Dissenting Voice

I don't mean to offend, pterrok, but at the moment I think all of us are still trying to learn the ins and outs of this very complex game. Variant play is certainly a great deal of fun, but it's not a good idea for those who lack a solid understanding of how the game works. Speaking for myself, I know I'm not nearly at a level where I can mess around and deliberately handicap myself; I'm still need a lot more practice of how to do things the "right" way before I get to that point. I don't know the situation everyone else is in, but for only the second Imperium it probably would not be a good idea to force each person to make deliberately poor game decisions. Don't forget that Civ3 was out for almost a year before the Epics started up, and a number of us had thoroughly tested the game inside and out before really going all-out on the variant themes. I at least personally don't think it would be a good idea to mess around too much with variant play at this point, especially with a new patch due out soon which will certainly change the way the game works yet again. But what do I know, after all; I'm not the one planning and designing the games. Perhaps the community wants a variant game, and if so some of your ideas may very well be good suggestions.