on the green cards.

Ship Building

Movement

Always in census order as usual.
Players who cannot affect oneanother may move simultaneously.
Reason: speed up the flow of play

Conflict

If a Pirate City is destroyed, the attacking player recieves a trade card from the extra deck (see Acquire trade cards below).

Acquire Trade Cards

Once a player has more than nine cities, they receive one card for each additional city from the extra deck. The extra deck is a complete, shuffled set of trade cards, marked to distinguish it from the base set. The markings are on the face of the cards, so that only the player holding them knows which cards are from the extra deck.
Extra cards may also be bought for eighteen gold from the extra deck.
When there are more than eigth players extra cards are added to the base set of trade cards. One card of each commodity is added for every player over eight.
Reason: Keep the proportion of disasters in each turn close to that which occurs when you have eight players.
Note: This seems to be too many cards for the higher order commodities (7 and greater).

Trade

With the extra trade cards in the game, these cards may not be used to increase the value of a set of cards beyond the limit printed on the commodity card itself.

Calamities

We do not play the limit of two calamities per player rule!
The Civil War mitigators such as Music and Drama and Poetry are used after the victim has chosen the tokens they are going to keep. I.e. victim turns over tokens, recipient turns over tokens, victim chooses faction, victim adds tokens for each mitigator to the faction they have chosen.
Reason: These mitigators should always help, not make the disaster worse.
The following calamities are changed for all players, once any player reaches 10 or more cities
Reason: keep disasters proportionally disastrous as the game expands.

Volcano - no change
Treachery - no change
Famine - no change
Superstition - no change
Civil War: Double the number of tokens turned over.
Reason: in the original game, Civil War left a player with most of their empire, but not necessarily in the place they wanted it. As a disaster it was horrible to deal with, but possible to recover from in two to three turns. Players were rarely cut in half, the worst possible outcome, as empire sizes were so much smaller. The way we've been playing, 35 tokens is about half the empire of someone with seven or eight cities and most players spend a lot of time with an empire that size. A player who gets Civil War in our current game is lucky to recover within five or six turns (if there are that many left in the game).
Note: Doubling this disaster made it so weak that it had no effect - we need to find a change somewhere in between.
Slave Revolt: The number of tokens not available for city support is doubled
Flood - No change
Barbarian Hordes: The number of barbarians is doubled.
Epidemic - no change
Civil Disorder: Reduce to five cities rather than three.
Iconoclasm and Heresy - no change
Piracy (Suggested Change) One of:

Primary victim loses three coastal cities, person who traded the card to the primary victim gets to chose one of the cities. Two secondary victims lose one coastal city each.
Prmary victim loses 15 points from coastal areas. person who traded the card to the primary victim choses five of the points. Two secondary victims lose one coastal city each.
Return to the old rules for piracy: primary vitim loses one coastal city for each valid ship held by the person who traded them the Piracy card that could reach the city. Maximum of four coastal cities may be lost.Each secondary victim loses a coastal city that could be reached by a ship beloning to the primary victim. Person who traded card is immune.

Alter AST

A player who ends a turn with fewer cities in play than the number required to enter an epoch, immediately moves backwards on the AST.