Use this thread to post techniques that you are not sure if they are cheats or legitimate strategies. Please put in your 2 bits worth on any technique so players will know what's not allowed and what is a good idea.

My Cheat/Good idea

When anticipating a technology that allows building a great wonder, I start building a palace in a high production city. Once the technology is discovered, I switch from the palace to the wonder and complete it quickly, sometimes in one turn.

Argument for: It seems legitimate to be able to plan for a high production task. Although prevented from rushing a wonder in many ways, the game does allow this.

Argument against: I'm quite sure the AI does not have the foresight for this (would it be fair game of chess against someone who didn't know how one of the pieces moved?). It seems as though the game designers intention with wonders was they must be built from scratch, the only short cut being great leaders.

from page 42 in the manual,
No penalty for changing projects: The penalty for changing production in mid-project is gone -- except for any shields lost as overrun.

I doubt the developers didn't realize that this would lead to working on projects you don't want prior to getting the tech for a wonder you want so you'd get the wonder faster. It's an obvious tactic that's probably been around since the first 4X game that didn't penalize you for production changes. As such, I don't see how it can be considered a bug. I think it's a little odd, but it's their decision... *shrug*

Now we have two threads about this. :rolleyes: (The other one. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14498)) Ah, well. People probably won't notice that other thread as such, so I won't merge them or anything.

But this is a point worth considering. I'm actually quite sure Firaxis didn't thought about this. Can a palace also be bought? Perhaps Firaxis should consider that the current built up production should be thrown out once starting a wonder. Just like what happens when you switch to a production which requires less shields then you already have.

Originally posted by Matrix
Can a palace also be bought?

no ;)

This was already addressed in the first patch!:rolleyes:

The main pre-patch problem was that people started to build palaces in several cities so they could switch to a wonder once it was discovered.
After the patch you can only build a palace in one city at a time.
The real problem remains though, building ahead of a discovery.
But it is NOT a cheat, it is explicitly allowed. In previous Civ-version you would get a penalty for changing the production.
This was taken out and is now a vital part of the game (although really unrealistic :p). It´s even mentioned in the manual, so unless Firaxis says otherwise, it´s not a cheat. :D

Originally posted by Lucky
This was already addressed in the first patch!:rolleyes:This remark was addressed to someone who claims to know the game (me). :blush:

Anyway, you can go on and on about how to expoit the AI. There will always be a way. So no cheat into that direction.

What about Retiring Immediately and looking at the WORLD MAP ??

What about 1/2 through the game to check your overall score ?
(Prob by then you'll have swaped maps with the A.I)

Reloading After STUPID mistakes ? I.E Moving your settlers in the wrong direction or Hitting the "A" for workers. Early on the lost of 2 turns can be substancal (Iam talking about the fist 100 turns)

Corrpted sav games. I.E it crashed on me once when I was saving and had to reload the game from an Autosav ;)

Originally posted by FriendlyFire
What about Retiring Immediately and looking at the WORLD MAP ??That is definitely cheating!! Imagine what advantage that gives if you do that after the first turn!
Originally posted by FriendlyFire
What about 1/2 through the game to check your overall score ?
(Prob by then you'll have swaped maps with the A.I)Also no go. Never ever!
Originally posted by FriendlyFire
Reloading After STUPID mistakes ? I.E Moving your settlers in the wrong direction or Hitting the "A" for workers. Early on the lost of 2 turns can be substancal (Iam talking about the fist 100 turns)Pressing the wrong button gives dispensation. ;)
Originally posted by FriendlyFire
Corrpted sav games. I.E it crashed on me once when I was saving and had to reload the game from an Autosav ;) If it is corrupt: ofcourse. I mean, you do have the right to actually play the GOTM. Just make sure you do the same thing as you did before.

Going into Anarchy to Sav your Game. Punching Monitor and Sending death threats to Sid.

Dose that sum up my problem. For the first time Thanks to the latest patch my GOTM has crashed repeatedly. I went into Anachy a total of 10 times.

A total of around 100turns were spent in anarchy. (Ok Exaggeration prob around 60-80 turns in anarchy). With population going backwards. So is there anything that can be done about this? Seriously affected my score. I lost around 2mil in population for example.

it really ruined an enjoyable game for me. :cry:
What would happen if I didn't know about the Anarchy thingy would it be ok to start again from ??? Hmmm I guess a lot of pplz will have the same prob. We'll see if the number of submission drop. But something must be done about this

Why exactly are you going into anarchy, FriendlyFire? Are you sure it isn't some change in the rules which you have overseen?

Someone had some good posts on this kind of crash. Basically, he isolated the city that caused the crash and made modifications to that city, avoiding the anarchy work-around.

I haven't had this problem yet so this fix is not first hand. The fix goes something like this:
- Display a list of cities with one of the worker automation commands (can't remember which) and print it or copy it out. This is the order the cities are processed in.
- When your turn is done, watch closely as it processes the cities. When the crash occurs, you should know approximately which city it crashed on.
- Modify the happiness in the problem cities. i.e. Turn a bunch of laborers into entertainers.

This fix requires replaying the turn a couple of times to determine the problem city and correct it. Under these circumstances, I don't believe this would be considered a cheat.

I'm not sure who posted this or if my instructions are completely correct. The original was posted somewhere on the Civilization Fanatics' Forum.

Just a thought, cranking up luxuries for a turn may also work.

Thanks for that clear explanation, Beard Rinker. I don't read everything that's on this forum. ;)
Originally posted by Beard Rinker
This fix requires replaying the turn a couple of times to determine the problem city and correct it. Under these circumstances, I don't believe this would be considered a cheat.No it's not a cheat, naturally.

I have another cheat/slimy tactic.

In the recent GOTM, there was a small island that had horses. I captured the island, starting a war with the French, and placed some units on it to guard the island. It seemed the French were throwing everything they had at the island as they had no other wars and I had my hands full with the Japanese.

What I eventually did to protect the island was cover every square with a unit (including using workers) blocking the French from landing. After a few turns I decided this was not a fair tactic, re-deployed my units to protect the city and horses and let the chips fall where they may.

In my opinion, using units, especially non military units for the sole purpose of blocking a landing is not within the spirit of the game and should be considered a cheat.

...Typically something Firaxis should improve: capture non-military units also when landing. But perhaps Firaxis has their reasons for not being able to land when all squares are occupied.
Argh, difficult matter... What do others think?

Edit: My own opinion: Just do it. It doesn't ruin the game. I'll only call something a cheat when it spoils to the edge.

If the AI would ever use marines, and if there were more units capable of making direct assaults from ships, this really wouldn't be a problem. Invasions launched from sea were common before marines were ever thought of. Vikings did it all the time, Corsairs and Pirates of various sorts did as well. There need to be more options for this type of assault in the game. I don't think its a cheat to use though, otherwise building a city on a 1 tile island would be a cheat. They are invincible until marines come around.

More cheats (that is what is this thread is about isn't it).

Use espionage options at your favour. If you do not like the result reload.

This is encouraged by the exorbitant cost for Espionage and has been elaborated on in another thread.

Expansionist Mischief -

Playing a game with the Zulus recently, I found a very effective use for Scouts. I was placing them on resources in the AI's territory before they could build roads there. The AI never demanded that I withdraw my Scouts, and never attacked them. I was able to keep 8 Civs without Iron or Horses through all of the Ancient Era, and most of the Middle Ages.

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
Use espionage options at your favour. If you do not like the result reload.
Quote from the rules of GOTM for Civ3
and reloading the game when things don't go the way you wanted are all considered cheating.

Originally posted by Aeson
Expansionist Mischief -

Playing a game with the Zulus recently, I found a very effective use for Scouts. I was placing them on resources in the AI's territory before they could build roads there. The AI never demanded that I withdraw my Scouts, and never attacked them. I was able to keep 8 Civs without Iron or Horses through all of the Ancient Era, and most of the Middle Ages.

Parking a scout or some other unit on a resource sounds ok to me. The AI certainly has mechanisms to remove your scouts if it wanted. Perhaps the fact that they didn't have these cruicial resources prevented the AI from becoming too aggresive.

The AI doesn't realise he's being denied to use that resource by you.

I wouldn't do it, Aeson. It can give a mighty big advantage. For example, it could give me the victory in the GOTM II, if we weren't the Greeks, but some explorer nation.

Originally posted by Aeson
If the AI would ever use marines, and if there were more units capable of making direct assaults from ships, this really wouldn't be a problem. Invasions launched from sea were common before marines were ever thought of. Vikings did it all the time, Corsairs and Pirates of various sorts did as well. There need to be more options for this type of assault in the game. I don't think its a cheat to use though, otherwise building a city on a 1 tile island would be a cheat. They are invincible until marines come around.
Yes I can see that now. Ancient times, near what would be the future city of Dublin.
Brother Liam: "Father, A Viking invasion ship has been spotted off the coast!"
Father Patrick: "Quick, head to the coast and chop down the forest."
Brother Liam: "But father, the forest was chopped down last year."
Father Patrick: "Ok then, go and plant a new one."
Brother Liam shrugs his shoulders and heads to the coast. Having had a wee bit too much the previous night, he falls asleep on the shore.
The Viking invaders approach the coast and spot the sleeping monk. "Sorry boys, no invasion today. We'll never get by him."

Clearly, lining the shores with workers is a ridiculous (yet effective) means of preventing an invasion. Even lining the shores with military units is questionable. How can 1 pikeman prevent several transports full of tanks from landing.

What I am suggesting is that this tactic should not be used in a GOTM. Firaxis did provide a means of defending against a sea invasion: units can't land and attack on the same turn, giving the defenders one free shot.

I've not played allot of civ 3 games yet but my guess is a one tile island isn't much of an issue. I have yet to see one, and if I did the one shield of production and slow growth wouldn’t be that tempting.

These one tile islands can sometimes use surrounding land, and be quite productive. Their real value lies in the fact that they become unsinkable "carriers" later in the game. Still not a big deal, but its nice to have an invincible base of military operations.

As far as the Scouts are concerned, are they allowed to be used that way in GOTM's or not? It certainly could be imbalancing in some situations. I can think of a few other uses that they might have as well, mostly just being a nuisance in AI territory with no reprocussions. Just want to clear this up as 3 of the next 4 will be Expansionist Civs.

Maybe I've missed something on this. It seems like a perfectly valid strategy to place a unit on a vital resource. The AI certainly uses a similar tactic.

I've never used a scout before. Is there something special about them that will make the AI ignore them? I've had workers wander onto neighboring civilization’s territory and I pretty sure I got warnings about that. Is this not true with scouts?

Matrix claims the AI doesn’t realize it's being denied use of the resource. Is this a fact or is it the AI is now in a weak position and doesn't want to risk a conflict. If the former is true then I would consider this an unfair exploit, if its the later, then I'd say it's a good tactic.

The AI never asks for Scouts to be withdrawn, unless perhaps you have other types of units in their territory as well. I was using this on Deity, where my military, landmass, and overall score were about half that of everyone else. Definitely they weren't afraid of me, which seems to point to the fact that they didn't realize what was going on. They didn't declare war to remove the Scouts at any time while I was doing this for most of the BC's. Workers and Settlers can be used the same way, because when the "Remove your troops or declare war" option comes up, they aren't relocated by withdrawing your troops. Usually the AI will try and capture Workers or Settlers that are undefended in their territory for very long though. I don't know if they realize whether the resource is being denied to them or not, but they don't seem to care about Scouts doing it.

I just found out that the AI will ask for you to withdraw the scouts eventually, but I haven't seen them demand that I do or declare war yet. I had a scout holding an Egyptian Iron source for about 20 turns, and then they asked me to withdraw my troops. The scout is still there though, and it's been at least 50 more turns. I've had a Scout in Iroquois territory doing the same thing for about 120 turns overall.

You only have (a) scout(s) on their terrain and they ask you to remove your troups but never force you to it ("<your troups will move automatically>")? What difficulty do you play?

Something I find i'm doing regularly is:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10018&perpage=20&pagenumber=10

Does anyone else think this is a bit of a cheat?

RE: Expansionist Mischief

Aeson: from the way you describe it, it smells of an unfair exploit. Given that this would be a significant advantage, I won't use it the next GOTM. However, I may do this with military units if the opportunity presents itself.

RE: Making money at the end of research

The Danster: My understanding about the scientific rate is it's supposed to carry forward any excess beakers to the next research project. Reducing your science rate prior to discovery may get you a little extra gold, but will slow next research project. However, from what I've read elsewhere on this forum, the science rate does not carry forward and your method is indeed a means of squeezing a few extra gold pieces. Keep in mind that this may not work in future patches as I don't think it's the intended behavior. Although it is an exploit, it doesn't give you a significant advantage and in my opinion it should be fair game.

I believe Matrix is the one who manages the GOTM so he should have the last word on these topics.

Beard Rinker, I agree with you almost fully. ;) (Ofcourse your last sentence. :p) I think Firaxis intended to have a minimum and maximum number of turns for advances. Taking advantage is no exploit at all. :)

I've played a Deity game (Large/Pangaea/8 AI), and an Emporer game (Huge/Pangaea/8 AI) using Scouts to deny the AI resources. It's worked extremely well each time, keeping everyone else from getting Iron and/or Horses until I was ready to destroy them.

I have yet to see the AI try to remove my Scouts either diplomatically or militarily. For its cost (10 shields for a Scout, 1 gold per turn support), it is by far the most effective way that I have found of denying resources to the AI. I personally wouldn't use it in a GOTM unless it was deemed an allowed "exploit". I think Explorers could be used this way for non-Expansionist Civs to keep later resources out of the hands of the AI in some cases. I haven't tested this with Explorers yet though.

I am attaching the Emporer save game if anyone wants to check it out. I think the Greeks and Egyptians were both able to claim a Horse, the Baylonians and Romans both have a shot at a Horse. All the Iron is "claimed" by my scouts, or will be before the AI can get there. A few Horses are still available, but still far enough away from the AI that my Scouts should get them. I spent a lot of extra time in Iroquois and Persian territory, making sure that they didn't get any Horses or Iron respectively. It turned out they both didn't have the resource for their UU's anyways. I think there is one AI off of the main continent, though they could be in the uncovered area still.

Something interesting about the game. The Babylonians are sending a force to attack me I think, they have just passed my Scout on Iroquois Iron. They didn't bother attacking, nor did they target any of my Scouts holding resources near their territory. It takes about 15-20 more turns before the Babylonians can even get to my territory though. They may be headed for an Iroquois city, but I doubt it. The Persians already tried to do the same thing with 4 Warriors and 2 Spearmen. That's the only warfare so far, as I'm building up a few more Horsemen before attacking the Romans. I also like the Inland Sea on this map, it's by far the largest that I've seen.

Had a little chat with my workmate about it and we reckon it could be seen as being akin to having a project which is overbudgeted, so if u need the cash then you gather in the overspend!!

Anyhoo... just thought I'd say

I finally had the AI demand that I withdraw my Scouts. Just moved them back in 2 turns though ;) If 2 or more Scouts are in an AI Civ's territory they seem more likely to demand that they are withdrawn. There may also be a relative power check the AI does to determine when to demand a withdrawl, as some Civs allowed the intrusions for much longer than others.

IMO it should not be possible to switch production without losing all the shields invested. In the real world if you have got half way to building the pyramids you can't suddenly switch to building something else without having to start again. Similarly a half-built temple can't suddenly become a settler or warrior.

Perhaps (though it would add to the complexity) a half-built wonder/improvement could remain half-built until you restart building at a later turn.

Originally posted by macaskil
Perhaps (though it would add to the complexity) a half-built wonder/improvement could remain half-built until you restart building at a later turn. Exactly. Remember Civ III is a game, not a simulation. There are many things that aren't exactly real, but an apparent best solution between reality and fun game-play. :)

Originally posted by Beard Rinker

....What I am suggesting is that this tactic should not be used in a GOTM. Firaxis did provide a means of defending against a sea invasion: units can't land and attack on the same turn, giving the defenders one free shot.


I thought that if you "woke" the units in the transports rather than "unloading" them, then you could move them. Eg. For a tank, you use one movement point (depending on terrain) to land, and can then use one more to attack. Is this right?

Originally posted by ainwood


I thought that if you "woke" the units in the transports rather than "unloading" them, then you could move them. Eg. For a tank, you use one movement point (depending on terrain) to land, and can then use one more to attack. Is this right?

My experience has been you are only allowed to land, regardless of the unit's movement. Now that I think about it, all of my landings may have been on tiles with high movement cost like hills or jungle. I'd better reinforce those unguarded coastal towns.

Regardless, I still feel that lining the shore with units (particularly workers) to prevent a landing is an unfair tactic and I won't use it in a GOTM. Although this tactic is similar to blocking units on land, the difference is on land your opponent can respect your block or attack you. For example: the AI making that mad dash across your territory to grab some land. Blocking the settler is perfectly valid since the AI can always attack you if it really wants to get by.

I feel that the game could handle the invasion by sea better than it does. Historically, this type of invasion can be very difficult to execute. If a country prepares for an invasion, then the invading country will suffer substantial casualties. In civilization, a sea invasion is a little more difficult to execute than a land invasion, but the difference is more of a logistical problem and not that there would be a higher than normal casualty rate.

Originally posted by Beard Rinker

If a country prepares for an invasion, then the invading country will suffer substantial casualties. In civilization, a sea invasion is a little more difficult to execute than a land invasion, but the difference is more of a logistical problem and not that there would be a higher than normal casualty rate.

Well this is true in Civ 3 too, when you land your troops on the shores, they can't move and the Opponent will have his turn to retaliate and attack first, so their will be more casualties then a normal assault were you are the first attacker... right?

Originally posted by Grey Fox


Well this is true in Civ 3 too, when you land your troops on the shores, they can't move and the Opponent will have his turn to retaliate and attack first, so their will be more casualties then a normal assault were you are the first attacker... right?

I'm not sure. Ainwood claims that units with more than 1 movement can land and attack if they land on a low movement cost tile like grass or plains. I suspect this is true.

Anyway, I don't see this as any more risky than blitzing across an enemy front lines. If the borders are deep enough, you can't attack the target city the first turn. It seems to me that attacking a fortified coastline should be much more difficult than attacking a fortified front line.

I do have a suggestion on how this might be improved in a future version of civilization.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=172750&t=4477#post172750

Originally posted by Beard Rinker
I'm not sure. Ainwood claims that units with more than 1 movement can land and attack if they land on a low movement cost tile like grass or plains. I suspect this is true.

Well I have never been able to move units after I have unloaded them or moved them by "un-waiting" them and moving them to the shore... And I tranported a lot of Modern Armor During GOTM2...

If you bring a transport into a coastal city, all the units on the transport will have full movement when they are activated. If you are at peace with the Civ you wish to invade, first land a Settler, and build a city the next turn. All your troops will be able to have the initiative, instead of waiting for the AI to strike first.

Originally posted by Aeson
If you bring a transport into a coastal city, all the units on the transport will have full movement when they are activated. If you are at peace with the Civ you wish to invade, first land a Settler, and build a city the next turn. All your troops will be able to have the initiative, instead of waiting for the AI to strike first.

Building a city is my preferred way of invading by sea. However, the act of building a city in someone else's territory is an act of war. If possible, I try and stick a city on some crappy piece of unclaimed land, build barracks and walls, then attack.

Originally posted by Beard Rinker
I have another cheat/slimy tactic.

In my opinion, using units, especially non military units for the sole purpose of blocking a landing is not within the spirit of the game and should be considered a cheat.

I agree, but I have seen the AI do this on very small islands. It may have been a glitch, but it left a worker on the only land square next to a city. I had to wait hundreds of years to develop marines before I could take it over. Definitely something a future patch should fix.