1) When I think of competition, I think of sports or games. And in sports or games luck is nearly always present. Even more, I am of the opinion that if it were not, the competing itself would cease shortly thereafter. Bear with me and imagine a sport – if the team or individual with better skills always won, competing a second time will be, to quote Blackadder, like a broken pencil – utterly pointless. Eliminating the element of chance is in effect killing the competition (no pun intended... at first).
Bogus. Not only do sports have extremely minimal elements of chance, but that chance is up to decisions made by the player. Also, "skill" is not fixed. Are you going to tell me that the Bills beat the Patriots or that the Ravens beat the Jets because they got lucky? Really?
What sports do NOT have is randomly benching quarterbacks, star players, etc for 1/8 or 1/4 of the game based on a dice roll. Even injury, a joke example provided previously, is rarely a factor of luck. If you apply the same amount of force to the same spot on the body, the same thing is likely to happen to it. Even injury is a factor of player decisions. The analogy to events is completely broken, as is the argument that luck somehow makes competition more pure. It doesn't. Uncontrollable luck factors cheapen competition, which is why teams aren't required to randomly bench their players, play different game lengths in different games, or any other assortment of stupid rules.
Total fairness in any given competition is impossible in theory and very nearly so in practice. If total fairness is unattainable, then every competition between equally skilled individuals is per definition sometimes decided by chance.
Aside from the logical flaw in something being impossible in theory and then minimally possible in practice, I see nothing wrong here so far.
I consider that to be a generic feature of competitions. Take that away and what we have is 2+2=4 all the time. A fact.
And now you fall from (mostly) accurate to 100% incorrect. Take a competition that has absolutely 0 luck factor: shooting 3 point shots indoors with identical lighting and no wind. Put two players against each other in this setting. A small % of the time, a poor player will hit more shots out of 10 or even out of 20+ shots than a player who is good at shooting. Do you assert this as luck? If so, how was the poor player lucky? If you can't, there is a fundamental logical flaw in your assertion that luck is required for competition.
What you believe is not relevant to what happens in competitions. Unless you have insider knowledge on the way these competitions are handled, you can't realistically assert they "acknowledge this" (care to post proof on that point?).
Let's continue:
Generally, equal opportunity and equal starting conditions are considered fairness in practice. Two long jumpers may be scheduled 2 min after one another in which time wind velocity shifts from +1,5 to -1,5 m/s. Fair? No. Happens? All the time.
Yes, although is there a reasonable means to avoid this issue? How large an impact does this issue have on the jumps? Also, how is this a REASONABLE analogy to events, which can completely turn outcomes independently of skill? Is one athlete jumping in a hurricane and another with 0 wind?
Fairness and luck are two completely independent factors.
Yes, but this really doesn't address
any of the points made by those in opposition to events, does it? No, it does not. I didn't say anything about fairness here in my event argument summary (and everyone having an equal opportunity to be screwed is part of the reason why). You could infer an unfair advantage to those with extra time in HoF settings though. Basically this point is true but has 0 relevance to the merits of events. Everyone has a fair chance in russian roulette, also, but that doesn't make it a good game to play.
It is my opinion that Civ 4 already involves so many elements based on chance, that one more – random events – does not make any significant difference.
Such a shame that we've already demonstrated times where adding an additional chance element such as events DOES make a difference. Believing otherwise is one's choice, but it's proven wrong. All random factors make a difference, and to a variable extent for each.
By the way, uniques and religions are not truly chance-based unto themselves and constitute bad examples.
On the other hand we will always have the most skilled player(s) get the highest score. To me that is the opposite of competition. It is mathematics.
Actually, as I demonstrated in the basketball 3 point shot example, those "mathematics" are wrong
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I'd also be delighted to hear how non-player decision-based chance has ANY factor on the outcome of, say, starcraft 2 matches. Or matches between organized teams in Gears of War 3 (or most decent shooters for that matter). Of the non-civ strong TBS games, most of the ones considered good don't have the game decided on low-odds RNG draws very often. Right now, civ IV is closer to pokemon competitions.
Even the woefully-designed civ V has a better handle on reigning in this crap than civ IV. Too bad that beta game was sold as a finished title and never truly finished but oh well.
P.S. If you want to play a game when the rules are designed to be as close to total fairness as possible, try competive bridge. Competitive rules ensure that both scoring system and dealt cards matter as little as possible. One of the best games ever.
I've heard this before and have been meaning to look into it.
... and this regardlss of if you think events should average or not, since you clearly stated in post #125 that you believed that somehow good events trumped bad ones ... you can't say that without having a idea where the 0 of that scale is 
). I presented a pseudo reductio ad absurdum and in post #138 you didn't denied you agreed with it ... in fact you even hinted that, according you, it would fit RL better. More, you repeatedly said ( one example is post #125 ) that you are OK if a event system gives good and bad events ( never quantifying things at all )
