[Kemal]

I partly agree with you, anarres.
I also think map restarts should be kept to a minimum, but as digger says ultimately it's a decision to be made by the two players involved in the game. Some players take the ladder and the rankings more seriously than others, and I can imagine that not everyone wants to spend their (limited) time on civ3 fighting from a backwards position knowing they'll probably lose no matter what.

It should be noted that when deciding to put in AI civs in a PBEM, you're not only fighting your human opponent, but also the participating AI civs, and any player should commit the resources necessary to handle the AIs at whatever stage the game is, just like in a single player game. That said, I do think that the sometimes *very* early AI rushes (ERIKK vs anarres game#3 is a fine example) should warrant a restart as no matter what you do there is no sure defense against them, the only thing the game result will depend on in these cases is whether your defensive unit survives the onslaught of AI free units. That doesn't involve much skill from either player, so whether you can speak of a winner/loser in such games is highly doubtful in my view.

You say that players could opt to play lower difficulty settings but I think you'll agree with me that most of the time the reason deity is chosen is to at least give the players some challenge in the early stages of the game, since most of the players at this forum seem to be pretty experienced and capable of handling deity AI, not to mention the difference in unhappiness and research costs between levels like monarch and deity.

I'd say just let players decide beforehand whether and how many restarts are possible during the game, and whether such restarts should have ladder consequences or not.