Well it was meant to just be a sincere thanks and cya, but I guess didn't come out that way.
I don't blame Ainwood and team. I appreciate the fun I've had and reality you can't please everyone, and the difficulty of this. A parting suggestion that starting at Chieftain and working up might have worked better and maybe should be considered for Civ5 or the x-pac or whatever.
Clearly, comparitively, a lot of people didn't play the harder diffuclties, and those that did mostly didn't submit. Fair enough, back to a simpler level.
For me, Monarchy is tolerable, and can be fun, but mostly still a walkover going through the motions, and Emporer, Immortal, and Deity is where all the fun is at. Only one in 5 so far, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I am under the distinct impression the difficulty will be slowly scaling back up again to let the community keep up. The challenger settings aren't difficulty based and don't change much (I was one of the few who played the Monarchy one on Challenger and it had no effect on spicing it up except shaving a few points of end score), hence I don't foresee any games that I would find fun for next couple months either.
As GotM is my only SP Civ gaming, and MP is unfortunately already dying out these last several weeks due to bad peer problems and lack of support (I log in every day, but last weeks can't get a ladder game, and frequently can't even get any game due to low numbers and prevalency of bad peers), it seems that's really just that. It's more about Civ4 really. The chopping and comparitive ease of military route (combined with ultra military scoring bonus) means there's only two real ways to play this game. The right way, and the handicapped way.
Many people have no problem handicapping themselves, not chop chop chopping their way to victory, not abusing the ******ed AI's military routine and stomping it to a guaranteed victory, cheerfully accepting the comparitvely ludcirous crap score for alternative more challenging ways of playing. I commend those people, but I simply can't do it. Feels contrived. Why not just skip the first 10 turns, or 25 turns? Same diff to me as choosing not to chop, or to go for cultural. I can't get into that headspace of playing without pulling out all stops and giving it my best for my best result I can get. Maybe a patch + x-pac will fix these things, and if so I try again then. But, in the meantime, a few long challenging GotM games would've kept my interest but it is not to be. If that is immature then fine, I stick my tongue out, am takin my candy cane, and going home.
So, as I meant to say befre without giving offence, thanks, and so long.