Where can I find a list of all PBEM rules?

Is it allowed to disband a unit next to an enemy to attack the disbanded unit - and thereby the enemy?
This seems like cheating to me.

Do I also have to wait a turn before I attack, when I break peace with an AI faction?

AoW.heavengames and AoW2.heavengames hosted forums have the "official PBEM rules" that most folks follow.

Unit disbanding near an enemy is fair game I think, but double check the posted rules. What is not fair game is disbanding so you can milk the unit for hero XP. :)

Also, the wait a turn to attack definitely applies to human and computer opponents. Break alliance turn 1. Break peace turn 2. Actually stab the buggers turn 3. This is why it's often beneficial to remain "not at peace, but not at war" with opponents sometimes when you want to keep the eradicate option easily available.

Using disband trick to reach an enemy you couldn't otherwise sounds quite obnoxious to me and I'd like it to be banned. I don't think it has been banned before; I didn't know it was a thing.

Would be nice to use this thread to collect a list of things that may or may not be banned; then for each PBEM we can post them,

X: allowed
Y: Banned
Z: allowed

etc

Banned: Trading all your stuff between the two wizards you control in order to get double income.
Not that I've done that, or anything...for a full game...

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Here's the AoW1 etiquette rules: http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=4,629

Here's the AoW:SM etiquette rules: http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=25,12,,60

I'm not sure how you are planning to attack an enemy via disbanding. Can you describe that better? I don't think attacking neutrals will pull in a player's units, and I'm not sure I see how disbanding one of your units to pull extra neutrals into a battle would be of benefit to you.

In AoW2:SM, I definitely consider the sphere mastery spells to be banned even though that's not explictly stated anywhere. Those spells (fire mastery etc.) make domain of darkness weak by comparison.

I cast it once in a PBEM game with Wenne, Vitek, Catermune, and a few others on here a couple of years ago. Even I, the caster, thought it was excessive. :)

Regarding all your silly AoW:1 disbanding stuff... Whatever. Someday I'll get you folks to graduate to the varsity version of the game.

The only AoW move that always seems in bad sport is dominate/disband/repeat to gain experience. There's no way to police that though and it would almost be better just to figure out a way to make dominate not grant experience

I'm pro flying dragonship and enjoy the idea that games can incorporate it

The courtesy one turn grace for peace/alliance break is great

I think defining rules for each game is important, it shouldn't just be assumed (with the exception of dom/disband/repeat).

I was quite mad when I got dumpstered unexpectedly by a FMDS, but I really like them now. especially since they remind me of Grome's flying ship in the first Elric of Melnibone book.

They CAN be instantly killed with Dispel Magic, I assume.

In my mod, the three warships are rebalanced so they'll hopefully all be viable, and it's not just dragonships which are made; so if you wanted to use Free Movement on a ship, the Dragonship would move faster than before, but only have archery instead of shoot javelin, and less transport space - if you want a real battle tank you'd have to wait for a Galleon or Galley.

It hits as hard as a ballista, it's cheaper than a ballista, it has better stats than a ballista, and it can cart around up to 5 units (for free) faster than most units can move. Only people with two Earth Spheres can use it, and if you can cast Free Movement then you can cast Stone Skin.

I can see why it might be banned.

Edit: The thing is dang near an Air Galley. More hp, half the defense, one less level of Marksmanship, no flying (but still able to move across anything except lava), and can carry two fewer units. Poor man's air galley, but that poor man has crap ton of extra money from not upgrading a city 3 times. Most of the reason I never make Galleons or Galleys is because they take too long. When you consider that a game might only last 50 turns or so, spending 12 turns (20% of the game?) to get a boat that can't go on land doesn't make much sense, especially since you probably can't afford it until much later, and you don't start making a boat until you find you'll need one. Until you fix that, Dragon Ships are still likely the Go To boat.

Currently the training times are
2 (transport is tier1)
4+2 (dragonship is tier2)
6+3 (galley is tier3)
8+4 (galleon is tier4)

I could change the unit tiers of the boats and thus their training time, but since 1-4 are the only viable options, I'd probably just end up homogenising them to all be tier2, which would feel like I'm making them less unique, even though they could then have radically different gold costs. That would be a solution, but not my preferred one. I suppose it absolutely would allow you to out-invest the other players on the water, with more gold, and dominate that way; what do you think? Should all warships have the same training time?

I'd might alternatively try to make a ship that takes 12 turns to make (then 8 for subsequent) worth it, by buffing everything about it. Cost not much more than the DS (why not be more cost-efficient, if it takes longer?), triple the HP, marksmanship, Vision IV, higher DEF, the works.

Part of this would be the DS being weaker than it is in 1.36 - it is too strong like you say. There's no reason the cheapest boat should already have the same weapon as the bigger ones, almost as much HP, transport V, etc. I'm starting to feel it should have no transport at all. Currently someone going for DS can kill someone making Galleons, with the same number of shipyards and gold, or even with more - because the DS outnumber the Galleons 3 to 1 (2 to 0, or 1 to 0 ) and aren't much weaker.

Also, since boats are so limited in their movement, maybe their current 28/32/36/40 movespeed is ungenerous.
It could be changed to 28/32/40/48 or something.

Things to consider: training time is a cost, and it is a big one. Time is one of the biggest resources that a player has, right up there with gold and mana. Doesn't matter how big your army is (or could be) if you don't have the time to move it where it needs to be. I don't know about you, but I can't really see specifics 12 turns ahead in these games. As long as there is such a disparity in training times, I'm a lot more likely to just keep building DS simply because I'll have more of them, which means I can make pseudo bridges, split them up for wider range, or group them together for more shots if I need to attack something.

The only reason I make DS instead of Transport Ships is because DS have a weapon. They aren't sitting ducks for the first frog/mermaid/strong breeze that comes by, sinking and taking my units with them.

Edit: Note for future readers: You edited your post with more stuff before I finished my reply. :)

What if Dragon Ships didn't have Transport?

Then I don't think they'd be worth it at all. If I'm building boats, then I'm building them because I need to move land units somewhere. If lizards are overrunning my stuff, then I either need land units to keep them out of my cities or I need land units to make the trip to their cities.

I don't really give a rip how many boats you have if I don't have to fight them. Build hundreds of transport-less DS, and I'll just leave a garrison on the other side of the river and send my dudes across the land bridge.

Edit: Also, lets move this particular conversation to another thread, so we don't clutter up a PBEM rules thread with outside discussion. I'll leave you to pick the thread and leave a link here to it.

Edit 2: On reflection, it depends on how expensive and powerful DS would be compared to the transport ships with weapons. If it is cheaper in time/money, then I might build a Transport Ship and a DS and just stack them together; I suspect auto-combat wouldn't try to assassinate the helpless transport as long as there was an active combatant, even if the transport was loaded up with units.

My understanding is that this is the consensus, though the links haven't been posted for more recent games.

Thank you, I'll take a look at the rules, don't want to spoil the fun :)