Late into this discussion, but I wanted to add a few things.
oopsy poopsy said:
If the statement's intention is to evaluate two variables and state that sometimes it is more valuable to have luck than skill, but still assume that skill is of primary importance, then the statement should read, "sometimes it is better to be good AND lucky." The major implication of "sometimes it's better to be lucky than good" is that the luck comes without being good.
And that isn't possible? You can be lucky but not a good player, and still win the game if things fall your way.
However, we are treating this statement as if it were made in a vacuum and it wasn't. It was used in this thread in opposition to another statement, "sometimes it's better to be good than lucky." When taken together the two original statements do evaluate the two variables and state that luck and skill both have their place in civ (and presumably in other areas as well), but regarless of how good a player is, they cannot foresee every possible outcome and that being good is greatly enhanced by also being lucky.
You're still assuming that being a good player is the baseline of importance, and that being lucky only enhances. You're effectively comparing "
good and
lucky" to "
good and
not lucky", ignoring the other two possibilities. From the way you phrased that last sentence, I think it's because you're equating "lucky" to "not suffering from bad luck", when in fact it also includes the possibility of
good luck.
Let's take three very simple examples. Take the exact same start Sullla and Sirian had, same variant rules, same everything... except:
Case 1> Switch the starting positions of Cuba and England. Now, it's the Cubans who get hemmed in on one resource-poor corner of the continent while the English fill the rest of it, and whose starting position is hilly, with its lake not adjacent to the ocean. Even if they could have reached Pink Dot (Santa Rosa) first, they'd almost certaintly have been limited to a small, icy fraction of the continent, in a variant that prevented overseas expansion. There's almost no skill involved there, that's simply LUCK. The only "skill" involved would be if the Cubans could have rushed settlers to the front fast enough to prevent England from closing the north peninsula off, and the chances of that were relatively slim.
And yet, I think they'd have found a way to win anyway, because
sometimes it's better to be good than lucky. Even with bad luck, good skill can find a way to win.
(If you want an example of extreme bad luck, look at Sullla's single-player walkthrough; the English start position was HORRIBLE. If he had started there, he might still have won, but it would have been much harder.)
Case 2> Keep the old starting positions, but instead of Sullla and Sirian playing, let's say it's me. I'm not nearly as good as the two of them. I almost never would have managed the hydra correctly, or thought to grab Pink Dot. And yet, with the start position they drew, I probably could have done extremely well simply because my natural expansion would have closed off the continent one line of cities further east. Now, I'd have almost certainly done some things differently; I wouldn't have waited until tanks to invade the English, for one thing.
In this case,
sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. I'm not a good player, but having good luck on the starting position could have still practically guaranteed a win.
(Better yet: what if there wasn't another civ on the continent? If you had it all to yourself, free to expand in every direction, how could you NOT do well?)
Case 3> Switch the starting positions, AND it's me playing. I'd be hosed, most likely; I'd almost definitely have to start an early war in the hopes of breaking through the English, a war that'd most likely cripple me compared to the other civs once the variant's effects are considered.
Good skill can overcome a lack of luck, and good luck can overcome a lack of skill. Both are equally valid, and if you can actually manage to have both skill AND luck, you're golden.
This last point reminds me of a football anecdote; I'm doing this by memory, so bear with me.
Back in the old days, many of the big college football bowls would host a banquet dinner the day after the game for the two teams. Of course, this often ended up being an excuse for the winning team to brag and rub it in the face of the losing team. In the 1960s, "Bear" Bryant coached Alabama, and one of the things he did for his team was set up an intensive physical/weight training program with professional nutritionists and such, something most colleges at the time had never bothered with.
In 1966, Alabama beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl 39-28. The next year, Alabama beat Nebraska again in the Sugar Bowl, 34-7. At the banquets, Bryant paraded his players up on stage, bragging about how his fast, fit players could often beat the slower, less fit teams that outweighed them by 50 pounds per man or more (which Nebraska did). After those games, Nebraska went and established a similar training program of its own.
In 1972, Nebraska beat Alabama 38-6 in the Orange Bowl to win the national championship. At the banquet, Devaney paraded his own players up on stage, bragging about how his fast, fit, BIG players could beat the fast, fit, small players of Alabama.
It's not like having the big players wasn't good in its own right; in 1966 and 1967, Nebraska HAD managed to get to two top bowls that way. Being fit, and being big, were both valuable characterstics (just like skill and luck are in Civ4), but combine both and you're unstoppable.
You guys DO realize that you are only just encouraging me, at this point. 
(That has to alarm somebody reading this, I'm sure. 
But that's OK. Alarming people can be fun on occasion, too.)
but... I... must... play... a couple... of more... TURNS!!! 
![[pimp]](/images/smilies/pimp.gif "Pimp [pimp]")
(There wouldn't be a new thread.)
I'll steer it back around when the time comes.
