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In your opinion, should cities spaced 3 tiles or less be considered an exploit? I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but am just curious as to your position on this matter.

If it were that simple, I could (and therefore would) legislate it.

A few issues are too complex to be governed by written rules, because effective rules would require long lists of contingencies, exceptions, and loophole plugging. Our rules are already too long. We'd choke under the weight of rule books if we encoded these issues. Yet they are too important not to be governed. For the first twenty Epics, I led an effort to govern these issues through unwritten rules of ettiquette, agreed upon by the tournament veterans and backed by a joint exercise of ettiquette and social taboo.

That process broke down over the worker farm issue, at the time PTW came out. I saw worker farms as an unbalancing force, an uber tactic that must either be taken off the table or allowed to become a no-brainer must-use move for Epics competitors. I thought taking it off the table would better serve the tournament's interests, and yet we cannot forbid all use of workers, so this was one of those sticky issues where the line could not be drawn with written rules. I worked to get the issue added to our ettiquette list but a group of players objected, with Charis being the most senior objector. This tipped the balance I had crafted, unravelling the entire process I had used to govern the tournament.

I had kept everyone on one page by instilling the value that we must stick together, play by the same rules, and in cases where disagreements could not be resolved, that I would make the tough calls in line with the vision I used to create the tournament in the first place. Charis lent his weight and authority to the notion that I should not make the call, that the value of keeping everyone operating under the same rules should be subordinated to the value of keeping everyone happy and giving squeaky wheels what they wanted. Why couldn't folks who wanted to use worker farms be allowed to do so? The answer is, because it mandates everyone doing so from a competitive standpoint, and that's not desirable for the tournament.

I lost the debate. Not just about that issue, but about the core values of the tournament. And not because my case was weaker, but because my will was weaker. I was weary from months of such debate, with MOO3 (still a hopeful-looking venture) on the horizon, while Charis was fresh off a hiatus away from Civ3 and ignorant of all the earlier iterations over similar disputes. In order to hold the line, I had to win that debate. I had to win every debate, with each player to come along who questioned why things were done the way they were and wanted them changed.

As well as the ettiquette system worked for most of a year, it was personally costly to me to maintain and eventually I wore down. Nothing has been done with the rules since then. We've been running on autopilot. How long that can last is anyone's guess. This tournament is still my baby and I worry about her. Who's looking out for her interests? She's way past overdue for a tune-up.


- Sirian