- Joined
- Nov 16, 2001
- Messages
- 2,686
I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme... or the first time in MP that someone loses out on a spacerace because their capitol was all alone on the other side of the world from their empire. 
For the purposes of the HOF, it's a big problem as earlier games were definitely profitting by this (unwittingly) in many cases. Either it continues to be allowed, and all new games will necessarily have to exploit this to remain competitive, or the FP is removed entirely, and new games won't be able to compete with older ones. Taking the FP out altogether would drastically alter the 'difficulty' of any game, as FP placement is one of the more definite areas of advantage that the player has over the AI. The comparison of 'old' and 'new' games would be shot by the removal of the FP entirely.
I'd have to say the only fair ways to deal with it would be to allow players to make use of this new information to score as highly as possible, or to have an official HOF mod where perhaps a balance could be struck by changing the optimum number of cities or allowing more corruption reducing single city improvements. I'd much prefer not to go with the mod route.
The GOTM is in a better position to deal with this as each month the games only need to worry about how they compare against other games that month.

For the purposes of the HOF, it's a big problem as earlier games were definitely profitting by this (unwittingly) in many cases. Either it continues to be allowed, and all new games will necessarily have to exploit this to remain competitive, or the FP is removed entirely, and new games won't be able to compete with older ones. Taking the FP out altogether would drastically alter the 'difficulty' of any game, as FP placement is one of the more definite areas of advantage that the player has over the AI. The comparison of 'old' and 'new' games would be shot by the removal of the FP entirely.
I'd have to say the only fair ways to deal with it would be to allow players to make use of this new information to score as highly as possible, or to have an official HOF mod where perhaps a balance could be struck by changing the optimum number of cities or allowing more corruption reducing single city improvements. I'd much prefer not to go with the mod route.
The GOTM is in a better position to deal with this as each month the games only need to worry about how they compare against other games that month.