Verjigorm, nice propaganda about Ashdod. pulling off stats when commonly banned nations are involved is pure propaganda in my book. for a relatively experienced players such as yourself to be wanting to play Ashdod is nothing short of hypocrisy Imho, especially when this game is generally newbie friendly, not an expert's game. P.S Pythium isn't the strongest MA nation barring Ashdod, Jotunheim is probably stronger, and a few other nations are certainly up there with them. MA is probably the most balanced era of all 3 due to the lack of real blood nations and ridiculous blesses(still possible of course but EA dominates MA in that regard).
Finalgenesis, starting in a death match isn't as bad as you make it sound. it's kill or be killed for Oceania/R'lyeh but whoever wins gains a massive advantage. a much larger advantage than a land nation gets for rushing and destroying another land nation.
oh yeah and if you really don't want a death match you can avoid it, both Oceania and R'lyeh can enter the land pretty well, and in CBM Amulet of the Fish only requires W1 which all water nations have access to, so bringing aquatic commanders(say thugs, mages, etc) onto land is easy. aquatic troops are more problematic, but both R'lyeh and Oceania have a good selection of amphibious troops, so that isn't a problem either...
also water nations have a massive edge as far as gem economy goes, thanks to Voice of Tiamat which is a staple for any UW nation. makes your gem income sky rocket much faster than land nations, and with all the oceans to yourself(if you got into the death match and won) you maintain a massive lead.
oh yeah, and while in CBM entering the water isn't as hard as it used to be for land nations, they still suffer from the poor amphibian trait and of course from research paths that are useful above the seas for not below them(most of the Evocation line for example).
yes being UW also has its disadvantages, but it's not as black as you're trying to make it seem, I've simply showed a lot of the white to counter your blackness. the truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle...
so anyway, are we decided on CBM+EGD? and I must strongly encourage you to ban Ashdod, and especially not let a relatively experienced player as Verjigorm take it... if you insist on not banning them than give them to a first timer in MP or something, otherwise ban. it's sad that Verjigorm's propaganda worked on you so well, congratulations Verjigorm. but for me, now I know more who I'm dealing with(or well, against) and I'll keep that in mind for the future, your reputation already precedes you, this is just a small addition
and 1 last thing for this long post, diplomacy. binding diplomacy is a nice concept, but in the end if someone breaks a diplomatic agreement there's not much you can do about it to enforce this rule besides stopping the game or some other ridiculously extreme move. now, this concept works in games where people know each other and have a certain degree of trust, such as the Gentleman's game that was around(not sure if it's finished yet or not). here we obviously don't know each other that much, and all these talks on good faith clauses and whatnot says a lot about the level of trust between the players in this game, almost non existent, as is expected with unknowns...
otherwise Machiavellian is the default because there's no need for unnecessary enforcement. however even in Machiavellian diplomacy, people who break NAPs are hurting their reputation, and others will know not to trust them in future games, so there's always a trade off. now, there are games that specifically encourage backstabbing, so in those it's more acceptable to well, backstab, but in normal Machiavellian games there's still a pretty large incentive to keep up to your word.