"Easy environments present no challenge to Man: it is the hard country that stimulates him to creative action." -- Arnold Toynbee
The matter of starting on a premade map is not so much a question of cheating as it is defiling the entire game itself. If one begins a game of Civilization with a ready-made map that will facilitate rather than challenge the emergence and growth of your civilization, then not only are you not playing Civilization; you do not even understand the concept of Civilization.
Central to the advance of Civilization has been the mastery of nature. From the dawn of civilization, when the first agriculturalists colonized the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, to the early Greeks who brought forth the glory of the Periclean Age from the mountainous shores of the Aegean Sea; from the Europeans who emerged from the Dark Ages to transform the forests of Europe into the crucible of a world civilization, to the American settlers who transformed the "Great American Desert" into the "Breadbasket of the World" -- the progress of civilization has been the arduous expansion of human society into the wilds of the world. And throughout all, there has been war and
strife over the control of land and its natural resources.
This reflection begs the question: If you do not want the challenge of leading
your civilization through the trials and tribulations in history, why bother
playing in deity mode? After all, by avoiding the challenges of Civilization,
you are not really playing Civilization in the first place.
And a couple of more pointed comments: To President Tiago of the Brazilians: starting against two civilizations, and with one of them on a rock! There's a challenge worthy of a "Deity!"
And to Roger Hofmann, who wrote (in a write-up that provides nothing new in terms ploys and tactics):
"The computer civs tend to build cities that have overlapping squares. You want to destroy these cities, not take them over (except if they contain a wonder). Poison the water supply to reduce the population to one, sabotage the city walls, and then use a military attack to finish the job."
Destroying the cities of opposing civilizations is the mark of a bad player; for a statement like this, you demonstrate that you are worthy of Barbarian leader (i.e., 150 gold), not a representative of Civilization. If only there was a Hall of Fame for Barbarians ... The only reason that I can see for employing such tactics is to slow opposing civilizations from developing nuclear weapons, since they have no qualms about using them, regardless of whether their leader is "civilized, rationalistic, and perfectionistic." It is a lamentable practice I look forward to discontinuing in CIV3.
As for the entire "Hall of Fame" debate, games that use premade maps, especially those designed to obtain high scores should not even be considered; they encourage bad play, and demean the efforts of good players! Sorry Thunderbolt, but I must disagree; there are players who spend a lot of time playing this game the way it was designed to be played, and it is unfair to them to include Roger Hofmann's score in the Hall of Fame.
Perhaps my statements reflect a specific style and philosophy of playing this
game, but as Macaulay wrote, "As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily
declines."
