I believe that the best solution is that we put our heads together, declare the behaviors we find unacceptable because they both violate the spirit of the game and are enforceable, and agree that anything else goes. If a problem with the mechanics cannot reasonably be enforced by the HoF staff, we should not ask them to enforce it and we should instead just all agree that it's kosher and use the problem until patched out.
This does seem the best approach.
"The more random factors are in game, the less chances you can get a positive outcome of every random thing". Thus, banning all random options won't automatically make the game more balanced - the result will most likely be the opposite.
The reason this is wrong is that even at the most random, there will still be people willing and able to keep trying until every random outcome (or every important one that game) goes their way. Since adding additional random factors increases the #games required to attain this, it leads to game spam > skillful play. Any individual random factor only pushes it this direction a little, but that's still harmful unless the random factor adds something useful to competition itself. Ruins/barbs don't truly do so.
Da Vince did a good job w/ his answer to this so I'll stop it off here.
[Trading gold per turn (gpt) for gold is never acceptable.] You have to really be going to war though. No phony wars to circumvent the intent of the rule.
I'm afraid this rule is over-stepping the "exploit" bounds:
- Going to war has serious opportunity costs, even if it's a phony war. I can promise you that this will not be a good idea at all difficulty levels consistently; hence the "exploit" tag is wrong on it. Things that can't even beat alternative options on a consistent basis AND don't cause effects outside of game rules are NOT exploits!
- There are VERY good reasons in-game to trade gpt for gold (and vice versa) that are not exploit related. RA comes to mind.
It is trying to get something for nothing by mis-using a game mechanic or bug. You should notice the two expolits we banned were related to resources: Gold and culture. Resources are the fuel that drives the game. Unbalance that and you have an exploit. Getting free techs like that Civ4 bug was banned there for the same reason.
This isn't a bad metric, but you have to be careful in its application as opportunity cost can be the primary factor and even if they're not intuitive they can be very large. Think about building wealth vs infrastructure in civ IV; you could always build infra, but sometimes its payoff is less than the cost. Such is so with declaring war on an AI. There's definitely no RA coming from that AI in the near future (the equivalent of 100's to 1000's of beakers!), future deals are off for a long time, relations with other civilizations are hurt, etc. Gold fleecing in this case is *not* something from nothing like constant switching between SP to magicspam great people/settlers/whatever.
On the topic of randomness, I am not particularly for or against it. It is part of the Civilization game. The Hall of Fame is about showcasing the best play of the game of Civilization. Luck messes a little with comparability. Sometimes rewards people with extra time. But it also gives different play styles a chance to occasionally rise above the mechanical play produced by the pure crunching of the numbers. In the end, you still have play well to take advantage of whatever good luck you have or overcome the bad luck. Good play shows up through consistency of results. Random luck evens itself out over time.
But why would you deliberately increase the time it takes for luck to "even out"? Why are you encouraging less-optimal styles of play to get lucky and beat people who used skill? Neither of these things fit the spirit of HoF or the general spirit of any competition.
I would like to see more reports people overcoming a bad break or riding a good one to new heights. That would be Hall of Fame worthy even if there is not way to rank them. Tossing the game at the first adversity may maximize your time for games that may place well in the standings but there isn't that much to talk about. My opinion. :shrug:
HoF as a concept does not provide this any incentive. This kind of stuff is SGOTM and XOTM material, not HoF material, because of the conceptual structure of each. Even your gauntlets are not lent for this because there is no limit to #tries as long as you use different maps.
I should point out that the rule about barbs is not about one setting being better that the other. Is it merely for the sake of comparability. So was increasing the number of definition of what constitutes an official table to include leader and map type. Barbs on is closer to what one would define as the basic game.
This is incongruous with HoF in general. You can't allow repeat spam of games with handpicked leaders and expect anything resembling a "basic game". This reasoning for the rule is a pipe dream; HoF is functionally about stretching civ to its potential to get the best times. The best times are, BY DEFINITION, no basic/normal games!
Resources other than normal/standard were excluded for the same reason that certain map types and the scenarios were left out. They are not the basic game. They are variants of the game, for MP or otherwise, not the basic format. ~280,000 tables will never be filled as it is, we don't want more.
Not to sound like a broken record, but HoF is NOT the basic game! It is a format for comparing BEST POSSIBLE games. In setting up rules of gameplay for such a thing, it is unfair and a little silly to assume it's something that it isn't and then make rules based on that assumption. If you feel the need to pick a setting, going with the default simply because it's the default is not appropriate. Going with an option because it has a clear advantage in the spirit of competition is appropriate. I will eventually be making a thread on each rule w/ a proposed amendment to it. I expect heavy resistance in each but will do my best to show that each amendment helps the competitive aspect of HoF, and will also expect a LOT better reasoning than "this settings should be on because it's default".
What else? Ah, yes. The 'C' word. Cheating. We are against it.
There's no alternative stance that you or any of the participants with sense could take. Cheating ruins the whole thing. Unfortunately it's probably possible but IMO HoF has impressive counter-measures for it.
Does it finally make sense to declare something to be not fun only because some robot with infinite time can get unbeatable #1? Or some not-robot can get the same jackpot once per a century? etc. etc. Hmm...
This is a competition and is set up as such. The fun is in the competitive aspect. If you want fun originating from random-ness you can have it any time you like w/o competing. Competing on random-ness is ridiculous.
You'll also notice that many of the settings do not add raw luck w/o significantly changing gameplay.
ok, so hitting a golden age the turn before attacking and then selling all gpt to an AI with 15k gold on hand is not ok? The AI always has mass gold on hand and the only way to get it from them is a severe one-sided peace deal, or fleecing. You don't get a portion of their gold on hand when you take a city. It's not 'free' given that you're about to go to war.
You're framing deity and immortal level games again (particularly deity). This tactic's power falls down to joke levels if you go down in difficulties. That fact already makes banning it dubious; we're talking about banning something that only even works at 1 or 2 levels, and even then isn't always the best move...any definition that would allow such to be defined as "exploit" would literally stop people from playing the game at all because 2/3 of all in-game actions would become exploits at that point.
There's non-zero probability that one can win a deity-domination game without building any units at all (actually nothing but "next turn" clicking needed). It's quite simple: AIs just destroy each other and the last capital is captured by a city-state. More over, there's non-zero probability this could be the fastest deity-domination win. Possible solution for this exploit is obvious: ban city-sates…
. Sadly I don't think this is true, as one could just run warrior attacks at astronomical odds to defeat the above "non-zero probability". AI is probably hard-coded not to attack for x time (it has been in every civ so far), which would leave the absolute theoretically fastest finish back to the player.
If someone actually pulls this off, more power to him, though he should probably have been playing the lottery, not civ.
Trading GPT for gold with no intention of keeping the agreement is an exploit and is never acceptable. If you keep the agreement then you are fine.
This is wrong. See above.
Yes, it is an exploit as well. The amout you can get is more limited. The one exception case is as part of your pre-declaration. I would rather ban the exception then broaden it. If I am underestimating the magnatude of what you can get then let me know. We will ban it too.
This is no good. You're banning a situational tactic which falls behind other accepted tactics because of your perception of how the game "should be" and completely ignoring cost tradeoffs. Your logic here is exactly what I was hoping I would NOT find in this thread. If this logic is followed we're literally going to ban war with the AI by the time we're done. You're literally preventing us from making a legit cost-opportunity cost decision, and one that even the AI will make on occasion! I don't see a basis for this definition of exploit at all and it has dangerous implications on gameplay in general because it's so arbitrary.
I would estimate that what you can get for a city can be more than a luxury. In any case, selling cities for gold just so you can take them back is the same in my mind as pillaging resource to break an agreement.
Wrong. Trade + pillage resources gives you 1000 gold for a loss of the resource for 3 turns or however long it takes to rehook the resource. Selling a city and then taking it requires a war declaration and enough investment in military to be capable of re-taking it, and carries all the opportunity costs of a DoW in general. Are you SERIOUSLY trying to tell us that these things are "the same"? The ROI and "consistently useful" aspects between the two are night and day! Everything's going to be an exploit like this...
I agree that judging intent is difficult. We have plenty of examples of what is clear intent. There is only the one exception for luxuries pre-declaration that I am being to regret allowing. Beyond that, intent is inferred from repetition. Same as with barbs pilliaging your luxury. Once might be an accident, twice is streaching credibility. Even once repeated over the course of multiple games streaches credibility. Everyone should avoid even the appearence of impropriety.
This isn't a bad example to judge intent, but you need serious work on your definition of exploit before it can be fairly applied.
For clarity: we're fine selling GPT to the AI as the end draws near, correct? Capitalizing on private information (knowing you're about to achieve a win condition) and exploiting a flawed trading system are two different things in my mind.
Not by the definition we're being given.....
? There are obvious costs to doing this (military preparation, diplo hits, whatever the city could have been doing in the meantime, any buildings lost in conquest) and they can either be reasonable or large enough that the tactic isn't viable. Where's the exploit in that reality?
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