Getting technologies very fast (100% science minus luxuries) because no money costs less (buildings/units) than you can rebuild in one turn.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31702&perpage=20&display=&pagenumber=1

Do you think this exploit is big enough to disallow?

A few things:
1. This exploit is impossible to police.
2. I often research techs in 4 turns. I will use reserves to finance deficits and rebuild them on the last turn.
3 In the era where I can afford to rebuild barracks in one turn, I'm anyway researching in 4 turns.
4. Not having any money, means you are losing on WallStreet, making this exploit not very advantageous in the late game.

Its not a gamebreaker but can be a useful short term ploy.

I've used it when I NEEDED a tech quickly. For example I had a prebuild for UN but needed to complete it before another civ or lose a million shields.

I didnt have enough cash to pay for a deficit budget at the time so I spent all my cash on improvements (why waste it), set my science to 100% and ran a deficit of several 100 GPT for three turns.
I lost 3 buildings and units that were rebuilt very quickly. I got fission in 4 turns and built Un a turn ahead of the other civ. Phew.

The downside of this strategy that makes it unsustainable in the longer term is that you always have no cash so you can NEVER upgrade any units! This is quite a powerful balance.

I vote leave it.

I think it should be banned--if you use it to start on TOE and then get it and Hoover you've only done it once, but the game is then completely out of whack. However, I agree that you couldn't police it...

I just discovered this site last month...Until then I was blissfully playing games 'by the rules' and winning in various ways but without very high scores.

Come here and find all sorts of ways to 'game' the system, which is depressing. I'd like to play by email, but until Firaxis gets patches to make all the exploits that come up completely useless--like keep taking units and buildings from across your empire until your deficit is paid for, or making massively starving cities virtually useless to stop the worker dogpile--I could be playing against someone who IS doing those things.

I also think that this should be banned. We might not be able to check it but the same thing goes for reloading, which is also banned.

Using this exploit means you are actually making money that doesn't excist, since the costs of all the units/buildings of your empire is paid with money that you do not have, but in the same time the commerce with which you could have paid these upkeep costs is used for science. Thus your research doesn't reflect the actual capability of tech research that your empire could support so that weak empires will have the same research capability as stronger (better managed/build) empires.

This in my opinion conflicts with the the whole idea of the gotm, namely comparing your skill in civ3 with other players.

Why even put this to the vote?
Of course such an exploit should not be allowed!

Well Ribannah, I want to give people as much freedom in the game as possible. The only reason there are some exploits disallowed is that they are so effective you will only make use of that, thus narrowing your ways of playing, which makes it less fun.

So the question is: is this so effective that you have to use it, while it makes the game less fun? (I can imagine it's no fun playing without money.)

I've not tried this exploit so I can't say how effective it would or would not be. I have run a deficit before, but I had a built up treasury, and never actually went negative.

I voted to allow this exploit. This seems to me, without further examples, to be just a cruder form of building Wealth. If I understand it, random buildings and units disappear from lack of support, but production is so high that it's easy to rebuild them. Production is replacing support. This is the same as building Wealth, without the 1:4 loss in production and with the random effects.

I think col gave a perfect example of how this exploit can be used very effectively also for civs with a good income. That's why I say ban it. :nono:

I consider this an exploit.

The effects will tremendous for a huge empire. A huge empire will have lots of units and improvements and thus increasing the chance you will only lose fairly expendable units and buildings. If the disbanding is random that is. When disbanding occurs according to some rules, big empires will even have better possiblities to get tremendous research rates at virtually no cost for a long time. Just think of running 1000+gpt deficits for just one building and unit a turn you can choose yourself!:eek: Looks very similar to the worker dogpile to me.

I'm no expert on milking but it will have an effect on scoring too. Effectively your trading money (and maybe happy faces) for (future) techs. As said, I can quantify this, but if it improves scoring this falls into Matrix' have to use category, meaning exploit.

I say ban it.

ProPain

Originally posted by ProPain


I'm no expert on milking but it will have an effect on scoring too. Effectively your trading money (and maybe happy faces) for (future) techs. As said, I can quantify this, but if it improves scoring this falls into Matrix' have to use category, meaning exploit.



I hadn't thought of this yet.

Now there really should be no debate whether this should be banned, since you can also use it not to get points for future tech but getting a tremendous amount of extra points by setting luxuries at 100% (when necessary tech have already been researched) while running a large deficit. A large empire will get a tremendous amount of additional happy faces meaning that if you want to try and reach a high position on the results list you are forced to use this trick.

Indeed there is little difference with the worker dogpile trick then.

mm. I should proofread before submitting a post to prevent the mistakes. :blush: In my previous post I meant to say I can't quantify it, but I'm sure some expert milkers can.

I hadn't even thought about the luxury variation. Probably more interesting than the science trick from a scoring point of view.

ProPain

Er - I've used the luxury trick too!

Back when I was concerned about getting high scores, I would routinely go to 100% luxury and run a deficit while I waited for domination or culture wins to kick in.

It just seemed so obvious I assumed everyone did this

Originally posted by col
Er - I've used the luxury trick too!


And why shouldn't you have used it? If only I had thought of that back then...
Since it wasn't (isn't) forbidden you were just using a legitimate technique to increase your score. And you probably weren't the only one, I guess. :)

I also think there's nothing wrong with upping the luxury slider to 100%, as long as you have the gold to support your upkeep. Once you start paying your empire's upkeep by losing a building and unit a turn, then - IMO - intentionally running a deficit goes from a fair techique to an exploit like the worker dogpile.

I just discovered this site last month...Until then I was blissfully playing games 'by the rules' and winning in various ways but without very high scores. Come here and find all sorts of ways to 'game' the system, which is depressing. - pterrok

Hi, pterrok. There are alternative multiplayer venues with less tolerance for and embracing of abusing the game. You say you'd like to play by Email. There's a better equivalent to that right here at CF, over in the Succession Games forum, under Stories. There's a wide variety of SG's being played, of all difficulty and many themes. You should check it out. Should be something there to your liking.

There are also other tournaments besides Matrix's GOTM. There's a second tourney at CF, which de-emphasizes "milking". I haven't tried that one, but some folks like it. Then there are the Realms Beyond, with a high difficulty, high variety tournament with several games per month. The RB events place a premium on No Spoilers, and the rules there embrace the integrity of the game, with no tolerance for "gaming the system". Sounds more like your speed. There's a link my sig if you want to take a look.


- Sirian

It is an exploit .... but very hard to police. In Tech races income usually is just high enough to to get some change or have a small deficit. It makes a hugh difference if you can move the slider form let's say 60% science to 100% science if the only consequence is loss of a unit and a barrack. One could even set up a building plan just to replenish these small losses. Poor implementation by F.

Arrrr, it's clearly an imbalance. Its different from, say, disbanding tanks for the shield yield to build things like marketplaces in the hinterlands because in that instance you still have to account for the full number of shields to get the improvement you're working toward. If this was really a fair technique, the game would sell off however many units and improvements were needed to cover the deficit, instead of just one apiece. (Am I right? I've never done it, does really only 1 building and one unit get disbanded? No matter what the deficit?!?) It amounts to free money. If you want to cannibalize your empire for some purpose, be my guest, but pay the bill. We don't allow the 'start with 10,000 gold' patch, so why allow this?

Originally posted by Jove
. (Am I right? I've never done it, does really only 1 building and one unit get disbanded? No matter what the deficit?!?)

Yup and thats why its an exploit. ;)

The game should keep on disbanding buildings and units to 'pay' for your deficit but it doesnt.

I have tried to play a whole game without money but its not so easy!

I have the perfect opportunity to do this in Tournament game 3_2--but I won't. If I DID do it, I would have a tech that the others did NOT have and could get some techs I'm missing AND recoup a lot of money by trading it around--thereby being able to rebuild the few buildings and units lost...

I'm surprised at the poll totals so far that want to allow this! To be clear:

Setting your sliders to make -100 gpt when you have 1000 gp in the bank is fine; setting your sliders to -1000 gpt when you have 100 gp in the bank would be disallowed!

I guess the one building and one unit limit came about when your civ falls into anarchy during a long war--if half of your buildings went away it would be very bad! But right-click on a building and see the price you can get for selling it and then tell me that limiting a huge deliberate loss to one building and a unit isn't an exploit!

Firaxis could make a quick fix by not allowing let you end a turn with your sliders set to generate a negative bank total within your current circumstances--so you could still fall negative if you lost a city during the AI turn, say.

But if they wanted to get tricky, ALLOW the negative total, but KEEP the negative balance from turn to turn. Then charge 10% interest on it per turn. You lose a building and a unit per turn for each turn that you're negative until you can get back to a positive balance. When your balance is negative, trading would be adversely affected in some manner--the AI would demand a LOT more or give a lot less. The max you could set either slider would be reduced by 10% for each 10% of your current income that your balance is negative.

Do something like that and you MIGHT push research to 100% to get a tech right away, but it'll be something you'd have to think about since you COULD get into a death spiral.


(Thanks, Sirian for the info on other places to go!)

I'm surprised given the interest governements seem to have in deficit spending that they didn't handle this differently, applying interest penalties or something of the like once you go into deficit. Then you can have the Balanced Budget wonder that makes two content people happy but prohibits you from going into deficit spending. :)

So far I think I won't allow this exploit. The poll doesn't say everything and a lot of people vote before they read the thread. :)

If all you lose is 1 building and 1 unit per turn from going negative, it is an exploit, and I change my vote to disallow.

I like the idea of keeping the negative balance, and charging interest! This would give you the choice, but look out!!

WAIT

Consider first that.


1. You do not lose ONLY one building but as many as 3 or even more. I've lost that much before (harbor, barracks, and marketplace) and 1 Immortal unit. The number of buildings demolished is in relation to the debt value.

2. This 'strategy' is very useful in OCC games since it gives you an 'option' of how to research techs. Without it OCC games will eventually go the UN 50-50 defeat route.

3. The buildings the game demolishes are not set in order. You could lose marketplaces or cathedrals at the first turn of debt. And if you don't keep track, instead of gaining you might lose a lot more through disorder and unhappiness.

This is not that exploitative really. ROP-rape is a bigger crime but it's not banned so why this. When you start losing marketplaces because of it and can't rush them then you just might be in for a bigger surprise.

Arrr, I dunno if Msgt Drew is right or not-we need to get the facts straight. However, I think I voted 'yes', thinking the question was to disallow it. So adjust the totals accordingly. Maybe I'll change my mind when the real facts come out.

Yes it should be allowed. It is not an exploit. It is part of the game design. This has been debated considerably in the regular forum. The points I make:

Having an old temple disbanded removes that culture contribution and pushes you closer to war weariness, having an old barracks disbanded means you have to rebuild it before you get a veteran unit out of that city.

People who think this is an exploit are crazy and unfamiliar with Civ 2 which had a more balanced perhaps but the same system at heart.

Might as well call marching an infantry along with a cannon an exploit because the cannon can't be just captured. Really you super civ players are too much with the exploit cry. The game is hard enough!!! Nobody is going to profit much from running their lux at zero and dipping into negative cash. But if it wasn't supposed to be possible, they wouldn't let you set the dial that way. Really.

Hey I just found another exploit we need to ban: it turns out that when you buy an embassy you can then pay money to steal the other guy's world map, and sometimes it isn't all that much money!

Hey and here is another one: when you build a granary in a city, the food supply only cuts in half when a new citizen is made. This would allow people to grow their cities TWICE AS FAST if they used granaries! Let's ban it!

Okay, I am being sarcastic and I apologize but I am extremely angry that some people consider this an exploit when Firaxis has put a check and balance in the form of the disbandings. Now maybe for the kind of players who are able to add hundreds of workers to a city every turn this seems like an exploit but to the AVERAGE JOE who can barely handle monarch level, the occasional dip into the disbanding phase is an occasion for great dismay and a signal that you are way behind in an important tech race. Honestly I wouldn't know how to "exploit" this exploit if you told me. Nobody is building buildings faster than this thing eats them. And the units taken away are the workers, ships, settlers and artillery that keep an empire relevant.

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
I am extremely angry that some people consider this an exploit when Firaxis has put a check and balance in the form of the disbandings

(....)

Honestly I wouldn't know how to "exploit" this exploit if you told me. Nobody is building buildings faster than this thing eats them. And the units taken away are the workers, ships, settlers and artillery that keep an empire relevant.

Uhhmm... I think you are misunderstanding some things here (or else I'm misunderstanding you :) ) :

The game does not keep on disbanding buildings and units until you have a positive cashflow or enough money to pay the rest of your upkeep that turn. This was the case in civ2, and that system worked fine. The problem here is that you can keep an entire empire, consisting of hundreds of units/buildings, running at the cost of 1 building and 1 unit per turn, because the game will never disband more than 1 each per turn. While doing so you can tremendously increase your score by setting the luxury slider at 100%, or gain an enormous amount of science by setting the science slider to 100%.

Both these things will heavily influence the flow of the game and will result in a much better result in the rankings, even though they are gained with a method that doesn't fit the idea of managing/building a solid, financially healthy empire due to skillfull play. Therefore, I think it is right to speak of it as an exploit.

Matrix, of course, will be the one to make the final decision in this matter, but I still believe this one is ripe for the banned-exploits list.

I hope you're not angry with me now ;) :)

Kemal sez:
Both these things will heavily influence the flow of the game and will result in a much better result in the rankings, even though they are gained with a method that doesn't fit the idea of managing/building a solid, financially healthy empire due to skillfull play. Therefore, I think it is right to speak of it as an exploit.


Oh, so the object of the game is managing/building a solid, financially healthy empire due to skillful play. I guess that excludes non skillful players from even trying. I though the object of the game was to control 2/3 of the landmass, destroy every other civ, be voted head of the UN, reach 100,000 culture points or launch a spaceship to alpha centauri.

I am starting to perceive that the debate about exploits has to do directly with the GOTM being a score-based comparative system and with people at the high end of the scoring being able to manipulate things to get extra points. I was feeling like I couldn't do these things in games played for my pleasure without feeling like it was cheating or depriving myself of learning skillz.

The problem is: there IS an immense difference between having a huge empire and disbanding buildings for spaceship techs or luxury score and being in the BC era and disbanding hard to replace critical buildings and units to reach literacy first. Just as there is an immense difference between joining workers to cities to grow them out of proportion to starvation in the late game and joining a worker to your city to pop rush the first Impi because the Chines are just two moves away from putting the smackdown on. To enforce a level ban on a tactic when the use of the tactic and its efficacy varies over the course of the game is a big downer. And on the other hand, if you have built yourself an empire so big that losing buildings every turn is an option that doesn't daunt you, I think it is your right to do things that way. The republicans run this country by driving us into deficit and disbanding businesses and unions and government programs left and right.

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash


Oh, so the object of the game is managing/building a solid, financially healthy empire due to skillful play. I guess that excludes non skillful players from even trying. I though the object of the game was to control 2/3 of the landmass, destroy every other civ, be voted head of the UN, reach 100,000 culture points or launch a spaceship to alpha centauri.

I am starting to perceive that the debate about exploits has to do directly with the GOTM being a score-based comparative system and with people at the high end of the scoring being able to manipulate things to get extra points. I was feeling like I couldn't do these things in games played for my pleasure without feeling like it was cheating or depriving myself of learning skillz.

The problem is: there IS an immense difference between having a huge empire and disbanding buildings for spaceship techs or luxury score and being in the BC era and disbanding hard to replace critical buildings and units to reach literacy first. Just as there is an immense difference between joining workers to cities to grow them out of proportion to starvation in the late game and joining a worker to your city to pop rush the first Impi because the Chines are just two moves away from putting the smackdown on. To enforce a level ban on a tactic when the use of the tactic and its efficacy varies over the course of the game is a big downer. And on the other hand, if you have built yourself an empire so big that losing buildings every turn is an option that doesn't daunt you, I think it is your right to do things that way. The republicans run this country by driving us into deficit and disbanding businesses and unions and government programs left and right.

Once again I think you're misunderstanding things.

You are correct if you state that the objective of the game is to achieve a victory by one of the conditions as you pointed out above. However, this discussion is taking place in the Civ3 Gotm forum, and as you can read in the Gotm section on the main page, the objective of the GotM is to create an environment where people can compare their skills with each other and see how good they are. In my opinion the exploits list is created to assure that all players obtain their scores by carefull planning and skillfull gameplay, not by using the easy-to-use methods Firaxis have (willingly or not) put in this game.
It is, of course, not always clear whether something falls under the category of "being an exploit", and that's why there are discussions about them in these forums.

You should be aware that one of most-rewarding, easy to use exploit, the worker dogpile, has been first questioned in a thread in this forum by one of the highest scoring players in the current environment. As a result of this discussion this method has now been put on the banned-exploit list. So your statement saying that the High scoring Gotm players use this list as a tool to protect their high rankings from newer players doesn't seem to make much sense.
Again, in my opinion the real purpose behind this list is to make sure that there is an environment in which one's playing skills can be compared to others and to see to it that everyone can obtain the same amount of knowledge about what scoring methods are seen by the current GotM players as not fit to use for meaningfull comparison of skills.

Concerning your remarks about pop-rushing and running a deficit,there is a big differnce between the use of an occasional poprush in case of an emergency and the huge poprushing to acquire an enormous amount of units/buildings early on. The occasional poprush is entirely within the spirit of the game, and this rule has been enstated because of the hugely unbalancing effects mass poprushing has on the game and thus again hampers the ability for players to efficiently compare skills with others.
Same goes for running a large deficit. Although not yet on the exploit-list, one can easily use this method to gain an enormous amount of points by not paying your empire's upkeep late in the game and thus free up an enormous amount of commerce which can be used for obtaining happy faces or large amounts pof science, and thus heavily chancing the flow of the game without requiring much skill of the player. If you are running a deficit early on, and have to sell off hard-to-replace buildings, it is obvious that this does not fall in the category of "being an exploit". So apart from having players pointing out that there is a strategy section on this site, you'll be fine.

And once again, you do not have to replace multiple buildings, the game only sells one off per turn, regardless of how large your deficit is.

Once again, these are all my opinions about why certain things should be put on an exploit list, if other players have others views about this, please feel free to post about them. :)

Bah, the guy's just trolling... let him be and he'll go away.

No I am not "trolling". You have misunderstood me.

I didn't say that the high scorers were trying to insulate themselves. I tried to say that the issue of, for instance, worker dogpiling, is very far removed from the common player (unless I just totally suck and don't know it). It is something that, at the high end of the player spectrum, becomes an issue between the higher scorers and the highest scorers. I don't ever reach a point in my games where I have the luxury to sit around adding workers to a city, because by the time I might be able to do that I have won or lost.

Now, it is replacing more than one building because you lose a building every turn and I have never seen a situation where you can build ANY building in just one turn based on shields. So, you are rebuilding over a few turns and losing more buildings all the while. YOu can not buy the replacement buildings with cash because you are running a NEGATIVE BALANCE (likewise you can not rush anything with cash or initiate any diplomatic or espionage functions or use cash in any trading for anything).

Furthermore, who reaches the point that they have a large enough empire to support a negative balance scenario as you describe but somehow they don't generate enough baseline cash anyway to support science? Hard to imagine. If you don't have marketplaces and banks in place, then you are going to run out of buildings to disband pretty quick and let's face it, you aren't going to be leading in science anyway.

Incidentally, has anyone ever run a negative balance long enough to lose all their buildings? I'd love to know what happens!

Kemal, thank you for your thoughtful debate on the subject, a nice contrast to BobtheBuilder's rancid dismissal. If I am going to be disallowed from using a maneuver (which I very rarely use anyway), I want to have it explained to my satisfaction. Playing the game well for comparative purposes means employing different strategies, or are we all just supposed to play the way the amazing winners who always find iron right away and have a knack for getting great leaders supposedly play?

Wow... rancid? (sniff) I don't think it smelled that bad! My rule of thumb is that when people start relating their posts to significantly off-topic subjects (say, politics) and do so in a way that seems inteded to provoke a response, it's probably a troll.

I also took into consideration your attitude of "if it's in the game, it's in the game and let it be" As other posters have pointed out, and as you have acknowledged (either here or in the other thread), GOTM is a contest where the participants agree to certain guidelines in order to offer a fair means of comparing talent. The point of the GOTM isn't to discover ways to find loopholes that blatantly take advantage of the system, it's to compare talent and hopefully help people improve their games. Now we have some very creative GOTM players that manage to find these loopholes anyway.

You indicated that you needed an explanation, which Kemal seems to have provided to your satisfaction. I believe the original thought was to neglect your treasury for not just science, but also luxuries... in other words, the Civ scoring system awards points for happy/content citizens as well as future techs. So if you go full lux or full sci you wind up having buildings destroyed, but that doesn't affect your score... you wind up deriving a "false" benefit for the sole purpose of maximizing your score.

I haven't voted on this because, like many, I've never been able to achieve the point in a game where this would be useful. I'm not much in favor milking anyway, doesn't seem like much fun. But that's where I'm coming from, and different people have different views. I'm guessing that you're more libertarian in terms of letting people use what is available to them in the context of the game. But that's why we have these votes, to let the participants decide what fair paramaters for the contest are. If you don't think it'd be fair to remove this "tactic" then campaign for your side.

Either way, I wasn't trying to offend you... I was just trying to blunt any negative response to your message. Looks like I've failed on the first count and for that I'm sorry. :(

BoB

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
I have never seen a situation where you can build ANY building in just one turn based on shields.

H All,

Never even heard of dogpiling until I read it here. Never knew I could let my balance go negative until I read it here... so I've got no real experience on these.

Typically my capital city or my forbidden palace city by about 1500ad (monarch level) will pump out 100 shields a turn. That's enough to pump out several improvements. I wish I could pump out a building + a unit in fact.

Seems to me that people think the deficiet problem is an exploit because of the large disparity between the cost of the maintenance vs the loss of the units/improvements. I would suggest that anyone doing this is only doing it for one of a few reasons:

going for a higher score
short term technique to gain some vital piece of tech
short term technique to make a very war wary civ happy.

I never care about my score admittedly - just winning by a new and interesting strategy is reward enough. But, GOTM is about scores so it seems a valid technique to me - it's available for everyone just as the ability to trade with other civs every turn is. Some of us don't bother cos we're too busy laying out our strategy rather than micromanaging...

The latter two seem ok to me in any type of game.

In any case, I'm thinking that we are only talking about 10 or 20% of total gold here aren't we? Or are there times in the later part of the game when people need to put say 50% of gold towards income? Ever since Civ1 I've always managed to get my tax down to 10% and usually luxuries to 10 or 20 and the rest tech.

Anyhow, what do I know, I'm a chess player anyhow :) haha

"The game does not keep on disbanding buildings and units until you have a positive cashflow or enough money to pay the rest of your upkeep that turn. This was the case in civ2, and that system worked fine. The problem here is that you can keep an entire empire, consisting of hundreds of units/buildings, running at the cost of 1 building and 1 unit per turn, because the game will never disband more than 1 each per turn. "

Right on! It SHOULD be working like it did in CIV2, therefore I say BAN IT!

Oh dear, nearly forgot all about this. :o It'll be disallowed for the next GOTM...

oh dear! what on earth is this?
the recapture value of shield--> cash is 4:1. so when u sell an improvement that cost 4 shields, u get 1 gold.
the recapture value of cash-->shield is 4:1 so when u rush an improvement that costs 1 shield, u spend 4 gold.

if u build the improvement at some point in the game u have every right to use it as u wish. i would never pursue this as a real strategy but come on! people are banning so called exploits without really thinking of game mechanics.

u might as well ban rush-building improvements with cash because suddenly ur empire gets 40 factories in one turn rather than in 20 turns....or upgrading because suddenly ur army of 140 horsemen becomes an army of 140 cavalry in one turn. the game is about priorities and how u balance them. if u can manage to trade off building improvements as fast as they get disbanded or quicker, then u are a master and are only squeezing out a tiny bit more score than the other guy. that's what differentiates avg players from the masters.

I don't think this exploit causes an issue when used by a moderately sized empire for a few turns to gain a Tech, or other short term goal. The problem is the scoring system. The GOTM ranks players by their game score, which rewards players who 'milk' a game long after they've effectively won it. This technique would be quite useful to a milker, and they'd be able to sustain it indefinitely:

- they dominate the world already, so there's no reason to rebuild the unit they've lost

- they usually have a large number of cities (well over 100, maybe up to 500 or so) so the non-paid maintenance runs to several thousand gold every turn

- improvements that sustain an advanced population limit (aquaduct and hospital) probably can't be lost (I don't know this for certain, but other threads mention that these improvements can't be bombarded, so they're probably not susceptable to this type of removal either)

- the milker intentionally sells off buildings to reduce maintenance costs and culture growth so losing one of these buildings is inconsequential; only improvements necessary to maintain happiness would be rebuilt

- and the luxury slider would be maxxed out, generating a large number of happy citizens and allowing further growth

If we had a scoring system that didn't focus on population, this wouldn't even be an issue, but we don't. I see the banning of this exploit as an attempt to reduce the capability for population growth so that there's not as great a difference in scores between milked and non-milked games. It's the moderator's call.

selling off cultural or otherwise unneeded improvements once domination is only a few tiles away for purposes of milking is done by every "milker" out there. selling off unneeded military is also standard practice. would be absurd to tell me i couldn't sell off 500 military units and the factories and plants after conquering is done.

We're not talking about selling improvements or units here, we're talking about running a high deficit ( a few hundred GP/ turn) and losing much less than you should (i.e. only ONE unit and ONE improvement). E-X-P-L-O-I-T!!!

The standard milking procedure of selling improvements and units even encourages using the max slider technique. Instead of selling them you keep em around as 'disbanding fodder'and let the comp destroy one of each every turn. You increase score at the cost of units and improvements you wanted to sell anyway! And if occasionally you lose a building of importance your rebuild it. You can even rushbuild it even though you don't have any cash by disbanding a few of those obselete units !


ProPain

I'm not sure what you are guys are talking about. I do quite a bit of milking in my games but I have never run into this exploit. Even if I set luxury slider at 100%, the gold income would still be on the positive side; therefore, it would be impossible for me to benefit from this exploit. Moreover, by the time I'm ready to milk the game, I would have at least 20000 golds in reserve (getting ready for rushing the mass transit in all major cities).

Of course, I immediately disband most of my units immediately after the war. If I don't have the technology to build the mass transit yet, I would disband my units to pre-build the factory. This is a good way to store up shields and lower the upkeep cost at the same time. Since the factory would take forever to build, by the time I discover ecology, I just simply swich all my factory queues to the mass transit and immediately rush to finish them.

Btw, I usually don't build any factory in my game; therefore, I can always put the factory in my production queue so that I can store up shields.:) I do think that it's an exploit to run on a negative balance. With my playing style, it would be impossible for me to have a negative balance (I love my saving account too much:love: ); therefore, I refer that no one else using it. However, if you want to use it; that's fine with me. IMO, people who have trouble with keeping a positive balance won't score very high.:)

Moonsinger, this is more a tactic that the early Space Launch/"tech catcheruppers" crowd could use to keep the tech research pace up. Clearly, the game should really disband units or buildings until the deficit is eliminated. The player should be given the option of which to do each step of the way to balancing the budget shortfall, but that would require additional programming. Other than the Space Launch crowd, I think if you are in this position, you need to review your game play practices.

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee
Other than the Space Launch crowd, I think if you are in this position, you need to review your game play practices.

Bingo! This tactic won't do the Milk crowd any good. Going back up to the last 10 posts or so, they were worrying that the Milk crowd would take advantage of this. When we milk the game, technology means very little to us.;)

I want to play GOTM14 and therefore need to know if this has been ruled on. The vote is currently:
YES - 31
NO - 31
I HAVE NO IDEA (?why) - 9

It is not allowed. See Matrix's comment on page two of the thread.

Originally posted by Creepster
It is not allowed. See Matrix's comment on page two of the thread. Well, I was sure I read the thread first, but on closer inspection I realise that I am either very selectively blind, or just too wasted to notice [pimp]

btw, anyone know why the only smiley with a spliff is called PIMP? Obviously a very open minded coder designed them :rolleyes:

I never used this exploit (I did't know about this) and will not use. But I vote for the freedom of choice in this situation.:cool: