Yes, I'd be fine with Events being on in Challenger games when said Events are on in Non-Challenger games.
I'd also be fine with a general heuristic of not having Events (and Huts) enabled for the Higher-Difficulty "stream" of games (Emperor through Deity as the Contender Class). Although, with any heuristic, it's just a general approach that can be altered, to keep things different and spicy.
Regarding Espionage Cultural Victories, the
Hall of Fame does differentiate them. You can certainly get a very rough feel for how they compare to Traditional Cultural Victories based on the results posted there, but there are some important points to keep in mind.
One is that there have been less players overall in the years since the Espionage Cultural Victories were introduced, and many of the corresponding #1 records were only ever attempted by one player. Contrast that fact with many players having played for many of the Traditional Cultural Victory slots, and it's often not a strong comparison to look at the fastest dates for the two types across of a given slot (where Difficulty Level + Map Size + Game Speed represents a slot) and draw too many useful conclusions.
For example, I have a couple of Deity Espionage Cultural Victories, but the truth is that I was trying to beat the #1 records for the corresponding Traditional Cultural Victory slots, realised that would not beat the corresponding #1 Traditional Cultural game, and just gave away a Legendary-To-Be City to an AI for a few turns to dump all of my Espionage Points into Culture Spread Espionage Missions, recaptured the City, and then finished off my game for a #1 record in the Espionage Cultural Victory slot. Since no one has bothered to compete with this #1 slot, I only tentatively hold it until someone takes the time to seriously attempt to challenge it.
Meanwhile, there are games where the player obviously started off with Espionage Cultural Victory in mind. One noteworthy game is
@Kaitzilla's Deity Standard Marathon 1300 BC Espionage Cultural Victory. Only one other player competed for this slot, but it certainly demonstrates the power of an Espionage Cultural Victory under the right circumstances (Incan Quechuas).
Contrast that date with
@Seraiel's Deity Standard Marathon 1255 AD Traditional Cultural Victory (not as the Incans), which was hard-won and tenaciously fought for over the years, with 8 competing games for the same slot that all had great results (1580 AD or earlier).
The BUFFY definition of there being at least one Spread Culture Espionage Mission (used in any City, even not a Legendary City) seems to have been validly accepted by the Hall of Fame community as a reasonable compromise for differentiating the two types of Cultural Victories.
In practice, not being able to use a Spread Culture Espionage Mission in any City doesn't really limit one in a Traditional Cultural Victory game, since the goal is not about taking a lot of territory or stealing many AI Cities, and the passive Culture already helps in these regards, anyway.
After a lot of discussion in the XOTM community, the end result was the stated consensus in the XOTM community to differentiate the two Cultural Victory types.
However, in practice, Map Makers just kept saying that the awarding of Awards would treat the two types as being the same, and we kind of just essentially brushed the agreed-upon decision of the XOTM community under the rug through this approach. This comment is not a blame and is not a criticism, but just represents the outcome of small decisions that were made over time.
In the end, it probably worked out for the best to just lump together the two types of Cultural Victories for XOTM, because the reality is that we just don't have a lot of players, and any form of Cultural Victory is often not chased after by a majority of players, and usually not even by more than a few players in a given game. (Meanwhile, this thinking is different for Hall of Fame, as any player at any time can post a game for a given slot, and Hall of Fame really does focus on the best-of-the-best results throughout time, thus we are only really limited on time and interest by players competing for a given slot.)
If someone has a good game, it's probably, in general, more due to other factors, such as making a lot of good decisions and receiving some good-luck results that would make any Victory Condition come out faster. If you have a great early game, you can often choose whether to make it Domination, (United Nations) Diplomatic, Space, or (Espionage or Traditional) Cultural, without too much effort.
There can be games where the difference matters, but does the difference matter for the wrong reasons?
For example, there was a Greek game where we were on the same continent as China, which I did not get time to finish, but where I was going for a relatively early Espionage Cultural Victory (pre-1000-AD). The reality is that I was successful in early warring and tech trading and could have had a great result with most of the Victory Condition types. Most of the players struggled with beating China in that game, but I'd sacrificed a fast buildup for an aggressive REX phase with later backfilling of Cities, and I ended up denying my AI opponent some key Resources, making for a strong, early conquest of that player, and setting up a good early empire to pull off a an early Espionage Cultural Victory, including having captured some Courthouses.
Had I had time to finish that game, the Victory date would have blown away those playing for a Traditional Cultural Victory by players who had not had a good early warring result. It wasn't the type of Cultural Victory condition that was at play in determining why I would have finished centuries ahead of the competition, but instead, early-game decisions and early-game luck, such as inadvertently denying Iron to my AI opponent by wanting to claim some other Food Resources, such that an Iron which was 3 squares away from one of my settled blocking Cities ended up being too close to my empire for the AI to lay claim to it, while it appeared to have been claimed by that same AI opponent in other players' games.
Also, there is the fact that while a large empire can help for an Espionage Cultural Victory, it can also be key for a Sid's Sushi Cultural Victory. I believe that a strong case could be made for a Sid's Sushi Cultural Victory being played very differently from a Traditional Cultural Victory.
Perhaps, however, simply the fact that Sid's Sushi tends to come relatively late in the game, often making it hard to get an extremely earlier result than a Traditional Cultural Victory, was seen in enough players' minds as being a reason not to treat a Sid's Sushi Cultural Victory any differently in the XOTM (and Hall of Fame) Awards tables from a Traditional Cultural Victory.
In my mind, though, what we "knew" as a Traditional Cultural Victory from our War Academy and the Strategy forum, with the roughly 9 Cities, Cottages in 2 or 3 Cities, and Great Artist Culture Bombs, is significantly different from how a Sid's Sushi Cultural Victory gets played. But, we don't make this differentiation or distinction in XOTM or in Hall of Fame.
I think that for a SGOTM game, if we ever have enough players and a Map Maker to run another one, it is important to at least discuss the difference and clarify up-front whether an Espionage Cultural Victory will be treated equally with a Traditional Cultural Victory, purely for the sake of all of the teams keeping an Espionage Cultural Victory in mind so that there wouldn't be any complaints after the game was over about one team winning that way while another team thought that the Victory type wasn't allowed.
But, given that we didn't go to the trouble of creating another XOTM Award category for Espionage Cultural Victory, it's probably reasonable to say that it's "too late" to entertain the idea of separating the types of Cultural Victories for XOTM and we can safely just proceed forward with the fact that information about how to play these 3 vastly different styles of Cultural Victories is open knowledge which any player can research and can use to play a competitive XOTM game, leaving it up to the individual player to assess which way to play, be it the method of play that seems to be the most efficient or be it the method of play that seems to be the most enjoyable, based upon how the player decides to play their game.
Though possibly you have already played far enough to have an idea about the map.
) then I can certainly try to accommodate that.
