Taking on Risk
One example would be losing a city in the early game to a barb because your warrior was one turn late to defend.
Okay, well in this example, it sounds to me like you took the risk of building a Settler before building a defender for that City, or that you at least sent the Settler ahead of said defender.
Either way, you are knowingly taking on a risk.
There is not a 100% certainty that a Barb will appear to disrupt your plans, but neither is there a 0% certainty.
You are taking a calculated risk.
Sometimes, that risk will pay off. Let's say that it pays off 4 out of every 5 games.
In your interest of makings games fair, wouldn't it be acceptable for you to actually lose a City to a Barb in 20% of your GOTM games? Wouldn't that give you a better result than the average player in 80% of your games, at the cost of doing a bit worse in 20% of your games?
I see nothing wrong with that model.
You chose to play riskily and thus went against advice of the game's Hint about "Failing to escort your Settlers is taking on a big risk."
So, what is it that you see fair about you being able to reload in 20% of your games, so that in the balance of the other 80% of the games, you can submit in the "non reloading category" and thereby do better than the average player who never plans to reload and thus always sends a proper escort with their Settler?
How is that approach in any way fair?
Anyway, for this example, I would suggest multiple ideas for how to deal with this issue in the future:
1. Build more early Warriors and spawn-bust the hidden squares, so that Barbs will not spawn anywhere near where you plan to settle.
OR
2. Move your Settler at a slower pace so that your defender is always protecting it. You could also "start off" by sending your defender in the right direction a bit ahead of time, just before the Settler is completed, allowing the Settler to move its full movement points initially, but then move slowly as a team once the Settler "catches up" to your defending escort.
OR
3. Skip buiding a Wonder like Stonehenge or The Great Wall in favour of getting Settlers produced earlier in the game, so that the only Barbs that you are dealing with are Barb Animals. You can be a little more risky in your play this way, as you can settle next to a Barb Animal and not worry about it attacking you, as it will be ejected from your cultural borders upon the settling of your City. This way, you can still enjoy the benefits of your risky play, but you'll also have to live with the fact that you might still have your Settler get eaten by a 2-movement point Animal (just either plan for that with SOME spawn-busting to spot all squares that are two-squares away or else accept the fact that you might lose a Settler in some of your games).
OR
4. Don't build Settlers. Build Axemen or Chariots. Not only will you eat the Barb Warriors for lunch, but you can capture instead of settle your additional Cities and will not have to worry about a Settler dying to a Barb unit.
Code-digging
And this is my whole point of posting -- are the existing rules fair? If I'm not a programmer and can't read code, I'm a second class player if some code savvy player does read the code during their game.
Very few players here actually read through the SDK (software development kit) code. More players read through the XML, but even those players are a small minority. Many players, however, have read the info SHARED by people who have done these things, and this info is free available to you or anyone in the form of the
War Academy, as well as by searching the forum for a particular subject (see the Custom Search textbox at the top right of this screen).
Further, for your convenience, there are summaries of the info that people have learned in the form of downloadable files. If you are interested in the results and implications of the discoveries made, as long as you can open and read a PDF file or a spreadsheet that someone else has already created, then you have access to this info for Civ 4 already, yourself.
It's very likely that this same type of info, once it becomes available for Civ 5, will also be published to the community on this web site and you will be able to fully absorb it at your leisure or pleasure.
I'm sure that if you asked nicely, someone could even provide you a couple of links to PDF files and spreadsheets on this web site that will give you a wealth of information about how the game works.
There is no way to be able to put a "ban on learning," nor would we want to do so if we could, so you might as well enjoy doing some learning of your own.