I think as you have to use valuable forests and population to get the overflow and since it is also part of the game mechanics I think it isn't. It conserves resource and food values just converts to gold using a Civ specific advantage (which is the point of the game I believe. Recognize, position and maximize advantages, especially unique ones, to keep pace with a bonus heavy AI). This 'exploit' is simply playing efficiently. There are many other well documented ways to play efficiently for many different leader/civ/resource/map combinations. So why is timing chops to get gold an exploit? With prot its about the only strong economic move that is available and it requires stone. Any strat that requires/maximizes resource use is obviously going to be very strong in comparison to more general strats as they are situation specific.


Okay I've ranted. If you find that this strategy is an exploit I at least ask that you consider the dozen or so other strategies that are designed to create localized overwhelming advantages (and are in fact necessary to winning at higher levels) before drawing a conclusion. That said I don't use this strategy that often. If it comes up fine but planning an overall game plan around it doesn't seem prudent in the long run.

Yes, it is an exploit. So is going to War against AIs. So is manipulating Diplomacy. So is manipulating Trade. So is playing Marathon, etc, etc, etc. You are exploiting a gaming aspect to gain an advantage. Just because it's an exploit doesn't mean its not an "acceptable" strategy.

No, it's not really an exploit, first of all because it's simply not that GOOD and requires a lot of micromanagement. Whip two pop to get a walls (often useless building) and some gold - has it's uses but isn't really exploitive. The thing that decides it for me is the fact that this method isn't really that much better than other methods to turn forests/hammers into gold, like building incomplete wonders. Maybe it can save you in an immediate wartime strike situation (where, well, going into anarchy also can) but it doesn't matter. And I don't really use this that much myself either, at least not on the whipping side of things.

That all said, I DO feel that chopping itself is rather overpowered in general - it's one of the number one ways for humans to keep up with AI production advantages (if an AI chopped like a human it could run over every other player almost always on Immortal/Deity), and I'd rather reduce both than have things the way they are. Chopping trees into axemen doesn't fit a realism point of view and it could be worked around gameplaywise, so I'll give you that.

first of all because it's simply not that GOOD

You are correct. It is actually quite SUPERIOR and thus is much better than good.

So, we are talking here of whip/chop overflows or of what happens if that overflow is bigger than the prod needed for the item in queue? There is a diference, you know.... ;)

It's an exploit of myself, BOOOO to tedious and unnatural micromanagement!

No, it's really not all that good - essentially you're turning your forests into gold instead of other uses. At it's most efficient it's just slightly better than losing a bid for a wonder - and it's not at the most efficient earlier in the game, since you want granaries for whipping and math for chopping. Not that it's not useful on certain settings/against the AI in some cases but a lot of times you're just as well off putting your worker turns and forests into something more useful (for instance, a courthouse which will save you plenty of gold after a while, rather than a building like walls you wouldn't need).

I use it in the endgame a fair amount too with pure overproduction and specific multipliers too. Workboats out of your IW+Drydock city for example..

One of the unofficial patches at removes the extra multipliers, reducing the overflow gold significantly. So you get your 100% bonus for the Explorer in your HE city, but the overflow hammers only get the regular forge/factory bonuses when converted to cash (same as if you built cash directly). Overflow is still worth it, just not quite as ridiculously overpowered.

Oh yeah, that's the other thing, I actually would be perfectly fine if straight out building wealth/research/culture was increased to 2 per hammer; I'd rather do that than mess with overflow, and then there just wouldn't be reason to mess with it so much. Late game overflow is definitely better than that as things stand now, but if the thread is referring to just like the protective walls trick it's only one of many ways to do something usefully.

No, it's really not all that good

Once again, correct. It is far SUPERIOR. It's more than apparent from the way your describing it's usefulness in conjunction with game timing and transitioning points that you don't have a lot of intensive training with it. In virtually every game I have used with this strategy to improve my skill with it - it has always supplied a much much much greater opening, tech rate, expansion rate, etc, then when not using it.

If you have the trees, the trait, and are not using it, you are making the game much more difficult and slower than it needs to be.

Protective gives better yields with stone, but as you mentioned, it gives you a useless building plus it is less than an ideal tech path, not to mention is slows down math.

CRE/EXP/AGG work best. With CRE virtually every single city has math when you start chopping. With EXP/AGG the 1st and 2nd city typically do not have math, but the rest do. Once again, a very STRONG and POWERFUL technique when used correctly.

No other strategy in the game that I know of allows you to maintain 100% deficit research virtually through 1AD. And as we all know, the early game sets up the rest.

If you have the trees, the trait, and are not using it, you are making the game much more difficult and slower than it needs to be.

Yes, I get what you're saying here - but basically I'd rather not have the protective trait in favor or something more useful, like philosophical or organized. If I DO have it, sure, this is a nice trick, but for the strongest game I'd rather have a better leader and use my forests for something else.

So in the sense of the OP - this isn't an exploit. Even purposefully playing a civ to do this isn't really all that big of deal. It's not at all like purposefully playing Rome or Inca for instance.

A wall so nice they built it twice, then magically some gold appears because my people actually built it five times and the rest of the work is apparently easily converted to gold? Yeah, that's an exploit, and one that feels particularly lame at that.

Another question!

What's worse?

- playing as a Warmonger with Persia or Rome on Marathon

Or

- playing as Cathy, using whip/chopping overflow on Standard ;)


I'm betting that no amount of whipping and chopping can ever help out Cathy as much as the Warmonger =D. Looks like they need to Delete some Leaders before anyone cries about successful whip/chopping.

Edit: @ Lansky

Honestly, I find it very difficult to over expand with the technique seeing how quickly your able to discover currency. I usually run out of land before I cannot afford more cities.

I suppose since it gives the best returns people seem to focus on protective walls. As Crusher points out Barracks, Libraries, and Granaries with the proper traits while less "effective" sources of gold are more highly desired and can actually help your empire in manners other than "I wanted some overflow gold".

Whether or not you feel it is fair I guess is the question. I have no qualms myself. Enough things in this game are bent to mess with the player that using one that is not doesn't bother me.


Edit - Even with Cathy's gold overflow I've crashed myself over expanding. So much good land, so little economy =/

The game mechanics are a bit questionable since I cannot see how people pushing themselves to their very limits can result in younetting some gold. It makes very little sense.

However, the game mechanic is in the game. It is there for you to use. Every single bonus you can get is a bonus that you may want to use... Or not. That is up to you. I personally feel that you need to take every single advantage that you can get, this one is one of them. Who cares if it makes sense? Why would it be unfair? You have the option, if it seems useful to go for it then by all means, please do.

I'm inclined to say "yes," but as I play single player only, I can also simply not use it and it'd be the same as it not being in the game in the first place.

Org is another trait that is great with it. It has 2 buildings that could be used for this relatively early and both are very useful. Though I'd agree that its not as effective as with Exp, Agg, Cre. Also the Agg use of this strat can also lead strongly into an early war

I don't really see how it's an exploit. Gold is really just an expression of extra wealth, it obviously doesn't translate into actual coins or anything. Essentially, what happens is that people get done very efficiently and the game says "ok, go do your 2nd job and we collect taxes on that"

Define: exploit

I would not call this trick superior.

1. It gives you best gains after Math and at that time Currency is one tech away or you have currency already. A few hundred gold from forests is not that important since you are able to gain gold from AIs to support your research then.

2. Stone is rare.

3. While you gain cash, you delay some useful buildings.

4. you lose worker turns

5. It's tedious and give you little gain for above reasons.

So... what are the exchange rates of hammer to gold for this...? 1 to 2 for the regular ones and 1 to 3 for the protective stone walls or something?

I would not call this trick superior.

1. It gives you best gains after Math and at that time Currency is one tech away or you have currency already. A few hundred gold from forests is not that important since you are able to gain gold from AIs to support your research then.

2. Stone is rare.

3. While you gain cash, you delay some useful buildings.

4. you lose worker turns

5. It's tedious and give you little gain for above reasons.



1. False. In my signature is a simple example of chop/whipping well before Math taking my research from 120 turns to 4 turns. A sick and overpowering amount of turns is saved with this superior technique. Learn it. Live it or go home ;).
2. Who's talking about stone?
3. You don't delay useful buildings at all. After all, Granaries, Libraries, and Barracks will eventually be needed.
4. You will be reach your happy cap very early regardless so you need to be doing something with your workers. EXP leaders more than make up for this with cheaper workers in the 1st place.
5. It's supremely superior and always allows for the fastest Expansion and tech rate.


Amazingly wrong. It is Supremely Superior, unless of course you are simply talking about Stone/Protective, which I am not.

@ Monster

Yes. The advantage is gives to the early game is overwhelming on every level except Deity (and even then it is powerful pre Currency) where AIs have lots of cash for trade, whereas lower levels don't usually have enough to make trading techs for cash worthwhile. The ability to maintain 100% deficit research is by far and way the most powerful strategy available, and whip/chopping achieves this for you.

It cannot even be debated. It's a simple fact. Anyone stating otherwise is smoking crack and foaming at the mouth in denial verging on cluelessness.

I'm always surprised when I see "skilled" players make such grossly inaccurate statements.

Define: exploit

My usual answers are

Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 :hammers: exploit)
Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).


That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

Man, you're the only player I've found so far who are soooo confident on own opinions.

1. False. In my signature is a simple example of chop/whipping well before Math taking my research from 120 turns to 4 turns. A sick and overpowering amount of turns is saved with this superior technique. Learn it. Live it or go home ;).

Huh, you're so generous to waste the 50% gain from forest chop before Math! 120 turns to 4 turns, another joke. Why do you want to rex to extreme and have to rely on a few hundred cash before Alpha and Currency? Man, it's all about how do you play the game. There are many other play styles for a healthy empire other than extreme rexing. Learn to try others before you negate them.


2. Who's talking about stone?

I mentioned about stone since Stone/Protective/Wall is the best gain for this trick. So if your best application does not make sense, then no need to mention other cases.



3. You don't delay useful buildings at all. After all, Granaries, Libraries, and Barracks will eventually be needed.

How true? there's only one or two choices for one trait, if you chop for wall, why did you think you didn't delay Monument/Granary/Lib?



4. You will be reach your happy cap very early regardless so you need to be doing something with your workers. EXP leaders more than make up for this with cheaper workers in the 1st place.

Do you know that you pay cash to let workers work for you? and you think they have extra turns for simultaneous chopping. Too many workers then. Of course, this part is the trivial one.


5. It's supremely superior and always allows for the fastest Expansion and tech rate.

Hence, this statement proves nothing.

This is a powerful strategy with the right leaders. Often (usually even) with the leaders/civs that this synergizes with also happen to benefit most from power REXing. There are many strategies and the leaders for which this isn't effective also happen to be the ones that more often than not benefit from more vertical growth early than horizontal and a later grab for power (or some other victory goal in mind).

IND can also make use of this strat effectively as well in two ways as long as it is paired with one of the more primary traits for this- exp, cre, agg. You beeline math and the prereqs for the cheap buildings. Then you use the first chop/whip series to get the gold to tech out MC. Then you repeat once or twice with forges.

The advantage of such a pairing is the multiplier of forges applies after they are built as well as when they are built. This allows three different whips per city (at least). These combos also provides the useful early buildings for a decent sized whip based-empire. It opens up the possibility for Collossus etc. Everybody has seen this path b4.

I define 'exploit' as using a game mechanic in a way that it was not intended to achieve an advantage that couldn't otherwise be realized. I don't believe the developers implemented chop/whip overflow with the intention of players using trait bonuses, multipliers, and extreme worker micro-management to gain massive amounts of gold that is otherwise unattainable in any other fashion. I believe chop/whip overflow was implemented so that people wouldn't have to worry about wasting production because their chop finished when the building only needed 10 hammers, not 20.

I'm not here to judge anyone who uses these methods, do whatever is fun for you. But until I see a developer comment that indicates that this was an intended use of this mechanic, it remains an exploit to me. I'm not a professional programmer, but I'm fairly sure that if this was something the developers foresaw as a tactic to be used, they could have programmed the AI to take advantage of it pretty efficiently.

Crusher

i've won a few immortal games and am pretty comfortable at emperor but i still find myself having problems expanding well. anyways i've read a lot of your post and links about getting gold from overflow and i'm really surprised. i can normally expand to about 6 or 7 cities by ad250 on emperor and thought i was doing pretty good. after using your suggestions in a few games i have been able to get repeatable results in the range of 9 to 12 cities before ad1 while researching faster than i ever thought possible.

why dont more people know about this? wow! thank you!

Define: exploit

I'll make a feeble attempt to define it:

An exploit, as it refers to games, is using a game mechanic or something otherwise in the game in a way it wasn't intended to be used by the game developers, usually to secure some sort of unfair advantage that wouldn't ordinarily be available.

A good example of an exploit is glitching inside of buildings in first person shooters like the Battlefield series; such an exploit would let you shoot at people from the inside (the walls of the building appear transparent when you glitch into them) without people outside being able to kill you. It's not hacking because no outside software is used; what makes it an exploit is that what enables it is a fault in the game engine that allows you to get inside.

Exploit can also be used more loosely to describe abusing a game mechanic in a game, in which case, it's much more subjective and open to interpretation about what's fair play.

My usual answers are

Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 :hammers: exploit)
Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).


That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter - though I'd add something about it being deliberate in there somehow, and note that the question of whether or not the gain is meaningful or trivial has no bearing on whether something qualifies as an 'exploit' or not.

No, it's really not all that good - essentially you're turning your forests into gold instead of other uses.


You may be underestimating the value of (properly leveraged) gold in the game.


At it's most efficient it's just slightly better than losing a bid for a wonder


At it's most efficient, it's like losing a bid for a wonder when you're industrious & have the resource assist. Excepting that it exchanges the 'risk' of getting the wonder when you needed the gold more for the opportunity-cost of having certainly built a building you may not need yet (if ever.)

Noting that, as Crusher said, it can be done with more than just protective+walls. Creative libraries, organized courthouses, expansive granaries; the pro-wall is just the most hand-wrung version.


- and it's not at the most efficient earlier in the game, since you want granaries for whipping and math for chopping. Not that it's not useful on certain settings/against the AI in some cases but a lot of times you're just as well off putting your worker turns and forests into something more useful (for instance, a courthouse which will save you plenty of gold after a while, rather than a building like walls you wouldn't need).

Again noting that Crusher does not limit this trick to *just* protective walls...

Say a courthouse saves me 4 gpt in a city. Also say I'm organized (I believe that's the trait that gets a bonus building courthouses.)

I have a choice: I can chop/whip to get the courthouse built in 2 turns. Or I can wait 6 turns for it to hit the 'max whipped overflow' threshold, and *then* chop/whip to get overflow gold.

If, according to the criteria set up here, I can get more than 16 gold out of the overflow (the 4 gpt that the courthouse saves me, times the number of turns I delay the courthouse in order to exploit overflow) using the same number of forests, worker-turns and pop that I'd use rushbuilding the courthouse, then I'm obviously better off going for the overflow instead of an earlier courthouse. If the overflow I can get is less than 16 gold, overflowing it is a losing proposition. If breaking the 16 gold threshold requires more forests/population/workerturns, then it's a question of whether those additional resources are worth the gold garnered for using them in this way.

I don't have actual in-game numbers to say for sure if it's plausible that I'll get better ROI overflowing (with same resources) than rushbuilding in this case - and it's obviously more complicated if we're talking about other buildings or applying additional resources on top.

Long post!

Huh, you're so generous to waste the 50% gain from forest chop before Math! 120 turns to 4 turns, another joke. Why do you want to rex to extreme and have to rely on a few hundred cash before Alpha and Currency? Man, it's all about how do you play the game. There are many other play styles for a healthy empire other than extreme rexing. Learn to try others before you negate them.

If you don't make a few whip/chops before Math your research can end up stagnate. If your research isn't stagnate then you haven't REXd hard enough. If you limit yourself to waiting for Math (EXP, CRE tech path almost always gets Math in time) the other guy who has been whipping/chopping will have more cities and thus be working many more tiles before you.

There are plenty of games where I never use overflow - usually because the leaders lack the ability ^^. However, I haven't always had this "addiction" to this strategy. I spend most of my gaming time executing build orders and expanding via peace/conquest through 1 ADish and in every game where there are trees available I always have much greater success than w/out.

Are there other strategies? Of course they are but that doesn't make them a better choice.

Screen shots of 193 turns at zero slider followed by 5 turns at 100%:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0000-3.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0001-2.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0002-2.jpg

I mentioned about stone since Stone/Protective/Wall is the best gain for this trick. So if your best application does not make sense, then no need to mention other cases.

Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.

This is fun isn't it? ;)

How true? there's only one or two choices for one trait, if you chop for wall, why did you think you didn't delay Monument/Granary/Lib?

I'm talking about CRE/EXP/AGG.

Do you know that you pay cash to let workers work for you? and you think they have extra turns for simultaneous chopping. Too many workers then. Of course, this part is the trivial one.

I'm really dumbfounded why you are so against it? I'm guessing you don't like my "tone" and presentation. Don't let your dislike for my attitude take away from the true strength of a strategy. Chopping lets you get to Math and Currency a lot faster which provides better overflow followed by earlier +1 trade routes and the ability to build and sell techs for cash which then further broadens the gap from research at that point forward as well.

You do waste some worker turns, no doubt about it. However, you DO EXPAND faster and tech faster which means you will have more cites, more tiles, and reach happiness techs/ability to trade faster too.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Waste a few worker turns when I will be stuck at an early happy cap or get more cities, work more tiles, and tech faster so my vertical growth starts sooner? I know which one I choose ;) .

Hence, this statement proves nothing.

Obviously we strongly disagree, but, I think I have made a much stronger case than you have - not to mention my personal gaming experience confirms it.


EDIT:

There is no doubt in my mind you are a superior player than me, however, that doesn't mean my point is invalid. I've actually been slowly upping my winning % on Deity w/ this method (Immortal is almost a gimme regardles, much like Deity is for you, although as I have said before, even when I win I don't really enjoy Deity - I prefer to stomp the AI silly.).

Actually, I really love beating up on easy levels, lol. This is kinda on topic...............

In this game here With an Abusive Leader on Emperor:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0000-2.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0001-1.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0002-1.jpg

I used about the worst possible whip/chop combination you can, Immortals - mostly to pay for unit maintenance pre 1 AD. I probably made 15-20 chops w/ overflow going into an Immortal of course. If I didn't whip/chop for gold overflow there is no way I could have sustained so many units, even with conquested gold.

To each there own I guess =-D

If you don't make a few whip/chops before Math your research can end up stagnate. If your research isn't stagnate then you haven't REXd hard enough. If you limit yourself to waiting for Math (EXP, CRE tech path almost always gets Math in time) the other guy who has been whipping/chopping will have more cities and thus be working many more tiles before you. the other guy will have 20 keshik and raze your sorry cities


Glad to clear up this misconception. Don't pretend this isn't doesn't do anything other than help you exploit AI tech/expansion weaknesses. It's not an "ideal" strategy - in fact, someone who just always plays Rome is better off in that regard.


There are plenty of games where I never use overflow - usually because the leaders lack the ability ^^.


If there's any one point I'm trying to make clear it's actually this - for the leaders that can do this well, yes it's useful. BUT, I'd rather have a better leader than rely on this to carry my game. Can't see this saving Toku even when he can chop walls/barracks.

Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.


No, stone with protective walls is definitely the best use of this exploit, you're not lending much credence to your own argument here. Getting 3 gold to 1 is much, much better than 2 to 1. For instance, a Creative library will take 3+ forest chops to pay off as much as 2 from a Pro/stone wall. Again, it's not that this can't be used with other traits, but then it doesn't pay more than just putting the hammers into an unbuilt wonder you have the bonus to. So first you have the concern of simply less payoff for all the chopping, and then you have to weigh immediate payout against waste of forests and worker time, and potentially chopping the wrong forests (since with an unbuilt wonder you can do it at any city).


I'm really dumbfounded why you are so against it? I'm guessing you don't like my "tone" and presentation. Don't let your dislike for my attitude take away from the true strength of a strategy. Chopping lets you get to Math and Currency a lot faster which provides better overflow followed by earlier +1 trade routes and the ability to build and sell techs for cash which then further broadens the gap from research at that point forward as well.

To be clear, I'm not against it, Duckweed will have to speak for himself. I've regularly used things like chops onto Maoi Statues in a bunch of cities or overflow on the late game. I'm just not all convinced this holistic "strategy" is better in the majority of circumstances - for a few civs, it's better than nothing, (I would rank barracks second to walls for this trick, it is true it can pay for a conquering civ like Zulu, but no more than other war-related "exploits"). But for most civs, at least half the traits without cheap early buildings, it's not worth it (for instance you'd have to chop 4+ forests on a courthouse because the first one won't turn entirely to gold. That's a lot of worker action and it requires a lot of forests).

You do waste some worker turns, no doubt about it. However, you DO EXPAND faster and tech faster which means you will have more cites, more tiles, and reach happiness techs/ability to trade faster too.

Yes, I don't dispute that you expand faster as it is a REX. But it hardly seems like you would tech faster, that's just a fact of most REX. If the land is open and there's no hurry to expand it's often more optimal to get tech/wonders before outsettling your ability to support yourself. On the other hand, if the map is already crowded then you'd be much better off investing in military than settling cities to get one building in them. I bet if you posted a start on the forum players could be ahead in tech and production without the REX because that's just the nature of it.


If, according to the criteria set up here, I can get more than 16 gold out of the overflow (the 4 gpt that the courthouse saves me, times the number of turns I delay the courthouse in order to exploit overflow) using the same number of forests, worker-turns and pop that I'd use rushbuilding the courthouse, then I'm obviously better off going for the overflow instead of an earlier courthouse. If the overflow I can get is less than 16 gold, overflowing it is a losing proposition. If breaking the 16 gold threshold requires more forests/population/workerturns, then it's a question of whether those additional resources are worth the gold garnered for using them in this way.


Well, of course you get more gold with overflow. That's obvious. But the problem is, you've also chopped a bunch more forests that can't go into anything else - so you have a new city with a courthouse, but no granary, monument, etc... And your workers have been busy here instead of elsewhere. The trick really is best with Pro/stone because you get 3 gold to 1 rather than 2, and most other buildings aren't as cheap so they require more chops just to get to overflow in the first place.

My usual answers are

Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 :hammers: exploit)
Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).


That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

The problem with "using design oversights" as a definition of exploits is that playing the AI at all essentially becomes an exploit :rolleyes:.

Is whipchop overpowering? I'm with earthling on this - give me FIN, ORG, IMP or PHI and I won't shed tears over not having it, especially with combinations of the two! It can seemingly make up partially for weak leaders, assuming you want to invest enough simultaneous worker turns in one spot. It makes sense if you need the money to quickly power to a tech or two, after that it starts to lose its appeal rapidly.

As for other things that are design oversights: any war, trades, beeline tech paths (especially bulbing liberalism!), bribing AIs to wars that screw them, gifting AIs nukes, and so on.

Now, as per one of the definitions of exploit, virtually everything we do in civ could be construed as an exploit if it's good play :lol:. So I don't have a problem with "exploits" unless they turn into some kind of unbalancing factor.

It's interesting though. The only people you see complaining that these tactics are "unfair" or "exploitative" just based on the perception of being cheap are lower-level players. The players who are better than me either use this, accurately evaluate when it is or isn't stronger than standard play, or if they're really good like USun avoid it not because it's cheap, but just for added challenge :eek:.

No, stone with protective walls is definitely the best use of this exploit, you're not lending much credence to your own argument here

I'm not selling myself short at all. My argument is not even an argument in my eyes, it's fact. But anyways, you need to keep in mind you have to research an extra tech and you wind up delaying math and currency. Then you have to contend with a wall and still need other buildings. If it was a library you could also immediately run 2 scientist, which when combined with deficit research and quicker to Currency becomes much more valuable.

The timing and transitioning with protective is problematic and not my 1st choice.

Yes, I don't dispute that you expand faster as it is a REX. But it hardly seems like you would tech faster, that's just a fact of most REX. If the land is open and there's no hurry to expand it's often more optimal to get tech/wonders before outsettling your ability to support yourself. On the other hand, if the map is already crowded then you'd be much better off investing in military than settling cities to get one building in them. I bet if you posted a start on the forum players could be ahead in tech and production without the REX because that's just the nature of it.

You're making it seem complicated. It's quite simplistic. Chopping gives you a nice sum of gold for a loss of population, loss of trees, and a loss of worker turns. If you don't chop you won't have enough gold to maintain 100% research.

Someone at 100% slider techs faster for some random amount of time, after which, the transition to vertical accompanied by their massive REX pulls way ahead. Teching faster gets you more cash on your chops and lands you at Currency quicker. The faster your cities are settled the more tiles you work. The more tiles you work the stronger your empire is.

Seriously, why limit the rate and speed of your expansion? The sooner you get those cities started the better and with whip/chopping you can really abuse expansion via peace/conquest. A massive horizontal is almost always superior to a mild expansion with quicker vertical growth.

Once again, in this game that I posted above, I really leveraged whip/chop even w/ out a modifying trait:



Gotta love Abusive Leaders on easy levels (Emperor)!

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0000-2.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0001-1.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/Civ4ScreenShot0002-1.jpg

Crusher

i've won a few immortal games and am pretty comfortable at emperor but i still find myself having problems expanding well. anyways i've read a lot of your post and links about getting gold from overflow and i'm really surprised. i can normally expand to about 6 or 7 cities by ad250 on emperor and thought i was doing pretty good. after using your suggestions in a few games i have been able to get repeatable results in the range of 9 to 12 cities before ad1 while researching faster than i ever thought possible.

why dont more people know about this? wow! thank you!


You are very welcome and I'm glad to have helped. Lot's of people do know about it, but IMO, they just don't know how to properly utilize it otherwise they would like it more =D. After all, results speak for themselves!

it's an exploit 100% . That Crusher guy is so greedy . Wanna REX and still 100% research at Imm/Diety ? I lolz . If you do that by this way of cheating , good for you but dont waste time and effort to convince other people that it is not, because again it is .

it's an exploit 100% . That Crusher guy is so greedy . Wanna REX and still 100% research at Imm/Diety ? I lolz . If you do that by this way of cheating , good for you but dont waste time and effort to convince other people that it is not, because again it is .

Who gave you the keycard of "opinion is always correct"? If you're going to state a case, at least attempt to back it up!

I voted Exploit too ;) as are many other features in the game, however, it is certainly not cheating. I don't consider it a waste of time to help people who want to learn how to improve their game.

Who gave you the keycard of "opinion is always correct"? If you're going to state a case, at least attempt to back it up!

Go easy on him! I like the attitude! After all, if you don't believe in what you're saying and your not willing to fight and defend your words to the death then you might as well shut the F up ^^.

It's true that people should believe something if they're going to go through the effort to say something. At the same time, I'm not going to "go easy" on someone who resorts to mild name-calling and a resounding "You're wrong!" without any reasons why other than it's how he feels, deep into a discussion with extensive arguments for both sides. He's even telling other posters to deliberately avoid posting potentially useful tactics to the community, and claiming that a legal tactic in every competitive civ IV game format I've ever seen is "100% cheating"! It's not a good post for beginners to read and it certainly doesn't add to the discussion between advanced players.

No, stone with protective walls is definitely the best use of this exploit, you're not lending much credence to your own argument here. Getting 3 gold to 1 is much, much better than 2 to 1.


But is getting 2 to 1 with something you want anyway as a byproduct necessarily worse than getting 3 to 1 on something you could care less about?


Well, of course you get more gold with overflow. That's obvious. But the problem is, you've also chopped a bunch more forests that can't go into anything else


And if I'd chopped them into something else, I'd have done the same thing for a different building. If I split them up between a bunch of buildings, then I've struck an average between 'hurrying' and 'delaying' the buildings.



- so you have a new city with a courthouse, but no granary, monument, etc...
And your workers have been busy here instead of elsewhere.


Which is a wash, because if I chopped into the granary (note: without the 2:1 bonus) then I delayed the monument, courthouse etc. Or if I split the forests, I split the difference. And my workers were still busy here instead of there.


The trick really is best with Pro/stone because you get 3 gold to 1 rather than 2, and most other buildings aren't as cheap so they require more chops just to get to overflow in the first place.

OTOH, most other buildings being considered are things that are (likely) to get built anyway - having a desired building as a byproduct instead of something irrelevant skews things somewhat.
It's only the base-cost issue (ie chops to get to overflow) that gives me pause.

The game mechanic , which is also Sid's will, didnt allow you , especially in high diffuculty, to keep the slider high, not even saying 100% for a while when REXing . If you are able to do that , without selling tech for AI for money , or have 1123123123 gold mine in your BFC, you are cheating, that simple.
You didnt "help" new player , it like giving a Warcraft 3 noob a map hack and say its cool, use it !
But I do have an advice for new guys out there . Just built cottage nice ,early,in big number , you will get pass Monarch in no time. To pass Emp+ lvl you need a little more than that , find tips
in this forum, but definitely not this one (if you dislike cheating,ofcourse)

Is whipchop overpowering?


If that's the criteria for "exploit," then gifting missionaries to bypass theocracy doesn't count either; on the other hand, building the GLH on an archipelago map might :p Or playing down two levels with the Incans.


Now, as per one of the definitions of exploit, virtually everything we do in civ could be construed as an exploit if it's good play :lol:. So I don't have a problem with "exploits" unless they turn into some kind of unbalancing factor.


My own thought: I don't have a problem with exploits unless they provide the kind of imbalance that will break a game. OTOH, I won't balk at acknowledging something as exploitive just because it's impact is arguably trivial (or alternately, if it's ubiquitous for competitive play at higher levels.)


It's interesting though. The only people you see complaining that these tactics are "unfair" or "exploitative" just based on the perception of being cheap are lower-level players.


Crusher plays Deity with some success, and yet he acknowledged this tactic as an exploit in his first post - though I'll grant that acknowledging is not quite the same as complaining.

For myself, I admit I'm a lower-level player; but again, I merely acknowledge this as an exploit. My only complaint is about those who complain about labeling it as such :p

wow, so much argument! i even have had completely lost my thought and started thinking whether overflow tricks really make sense or not, although i've used them myself extensively and i think it's the only think that can keep you (or, well, me) afloat at imm.
referring to the OP, i can say, that, on higher level, just everything goes, at least until firaxis guys come and say: "hey, it's a cheat, we're going to fix it in the next patch"
if humans were not exploiting this and many other tricks, they'd play just like AIs and therefore they'd stand no chance over noble.

First off, I just like to argue just as I like to buy cars and haggle for days. Both are very fun.

(if you dislike cheating,ofcourse)

I despise cheating, cheaters, liars, those who lack integrity, etc. So we think alike in that aspect. We simply disagree when it comes to this exploit. To me, in no way, shape, or form is it cheating. I would consider playing Marathon or using settings such as "no tech brokering" much more exploitive because they change the game much more drastically in favor of humans.

Heck, AIs are dumb and anything you do within the rules can be exploitive. I don't know how many times I have gifted poor cities to AIs for a variety of reasons, all of which benefited me.

The game mechanic , which is also Sid's will, didnt allow you , especially in high diffuculty, to keep the slider high, not even saying 100% for a while when REXing.

Did they intend against 100% slider or not? You seem to point out a number of ways 100% w/o whipchop is attainable, but then that goes against "Sid's will". Which is it? Or are you saying that selling techs and resources for gold is also cheating? You might as well.

You didnt "help" new player , it like giving a Warcraft 3 noob a map hack and say its cool, use it!

Come on, ease off the ignorance. For those of you on the forum who are not aware, WC III is a real-time strategy game, and a map hack in that game lets you see the whole map illegally.

But, the ignorant part of this statement is that map hacks in that game require third party software which is SPECIFICALLY BANNED by the agreement you accept when you go online. It is not part of basic gameplay, and it sure as hell wasn't introduced by Blizzard intentionally (the gold overflow WAS introduced intentionally, as you used to just lose those hammers). Comparing something that is a flagrant violation of rules with something that was intentionally added into the rules makes for a pretty weak argument!

but definitely not this one (if you dislike cheating,ofcourse)

"Cheat" defined, as per dictionary.com:

–verb (used without object)
4. to practice fraud or deceit: She cheats without regrets.
5. to violate rules or regulations: He cheats at cards.
6. to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers.

Unless you can come up with a credible definition that actually defines overflow as cheating, you're making a false claim. As it stands now, overflow is part of the basic game, needing no modification or rule changes to use - it's available to every civ at game start no matter what. Cheating in gaming context implies a violation of rules, typically. Overflow by definition is NOT cheating.

Any assertion that playing within the rules is cheating is playing pretend.

The game mechanic , which is also Sid's will, didnt allow you , especially in high diffuculty, to keep the slider high, not even saying 100% for a while when REXing . If you are able to do that , without selling tech for AI for money , or have 1123123123 gold mine in your BFC, you are cheating, that simple.


I hope this is satire.


But I do have an advice for new guys out there . Just built cottage nice ,early,in big number , you will get pass Monarch in no time.


Eh, no.
Building cottages is helpful, yes. But it's no good for getting through monarch (or even prince) if you don't know what to do with the commerce. You'll also need to get over the builder's bug, so you don't wind up neglecting your military and getting steamrolled by Monte.


To pass Emp+ lvl you need a little more than that , find tips
in this forum, but definitely not this one (if you dislike cheating,ofcourse)

While I consider this an exploit, I don't consider it 'cheating' any more than I'd consider backstabbing an AI you worked up to friendly "cheating."

If you are able to do that , without selling tech for AI for money , or have 1123123123 gold mine in your BFC

That actually isn't possible, since the gold mines would contribute to commerce in which case it doesn't help maintenance if you have 100% slider :D. Logic mistake! Maphack in wc3 is totally different as well.

As for overflow, etc. debate, I agree that it's exploitive, but given that the ai gets some freaking ridiculous bonuses (they actually cheat :P) it seems just as fair as some of the other ways of improving your win chance.

I've said that before already so I'll make this short - if I can magically move from 21:gold: to 421:gold: way before Writing even so I can fund my REX for 30 turns at 100% it's a one hell of an exploit and who knows, perhaps on Deity I'd feel forced to use it to survive. Luckily I'm an Emperor player and I have no intention using that game mechanic, it feels illogical when used that way. To prevent occasional hammer loss due to overflow - sure, but not deliberate, planned breaking the game.
Don't tell me that if you've done one chopwhip for cash on exp granary you won't do that again in another city. Sure you will! And having more cash from the overflow will let you found more cities, in each of which you'll continue to chopwhip for gold untill run out of forests.
So yeah, it's a gamebreaking exploit in my opinion.

The problem with "using design oversights" as a definition of exploits is that playing the AI at all essentially becomes an exploit

Really? That stance seems a touch naive.

Fundamentally - yes, you have a human brain where the computer has dice, and unless you choose to exercise that exploit you aren't likely to beat Prince. No disagreement there.

Furthermore, I'll concede that trying to avoid all of the places where the AI is handicapped (not merely stupid, but actually blind) is way more trouble than it is worth. For example, as far as I can tell from reading the code, the AI doesn't even know what map it is playing - not only does the AI not play water maps worth a damn, but it never actually knows that it's in an archipelago.

I don't see overflow as belonging to either of those categories. It's much closer to collateral damage where... I think the most general way to say it is that the product shipped before the implementation demonstrated that they understood how it worked.

(The generous interpretation is that it is closer to the asymmetry of worker theft - being unable to combine "easy" and "right", they went with the former. I can't imagine any argument that would persuade me they weren't ret-conning in a justification, but perhaps I'm too cynical).

That said, it's difficult to claim that your opinion changes my games in any way; the topic is only worth pursuing as far as it is itself entertaining.

That's true, very little said here will impact the way games are played directly.

Technically, the AI can get overflow too. I'm sure in some rare cases, it occurs, just as the dice might make it play a weak map for it better than normal (as in giving it a land-heavy start in archipelago, or a lot of production on such a map).

At the end of the day though, the AI can only do so much. Overflow tricks are quite balanced in MP IMO, although my experience in civ MP is limited it's enough to know that you can screw yourself by expanding into areas you can't defend, not to mention tech trades are off normally so the whole brokering thing just makes it harder.

^anyway, even if AI occasionally gets overflow, it's negligible for him, while human can feed research and expansion almost exclusively by whipping warriors or whatever.
may be developers did not know what were they doing when they made the overflow thing. but they do not hurry to remove it, so i think it's "sid's will" to (ab)use it.

@Crusher, looked at your examples. I'm convinced this tactic can be very strong in the right circumstances:

- Have to have a leader with cheap buildings

- After extreme rex > 10 cities
- And even more recovering from an axe rush
- If you're afraid losing librace, but that's hard to tell in the bc's
In those cases cash can be a lifesaver.

But on deity 6-8 cities is often the limit. In this case researching 100% isn't that important. You'll be ahead in the bc's but this advantage tends to flatten out around ~1 ad after currency/trade. Meanwhile you probably don't have forests left to help chopping wonders/unis and oxford in the future which is not unimportant.

Since it has lots of potential i'd say it's a strong tactic to have in the bag but since it's not gamebreaking i don't consider it an exploit also since you're clearly giving up other things to use it. I'm going to use it myself in the future but the circumstances must be favorable, it's not some always superior technic , just a good one imo. Once currency is in it's not needed anymore i think and i'd specifically use it to get this tech soon.

The problem with "using design oversights" as a definition of exploits is that playing the AI at all essentially becomes an exploit :rolleyes:.

Yeah... Who said playing against the AI wasn't an exploit?

But on deity 6-8 cities is often the limit. In this case researching 100% isn't that important. You'll be ahead in the bc's but this advantage tends to flatten out around ~1 ad after currency/trade. Meanwhile you probably don't have forests left to help chopping wonders/unis and oxford in the future which is not unimportant.


Are you saying that 6-8 cities is the limit because of upkeep costs or are you saying that is the limit because you can't get your settlers out fast enough to get more than 6-8 cities?

If it's because you can't get the cities out fast enough, then could you get more cities if you pushed harder on the whip/chop for more Settlers? I really am asking a serious question here since I fall down and get crushed by Deity difficulty - I just can't keep up with the pace.

Of course, if you can't expand beyond 6-8 cities because you get hammered by maintenance costs, then whip/chop gold overflow seems like an obvious solution to the problem.

Mostly it is because of room.. Obviously whip / chop can sometimes allow you to expand a bit more recklessly than you would otherwise crashing rather hard. It is true that you need to pay more attention to economy on deity, but room is still problem more often than not. It is important to figure out when economy is the limiter rather than room however, often you won't have sufficient exploration to know with absolute certainty which one it is. Charlemange is a very synergistic leader this way. Imperialistic to allow you to claim 1-4 more cities than you would otherwise get and pro to carry you the way to col where your super UB managed to save you from economic ruin, then you should have recovered by the time when you reach the gunpowder era where your extra promos help or maybe you rely heavy on EP, not so strange with a lot of courthouses everywhere and cheap castles(as you already have some walls from whip/chop overflow).

^anyway, even if AI occasionally gets overflow, it's negligible for him, while human can feed research and expansion almost exclusively by whipping warriors or whatever.
may be developers did not know what were they doing when they made the overflow thing. but they do not hurry to remove it, so i think it's "sid's will" to (ab)use it.

My whole point is if you replace "overflow" in your sentence with "trades", "national wonders", or "military units", you can make a nearly identical argument, and yet nobody is calling those things exploitative, even though by definition they are also ;).

Are you saying that 6-8 cities is the limit because of upkeep costs or are you saying that is the limit because you can't get your settlers out fast enough to get more than 6-8 cities?

If it's because you can't get the cities out fast enough, then could you get more cities if you pushed harder on the whip/chop for more Settlers? I really am asking a serious question here since I fall down and get crushed by Deity difficulty - I just can't keep up with the pace.

Of course, if you can't expand beyond 6-8 cities because you get hammered by maintenance costs, then whip/chop gold overflow seems like an obvious solution to the problem. It has little to do with maintenance, if i could i'd gladly expand to 10+ cities pre 1ad if i can safely do so, even without these overflow tricks you'll catch up somewhere when things come online. Currency's key, once you have it your problems are over. Sure Crusher's trick is a nice way to get there faster.

Problems with expanding on deity come down to 2 things.

1. deity ais expand very fast, it's the only level where they begin with an extra settler. I begin chopping asap, whipping the capital tends to get the first settler out a bit faster but tends to slow you down subsequently unless you have lots of food so this is situational. Rexing is probably the strongest point of my game, i often can get to ~8 cities or even more but not always.Apart from blocking there's a good trick to keep maintenance in check, position the settler on the city site but only build it when the ai's coming with his settlers. You need good scouting to see when they're coming.

2. If there are very aggressive ais around then you have to make sure that you can defend what you build, extreme rexing is just a bad idea in those cases. In that case i often build one or 2 spearhead cities in the direction of the threatening ai preferably on hills not too far from capital and position a defend force between those cities that can reach both cities in 1 turn. You lose the 25% fortify bonus in this case so also fortify 2 units in the cities itself.Make sure you can whip walls when declared on. This'll keep you save until cats, around that time you should be able to do somethings diplo wise.

This situation often leads to smaller early empires. But since your techrate is better it's often possible to take out these aggressive neighbours in the renaissance since they don't tech that well.

^^
^^
yeah, and with other words like units it sounds cool. :lol:

i should insert "i agree with TMIT" in my sig :lol:

It looks like something that shouldn't be in game - it shouldn't promote tedious micro like that. Re the exploitness of it, I think it's borderline, but ultimately not an exploit - it's more like micromanaging tiles in Civ1-3. But if it's gone, I'll be glad.

It's obviously an exploit. Overflow was added to reduce the need for micromanagement in timing whips and chops. Leveraging overflow into gold via extreme micromanaging is abusive, IMO, since it's counter to the spirit of the game and the design intent. No different to me than increasing your gold with the world builder, which is also legal under most game settings - the game allows you to do it. It's your game though, play it how ever you like and have fun.

Personally, I've never even tried this, because it just smells wrong to me.

Long post!

If you don't make a few whip/chops before Math your research can end up stagnate. If your research isn't stagnate then you haven't REXd hard enough. If you limit yourself to waiting for Math (EXP, CRE tech path almost always gets Math in time) the other guy who has been whipping/chopping will have more cities and thus be working many more tiles before you.

There are plenty of games where I never use overflow - usually because the leaders lack the ability ^^. However, I haven't always had this "addiction" to this strategy. I spend most of my gaming time executing build orders and expanding via peace/conquest through 1 ADish and in every game where there are trees available I always have much greater success than w/out.

Are there other strategies? Of course they are but that doesn't make them a better choice.

Screen shots of 193 turns at zero slider followed by 5 turns at 100%:



Having looked at your link. With a gold in your empire, sticking at Writing at that stage means you played it in a suboptimal way. As I mentioned, why do you want to rex to extreme instead of blocking and settling some of the cities after Alpha and Currency?


Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.

This is fun isn't it? ;)

Oh yes, stone/protective/wall is the best gain for this trick since each forest give you 60/90g with/without math. Even if you consider the wall to be useless (actually not, defense and event) the final gain from the walls is more than 40/60g useful buildings when there are more than 3 forests to be chopped in a city. You are an expert on this trick and you do know that you gain more with more chops at the same time.


I'm talking about CRE/EXP/AGG.


An example from one single leader Suvy(CRE/EXP) give it a best use and you call this strategy superior. Some players claim that they are deity players because they can beat the deity dual map with Inca! You may argue that you mentioned Agg. Honestly, Barrack is useless in peaceful environment in early stage. Even there's a coming invasion, I only build barrack in capital and another best production city before I lauch an offensive war. So you indeed delay useful buildings by chopping all the forests to a single building for cash.


I'm really dumbfounded why you are so against it? I'm guessing you don't like my "tone" and presentation. Don't let your dislike for my attitude take away from the true strength of a strategy. Chopping lets you get to Math and Currency a lot faster which provides better overflow followed by earlier +1 trade routes and the ability to build and sell techs for cash which then further broadens the gap from research at that point forward as well.



It's very little about your altitude, I have to shut up my mouth if your statement is really true and I'd be happy instead to actually learn something. However, this small trick is rather suboptimal than superior in many situations.


Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Waste a few worker turns when I will be stuck at an early happy cap or get more cities, work more tiles, and tech faster so my vertical growth starts sooner? I know which one I choose ;) .


Expand faster, I'd rather say that your early cities are up faster at the cost of at the edge of broking and that's definitely not an optimal way to play the game. It's a pity that some players are proud that they can settle more than 10 cities ~1AD and don't know that it is often better to just block some room and settle them at a later stage. Tech faster, maybe. However with blocking and less cities early on, the teching could be faster other way.



Obviously we strongly disagree, but, I think I have made a much stronger case than you have - not to mention my personal gaming experience confirms it.


Stronger? I don't see it.;)
Moreover, as I mentioned, you need to at least try other strategies 1st before saying yours is superior. Fortunately, I know this trick no less than you.


There are other negative effects of this trick.

1. Forge, OR and Burea will give you more if you save those forest later.
2. You'll delay or even lose some important wonders without those saved forests such as GL and NE. You may argue that you will save some for GL. However, there are many wonders opening in immortal and below. Think about it.
3. you remove the possibility of new forests.

Finally, I have to repeat my opinion in my 1st post. I did not say this trick is garbage. However, I would not call something superior if there are equal or better alternatives exist.

^I generally agree. It's not a trick that'll raise your game with a level or more and there are drawbacks to this trick. But a normal beeline to math (don't want to waste forests pre math except on workers/settlers/early axe rush), then chop to currency is an interesting strat that i'm going to try in one of my next games. I think if you have a *2 multiplier it'll be good, otherwise don't bother 1H > 1C unless you have no good things to spend the H on which is never a problem with forests.

I find this strategy is very useful with 2 pop whips.

When I'm expanding I like to get my buildings done quickly and get those new cities producing surplus beakers soon. In this case I'll wait not until the building is almost done but until its on the borderline between one and two pops for a whip. That way the vast majority of the second pop will go to overflow along with the forests just as in a normal chop/whip but you are in fact 'hurrying' production.

This works best (and really only) with Cre libraries, Org Courthouses and Ind Forges. Agg/Prot I view as 'wasting' forest hammers that could be used to fund infrastructure (As Dirk1302 alluded to) if I'm not directly moving towards a war.

For Exp a 2 pop whip is not usually viable for granaries but whipping with most of the production remaining and 2 chopping overflow (or even 1 if you are keen on saving forests) is still a very effective first build method especially when leading into another double speed building that can be available for a nice chop/whip sooner.

The strength of a Agg barracks chop/whip I see as producing cash for an army, maximizing hammers (especially b4 math) from forests when building an axe army and getting 2 free promotions as the barracks actually costs you next to no hammers in terms of turns spent building your army (I view turns as the most rare 'commodity' for an axe rush).

Edit: All bets are off what I may do with Shaka... as we may all say

Having looked at your link. With a gold in your empire, sticking at Writing at that stage means you played it in a suboptimal way. As I mentioned, why do you want to rex to extreme instead of blocking and settling some of the cities after Alpha and Currency?

I agree here totally. Blocking is usually the optimal path to take. Then filling in quickly with the high quality spots followed by a nice steady lower quality fill in.

I view the chop/whip overflow as a nice boost early to get
the buildings needed for productive cities up quickly while having a little extra gold to maintain a high research rate. I'm not going to plan my expansion around this strategy nor am I going to wait until a building is 1 turn from completion to chop and whip it.

If a site happens to be food heavy and I have a cheap econ building (or I'm Agg and I'm axe rushing a nearby foe who has a nice start) then I'll whip chop overflow for the nice gold boost and hammer overflow for the next necessary building. I'll 2 pop especially if this is available in a city with a good food supply but this is usually the second building (after I whipped only the first).

I also view saving forests to be extremely important for the National wonders as Dirk13023 pointed out. As such I use this only when the opportunity presents itself and will at most come only 2-3 times a game with the right leader and the right map.

Also I would never use this strategy in my (two) high production city, especially as IND. I'll whip in the granary and forge and save those forests for a OR, Forge, Beau,(prereq resource) Chop/whip exstravaganza for wonders. Now if there happens to be overflow gold ;) then so be it.

It is nice to be able to whipchop overflow for cash if you've crashed your economy but crashing your economy is not always the optimal play.

Since it has lots of potential i'd say it's a strong tactic to have in the bag but since it's not gamebreaking i don't consider it an exploit


I dislike this criteria, on the grounds that it makes using even obvious and admitted bugs "not-an-exploit" if the effects are trivial.

But then, I don't have a problem with using things I consider exploits if they're not game breaking. Perhaps if I did, I'd be more conservative in what I considered an exploit.

I dislike this criteria, on the grounds that it makes using even obvious and admitted bugs "not-an-exploit" if the effects are trivial.

But then, I don't have a problem with using things I consider exploits if they're not game breaking. Perhaps if I did, I'd be more conservative in what I considered an exploit.

It's fun to debate something like this, but in play terms it's irrelevant. If you want to do it you do it, if not you don't. Against human competition, there's no stopping anybody so you have to weigh its costs against its benefits like anyone else or else you're deliberately handicapping yourself. The AI doesn't care what you do no matter what.

It exchanges hammers to gold at a 1 to 2 rate. The same is accomplished by failing a wonder build fed with hammers that were amplified by a +100% bonus resource. I don't see why this trick would be classifiable as gamebreaking when failing wonders is not.

As for the protective walls; throw Charlie and Toku a bone here. Protective can use a little boost every once in a while.

Against human competition, there's no stopping anybody so you have to weigh its costs against its benefits like anyone else or else you're deliberately handicapping yourself.

True, but if you ask me, that's exactly what makes it relevant. In a multiplayer game, exploits are fixed so that gameplay doesn't have to depend on using them. It's not about making the game fair, since everyone can exploit; it's about making the game better.

In my own opinion:

The "whip/chop overflow trick" (or whatever you call it) IS an exploit.

For example: Protective players should build walls simply because they want more defense (and later castles)... not for a large chunk of gold to fuel your over-expansion, hasten your early tech rate, etc.

It may be clever (as most exploits are)... but you're playing in an UNINTENDED and unorthodox manner (more so than most other tactics) just to squeeze a little bit more of an advantage out of something. It's cheesy, and if you don't believe so, you're just kidding yourself.

To those that say it's a part of the game (and is intended?):

You HONESTLY think the developers intended on players timing mulitple tree chops and whipping population away at the very end of producing a 1/2 cost building in order to create a dramatic overflow of gold?

You HONESTLY think the reason the developers implemented the gold overflow was for doing things like this?

You HONESTLY believe the developers expect players using the Protective trait to use this tactic? (To those that say it's a way of leveraging the weaker traits, like Protective.)

It was implemented in case you happened to overflow a building by too much, and to lessen the penalty in case you accidentally did so. It was also probably implemented to LESSEN the micromanagement used when trying to AVOID overflow and loss of resources.

The game design for Civ 4 usually steers in the direction towards less "tedious" micro. To "whip/chop overflow gold" is micro-intensive and I don't think it's a tactic intended to be used by competitive players.

Just because it's in the game, or was put into the game at a later date, does not mean using it in any way you can think of is NOT an exploit of game mechanics.

"Hey, we're not breaking any of the rules or mechanics of the game!"
No... but you're "exploiting" them.

As for the argument saying, "Warring, Trading, and simply playing against the AI is an exploit." Why then would you go out of your way and exploit EVEN FURTHER in a very tedious, unorthodox manner?

Nobody is satisifed with the AI, and we're ever trying to improve it thru better coding and logic. In a way, we're working towards "eliminating" the exploitation we use against the AI. This particular exploit of the gold overflow mechanic is something that CAN be fixed and should be to support this goal.

I'm sure there won't be any official patches coming out again since the developers probably moved on to bigger, better things (Civ 5?!). But if there was another patch, they would surely nerf this and correct it.

True, but if you ask me, that's exactly what makes it relevant. In a multiplayer game, exploits are fixed so that gameplay doesn't have to depend on using them. It's not about making the game fair, since everyone can exploit; it's about making the game better.

Indeed :goodjob:

I couldn't care less about it within my own, private games (which is primarily the way I play).

But, if I ever was to choose to play multiplayer or to be competitive and boast about my difficulty/score, I'd hate to be forced to use this tactic because everybody else is.

It's fun to debate something like this, but in play terms it's irrelevant. If you want to do it you do it, if not you don't. Against human competition, there's no stopping anybody so you have to weigh its costs against its benefits like anyone else or else you're deliberately handicapping yourself. The AI doesn't care what you do no matter what.

I figured this stuff was obvious enough to go without saying. But saying it does bring up the question of whether this thread is maybe more suited to general discussion than strategy&tips. The decision of whether or not to use something that's arguably an 'exploit' is part of strategy; but the discussion of whether labeling something as an 'exploit' is semantically correct or not isn't really.

The "whip/chop overflow trick" (or whatever you call it) IS an exploit.

Let's examine why you feel this way.

For example: Protective players should build walls simply because they want more defense (and later castles)... not for a large chunk of gold to fuel your over-expansion, hasten your early tech rate, etc.

This is using an opinion as a means to support another opinion ;).

It may be clever (as most exploits are)... but you're playing in an UNINTENDED and unorthodox manner (more so than most other tactics) just to squeeze a little bit more of an advantage out of something. It's cheesy, and if you don't believe so, you're just kidding yourself.

It's not cheesy or any more exploitative than standard play, and if you don't believe so, you're just kidding yourself (see, I can do this too! Isn't it constructive :lol:?). Whether it was intended or not is certainly debatable, given that they added the ability to do this deliberately after the release of civ. Also, we've already established that it's not necessarily an edge at all, but rather has the potential to hurt if used in the wrong situation.

You HONESTLY think the developers intended on players timing mulitple tree chops and whipping population away at the very end of producing a 1/2 cost building in order to create a dramatic overflow of gold?

They allowed it to occur, and have known about it for a long, long time without correcting it. They probably intended it at least as much as the favorite civic bribe bug (as in, since when did intent matter for game rules or definition of exploit?). There are so many things that can abuse the AI that singling overflow out seems a little arbitrary.

It was implemented in case you happened to overflow a building by too much, and to lessen the penalty in case you accidentally did so. It was also probably implemented to LESSEN the micromanagement used when trying to AVOID overflow and loss of resources.

You state this as if it's fact. It isn't, or if it is you've done a sorely poor job in proving it. It is quite difficult to overflow a building too much by accident in this game. If it weren't, this discussion would be moot, because we'd be seeing overflow out of the AI, too.

The game design for Civ 4 usually steers in the direction towards less "tedious" micro. To "whip/chop overflow gold" is micro-intensive and I don't think it's a tactic intended to be used by competitive players.

Micro makes or breaks at the margins. This isn't any more micro intensive than switching a food tile between cities (in fact, it's less since you don't have to enter city screens multiple times). Are you saying tactics like sharing food resources weren't intended also? I don't understand this particular argument.

"Hey, we're not breaking any of the rules or mechanics of the game!"
No... but you're "exploiting" them.

The definition of exploit encompasses virtually every good decision made in civ. Where are you going to draw the line? You can put a pretend line anywhere you want.

As for the argument saying, "Warring, Trading, and simply playing against the AI is an exploit." Why then would you go out of your way and exploit EVEN FURTHER in a very tedious, unorthodox manner?

How tedious is something that takes 10 seconds to execute, TOPS? Are we playing the same game? Warring and trading take more time than this! Do you "HONESTLY" (:p) think hitting alt-c a couple times qualifies as tedious micro?!

I'm sure there won't be any official patches coming out again since the developers probably moved on to bigger, better things (Civ 5?!). But if there was another patch, they would surely nerf this and correct it.

Surely, after ignoring it for over a year and multiple patches, they'd suddenly do a 180 and nerf it. Or maybe it's more plausible to assert they wouldn't, based on past experience!

True, but if you ask me, that's exactly what makes it relevant. In a multiplayer game, exploits are fixed so that gameplay doesn't have to depend on using them. It's not about making the game fair, since everyone can exploit; it's about making the game better.

You're missing the point. MP is a realm where you might be getting choked by dog soldiers or even guerrilla archers while trying to whipchop your precious gold. Or maybe they settled that hill city while your chops went into a barracks or granary instead of another settler and some archers. Or maybe they'll convert all your precious gold into their gold as they rape you with chariots. The point is that it's one possibility among many in MP, and improperly USING it can result in a pretty humiliating outcome. In other words, it's pretty balanced.

So again, the question becomes:

How is something that does not materially affect game balance, that has less of an impact than variations in standard play, and that falls within game rules qualifying as an exploit? Or, if you take the broader definition of exploit, how is this different from any number of other effective tactics in civ to which the AI can't appropriately react? Drawing pretend lines in the sand? If you HONESTLY (:p) think there's a difference, you're just kidding yourself! Haha!

How is something that does not materially affect game balance, that has less of an impact than variations in standard play, and that falls within game rules qualifying as an exploit?

Under those criteria, nothing is an exploit.

Under those criteria, nothing is an exploit.

That's a very keen observation, there.

"Exploit" in a gaming sense is a ridiculous term. By definition, every sound tactic used in a game is exploitative, so we're already using some bum terminology.

Therefore whether something is an exploit is functionally irrelevant. Now if it affects gameplay by causing it to become imbalanced or unstable, it's a different kind of problem - not technically more "exploitative" than other things but damaging to the game's depth. A good example of such an imbalancing move is the glitch in madden 2009 that lets the quarterback snap the ball 30 yard downfield for an instant touchdown. THAT'S imbalancing, and completely different from wallchop which actually adds relevant choices to the game rather than removes them.

I don't think overflow cash was unintended. I base this on the fact that the mechanic is in the game. Kind of hard to argue no?
The question is if the possible uses of it were unforseen by the dev-members. I have to go with TMIT on this; the fact that noone has cared to do anything about it despite many patches (and the latest not so long ago as some posters seem to suggest), indicates that the devs where at least not concerned enough to do anything about it.

In any case for a single player experience that is not part of a challenge with specific criteria I don't really care what people think about it. Everyone will have to determine what they do or don't do in a game. Comparing something that can be done within the standard game interface and rules to using the WB is silly though.

Personally I might consider limiting myself in various ways the day I find deity to be too easy otherwise, that's far from the case right now however. I don't consider overflow tricks to be amongst the most powerful tools at the player's disposal so I would probably not start here.

When it's based on protective walls or aggressive barracks and other such bonuses it's probably an exploit because it's just due to a bad game coding. Without bonuses it's not an exploit, just boring micromanagement...

That's a very keen observation, there.

"Exploit" in a gaming sense is a ridiculous term. By definition, every sound tactic used in a game is exploitative,


Y'know, you've said that many times. And I've never challenged it, but if you're going to newspeak the language away, I think it's time someone asked you to back that reduction up.


Therefore whether something is an exploit is functionally irrelevant.


Semantic arguments usually are, outside of getting past communication issues based on interpretive differences (or just plain ego-slinging.)

But with that noted, if it's so "irrelevant," why bother objecting when someone uses the term? Why make such dismissive remarks as "only low-level players call it that," or make borderline flames about 'arbitrary lines'?

If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter either way.

Well, the thread certainly took a change of pace from when I last posted, so first of all, in case anyone forgot, my position is this:
Whip/chop is NOT an exploit, in my opinion. Tricks against the AI like gifting gp aren't really exploits in my view either. For that matter, neither is perpetual anarchy to avoid unit striking - I've never really used this myself and it does happen to be banned in our community here, but I wouldn't call it an exploit and I give major props to whomever was ingenious enough to come up with it. I really only view true "bug" type things like units in boats razing cities as exploits.

That said, something not being an exploit doesn't mean it's not bad game design. An example of this is the Apostolic Palace system - it's just cheezy as a human player to abuse that against the AI (my personal fix would be to make civs vote by pure population weight, not "religious population").

So, as relevant to this discussion, I do have one major opinion - if (when) I could change the game mechanics, I would make all forest chops, period, a lot less lucrative. Whether it's units, wonders, etc... excessive chopping and deforestation just doesn't make sense, and leads to imbalances in starts and so on. As things stand it's necessary to compete with AI, and against other humans who do so, and it is symmetric because all players can chop, but the system itself really doesn't add much to the game - for instance, previous civ version never had forest chops count for so much, neither do various mods around here, and they all do fine. But, again, this applies across the board - so chopping for gold and chopping for axes are both overpowered, but not really exploits. Likewise, from a pure game balance sense, I would see the Protective trait improved anyway and for all civs have building wealth/research/culture a straight 2 to 1 so you wouldn't have to worry about overflow, unbuilt wonders, and the whole kit and kaboodle.

With that said, my position on the "whip/chop" is still just that it's really not that good. Slightly beneficial sometimes, mainly when you've already crashed your economy, useless in others, as Gliese says

It is nice to be able to whipchop overflow for cash if you've crashed your economy but crashing your economy is not always the optimal play.

So, in the interest of real game mechanics discussion - I would like to ask the following, which I haven't seen an answer to, especially in response to quotes like this:

But is getting 2 to 1 with something you want anyway as a byproduct necessarily worse than getting 3 to 1 on something you could care less about?

-If you're only getting 2 to 1, then why is this better than gold on an unbuilt wonder?

I know that seems a little oversimplified so I will trouble to try to present cases in depth, as I understand them. The first thing being that it IS true, isn't it, that you get 2 to 1 with everything except protective + stone, and there's no other secret bonuses out there to it.

So considering that, there are early game wonders out there which gain benefits from marble, stone, copper, gold, and ivory, which makes for a very, very good chance that you can have a bonus to one of them. Industrious civs even get a free 50% to make 2.5 to 1. The other thing is, with wonder chopping, if you really need the gold, every forest goes directly do gold. As before, if you're building something like a barracks, in a brand new settled city, first you have to build the barracks and overflow for its cost again, and only THEN do you start getting the conversion to gold. So, in fact, whip/chop isn't even a strategy of its own, it's a hybrid between regular development, and pure chopping for gold.

Various potential uses for forests

-Non-gold based chopping: the default game. Whether you're building military, other buildings, wonders, workers, whatever, this is the baseline to compare other uses towards. Also, keep in mind that this encompasses a standard, non-REX game - you don't have to keep founding new cities to have more buildings to chop.

-Unbuilt Wonders: give a straight 2 to 1 gold if you have the resource. Every hammer goes straight into gold and you can chop at any cities you want until the wonder is built. No need to send workers to the outskirts of your empire's new cities or clear forests that the new cities may need for other buildings. Even better are National wonders like Maoi or the Epics where there is no pressure at all for timing against another civ.
Disadvantages: Gold is not immediate. So you may be waiting 5-10 turns until someone finishes the wonder.
Rating: Excellent, but not technically a guarantee since it depends on a resource rather than traits.

Protective/Stone Walls: Something is to be said that it's almost fair the protective trait has some other benefit going towards it. At any rate, this is unique among all other situations in that it does give you 3 gold to the hammer. Walls can be built in any city and they're cheap which makes it easy to get plenty of hammers into the overflow
Disadvantages: You still have the Protective trait, and walls can end up being a useless building itself.
My Rating: Good-Awesome

Aggressive Barracks: available everywhere, fairly cheap so most forests will go straight into gold.
Disadvantages: You may not want barracks everywhere. Furthermore, you're directly detracting from military production for a lot of leaders - sure, that extra gold could help you get to literature, but instead those forests could also go into more Keshik!
My Rating: Good-Excellent, with a special note for saving warmongers after they have fought into a poor situation.

Creative Theatres: Very cheap and is a building you probably want eventually anyway
Disadvantages: Later in the tech tree, so might not really matter when you need it.
Rating: Excellent, but later in the game

Creative Libraries: More expensive building, so you need at least a chop into overflow itself before you start converting to gold.
Disadvantages: You'll likely want libraries in most cities, but sometimes you might not. You might also have already wanted libraries in your capital/core cities before you are ready for the trick. Also will be more worker intensive and building a library before other buildings isn't always the best;you also won't really need the extra culture if you're already creative.
Rating: Medium-Excellent

Organized Lighthouses - cheap and early in the tech tree, one has a lot of flexibility.
Disadvantages: Not every city is coastal, and the lighthouse might not be the first building you want; also coastal cities might not have forests. But in many ways this is a very, very similar case to unbuilt Maoi - so I see no reason to call this better.
Rating: Good-Excellent

Organized Courthouse- a building you want in every city, and by itself will help your economy and expansion.
Disadvantages - quite expensive, just building the courthouse from scratch, and then requires 2 forests or a forest and a slave before you even start converting to gold. So very worker intensive.
Rating: Medium-Good

Expansive Granary-early and cheap, and a building you want in every city, so the same general advantages as a couple of others.
Disadvantages: The granary is like the #1 building you don't want to delay. Chopping before Math is a smaller return, and waiting until math for granaries is also painful. If you include whipping before you get the granary that's added inefficiency.
Rating: Medium-Excellent

Any Other buildings - unless I've missed something, forges, colisseums ect... are just too expensive to be worth the trick - they'd have a Poor rating.

Now I don't expect everyone to take these ratings at face value - but still, I think the point remains. I'm NOT saying, "don't chop forests or use them for your economy in any way." But it's not at all clear that the whip/chop is better than other uses, especially since one other common situation is often a better conversion - put as many forests as you like, no need for single turn timing and heavy worker coordination, straight into a wonder. Protective stone is clearly better because it gives a higher payoff, but everything else is situational and best, and even then it's more of a "something you can do with traits that are weaker anyway, so hardly overpowering."

Edit: Since I have the time, I might as well add a clarifying scenario here, since I realize looking back some people may miss some of the thought process and not get the idea. So, to show why if it's really necessary chopping a wonder is just as good - Consider a situation where you have a desperate need for gold, as an organized leader, and a new inland city with 8 forests.

To overflow a courthouse, you'd need the following: The equivalent of 4 forests in pure hammers, before overflow starts even turning into gold. This can be accomplished by simply building for a while, a slave as the courthouse nears completion, etc... but that takes time. But I'll grant all that for the hypothetical situation - so for this scenario I'd say that you need two forest chops just to get those base hammers, which leaves 6 remaining forests to turn into gold. To time it right, you need 7 workers to chop the forests needed for overflow on the same turn.

Now, consider simply having an unbuilt wonder (in fact, with 8 forests and the bonus you could probably actually complete any wonder you wanted, but we'll disregard that). In this case, it doesn't matter what the new city builds - let's say it just starts on a vanilla granary. Then, with just 1 or 2 workers you could go around and chop the forests into the unbuilt wonder - and all 8 of them go straight to gold. Or, the beautiful part is, there's absolutely no sunk cost - you could still put 2 forests into a courthouse right away, no worry about timing, and then 6 into the wonder as the workers get to them; you have complete freedom on what you want to turn into gold, at least as long as the number of forests isn't enough to complete the wonder. The only drawback is that you have to wait for the wonder to be completed elsewhere to actually get the gold in your treasury (which if you're building the wonder "for real" elsewhere is also an easy and common scenario). But, this situation saves so much time and effort in comparison to the overflow. And to be clear, yes, the courthouse is an expensive building so that's why it doesn't seem so good of a comparison - which I why I think the cheap buildings like walls/theatres are best for overflow, but these buildings have rather more limited uses themselves.

OK beeline Lib is exploit, tech broker is exploit, backstab friendly AI is exploit , draft rifleman is exploit, even spam cottage everywhere can be an exploit. But this "Tree Economy" is not an exploit , it's cheat

Honestly I can see the frustration at people saying that in this thread, sorry mi6agent because it's not adding much to discussion. This can hardly be a cheat when it isn't even better than how people use their forests anyway. (which I know not everyone agrees with me on, but it's something to discuss) Chopping forests into axemen is WAY more powerful than this is, yet no one calls that a cheat.

Although your post is actually incredibly illuminating to me personally on a number of levels, because things you've reverted to calling an "exploit" ARE actually something I consider as bad game design, which I'm planning to mod.
-The AI in civ4 are somehow fundamentally stupider about tech brokering, because of how they value monopoly techs. I don't know why they didn't go with a system similar to civ3, where after a few civs knew a tech, the AI wouldn't bend over giving it to you in trade. There's the potential to even have AI's consider "who they prefer to trade with" yet they don't. And of course the whole vassal system throws everything out the window, AI's practically beg to sell themselvs to each other in tech and every aspect there.
-One main feature I want to include in a mod is "citizen opinion," again like the democracy features of older civ games, don't know why this was removed. So backstabbing a friend, religious ally etc... would result in penalties within your own empire (unless running something like a police state, but then AI would be less likely to be your friend)
-The drafting system could be fundamentally improved imo- I intend to introduce a "garrison" system based on city defense promos to have maintenance free defensive units, and allow drafting almost the whole game rather than just the one civic (costing gold along with population). Offensive units will be more powerful and important but more expensive to maintain in peacetime, basically correcting the ridiculous civ4 trend of giant standing armies that would be crippling in the real world.
-And of course like I was saying, I do feel forest chopping as a whole is silly - chops could just be less lucrative (and with all these changes top level AI bonuses could be not so overwhelming, but the game could be smarter and more fun).

Forest chopping is a intended feature of this game . Heck Maths even make forest produce 50% hammer. But does Currency or any tech make chop tree gain 50% more overflow gold in their description ? No lolz yes ? haha

Forest chopping is a intended feature of this game . Heck Maths even make forest produce 50% hammer. But does Currency or any tech make chop tree gain 50% more overflow gold in their description ? No lolz yes ? haha

Very intriguing counterpoint. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

@ Earthling : the citizen opinion is cool and realistic. Hope it will be implemented again in Civ 5

Hmmm... just to be sure, is the mechanics atm.

You are aggressive. Barracks cost 50 hammers.
You get to 49/50 by passing turns.
You now whip + chop 2 forests pre math.
So thats (30+20+20)*2= 140.
Your city produces 1 hammer, so then overflow is then 140-52= 88 gold?
52 comes from allowed over flow of barracks remaining as hammers (original cost) + 1 hammer to finish + 1 hammer due to city production.

backstab friendly AI is exploit

It's impossible for a human player to backstab an AI, since a human doesn't have an attitude to the AI.

So backstabbing a friend, religious ally etc... would result in penalties within your own empire

Again, it's physically impossible for the human to "backstab" an AI, unless you use different definitions of "backstab" when it comes to AI and the human. And there's already a "we won't fight with our brothers and sisters in the faith!" unhappiness.

Having looked at your link. With a gold in your empire, sticking at Writing at that stage means you played it in a suboptimal way. As I mentioned, why do you want to rex to extreme instead of blocking and settling some of the cities after Alpha and Currency?

You seem confused still, or more likely, playing ignorantly dumb on purpose, but to each their own. I've already rebutted this silly response over and over. But because some people lack the faculties needed I'll beat the horse one more time.

The earlier you settle and found new cities the quicker you are working X amount of tiles. For those incapable of understanding this I genuinely feel sorry for you. Why in the world would you want to be working fewer tiles if you didn't have to be? Just keep on expanding and chop as needed.

In games that I use this technique the limiting factor in REXing is usually land, not the ability to afford more cities. I'd rather have 15 cities by 1000 AD (while still reaching Lib first) which have had much more time to grow and work many more tiles than,

Limiting myself to fewer cities earlier because I cannot afford them, waiting for techs that allow me to afford them, then filling in my land. It's a no brainer. The guy who starts earlier will be way ahead. It's not rocket scientist.

If I seem "rude" it's because I'm offended by people playing "dumb" and ignoring the obvious. It's a simple concept. The greater number of cities you can found at an earlier date while still powering research the stronger your empire will be. I'd rather be the guy working 150 tiles than the guy working 75 any day.

yes so you call other ppl dumb because they rather work 75 tiles than work 150 tiles by using a dirty trick ? that's not a very good way of arguement, and I advise you drop at least 2 difficulty level because managing this Tree Economy is not realy good for your health.

All I know at this point is that Civilization V better be really damn near perfect b/c if the developers spend any time on these forums at all they'd realize every mistake they have ever made.

All I know at this point is that Civilization V better be really damn near perfect b/c if the developers spend any time on these forums at all they'd realize every mistake they have ever made.

Good grief no, because it would mean they wouldn't be trying to come up with something innovative :P just bug fixing!

yes so you call other ppl dumb because they rather work 75 tiles than work 150 tiles by using a dirty trick ?

His rant is about people who don't think that his strategy is that effective, not about those who consider it too cheezy.

His rant is about people who don't think that his strategy is that effective, not about those who consider it too cheezy.

ofcourse it's effective . Who mind having 15 city without making your worker go on strike ? :but if i were him i'd just open WB and add a gold mine each city, pretty similar effect and dont have to chop these poor tree. Preserve forest own late game don't u know :lol:

Y'know, you've said that many times. And I've never challenged it, but if you're going to newspeak the language away, I think it's time someone asked you to back that reduction up.

Semantic arguments usually are, outside of getting past communication issues based on interpretive differences (or just plain ego-slinging.)

But with that noted, if it's so "irrelevant," why bother objecting when someone uses the term? Why make such dismissive remarks as "only low-level players call it that," or make borderline flames about 'arbitrary lines'?

If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter either way.

Well, you saw me objecting much more strongly when someone claimed it was CHEATING than calling it exploit. I really don't mind the nomenclature, if someone wants to label ever tactic an exploit I don't see a problem...a little weird but it's not like it changes anything. However, singling out overflow IS problematic since it IS a part of the game. My point with arguing semantics with exploit as a term is that it makes discussion a little more confusing. What we're looking for is whether the trick is functionally different from other tactics in-game, not whether it actually provides the player an advantage, and using the word exploit isn't appropriate for that - we're even better off with "cheap" or "unfair".

As for backing up that it's ridiculous, I actually did already. In this thread. Look at the definition of exploit:

–noun
a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act: the exploits of Alexander the Great. (probably not what we're looking for).

-verb
1. to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit a business opportunity.
2. to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.
3. to advance or further through exploitation; promote: He exploited his new movie through a series of guest appearances. (pick any of these you want, but none of them single out overflow...!)

The above from dictionary.com. The uses we're seeing in this thread are a kind of gaming slang, but used very inconsistently.

Now, look at OP's context:

I think as you have to use valuable forests and population to get the overflow and since it is also part of the game mechanics I think it isn't.

First line of OP. I don't think he's arguing whether the player is using resources to his own gain. But, a lot of tactics do that. What we're arguing then is whether overflow is a fair/appropriate aspect of gameplay. What nobody has managed to do on this thread so far is give us a CONCRETE reason that it isn't fair/appropriate. Most arguments against it are that it was unintended (pretty presumptuous assumption) or that it feels wrong...fine, but you can say the same thing about siege. There's a reason people can't do it, though.

If I may add...

I would not debate about this overflow stuff being an exploit or not. As I asked before, this means we should first agree on a definition of what exactly is an exploit, thing that it seems we cannot do.

Now, about the fact that it was probably unintended, I agree with it and see good reasons to think that way: overflow (or hammers from buildings you cannot build - same idea) turning to gold was introduced following the appearance of overflow, the latter reducing micro-management, to prevent some production exploits (sorry, cannot find any better word); I cannot see any better reason to the introduction of gold-overflow, I hope you will agree on this.
Anyway. This gold is supposed at first to be a compensation for lost wonders. Now, one can exploit the mechanisms of the game and sacrifice hammers to get gold. Fine. If problem there is here, it is with tree chopping I would say. But now, consider this: when you are producing an item at 3x speed (let's say, a wall with stone being protective) and this item creates overflow, the overflow is added to the next item after being reduced to 1x. However, if there is still hammers remaining, they are turned into gold at a rate of 3x. There is some inconsistency here I would say.

Now, I think this should be turned off. You could argue that lots of others exploitative stuffs in CIV should be turned off in CIV then (siege anyone?); but the thing is that in the present case, there is a really easy fix: just get back gold to 1x when you make the conversion to gold, like Dresden did in his patch. It will not remove the feature completely, but at least make it consistent with what's already done. Now, why wasn't it done before if that was wrong and so easy to fix? Do not ask me, I do not know.

On a more personal note, there is still the fact that I consider this wrong; this is deeply personal of course, but one cannot deny that there is something strange (fishy?) in this mechanism.

Seriously people.

We're talking about magically creating 400+:gold: within five or so turns, before Writing, not to mention Currency, where upkeep is usually sth ~7gpt :crazyeye:

You can do this every time you want as long as you have forests (which can often regrow if chopped early), without fail. Low on money? Well, let's fix it! 6 turns later we're back in business...And you think that it's not a dirty trick? (if "exploit" term requires thoroughed definition, let's use a better term) I mean, it's like finding five tribal huts and pop them all for gold every time.

I don't know, to me it's like buying gold in MMORPG and argue that "I work, it's my money, I'm investing into my entertainment, leave me alone" :lol:

It exchanges hammers to gold at a 1 to 2 rate. The same is accomplished by failing a wonder build fed with hammers that were amplified by a +100% bonus resource. I don't see why this trick would be classifiable as gamebreaking when failing wonders is not.

As for the protective walls; throw Charlie and Toku a bone here. Protective can use a little boost every once in a while.
Because thing like that you have to plan them. Find a wonder you can build, connect +100% resource, spend some time building/chopping it without any real effect than slow you down, and then sit and wait until it's built somewhere. Who knows when?

With chopwhip for gold you can easily tie everything up within sth like 6 turns. Boom and it's done, you have large amount of gold as soon as you want, no ifs.

I'm with mi6agent on this one.

Are we still on this? :lol:

Logics about forrests magically turning into gold and such aside, I feel like a lot of arguments are geared towards the question if the game mechanics were meant to be used this way. So in the game there are in fact two mechanics: those that are meant to be used and those that are not meant to be used. Apparently the logic of the ones opposed to gaining gold this way revolves around the question what game mechanics are meant to be used and which ones are not.

This logics really have me wondering why on earth I would want to question any of the game mechanics. SO I can get gold from overflow. Should I wonder then if this was meant to be used like this? What would the criteria for this be? Are the only valid game mechanics those that are explained in the tutorial then?

What makes this game so hard on deity is that you need to know the game mechanics intimately. You cannot get away with playing the game in a naïve way, and you really need to squeeze every penny there. This game mechanic is put there by the designers. It is not some trick of getting more gold by exploiting loops in the diplomacy or something. It was designed to work in such ways as to be possible to get gold this way.

Now the only question is if you want to use this mechanic. I for one find it irrelevant if the designers of this game meant the mechanic to be used in this way. You can use it, so using it makes it valid. Any creative way of making most out of the game is a valid one in my book. The only mechanics that we are not supposed to use are the ones that are buggy. If we can find a loophole allowing us to beg for 1.000.000 gold then sure, that would be an exploit. Using a mechanic that is in the game is not. It is irrelevant to me what the designers of this game intended for this mechanic.

To quote Crusher1:

"It's not rocket scientist!"

i just think alot of people are getting their kicks if you will arguing. i dont think anyone actually believes this new whip and chop technique doesnt provide people with a good advantage. after all since i have been using it i have almost doubled my rate of expansion and my research has been better too which has given me the wow factor! pretty much everyone in this thread so far already knows how strong it is but the main thing seems to be is it illegal to use. there has already been some patches but it hasnt been changed so i cant think of any reason not to use such a wow! strategy.

Seriously people.

We're talking about magically creating 400+:gold: within five or so turns, before Writing, not to mention Currency, where upkeep is usually sth ~7gpt :crazyeye:

You can do this every time you want as long as you have forests (which can often regrow if chopped early), without fail. Low on money? Well, let's fix it! 6 turns later we're back in business...And you think that it's not a dirty trick? (if "exploit" term requires thoroughed definition, let's use a better term) I mean, it's like finding five tribal huts and pop them all for gold every time.

I don't know, to me it's like buying gold in MMORPG and argue that "I work, it's my money, I'm investing into my entertainment, leave me alone" :lol:


Because thing like that you have to plan them. Find a wonder you can build, connect +100% resource, spend some time building/chopping it without any real effect than slow you down, and then sit and wait until it's built somewhere. Who knows when?

With chopwhip for gold you can easily tie everything up within sth like 6 turns. Boom and it's done, you have large amount of gold as soon as you want, no ifs.

I'm with mi6agent on this one.It is not 'magically creating 400+ :gold:' at all. It comes at a price. You could use the forrests to whip infrastructure. You chose to get some gold instead. This will cost you later, because now you need to slow build that buildings you need later. You can chopwhip those buildings and then build wealth later or slowbuild them without the possibility to build wealth. It is a tradeoff, and a legit one at that.

If this hammers to gold bothers you so much then I fail to see why building :gold: in some mudhole is valid. Because you teched currency by then?

If taken to the extreme any logics fail. This game is not meant to be really picked apart and to examine every little detail. This game is simplified so that it remains simple enough to be easily grasped and complex enough that you have some interesting choices. This mechanicis just another one of the ones that makes the game more interesting. Some maps allow you to expand really fast, others do not.

If we could all use our fantasy: Ok, maybe this makes very little sense, but let us put it this way. Your barracks created with chopwipping required quite some hammers. Maybe those hammers were not magically transferred, but the overflow represented some extra effort that went into the barracks. This led the population to be so proutd of their achievement that they all offered some extra :gold: in order to celebrate the event.

Ok that is of courser total nonsense for logics but in a game where economies are represented by :science:. :hammers: and :commerce: it does not require some mental acrobatics to assume that the economy will have you scratching your head on occasion.

so now the best city spot is 20 plain forest ? haha

so now the best city spot is 20 plain forest ? hahaOk this is the level of stupidity where I refuse to argue any further. I said no such thing, and if you can point out where I said this then maybe I am willing to elaborate on it. You are just reading whatever you want to read in between the lines and forego everything that is actually said.

Since this is a forum I will have to explicitly say what it is I want to say. Therefore the things I write down represent my opinion. The things that you make from them are not my opinion. What you are saying is therefore irrelevant, not what I said at all and basically stupid, pardon me saying so. If you will stick to the subject please and not retreat into lalaland where you put words into our mouths I would be very grateful.

what is the best economy ? CE , SE , HE , WE . Finallly we have an answer : It's a T E , beat that !

mi6agent, meet ignore list. Ignore list, this is mi6agent.

I am sure you two will get along just fine.

no Shurdus, I'm just little over the top because I've just realize the power of a 'TE' . And yes my bad, the best city should be 19 plain forest and 1 grassland pigs :D

I feel some of the people who are arguing so vehemently against this technique may have insufficient grasp of other civ techniques to prevent economy crashing. This one is indeed simple to learn and doesn't involve so much timing, gains are instant. So for them it may seem to be a gamebreaking exploit.

I don't think it's it's very important if it's exploitive or not since we all attach rather different meanings to the word. I don't think it's gamebreaking which is imo far more important. You pay the price for chopping these forests, there are other (often better) means to rex and get healthy financially by 1 ad.

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?

My 2 cents on whether chopping wood and whipping population resulting in money is realistic (historical) or not. Soviet Russia covered its enormous deficit this way - except that it wasn't 'hammer overflow', of course - it was export of slave-labour-extracted natural resources. The results, however, are essentially similar.

My 2 cents on whether chopping wood and whipping population resulting in money is realistic (historical) or not. Soviet Russia covered its enormous deficit this way - except that it wasn't 'hammer overflow', of course - it was export of slave-labour-extracted natural resources. The results, however, are essentially similar.But the russians made money exporting products you say. How is that similar to getting gold from chopped forrests?

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?I have never used this technique and i play deity where it's not possible to have 15 cities 1ad anyway.Try to read what others write before lashing out.

I have never used this technique and i play deity where it's not possible to have 15 cities 1ad anyway.Try to read what others write before lashing out.

Clearly you have not played marathon with an abusive leader ;).
But yes your point is still valid. In normal random leader(or such) games you don't have to use this specific exploit to win (though it is pretty though to win without using any exploits, exploits is defined as behaviour not intended by the game designers. They did design the AI to stuck up in their cities so that is not an exploit, however letting them capture a city and then demolishing their stack with CR troops could be thought of as one for example).

Exploits are varying degrees of strength. Some might feel uncomfortable using some but not others. At any rate you should play in a way that makes the game most fun for you. If that means exploiting the game engine as far as it goes so be it. I tend to play more MP than SP. There agreeing on what exploits should and shouldn't be allowed before the game stats can increase the enjoyment of the game quite a bit.

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?

Nobody is going to take your arguments seriously until you stop spouting flagrant nonsense. It's far beyond debate that the tactic in question isn't cheating, and yet you insist on going there and telling the deity player that his application of cost/benefit on the tactic to show its balance that he is cheating.

If you think this tactic is cheating, I strongly suggest you refer to the closest dictionary you have at hand, read the definition carefully, as many times as it takes, and then check back here.

@Oyzar, I guess you mean romans (or maybe incas?) on marathon, it should be possible to get at 15 cities 1ad if the circumstances are right. Indeed never tried it. Agree with the rest of your post.

I think it's possible to win without outright exploits but maybe without knowing i use some tactics that are considered exploitive. I admit for instance that i've used that city bait then move in with cr troops trick on some occassions (not often) where the enemy was stronger than expected, this one is pretty exploitive imo more so than the overflow trick discussed here.

I remember writing a deity walkthrough here where i blocked of a hugh stake of land with one band of 5 cities exploiting the fact that ais are programmed not to go through borders when expanding. DanF asked me if he thought this was an exploit, i answered no since deity is though anyway but apart from deity being difficult i now feel the way i blocked of so much land there is an exploit of the ai. Designers put in this ai rule since there were complaints about ais settling in illogical and annoying places, on that particular map i really abused that rule.

Giving 30 gold to a newly met ai to get +4 fair trade is also considered an exploit by some. Don't think so here because the +4 wears of pretty fast. But is is really good since you can do some useful things with the ai in this timespan which you couldn't do without the gift.

Nobody is going to take your arguments seriously until you stop spouting flagrant nonsense. It's far beyond debate that the tactic in question isn't cheating, and yet you insist on going there and telling the deity player that his application of cost/benefit on the tactic to show its balance that he is cheating.

If you think this tactic is cheating, I strongly suggest you refer to the closest dictionary you have at hand, read the definition carefully, as many times as it takes, and then check back here.Your grasp of the English language is far, far better than that of mi6agent so he could not possibly win any argument anyway.

You language cheat!

This one is indeed simple to learn and doesn't involve so much timing, gains are instant.

In order to waste the fewest amount of worker turns and power tech in coordination with new cities and when those cities will reach 2 pop for proper execution of chops "timing" and proper "transitioning" are very important.

Expert players will pull this off with greater ease and thus have much more success when using it. Players lacking skill or basic fundamentals will have a very hard time and are more apt to dislike the technique because they don't achieve the same results.

I have never used this technique

You seem to have suggested in some of your previous post that you don't think the technique is actually that useful. Seems a bit odd considering the above quote.

on marathon, it should be possible to get at 15 cities 1ad if the circumstances are right. Indeed never tried it.

Quite a bit more than that actually! I have peacefully REXed 15 cities by 1000 BCish on Marathon before with the help of Overflow.


I guess I'm just a bit surprised still that some players have no love for the technique at all. I'm not talking out of my a$$ at all. I really have spent 100s of hours REXing thru 1AD w/ and w/out the technique on the same map (comparison point being 1AD) and then repeating and in virtually every scenario whip/chopping has come out ahead.

Even in the slim cases when each technique (overflow vs no overflow) attained the same amount of cities by 1AD, the whip/chop technique was still teching faster and working more tiles (founded cities earlier).

I just read another thread about something like Monarchy CRE abuse and saw some guy write a response to Unconquered Suns response about CRE/Overflow telling him that is a poor choice and doesn't work well. Seriously, what are people smoking, lol.

Can myself and others win w/out overflow? Of course. I'm not a consistant Deity player by any means, however, I can win pretty much at will on Immortal with random leaders and never use Overflow. Of course, I could always use Overflow and have a stronger game!

Your grasp of the English language is far, far better than that of mi6agent so he could not possibly win any argument anyway.

You language cheat!

Yes, having a strong grasp of the English language when having an internet discussion/argument in English is strong, but not throwing childish tantrums is superior!

@ Pope

You have to make it entertaining!

Voice said it best:

the topic is only worth pursuing as far as it is itself entertaining.

Besides, its pretty clear who has put time and effort by trial and error to unveil the said techniques actual strength. Some people continue saying its bad when my personal tests have proven quite the contrary. Game theory in a forum is one thing but results dont lie.

^
-Never used the technique but from your link which i read it's pretty clear how it'll work out. I have not denied in my previous posts that i think the trick is useful, maybe you confuse my posts with Duckweed's who's more skeptical of it. I don't think it's gamebreaking but i'm going to use it myself to get from math to currency after beelining math if i have the right leader for it. I think it's there that you gain most from this technique.

- Did you rex to 15 cities on deity 1000 bc? In Usun's dual deity game it was possible to do that in the gilga game but that's surely an exception. Other ais, not maintenance tend to be the limiting factors there.

It's important to realize that the game doesn't stop 1 ad, having good research then but not much forests left and maybe also unhappy (or worse unhealthy) cities isn't necessarily better than getting that good research a few hundred years later with most of the forest potential intact. Chopping some wonders has always been a good alternative for this technique as well.It depends to use a horrible cliche.

I play mostly Emperor-Immortal games these days Dirk - below my skill but much funner! I only win Deity about 20% of the time and even when I do win I don't enjoy it lol. As you know Deity AIs tech much faster and always have money so the technique in discussion is less powerful there. It is very powerful on less difficult levels where trade suffers from slow/broke AIs.

Besides, Deity really is a roll of the dice and many games cannot be won regardless. When I do get a good leader with a strong starting position AND don't have crazy neighbors a win is almost always manageable.

The REXing to 15 cities around 1000 BC was with Cathy, Marathon, 400+ gold from huts, and a sick starting position, with a big need for more workers! I think I had 9 cities at 1700 BC that game.

I don't worry about the health when I use that strat. I simply settle lots of cities and get more health resources and trade for the rest - besides, with lots of food it matters even less. Save trees in cities you plan to make the wonder in, simple enough. Plus you won't have better research a few hundred years later - well, ok, you will, but it won't be higher than the guy who chopped away in most cases because once again, you get a greater number of cities and are working a lot more tiles that same few hundred years later.

Btw TMIT, you wanted a reason, I gave you one (inconsistency); will you acknowledge that? ;)

@Crusher, i agree that the overflow technique will have a bigger impact below deity for the reasons you stated. I wonder how it'll be in the immortal AW SG game we're going to play. We're probably playing Gilga and we'll need walls. The chop overflow technique might be very strong there as the slider's often low in these sort of games. We may have to make a decision about this in that game.

Regarding what's possible on Deity with regard to expansion:

Sky is the limit if an early war actually pays off big. My personal best for a peaceful game was 17 cities at 1 AD, on Normal speed. This was with Joao, an excellent production capital and quite a few easily-accessible islands. I also gambled and won (built the GLH to pay the bills, which finished at a decidedly unsafe date).

Deity games are highly random though... it's pretty much the only level on which I don't shoot for a dozen cities in the BCs because sometimes that would be too much of a risk / take too many concessions elsewhere.
Testing strategies for that is something I find very hard because often it becomes 'look for something you can break' rather than 'flawlessly execute predecided strategy x'.

Btw TMIT, you wanted a reason, I gave you one (inconsistency); will you acknowledge that? ;)

Yes I will.

I'll just add it to the laundry list of inconsistencies then ;).

But the russians made money exporting products you say. How is that similar to getting gold from chopped forrests?
It is merely a question of simulation/realism. Obviously CIV has a massively simplified economic model, and wood is not a directly exportable resource, neither are resources discrete and thus 'sellable' for money per some quantity (as there is none). So all we have are various simplifications and shortcomings which give results appoximately similar to real-life mechanisms they simulate. It is the results that matter, and they are essentially similar - people and trees converted into 'hammers' and 'gold'.

If people can simulate ruthless exploitation of population and natural resources to boost their industry and economy (and keep population figures under controllable cap), I say it simulates bloody Soviets' state machinery pretty well. If it takes building a 'project' - well, so much the closer to Soviet reality with its 5-year plans to be done in 4 years. If it does not actually involve negotiating with another party - well, that just one of the shortcomings and simplifications. Like trading only complete resources.

however letting them capture a city and then demolishing their stack with CR troops could be thought of as one for example

This I completely disagree with. This is an acceptable tactic that makes the most efficient use of the given military situation. You have to build troops. If you happen to have upgraded them with CR and a war comes with an SOD that you can't win in a field then fighting city warfare is perfectly acceptable. A city gets really trashed in this method btw and is really last resort since its likely that you lost a good chunk of gold and infrastructure in the city that has to be rebuilt (probably w/o the forests that were chopped to make the city useful).

The AI is always militarily inept. That's a big reason why it has such an economic advantage. Part of winning the game is using your resources more effectively and efficiently than the AI. This tactic is also acceptable against Human opponents as well. Both human, and AI, should take into account that there exist such promotions as CR and that when you plop 'all your eggs in one city' then you are taking the risk of succumbing to the pitfalls of this promotion. This is especially relevant when power ratings, spies and other mechanics exist tog et a good read on your opponent's war capacity (and the AI does weigh these considerations when preparing/declaring war as we know). Attacking an opponent with 10 unpromoted axes and swords and sitting in a city with a SOD is asking to lose troops to a counter attack (in fact isn't counter attacking fundamental to warfare in general?)

Granted Crusher1 is getting a little vehement about the whole argument but he is somewhat right when it comes to saying that going to war against the AI is exploitive if this is what we mean by that. We are exploiting weakness' in the AI. But that's part of the game to do so.

Another thing about protective. It is considered a weak trait. I agree to a degree as often it is paired with 'stronger' traits and synergistic situations so as to maximize the archer/gunpowder promo's (i.e Sitting Bull and TP's, Toku and Agg, China and the CKN, Church and RC etc.). Yes its a little weak but not only can it be used for absorbing the enemy's main thrust b4 an attack but it is probably 'supposed' to be used this way. Declare war on the AI, let them waste their advantage breaking their SOD against a fortified hill, XBOW/Longbow defense then counter attack. Every taken city the AI will counter attack and lose many units to your CG defenders. The point of Prot is to have a main body foot soldier army that is very hard to counter attack.

BTW if they want to make good warfare simulation in Civilization then they should abandon the whole unit concept and move towards an army concept. War simulation games are a perfect example of well balanced strategic war. The Total War series is a great example (especially in the later games for strategic level warfare) but the best war simulator is Hearts of Iron II. If you think the mechanics of war in Civ IV are illogical then play these games. Maybe Civ V will adopt some of these concepts (supply lines, armies, force multipliers, leadership etc). But until then we gotta slog through the ultimately broken siege weapon concept among other things.

^Good points, protective is very good in situations where you're on defense. Trapping strong ais to attack you and suicide on superior protective defense is a strong tactic on high levels too, sometimes subsequent war/conquest can be a cakewalk.

Okay TMIT (man, that always makes me think of teenage mutant ninja turtles), I will spare you the rebuttal I had to your comments since I left the office yesterday without finishing all of them. :p

But I also will not post them because last night I actually tested out this tactic so I can judge it myself. (I feel a lot of times people on these boards just talk out of their butt and theorize for the sake of debate, instead of actually having personal experience - which I can be guilty of sometimes too :D.)

I have to admit, after testing it out, I was a bit underwhelmed.

I set up a scenario with a protective leader, normal speed, all ancient era techs, 4 pop city, access to stone, a wall at 48/50 hammers with 1 more turn of production left, 3 workers waiting to chop down a forest in 1 turn, and under slavery.

I proceeded to whip the wall, and then made each of 3 workers chop down their forest tiles. I gained a little over 100 gold. Ummm... huh? Wait a sec... this doesn't seem like the effect I was expecting!

I don't know if I performed it correctly, or if things have been altered since the original article, but I wasn't seeing the 600+ gold that Vale described (with only 2 workers too).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272
Perhaps I also needed Mathematics for more potent chops.

[EDIT: ah... his tests were performed on Marathon speed... yuck]

I was under the assumption that the amount of gold obtained thru this unorthodox tactic was both significant AND early. I thought it was cheesy, which is why I never even bothered to test it out.

Honestly, (:)) I doesn't really seem that game-breaking. I had to invest a citizen and 3 forests (along with tedious planning) for that amount of gold. I would of rather put that raw production toward military or infrastructure that early in the game... or even a wonder.

The debate though was enjoyable to read. For those that are still debating the issue: Have you actually tried doing it yourself within a game? My personal results were rather disappointing and don't seem game-breaking. If I'm playing against someone who employs this tactic, I don't think I'd really care much.

An investment is still being made for that gold (time, forests, citizens, and worker actions) - it doesn't come too easily and in great portions. It also seems like you would need lots of forested area to continue producing incremental gains to have it significantly affect your finances at these small amounts.

Something you described in your post is not what happened. I just tested it to make sure and got 233 gold under the conditions you described. There will be slight variations depending on the tiles worked the turn you are completing it but you should always get 200 and change every time with the setup you described.

Are you sure that:
1. Stone was absolutely hooked up? Easiest way is to put it on the center tile of the target city.
2. Leader was protective?
3. You whipped?
4. The forest chops came in time?

If all those are true there is no chance that what you described happened unless you are running some sort of modified base game beyond just the unofficial patches.

To be honest, I can't reconcile your results at all with the mechanic. If the problem was just 1 or 2 you still should have gotten a little over 130 gold. If it was 3 that would have resulted in about 90 gold less than I got so around 140 gold. Anything else or any combination of the above problems would have been significantly worse than 100 gold.

Put me in the exploit camp as even though the conversion mechanic is intended and probably ok, the production bonuses not being factored out was an oversight.

Hey there, Vale.

I'm pretty sure stone was hooked up. I checked the city screen also to make sure it was.

I used Charlegmene (protective, imperialistic).

I whipped a population when there was only 1 more turn left for the wall to be complete (at 48 of 50 hammers).

I'm pretty sure the forest chops came in time since i selected them all at the beginning of the last turn and pressed spacebar and made them wait. I then whipped, followed by chopping each forest (total of 3).

Normal speed, standard map.

The only mods I have installed are BetterAI and BUG.

I don't know... I'll have to try it again to see. It was the first time I tried it out.

Anybody ever do this with a unit in the Heroic Epic city?

Mostly, I'm thinking that you might be faced with an economic meltdown and notice that you have 4 trees in the Heroic Epic city and a unit that you were going to build anyway. You're not sacrificing any hammers on a "wasted" building because you'll get a unit that you wanted anyway and there's always a need for one more Archer somewhere in your empire (I picked Archer just because it's cheap).

You'll certainly feel some pain from the lost population and the two lost :health: as well as from the lack of emergency hammers that you could grab at a later date, but that sacrifice might be worthwhile if your need is great enough.

@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048) -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities :hammers: and :gold: are processed (as mentioned by Juju).

I like to push things to the extremes with my examples, so here goes:

Tokugawa, start in future era, marathon speed. Kyoto has HE, IW, Drydocks, Military Academy, Forge, Shale Plant, Factory, Kremlin. Civics are Police State, Bureaucracy, Slavery, State Property, ...
Total Production Modifier for building a Work Boat: 595%
Put 35 :hammers: (6 base :hammers:) into the WB (cost 36 :hammers: for future start), then whip 1 pop.
Overflow Hammers: 6 :hammers:
Overflow Gold: 796 :gold:

Interesting. I may have to pick up that patch. But receiving over 100 gold seems odd to me if the patch completely fixes the oversight.

90 hammers from the whips and chops of which approximately 17 are saved as hammer overflow with the rest being converted to gold should yield around 73 gold I would think.

@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048) -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities :hammers: and :gold: are processed (as mentioned by Juju).

I like to push things to the extremes with my examples, so here goes:

Tokugawa, start in future era, marathon speed. Kyoto has HE, IW, Drydocks, Military Academy, Forge, Shale Plant, Factory, Kremlin. Civics are Police State, Bureaucracy, Slavery, State Property, ...
Total Production Modifier for building a Work Boat: 595%
Put 35 :hammers: (6 base :hammers:) into the WB (cost 36 :hammers: for future start), then whip 1 pop.
Overflow Hammers: 6 :hammers:
Overflow Gold: 796 :gold:

I always thought some of the things added/taken away while others ignored to be a bit of an issue with the unofficial stuff. For example, has BetterAI fixed the "I won't switch to bureaucracy because my favorite civic is caste system" bug yet? That's another example of something that is just as clear an inconsistency...the problem is that the game has a lot of these things and fixing only a few and ignoring the ones that hurt the player seems iffy.

I'd probably use BUG and Better AI at least on occasion though, if they didn't lag me :p. It would be REALLY cool if BUG introduced auto-airlifting while waypoints are set!

The debate though was enjoyable to read. For those that are still debating the issue: Have you actually tried doing it yourself within a game? My personal results were rather disappointing and don't seem game-breaking. If I'm playing against someone who employs this tactic, I don't think I'd really care much.

im going to use crushers quote below since he was kind enough to show people like me who were unaware of this strong style. im going to say it again. wow! using this style has helped me double my expansion rate and tech faster too! wow!

I guess I'm just a bit surprised still that some players have no love for the technique at all. I'm not talking out of my a$$ at all. I really have spent 100s of hours REXing thru 1AD w/ and w/out the technique on the same map (comparison point being 1AD) and then repeating and in virtually every scenario whip/chopping has come out ahead.

Even in the slim cases when each technique (overflow vs no overflow) attained the same amount of cities by 1AD, the whip/chop technique was still teching faster and working more tiles (founded cities earlier).

Perhaps I also needed Mathematics for more potent chops.
Can you confirm that you didn't have math when you tried this with that patch earlier? Math would explain getting slightly over 100 gold from overflow if the patch is working correctly. If not there is something funny going on.

@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch

It's superior to use official patches and play the game how it was intended to be played. There is no point making changes in the game/new patches based on someone else's presupposition of what's right or wrong, what should be allowed disallowed, how I should play, etc.

With all respect for you, DanF, this:@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048) -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities :hammers: and :gold: are processed (as mentioned by Juju).

implies 2 things:

- That the thing as it is in vanilla BtS is a BUG :D Debatable, as we can see by the monthly 10-page thread on this subject :p, but we can acept that point for the time sake

-That Dresden's change is any better than the code in vanilla. THAT is a huge assumption and I expressed my disagreement with that change enough times. IMHO capping the overflow as Dresden did goes against the spirit of the original coder as stated in the vanilla manual ( reducing MM ) because it opens space for more MM ( to avoid losing hammers to thin air , pretty much as it happened in previous version of civ ) and it was most likely because of that reason that Firaxis, in spite of knowing of this issue for quite a while ( atleast since the date of vale's article ) has not touched that part of the code in the expansion and in the 6 patches ( 8, counting with the update to 1.74 and 2.13 with 3.17 ) that were launched from that day on.....

Note, I'm not saying that I agree with the code as it is. I'm just very reticent to the idea of saying that Dresden solution is better than the original code.

It's superior to use official patches and play the game how it was intended to be played.

I agree. I like having a crippled AI that makes boneheaded decisions because I like to get my wins more easily. I can't be bothered to put the extra effort and thought into my game that the betterAI upgrades would require and I believe that I'm morally superior to all of the people who want that extra challenge because I'm playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

In fact, I didn't get any of the patches and I'm playing the Vanilla game that came with the original release CD and I didn't put any patches on at all because that's the original game and that's how the game is supposed to be played. Also, truly superior game play involves Amphibious Elephants.

Edit: I realized after I hit "Save" that this came across as even more snarky than I had intended. I like betterAI quite a bit, but any game this complex will have gameplay issues that are worth debate. The designers did some amazingly brilliant things and fairly boneheaded things (although not too very many of the latter). I look at unofficial patches the same way that I look at a mod. If it makes the game better for me, then it's worth playing. If it doesn't make the game better for me, then I'll stick to the original. I'm currently ploughing my way through Fall From Heaven 2's Scenarios and I'm having a blast. I don't think that anyone would call that "official", but it's an absolute blast.

Note, I'm not saying that I agree with the code as it is. I'm just very reticent to the idea of saying that Dresden solution is better than the original code.

Perfect.

DanF was emphatically wrong with his quote as are others supporting his quote. It's a no brainer. If it wasn't a no brainer it would be the official Civilization patch!

Thankfully, the game designers do not fall into a hopelessly foolish state of mind and agree with those living in a dazed and confused status supporting non official patches.

People are more than welcome to choose any mods/patches that they want but need to realize that this is the real world and they are not the game creators and they do not get to make the final decision for the finished product provided for the Community as a whole.

Hence, we are given an official patch, with official rules, and official guidelines to play by. People are entitled to play how they want but it's nonsensical to lash out at others who choose to play by that which Firaxis has so graciously provided for us in its original (official patch) content.

Note, I'm not saying that I agree with the code as it is. I'm just very reticent to the idea of saying that Dresden solution is better than the original code.

Any neutral and reasonable person would agree with you.

@ Pope

I have an original Franco Harris Jersey in my closet! GoGo 32!

^ HOF-mod credits (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mod.php#credits)

Let me fix my previous post ^^ because everything else applies ;).

Corrected!

I respect you too, rolo, but thisIMHO capping the overflow as Dresden did goes against the spirit of the original coder as stated in the vanilla manual ( reducing MM ) because it opens space for more MM ( to avoid losing hammers to thin air , pretty much as it happened in previous version of civ ) and it was most likely because of that reason that Firaxis, in spite of knowing of this issue for quite a while ( atleast since the date of vale's article ) has not touched that part of the code in the expansion and in the 6 patches ( 8, counting with the update to 1.74 and 2.13 with 3.17 ) that were launched from that day on.....
seems to imply that you misunderstood the actual change in the mechanics.
Only the "non-generic" modifiers get factored out of the overflow - nothing turns into thin air. In my example above you would still get 494 :gold: = the same as if you had put the excess hammers into the "build wealth" process. THIS discourages dubious MM to take advantage of a broken mechanic.

Anyway , it continues to be inconsistent with the wonder consolation gold....

I don't agree that unofficial patches need to be always viewed as a mod which seems to be implied in some posts. It's fairly common for developers to stop working on a game long before the fans do. Games are becoming more and more complex and consequently they have more and more bugs. A good example is another game I play alot, Baldur's Gate 2. Without the unofficial patches and game-fixes there would still be hundreds maybe thousands of bugs that are clearly unintended by the designers.

The trouble is with mechanics that are borderline between bug/exploit/useful feature. Now the patchers/players have to decide what the intent of the developers are to determine into what category a specific feature falls.

For BG2, most of the fixes are unambigious and there is no need for discussion really. Let's say a npc is named GArren. Clearly there's been a spelling error. Most of the bugs fixed falls into this category. For the more ambigious features which has generated a bit of controversy and debate, there is usually an option if you want to modify them or not when you install the major fixpacks available (first by the Baldurdash group and later on by Gibberlings in the case of BG2).

Now every patcher/modder is free to do what they want but to me this is the best solution when there's a disagreement of whether a feature is a bug or not, make patches component-based and have the controversial options as optional.
Of course, CIV has different code from BG2 and the use of online games creates problems that do not apply to BG2.

I actually lean towards agreeing with DanF here that the production bonus overflow should be downsized again like what has been done with overflowing into a new project IIRC. Mao can't overflow a granary into a library and keep the production bonus. I think it's reasonable that overflow into gold should not get a production bonus either.
I can't say I feel a very strong urge to modify/fix this particular feature though because similarly to Dirk I don't consider it game-breaking. Perhaps I'm wrong and will change my opinion in the future but as of right now it doesn't stand out as a big issue to me.
As such I'll gladly continue using the latest patches by Dresden to fix bugs and optimize the game.

For example, has BetterAI fixed the "I won't switch to bureaucracy because my favorite civic is caste system" bug yet? That's another example of something that is just as clear an inconsistency...

Has been fixed in the unofficial patch if I'm correct

Perhaps you should try one day to play with these TMIT? :p

You seem confused still, or more likely, playing ignorantly dumb on purpose, but to each their own. I've already rebutted this silly response over and over. But because some people lack the faculties needed I'll beat the horse one more time.

The earlier you settle and found new cities the quicker you are working X amount of tiles. For those incapable of understanding this I genuinely feel sorry for you. Why in the world would you want to be working fewer tiles if you didn't have to be? Just keep on expanding and chop as needed.

In games that I use this technique the limiting factor in REXing is usually land, not the ability to afford more cities. I'd rather have 15 cities by 1000 AD (while still reaching Lib first) which have had much more time to grow and work many more tiles than,

Limiting myself to fewer cities earlier because I cannot afford them, waiting for techs that allow me to afford them, then filling in my land. It's a no brainer. The guy who starts earlier will be way ahead. It's not rocket scientist.

If I seem "rude" it's because I'm offended by people playing "dumb" and ignoring the obvious. It's a simple concept. The greater number of cities you can found at an earlier date while still powering research the stronger your empire will be. I'd rather be the guy working 150 tiles than the guy working 75 any day.

Offensive language neither lets you convince anyone, nor helps on discussion. There's many statements I posted and you end up with only one counter point and again using offensive words. I would be happy to continue on discussion and share my thoughts with people under a friendly environment. But for now, I'd rather stop here.

Finally, if you really want to prove that your point is valid and I am wrong. I shadowed Pauliskhan's Team101 game a few weeks ago. Cathy/Emperor (a leader can use your trick and a level you'll feel more than comfortable). In that game, I settled cities in a slow rate and I only settled 12 cities in 1000AD. There's room for you to settle more than 16 cities. Use your superior trick to rex to extreme to work the most tiles and post a save of 1000AD to show me how superior empire you can develop using your superior trick.
Edit: I used and saved those forests for wonders in that game, which was mentioned in my last post.

Here's the link and good luck!
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=320926

Or on the other hand, I can put some time to play a game you think can support your point well.

I agree 100% with Gliese's post. Firaxis has provided us with a great game, each expansion pack was a big improvement on what went before. There's reasonable backup for modding. Most of the downright errors have been fixed by them. It's down to the community to take it further. Community lived up to that expectation also since what has been provided by Firaxis enabled them to do so.

Sure the game could have been better (well a bit) but it would have been so much more expensive that the community would have been very small. I still think they did a great job. There's objective evidence for this also, read reviews outside this community, in the turn based genre civ4 almost always comes up on top. It's generally considered as a high standard against which other games are measured.

As to the technique, it may not be a very big deal on deity but i feel it can have a big impact on all the other levels. Since i have never tried it i may have to reserve further judgement until i have. Maybe it is really overpowered and in this case i think i agree with DanF/Gliese that the production bonus should be taken off the gold overflow.

Does Dresden's patch alter the game very profoundly or is it more or less minor issues he addresses?

In my opinion the trick, whether or not it actually is overpowered, in fact makes the game more interesting and balanced.

Let's consider the different traits in the game:

Category I: Primarily Monetary Bonus

Financial - Provides a nice solid bonus throughout the entire game that can help with any play style. Very effective for racing to techs like Music. Yet there is no production bonus to buildings, so here is the drawback.


Category II: Hybrid Monetary/Production Bonus

Organized - Provides a gold bonus that increases with empire size, and a production bonus to one building that is unlocked by Code of Laws.

Philosophical - Provides a gpp bonus that is stronger in the early stages of the game. The production bonus applies to one building that is unlocked by Education.


Category III: Hybrid Special/Production Bonus

Protective - Very narrow in scope for the most part, but the overflow technique provide a back door to redemption.

Creative - Tends to lose steam in the later stages of the game, but the numerous production bonuses provide numerous avenues for extra overflow gold.


Category IV: Hybrid Special/Monetary Bonus

Charismatic - Just like Financial, has no production bonuses. But everyone knows how great a trait this is.



"Special" refers to things like extra promotions or extra culture for cities.

"Monetary" refers to things that provide a direct boost to income, whether through maintenance, commerce, or gpp.

The point of this summary is to show that nearly all the traits have something to "round out" their weaknesses.

Can you confirm that you didn't have math when you tried this with that patch earlier? Math would explain getting slightly over 100 gold from overflow if the patch is working correctly. If not there is something funny going on.

I did not have Mathematics. I just went into world builder, set up the scenario (with stone, quarry, roads, forests, 3 workers) and granted myself all ancient age technologies.

@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048) -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities :hammers: and :gold: are processed (as mentioned by Juju).


Wow... very interesting, thanks Dan. :)

So it really is retarded still in the official version.

I just assumed most players (especially the serious ones) used BetterAI and the unoffical patches. Guess not... :eek:

The unoffical patches and BetterAI improve upon the game so much and fix many huge bugs and balance issues that Firaxis overlooked. Many of the official patches that came out were usually promptly followed by an unofficial patch to repair crashes, bugs, and imbalances... some that were even introduced by the new patches themselves.

Can't blame Firaxis too much though, it was actually their "job" and they were probably under a deadline to hurry things along, as opposed to the passionate fans out there that know computer code and/or game balance and do it as a hobby for the good of the game.

Who cares what's offical or not when it's correct and logical? Even the BUG mod is a must have... instead of using the "official", inconvenient interface. Thru careful design and collaboration, BUG made it into what it should've been from the beginning.

Whatever, I'm just glad that this exploit is fixed within the version that I play.

His rant is about people who don't think that his strategy is that effective, not about those who consider it too cheezy.

I'm loathe to do this, maybe you know particularly about some very similar principles debated in the FfH forum, but here's the thing - there has been NO proof in this thread the strategy IS effective. Gee, posting a good game where you conquered people as Persia - that doesn't really prove anything. And I really wonder what standard size mapscript is giving room to settle 15+ cities - of course as oyzar reasonably pointed out a large map on marathon may be conducive to this but it still does not seem useful in a regular game. And it seems the debate has been ignored in this thread because people are busy criticizing a few newer posters for flamish type stuff and "well that's not how you use the word exploit."

So, all right, it's time for this: Comparison Game. Let's hope to resolve some fundamental misunderstandings and straight out misrepresentations by some posters.

I guess I'm just a bit surprised still that some players have no love for the technique at all. I'm not talking out of my a$$ at all. I really have spent 100s of hours REXing thru 1AD w/ and w/out the technique on the same map (comparison point being 1AD) and then repeating and in virtually every scenario whip/chopping has come out ahead.


I'll give Crusher one more chance to clarify - I completely see how, if you are already REXing with a suitable civ this strategy can be used. But, are you trying to say this gives ideal development compared to other economic choices?

In that case, you'd have to show the following:
A: It beats a player on the same start who can choose to use any other strategy besides "REX till you can barely afford maintenance"
B: It beats a player on the same map but with the REX leader worldbuilded out and replaced with Elizabeth of England (or whomever is chosen by that player, in fair spirits to economy, so not Rome for warmongering or something out of spite).

Bonus points if you do this on a Lonely Heart map, which is really ideal for testing economic situations, and I'm rather sure your REX would have suboptimal development. I'll give it to you that I'm not sure "A" wouldn't work sometimeson regular randomized maps, I don't think "B" will come close, but we can try.

All the rest of you can enjoy playing with your cheesy exploits and broken games with retarded AI, haha! I don't need to argue anymore because I couldn't care less of what other people think who don't play the game the right way.
Wow did Crusher's attitude rub off on you or something? And you have to put things into context here-I'd guess probably over 90% of the people who play this game don't know about mods, better AI, or even Civfanatics for that matter! And I would know from experience as out of all of my friends and family who play this game (2 former roommates, an ex girlfriend, my 2 brothers and a couple of co-workers), I'm the only "hardcore" civfanatic. We have to take a step back and realize that we aren't the only ones playing this game, and as a matter of fact, we are in the HUGE minority.

And by the way, "Better AI" may be a little better, but it's still retarded too!

Well, I don't to derail this thread about BetterAI myself- personally, I don't use it but not because a lot of hard work didn't go into the mod -it's because I feel there are more fundamental changes needed to the game that BetterAI doesn't address. The main problem is the complete freedom of the human player versus the total rigidity of the AI. Part of this is the diplomatic system, where the AI lack even the most basic concepts of trend-spotting -a player who kills three AI right in a row, all in a line to the fourth AI's empire, won't see a single response from the AI to know it's next (while I'm hoping it would be rather simple for AI to distrust "warmongers" based on in-game actions). The military aspect of civ4 is fundamentally built upon micromanaging huge standing armies where the human player vastly outsmarts the AI - I'd like to see changes that make supporting a military more of an economic endeavor, and the system itself not based so much on numbers and who gets collateral in first. Something that could impress me if it was in BetterAI would be like like a random personalities that randomizes EVERYTHING, from favorite civics to unit build weights, but that's not there. So personally I'm aiming to create a mod (eventually....) that instead approaches the problem from the other direction - limiting the human's freedom so you actually feel like you're the ruler of a nation, responsible to real diplomacy (rather than making someone happy forever simply by adopting a civic that doesn't even matter) and your own citizens. But discussing BetterAI seems off topic, and personally I'm rather impressed with the mod even if I don't usually use it, so certainly not here to complain about that.

personally, I don't use it but not because a lot of hard work didn't go into the mod -it's because I feel there are more fundamental changes needed to the game that BetterAI doesn't address.

Well, it's still better then nothing.

but here's the thing - there has been NO proof in this thread the strategy IS effective.

I wasn't saying anything about its effectiveness one way or other, I was merely explaining his position. Although recently he seemed to make a flawed "it's official, so it isn't cheezy" argument.

The main thing holding me back from using all the latest unofficial patches is the effort required since it seems they are constantly updated! I'm sure it's just me but I consider installing and uninstalling patches and mods (such as BUG) to be sligthly cumbersome for CIV, it might just be that I always forget about it and have to read up on what to do since they usually don't come with install and uninstall .exes, which is a little tedious.

I do use the unofficial patches though, they contain many good bugfixes, for example I remember one of these patches took care of spies being bumped outside enemy borders during DOW and another fix corrected the exploit of undetectable spies on boats etc.

Well, it's still better then nothing.


No, it's not if it's a step in the opposite direction - not because it's bad but because of different principles. I understand if players want it for GOTM competitions and all around here, I wouldn't even oppose. But when I'm playing for fun, I don't particulary want AI's who compete "to win the game." That's probably the worst line in the whole game, even ahead of WFYABTA. I'd rather have the feel that I'm part of a civilization and face challenges instead of metagaming. Which is also why I miss a ton of the stuff from previous civilization games, like palace views, advisors, etc... those simply made the game more fun, and civ4 out of all civ games is just as mechanical, even though it has the potential for much more.

But when I'm playing for fun, I don't particulary want AI's who compete "to win the game.

The BetterAI does nothing to make the AI's existing personalities less pronounced.

I thought it made some significant changes as to how the AI waged war? And was TMIT right in saying earlier that it doesn't change anything about civics (or does, but not in the expected way?) Maybe I'm wrong here, but again, I'm not trying to say it's bad and this also isn't the thread for it- I'll have to go look at changelogs again so thanks.

And was TMIT right in saying earlier that it doesn't change anything about civics (or does, but not in the expected way?)

I don't understand what you are talking about. If you are talking about the bug where a leader running a favourite civic refused to allow you to ask him to change other civics also (Elizabeth running FR refused to change from Mercantilism to Free Market because "that would go against everything we stand for", for example), then that bug had been fixed.

I thought it made some significant changes as to how the AI waged war?

Sure, the AI is now a bit smarter when deploring troops, naval invasions in particular. What exactly does it have to do with AI's personality? There is no iAIWarStupidity parameter in the files describing the AI's personalities.

Anyway, I support a comparison game between someone who uses that overflow manoeuvre and some who doesn't. Bring it on.

Has been fixed in the unofficial patch if I'm correct

Perhaps you should try one day to play with these TMIT? :p

It's a lot more concrete than "one day".

It's "one day when I have a computer with more than 512 MB of RAM".

Better AI and especially bug slow me down a lot. I should have another gander at the unofficial patch, although that screws with the rare occasions I play MP.

Finally, if you really want to prove that your point is valid and I am wrong. I shadowed Pauliskhan's Team101 game a few weeks ago. Cathy/Emperor (a leader can use your trick and a level you'll feel more than comfortable). In that game, I settled cities in a slow rate and I only settled 12 cities in 1000AD. There's room for you to settle more than 16 cities. Use your superior trick to rex to extreme to work the most tiles and post a save of 1000AD to show me how superior empire you can develop using your superior trick.
Edit: I used and saved those forests for wonders in that game, which was mentioned in my last post.

Funny ^^. I looked at the map and it isn't a whip/chop map because the starting position is boxed in by 2 close neighbors and water on 2 sides, too much jungle, and Stone which dramatically changes the game by allowing for the fastest early teching possible - rep scientist.

I may still do it just out of neutrality and in the spirit of seeing how things work out, but still, the technique will not work well with the scenario you provided. After all, rep scientist power research to Currency w/out the need for overflow and IMP still lets you keep up in settler production while getting wonders.

When you get a map with no stone , less jungle, and not boxed in I'd be more willing.

It's "one day when I have a computer with more than 512 MB of RAM".

I've got 512 MB RAM too, and BetterAI isn't slow for me. Mind you, I received regular MAF's on saving 'till I increased my paging file.

Official Patch 3.19 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323831)

Oh... look what's included in there:

"Build-specific production modifiers are no longer counted for overflow gold calculations"

Hmm... looks like it WAS a bug being exploited afterall; even the developers thought so. :cool:

Honestly, did anybody think otherwise? :mischief:

Also in the notes from that link:

- Fixed a few AI civic evaluation bugs

- AI changes civics during Golden Ages

:)

- Re-enabled Foreign Advisor "Glance" screen

Wow, that only took you 200 years to realise. :p

- Collateral damage modifiers, collateral damage immunity, and air defense modifiers, multiply instead of add

It's like they've been reading everything we've been discussing lately. :o

Too bad nothing has been done about vassals and hidden diplo status but a great list of changes nonetheless.

I still think it is double standart, since the wonder consolation cash is not cut down like that :p But anyway, it only took 2 years, 1 expansion and 9 released patches to change this :p

Well, again, rather than see wonder consolation cash cut down I'd rather just see straight out building wealth, cutlure etc... be doubled. These can't be affected by building multipliers anyway (well, the hammer multipliers but not the multiplier for what is being built). If wealth was just 2 to 1 this whole time I'd be very happy, but still, I was quite surprised by the new patch, very interesting.

Oooh, I'm happy!

It looks like they fixed the "self-close" bug, civic bribes, and FINALLY the spread culture mission works again!

Edit: Is that what I think it is?! No more hibernating AP?!

The overflow removal was worth this.

I blame Crusher1's fanatical zeal for ruining all of my whip/chop overflow fun. ;)

This also pretty much cements the protective trait as flatly worse than the other traits for most SP situations, at least for a monarch level player such as myself.

So I guess a mod should change the thread title to,

"Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? Firaxis says yes"

I wish they'd have patched something small to boost protective in light of this. Half priced Security Bureaus? Hey, it's late but at least it doesn't obsolete.

So I guess a mod should change the thread title to,

"Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? Firaxis says yes"

Let's just hope that Firaxis have not made another "barrage-like" thing :
OT4E from civfanatics.ru has tested the patch and found ZERO gold overflow (pop-rushed and 10-forest chopped a theatre with Creative leader).
With some luck it was just defective testing :please:

Funny ^^. I looked at the map and it isn't a whip/chop map because the starting position is boxed in by 2 close neighbors and water on 2 sides, too much jungle, and Stone which dramatically changes the game by allowing for the fastest early teching possible - rep scientist.

I may still do it just out of neutrality and in the spirit of seeing how things work out, but still, the technique will not work well with the scenario you provided. After all, rep scientist power research to Currency w/out the need for overflow and IMP still lets you keep up in settler production while getting wonders.

When you get a map with no stone , less jungle, and not boxed in I'd be more willing.

If I understood your post correctly, by saying this, you now confess that your trick is NOT SUPERIOR at least under some circumstances (And I mentioned that in many situations your trick is a suboptimal way to play the game)-- in this map you DO care about the stone which can support a wonder economy, so stone IS important whether you are going to use the trick or not. Isn't this a counter point to your own previous statements, where you don't care about stone at all.


2. Who's talking about stone?




Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.



Moreover, there are more than 20 forests to be chopped just in capital, western Horse/cow, northern fur/Incense, and eastern Fish/horse site. I could not imagine you need more than 20 forests to support your trick! This map is one of the easy map that everyone in your level can easily settle more than 10 cities before 1AD and you called cathy boxed.

Edit: Indeed, the argue should be over now since the coming 3.19 patch will remove this, and from the beginning I always consider this trick is nothing about SUPERIOR with so many drawbacks and limited usage.

With some luck it was just defective testing :please:
Nnnnope :) Finally. Patch 3.19 is on, and no more multiplier bonuses for the overflow gold. No more excuses for cheesy exploits. Good job Firaxis, you're THE only gaming company I trust.

:lol: And I'm sorry to say that, but (like on Family Guy when Peter gets exam results that he's not a genius, but a ) IN YOUR FACE! HA! IN YOUR FACE! :lol: Yeah, I'm nasty, but I had to say it :p

Nnnnope Finally. Patch 3.19 is on, and no more multiplier bonuses for the overflow gold. No more excuses for cheesy exploits. Good job Firaxis, you're THE only gaming company I trust.

And I'm sorry to say that, but (like on Family Guy when Peter gets exam results that he's not a genius, but a ) IN YOUR FACE! HA! IN YOUR FACE! Yeah, I'm nasty, but I had to say it

Thats actually bad, they didn't just not get the multipliers for gold, they got NO gold at all. So that was like, 280 wasted hammers that have disappeared?

Nnnnope :) Finally. Patch 3.19 is on, and no more multiplier bonuses for the overflow gold. No more excuses for cheesy exploits. Good job Firaxis, you're THE only gaming company I trust.

:lol: And I'm sorry to say that, but (like on Family Guy when Peter gets exam results that he's not a genius, but a ) IN YOUR FACE! HA! IN YOUR FACE! :lol: Yeah, I'm nasty, but I had to say it :p

Now now, we still have the Apostolic Palace...;)

Nnnnope :) Finally. Patch 3.19 is on, and no more multiplier bonuses for the overflow gold. No more excuses for cheesy exploits. Good job Firaxis, you're THE only gaming company I trust.

:lol: And I'm sorry to say that, but (like on Family Guy when Peter gets exam results that he's not a genius, but a ) IN YOUR FACE! HA! IN YOUR FACE! :lol: Yeah, I'm nasty, but I had to say it :p
I don't think you understood my point. Getting 0 gold in that situation I quoted from lexad isn't what it is supposed to happen in 3.19 acording with the changelog. The gold obtained in that situation should be the overflow hammers traded at wealth ratio ( 1 hammer = 1 gold ).....

Anyone else wondering what Crusher's response will be? :mischief:

Well i guess i never get to use the technique/trick/exploit now. Still amazed at the fierceness displayed in some of the posts here :lol:, it wasn't such a big deal after all.

Ultimately i think it's a good thing it has been nerved. For one it feels a bit unnatural, it also involves some boring micro. And while i'm sure this isn't a gamebreaker on deity it could indeed be too good on immortal and below.Being able to rex to 15 cities early without any penalty/restraint is very strong.

^I am also a bit curious as to Crusher's response :D.

With some luck it was just defective testing :please:
Doesn't sound like there was anything wrong with the test. Where do you see this post?

Using your brains is an exploit. AI hasn't got them, you know.

Anyone else wondering what Crusher's response will be? :mischief:

Probably surprise. This really HAS gone unpatched a long, long time.

But now the OP question is moot. If people are still doing this in 3.19, there's no question as to whether or not it provides an unfair advantage.

but it still works in 3.19? you still can whip for overflow, it's just no longer afffected be building multipliers if i understand correctly. Well, then it's now a question of just "building wealth before currency", and it can still save your rear side for some turns if you've made a mistake and are stuck with 86turns to research writing at 0 and no money.

BtS 3.19 --> killer of debates, and some mods (more than likely). :lol:Official Patch 3.19 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323831)

Oh... look what's included in there:

"Build-specific production modifiers are no longer counted for overflow gold calculations"

Hmm... looks like it WAS a bug being exploited afterall; even the developers thought so. :cool:

Honestly, did anybody think otherwise? :mischief:
lol
Anyone else wondering what Crusher's response will be? :mischief:
Yes
but it still works in 3.19? you still can whip for overflow, it's just no longer afffected be building multipliers if i understand correctly. Well, then it's now a question of just "building wealth before currency", and it can still save your rear side for some turns if you've made a mistake and are stuck with 86turns to research writing at 0 and no money.

Indeed. In BtS 3.19, assuming it works correctly (which is sort of unproven at this point), it's hardly going to be called an exploit anymore.

WOw that finally killed this thread.

Now I'm going to start a new thread complaining about the patch (not the overflow fix)

not yet, it's still alive, as we are posting here )

haha where is crusher now i'm missing him

I can confirm that overflow is capped at 1x the cost of whatever you are building.

Any extra hammers are thrown away and NOT converted to gold.

What i feared .... :(

Good ol'comeback to the MM times, I guess

Well, you can still chop/whip into wonders with production bonuses for compensation money... that still seems to work as before. Principle still works, only it's more fiddly and you only have a limited time window.

I wonder if IND sees a sudden upwsing in popularity as all who likes chopping discounted buildings turn to it?

Why would this turn things back to the MM times? The overflow trick was really over the top in some very cooked up and specific circumstances. In the very typical scenario's you would not get such insane overflows. If you play the game normally there is no need to really worry about wasting all those hammers, you just have to be careful not to whip and chop two forrests to complete a building any more.

Ow and as to guessing if the designers intended the mechanic to be like it was in 3.17... Guess not. :D

Well, the overflow trick was pretty MM-ish, too.

Why would this turn things back to the MM times? The overflow trick was really over the top in some very cooked up and specific circumstances. In the very typical scenario's you would not get such insane overflows. If you play the game normally there is no need to really worry about wasting all those hammers, you just have to be careful not to whip and chop two forrests to complete a building any more.

Ow and as to guessing if the designers intended the mechanic to be like it was in 3.17... Guess not. :D

Actually, that's not true. You'll have to MM away from producing a warrior before a settler if chopping and such, and whipping one automatically loses hammers now.

One thing that makes me wonder about the whole process is why this thread even started...or specifically, why if it WASN'T intended it existed in 3.17, or even 3.13. It's been a known tactic for well before each of those patches... so if fireaxis knew of it, why the massive delay on the change? And, why change it back to the old way rather than mimic what the unofficial patches did with reducing the hammer ---> gold to just 1:1 (which would have removed any exploitative issue as then the forest yield would be minimal).

I logically thought they intended for it since they didn't change it for so long, but since that clearly isn't the case now, why didn't the copy the (better) implementation done in the unofficial patch? Pride? Why introduce MM back into the game?

Overall though most of the 3.19 updates are extremely good to see and I have no qualms about updating...just a bit annoying to have to swap warriors into/out of queue to avoid losing hammers.

Well, the overflow trick was pretty MM-ish, too.

Yes, but in this case we're being forced to MM just to AVOID losing hammers, rather than gain something

And, why change it back to the old way rather than mimic what the unofficial patches did with reducing the hammer ---> gold to just 1:1 (which would have removed any exploitative issue as then the forest yield would be minimal).


Judging by the patch notes, it's what they intended to do. Why they just didn't copy the unofficial patch code - I don't know also. Maybe it's just the result of the inefficiency and bloat of big corporations...

Judging by the patch notes, it's what they intended to do. Why they just didn't copy the unofficial patch code - I don't know also. Maybe it's just the result of the inefficiency and bloat of big corporations...

Build-specific production modifiers are no longer counted for overflow gold calculations

At the moment, it appears there is no longer any such thing as overflow gold. This means the patch note is misleading and probably the game is not working as intended, if the description is meant to describe what is intended.

At the moment, it appears there is no longer any such thing as overflow gold. This means the patch note is misleading and probably the game is not working as intended, if the description is meant to describe what is intended.

By "the thing they intended to do" I meant "doing what the unofficial patch did".

By "the thing they intended to do" I meant "doing what the unofficial patch did".

But the unofficial patch still allows for some overflow gold, it just doesn't get the multipliers like for stone+PRO leaders. Or was I using a different UP?

But the unofficial patch still allows for some overflow gold, it just doesn't get the multipliers like for stone+PRO leaders.

Exactly. That's what I am saying - that Firaxis didn't do what they intended to due to their buggy code in that regard.

Oh, so you're agreeing they didn't do what they intended to do, and that the patch notes are incorrect.

For those of us who don't abuse the overflow gold system (i.e. timing chops and whips on buildings with +100% or higher modifiers), the change comes as a disappointment because, as TMIT explains, it introduces more MM for those of us who want to avoid wasting hammers. Wasting hammers is a bigger concern than trying to convert hammers into gold, so it's a step backwards as far as I can tell.

At the moment, it appears there is no longer any such thing as overflow gold. This means the patch note is misleading and probably the game is not working as intended, if the description is meant to describe what is intended.

The changes to CvCity.cpp make it clear that the patch note correctly describes the intended change (which does not match the actual change).

The changes to CvCity.cpp make it clear that the patch note correctly describes the intended change (which does not match the actual change).

So I assume in the unofficial patch for 3.19, the game is going to be fixed to be more like the UP for 3.17, where overflow gold was still allowed but not put through multipliers, and that based on what the intended change was from reading the patch notes, very few players will object to this change.

I'm still surprised this was stuffed up. It's a pretty damn easy thing to test in 30 seconds.

The changes to CvCity.cpp make it clear that the patch note correctly describes the intended change (which does not match the actual change).

I hope that is the case. Having zero hammer overflow just creates more unnecessary micromanagement. I hope the UP stays as is.

This reminds me of the good ol' days :( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159109

So I assume in the unofficial patch for 3.19, the game is going to be fixed to be more like the UP for 3.17, where overflow gold was still allowed but not put through multipliers, and that based on what the intended change was from reading the patch notes, very few players will object to this change.

I'm still surprised this was stuffed up. It's a pretty damn easy thing to test in 30 seconds.

:wallbash:

So it sounds like overflow SHOULD be in the game, just reduced.

I'd be good with simply discounting the multipliers straight building gold wouldn't get... or with simply sandbagging hammers (which probably *should* decay though). As it is... it's awkward and more likely to come up in casual play than the previous implementation :(

Only half a cookie, because the other changes are good.

Actually unless i miss something there's no need for any gold overflow at all. Just convert all you chop/whip to hammers. There's probably an exploit of this too that i don't know though.Capping the amount of hammers is definitely not a good idea, you have to MM every time now next build is 1 turn after whip. If it really works that way now i'm a bit disappointed since it was easy to foresee the trouble coming from this.

Unrestricted stockpiling of hammers could be very powerful... you'd get an almost instant up-to-date army after getting a key military tech, with your production cities producing 1 unit/turn for a while. No inefficiency from upgrading, and no AIs begging you to spread your wealth around.
Stockpiling hammers for an instant Great Library/National Epic sounds as if it would give you rather ridiculous tech boost.

You used to be able to stockpile an unlimited amount of hammers from whips/chops if you built gold/science/etc in between though, and from what I've seen that wasn't much of a problem; the ability to pile up ridiculous numbers of multipliers for overflow cash before you'd have decent gold multipliers was.
Still, hammers disappearing without any compensation is rather horrible and far more intrusive than the problems we had before.

Actually unless i miss something there's no need for any gold overflow at all. Just convert all you chop/whip to hammers. There's probably an exploit of this too that i don't know though.

Prebuilding. Scenario: I'm getting really close to Democracy, so my production powerhouse starts building cheap units, rolling the overflow forward until on the turn when I discover the tech I have enough overflow to insta-build the Statue of Liberty.

A variation of the prebuild "exploit" is still available, via the deferral of hammers when building Wealth/Research/Culture, but in practice you can't really do anything with that beyond pre-chopping.

Woe to us that the Marathon players got their way ;) (Too much overflow shouldn't be a problem with such huge build costs anyway.)

Other than one poster's test though, who else has verified that the hammers disappear after max overflow? If that is the case, it is rather horrible, but it seems almost everyone hasn't downloaded the patch out of fear of something or another (also breaking mods...) so do we really know for sure?

@Iranon/Vou, yes that would work. Even now it's possible to have several buildings whipped with one production turn to go in queue but you have to watch out for decay. Building something like warriors (or the like) would be a way to stock a lot of H. Hmm just 1:1 conversion as it was in the unofficial patch would have been ok then. Poor man's building wealth where you have burn your forests and do lots mm, not much gain there.

It is still possible to get overflow money.....

The below is from a completely impossible event in a real game, just for testing proposes
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/Civ4ScreenShot0086.jpg

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/Civ4ScreenShot0087.jpg
The pics are separated by 2 turns, just to dump the overflow somewhere. No huts popped and always 100% research

rolo,

On the other hand, this save produces absolutely zero despite a ridiculously massive number of hammers from forest chops.

So there's a difference between base hammers and forest chops?

Oh dear, seems we'll have to hold on 3.19 until this is taken care of.

So there's a difference between base hammers and forest chops?

See DanF's post... :)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8164561&postcount=193

I find taking out the gold multiplier is fine in the patch


The thing that drives me crazy though is the removal of barrage for tanks. WTF? Tanks were already not very powerful and Germany's UU was already weak cause the AI didn't build any tanks. Why slow down warfare even more in the lare game and make us rely more on artilery.

I'm so sick and tired of relying on artillery every game. PLease don't make this worse

The Barrage promotion already did nothing for tanks before, that's why they took it out, assuming you were playing BtS.

mboettcher,

It is not simply a matter of the gold multiplier being removed, overflow gold has been messed with in a very very weird way that will usually mean 0 gold no matter how many forests you chop.

@Iranon/Vou, yes that would work. Even now it's possible to have several buildings whipped with one production turn to go in queue but you have to watch out for decay. Building something like warriors (or the like) would be a way to stock a lot of H.

Cheap units in a big production city with Heroic Epic would be the biggest worry for hammer stockpiling for me. Being able to throw that kind of insane number of hammers into a wonder is a big deal.

Even if you're building reasonable units that you'll actually use (even if just for Garrison duty), it's not that hard to imagine a Heroic Epic city that puts in a decent number of hammers beyond what is required for a unit each turn. Drop Police State and a Military Academy in there and suddenly everyone is Industrious.

Would it be a problem? I don't know. It would certainly change my game quite a bit, though. Funnily enough, the Wonder that I would target with this potential new feature is West Point. As it stands now, I never build West Point in the Heroic Epic city. I don't want to waste that +100% production bonus (plus any number of production turns that a settled Great General would miss) on something that isn't a unit. With this change making an instant West Point possible, it seems like an easy choice to make for wonder pairings.

The thing that drives me crazy though is the removal of barrage for tanks. WTF?

TF.

Essentially, before 3.17 barrage was additive, which is useless (because of rounding problems) for low strength units like cats and trebs. So they switched to a multiplicative implementation (which they further revised in this patch). Given a multiplicative implementation, the barrage promotion line does nothing for units that don't start with inherent collateral damage (tanks).

So either you pull the promotion line, or you have to dial up some baseline damage that all tanks do (and then work through the implications of that). In 3.17, they chose neither, which is clearly the wrong answer, and in 3.19 they pulled the promo line (which is the recommendation that alexman originally made to modders when the problem with the 3,17 implementation was exposed).

It's easy enough to mod back in if you miss it. You can simply restore ARMOR to the types allowed to use the Barrage promotion to get the worthless 3.17 behavior ;) and modify the collateral damage of tanks (and substitutes) to get inherent collateral damage. Both of these are straight forward XML changes.

I find taking out the gold multiplier is fine in the patch


The thing that drives me crazy though is the removal of barrage for tanks. WTF? Tanks were already not very powerful and Germany's UU was already weak cause the AI didn't build any tanks. Why slow down warfare even more in the lare game and make us rely more on artilery.

I'm so sick and tired of relying on artillery every game. PLease don't make this worseNot powerful? It's a 2 move 28 strength unit out of the blue with the ability to attack twice one turn. You don't rely on arty but on bombers. Or research on to my fav MA.

I actually don't like tanks much. If it's a same-continent AI infantry/arty are an earlier option with much less initial-hammer investment. The hammers needed to get controlling airpower AND build tanks AND build garrison troops that function to keep the tanks alive after taking cities is kind of stifling. By the time you're done w/ all that, maybe it's not even FASTER on a game-turn basis than infantry/arty, either, and more can go wrong on the way.

For intercontinental stuff I prefer to go 100% amphibious where possible, which is often. When it isn't, that's when air power and some decent stack composition start mattering.

You have to have a fairly big techlead to actually conquer cities with tank/bombers, in that case the tanks can also hold the cities. If the ais have flight i tend to lose lots of bombers to fighters. But mostly I like to use them to support infantry/artillery as i use cavs supporting rifle/cannon, to quench enemy troops in the field. They give you a feeling of security that you can react to counters quickly. Later they can keep up with mobile artillery and do the city taking, by that time i tend to have mech inf too, cavs would be more or less ok too but even after heavy collateral cavs won't win all their battles, tanks do and can attack twice, this gives them a good lifespan even without upgrading to modern armor. They're not the best units but often very useful all the same.

Since when has efficiency become an "exploit" :groucho:

@ Duckweed

HotCathy - old patch - no whip/overflow because the map/land situation didn't call for it - However, I did expand slightly faster than you which should have allowed me to work tiles sooner which is the basis to some degree of my previous point BUT,

I wasn't able to trade for as much stuff and had a lot of weird random wars through most of the middle game out of the blue so my research wasn't ideal and it definitely slowed me down having to keep making units (too bad or I would have done much much better given my start), however, I do have more cities than you did and have a higher total score:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/HotCathy/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/HotCathy/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/HotCathy/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/HotCathy/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg

Edit: forgot to add the save!

^Good effort to get a higher score -- with the land of DG.:lol: Nice rush, but you forgot the game rule set by Pauliskhan -- NO DOW 1st.:lol:
Edit:
Or was I wrong? -- DG dared to declare on you that early--probably ~1500 BC--that a deity aggressive AI DOW date.:eek:

^Good effort to get a higher score -- with the land of DG.:lol: Nice rush, but you forgot the game rule set by Pauliskhan -- NO DOW 1st.:lol:
Edit:
Or was I wrong? -- DG dared to declare on you that early--probably ~1500 BC--that a deity aggressive AI DOW date.:eek:

You can always bait the AI into passing war checks by spamming demands. Even DG will declare @ furious if you don't just SPAM troops.

^Good effort to get a higher score

It was meant to be a simple comparison game that potentially happens when settling more cities earlier to work more tiles - something I still think overflow allowed much better - even if I didn't use it ;) so rules, on this bad example of a map don't apply anyways.

As far as the score goes, it was a give take with the early war because I ended up in about 2-3 wars with Nappy after and had to make a lot of units at random times through out the game, not to mention my trade suffered because of it and it really slowed me down mid game.

Once again, I think you are a very good player Duck but I do not agree with your thinking in regards to overflow, which doesn't matter now anyways ^^.

It was meant to be a simple comparison game that potentially happens when settling more cities earlier to work more tiles - something I still think overflow allowed much better - even if I didn't use it ;) so rules, on this bad example of a map don't apply anyways.

As far as the score goes, it was a give take with the early war because I ended up in about 2-3 wars with Nappy after and had to make a lot of units at random times through out the game, not to mention my trade suffered because of it and it really slowed me down mid game.


Orleans is probably the best city in the map, so that gold mine will help a lot in early expansion. Sincerely, no matter in deity or levels below, blocking and settle some cities in a later stage is proved to be the optimal play by many players. And this is our final debate where I asked "Why do you want to rex to extreme instead of blocking and settle some cities later".


overflow, which doesn't matter now anyways ^^.
I mentioned in last two posts already.:)

Orleans is probably the best city in the map

It was very far from the Capital and that gold mine barely paid for maintenance, however, you are right, that is a very powerful city and helped out a lot as the game wore one, especially since I had to continuously make so many units during my wars.

There's nothing wrong with blocking but I still stick to my original train of thought that the earlier you can start growing your cities the stronger they will be later. After all, if you can find a way to "afford" the city early a 15 population city which was settled before 1AD will do much better than a 5-6 population city founded at 500-600 AD.

I'm sure we would both agree "balancing", "timing" and "transitioning" throughout the game are all game breaking issues. I'm always looking for a way to get things started as early as possible and when overflow was allowed I could accomplish that better.

1000 AD might not be the best time frame anyways with more emphasis being on the potential long term gains made. During this game I could have easily afforded 5-6 more cities but my score at 1000 AD would have been a lot lower. So that was my goal for this game - a good 1000 AD score.

So it seems the way I look at things and "said" them was flawed. A larger Horizontal expansion typically needs a little more time than I was giving it to pull ahead, however it will still pull ahead. 10-12 cities might research faster and get a lot more infrastructure and maybe even have more popluation, food, etc, however, 15-18 cities won't need a lot of time to quickly bypass the earlier advantage gained from a smaller empire - my opinion anyways.