Era bonus? Can you tell me a bit more about that? I never knew that such a thing existed. I do agree that a lot of the starts posted in the forum, for instance also the pt III deity challenge i posted (deliberately made a bit easier so more players would try) or the start posted here are a bit more playable than your average fractal map. On the other hand if you compare to a B&S map (a suggestion of yours which i've taken up in offline games) the maps posted here are still a bit harder, there's often really a lot of room to expand and early trade to be had on B&S maps and i recommend them to players who want to make the jump from immortal to deity.
It's often possible to expand to 6 cities imo on most fractal maps too, but indeed not always 8 or a bit more which we see here or in the other maps i mentioned. I'm really interested to hear how that era bonus works out .Even without this bonus i'd feel that some earlier action is called for with less than 6 cities because you'd just lack power late game regardless. You can't even build the important national wonders in this case so apart from blitzing cultural seems to be the only option.
