PBEM game: The first step (Running)

[Alneyan]

As usual, I have settled on a wonderfully unimaginative title for my game ("A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step").

So, this game is intended for new players to get their feet wet; for this purpose, a new player is someone having not played in multiplayer at all, or just a little (started a game, played with a friend, and so on). There will be a few "seasoned" players, who will answer questions and give a few hints to the other players (but certainly not a perfect strategy).

The game will be played in the Play-by-email format (PBEM), where turns are sent in mails; more specifically, the host (myself here) will send .trn files, the players will play their turns as usual, and send back their order (.2h) file.

The following players have expressed interest in joining the game as players:
- RibbonBlue: Man
- Sushiboat: Ermor
- BigDaddy: Pythium
- Agrajag: Jotunheim
- CyborgMoses: Machaka
- Molog: Pangaea
- Enforcer: Arcoscephale
- Schmonk: Marignon

If you have already made up your Pretenders, feel free to start sending them to me. They can be found in the newlords directory: if your nation is Ermor, the Pretender fille will be ermor.2h . My address is alneyan[AT]fastmail[DOT]co.uk (replace [AT] and [DOT] by @ and . respectively).

The seasoned advisers:
- Quantum_Mechani
- Ironhawk

Settings for the game will be fairly standard, along those lines:
- Map: Likely Inland (comes with the game), as it is a rather small map, and it does not have any corner.
- Strength of independents: 6, the level where independents are no longer push-overs, but aren't too deadly yet.
- Research level: Standard research
- Hall of Fame entries: 15
- Magic site frequency: 45 or so
- Renaming is on
- Graphs are likely to be on, allowing all players to see how well they are doing compared to the other nations.
- Turn-around: 48 hours, with the turns running as soon as all turn files are in.
- Mods: A tricky one. Enabling mods for a first game may be contradictory, but a mod such as Zen Pretenders Balance could be interesting, as it reduces the gap in power between all Pretender choices (making poor choices less of a problem). Zen Pretenders is attached to this mod, along with a readme file listing all changes made by the mod.