The world at your feet

trada said:

Of course, as I did point out in this thread back in 07, you don't need to copy a file over in order to reload your movement points. You just need to save/reload your game..

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This is what the ancient "cheat" file says, but it's never worked for me in versions 4 and 5. What version do you play?

Oh, I've never done the cheat. I don't use them. In fact, since I first lurked these forums during the Civ1 forum GA I've gone out of my way to ignore any explanation of cheats. For instans, I still don't know the Fast Settler cheat. wooat!

trada said:

Of course, as I did point out in this thread back in 07, you don't need to copy a file over in order to reload your movement points. You just need to save/reload your game

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If what you say here would be correct, you would have a point of course. But is it? What you describe has never worked for me, nor for Whelkman. I've tried this years ago (after reading about different "cheats" online) in CivDOS v01 and v05 (haven't been able to find the other patches for some time, if you have them, I'd love to try them out) without any success. The online FAQs are not always right you know.

The reason it was necro'd was because it was brought up (by Whelkman) and discussed in another thread started by me just a week ago or so. I hadn't noticed this/wasn't aware of this until then.

Whelkman said:

This is what the ancient "cheat" file says, but it's never worked for me in versions 4 and 5. What version do you play?

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Exactly!

Fascinating.

How people can argue. It's fascinating.

This is definately a hack if you ask from me

After reading through these forums a bit, I noticed that people keep talking a lot about these different kinds of cheats. "Sentry-cheats", "Settler-cheats", "Battle manipulation" and all kinds of "legit cheats" which (this I found most preposterous) must be used in order to retain competitiveness Geez.. After reading few threads, your list of highscores lost its value completely for me..

I wonder.. is there anybody here who plays the game fair? Or have you found it too hard? I would downgrade the difficulty instead of constant restarting of the game or any of this other cheating stuff.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And when your transport full of artilleries gets flushed by a frigate, it really eats, but those are experiences that belong into the game from my point of view.

What do you think about using these "cheats" that Sid clearly didn't mean to be used? I've sticked to CIV1 since I think it's a legendary game and I don't like the graphics on any newer version I find the angle very irritating as well, when compared to great one of CIV1 8)

We would argue that leveraging these "cheats" makes the game more challenging since it increases the amount of available options and allows for larger empires. Not only can we play at Emperor (though I usually stick to Chieftain), some of us have modified the game to allow for even more challenging difficulty levels (and higher Civ%). Our games plan moves 50-100 turns ahead.

Though I don't care one way or the other since I bought the game and will do whatever I please with it, I'm reasonably certain Meier would approve of this playing style. He obviously intended for a variety of scenarios, and these tricks have kept the game fresh and open for debate (obviously). I would have lost interest in Civilization years ago if it lacked the exploits.

The majority of this community plays the game "legit". Only a few of us explore the game's limits.

muppa said:

This is definately a hack if you ask from me


I wonder.. is there anybody here who plays the game fair? Or have you found it too hard? I would downgrade the difficulty instead of constant restarting of the game or any of this other cheating stuff.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And when your transport full of artilleries gets flushed by a frigate, it really eats, but those are experiences that belong into the game from my point of view.

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What a healthy attitude. I wholeheartedly agree with that post. The problem is that with these god games, power corrupts! And the appeal of changing the rules of life is fascinating.

However, I really don't think it matters whether you hack the code or use the instant irrigate cheat, or the save cheat. Cheating is cheating. You either do it without a care or don't do it at all. It's like saying some ways of killing people are good and some not - the end product is the same.

Having said that, Dack's work is brilliant.

Using fast settler doesn't compare to killing people at all.

Certain 'cheats' can't be tracked at all, such as the reload cheat. Thus you have to use them to stay competitive, because your competitors will. Any serious player will know this.

The Settlers 'cheat' can be tracked, sort of. But enforcing a "no Settlers 'cheat'" rule would be very harsh on the players, as it would really limit their options and hamper their game. Just consider this: An enemy Legion suddenly appears next to your Settlers that's busy irrigating a plains square. Waking up the Settlers would invoke the Settlers 'cheat', regardless of your intention. Not waking it up would mean almost certain death (unless using the reload 'cheat' of course). And what about when you quickly need to build that road, clear that pollution, etc or just regret issuing that work action? Waking up a busy Settlers always invokes the Settlers 'cheat'. If you start to allow any exceptions, such as when a Settlers is threatened by the enemy, pollution has occurred, a good city spot has been found, etc, these exceptions immediately put an impossible workload on any supervisor(s) of the competitive environment. Thus such rules are in practice impossible to maintain, unless all exceptions are explicit and clear enough for a bot (program) to interpret and evaluate.

As for my own private games, avoiding the Settlers 'cheat' would require too much effort and discipline to ever bother not to do it (I mean, c'mon...). I mostly avoid the reload 'cheat' and TWAYF though (you don't accidentally do those all the time, this holds especially true for the latter). I am a reload junkie for avoiding enemy Wonders and Barbarians from Goody Huts though (other than that I don't cherry pick them).

I do use the Sentry and Settlers 'cheats' all the time, every game.

Sentry-move is also utilized in normal play. You must use it to activate boarded units when stationing transport vessels in cities (because the units are still sentried upon docking). Though the behavior can be leveraged for infinite movement at sea, the ability to activate sentried units within a turn was clearly intentional.

muppa said:

This is definately a hack if you ask from me

After reading through these forums a bit, I noticed that people keep talking a lot about these different kinds of cheats. "Sentry-cheats", "Settler-cheats", "Battle manipulation" and all kinds of "legit cheats" which (this I found most preposterous) must be used in order to retain competitiveness Geez.. After reading few threads, your list of highscores lost its value completely for me..

I wonder.. is there anybody here who plays the game fair? Or have you found it too hard? I would downgrade the difficulty instead of constant restarting of the game or any of this other cheating stuff.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And when your transport full of artilleries gets flushed by a frigate, it really eats, but those are experiences that belong into the game from my point of view.

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I totally agree! In my point of view, I play fair. The only questionable thing I do is to buy units (mainly settlers) for the price of buildings (usually barracks). I started by rejecting this option but later my thoughts about it have changed. Now, I think that this is not cheating although it is clearly a game feature that was unintentional. But I agree that we're moving on muddy waters here.

I'm proud to say that I never never never reloaded a game just because I lost a battle or I found barbarians when I was looking for coins. Not even when my capitol got captured by barbarians and I had to rebuild the Palace and pay 3 or 4 precious coins every single turn from that moment on.

But of course Whelkhman is right when he says he can play as he wishes since he bought a copy of the game. That's not the question. Of course he (and others) has all the legal rights to play whatever way he wishes. For me, this game mimmicks life and in life you don't have a second chance to do things. I can't say «Oops, I got fired. Let's reload the game».

Concluding, everyone is right in their own way of playing. To cheat or not to cheat is more a philosophical question. People are very different. The important thing is that we all find a lot of pleasure, not only playing but also discussing this game.

First off, I don't see the "Settler Cheat" as a cheat in any way. That's just a feature of the game. It so happens that if you activate a working Settler, the li'l cutie can do something new instantaneously. It would be weird to avoid waking up a settler out of fear of "cheating"...

Sencondly, I see no problem with buying a city improvement and changing production to a military unit. Sure, subsequent Civ games made that trick impossible, and so clearly the designers recognized the potential for "abuse" -- but it isn't always useful, anyway: most units' production costs don't match up to those of improvements.

These things being said, we now approach the realm of true "cheating": anything which involves saving the game and reloading will take some element of risk and randomness out of the game experience (even if it's just saving in case that hut contains barbarians). Now, mind you, I don't think this is bad; I will often save for the very reason I just mentioned (avoiding "You have unleashed a horde of barbarians!"). Typically, though, I will only save for that reason, when I'm playing a game on King level. I like the unpredictable setbacks: they make the "story" of my game interesting.

I have played "experimental" games, too: seeing how many cities and how large a population I could manage (using the Earth map), for instance. In these scenarios I save before every battle, because I'm not playing for the challenge, but in order to shape the world according to some preconceived plan. But after a couple of such games, I found that I rather preferred the good old-fashioned King level "just try to win" games.

As far as the manipulating of saved files, that goes a bit too far for my tastes. I can imagine having explored one's whole continent (or even world) before 3980 BC, and while it would clearly be useful for knowing where to build all one's cities, and where to send one's first caravan-and-diplomat-laden triremes, it just seems to take a little fun out of play (for me): I actually enjoy the "surprise" of seeing an irrigated square on some distant shore, and the wonderment that occurs when I see the first enemy unit, and first enemy city, and first enemy capital, from a ship or with a tentatively advancing diplomat.

I do have a question about Emperor level, though: it seems that regular play is destined to lose on that level, unless you are extremely lucky at the start (e.g. two Settlers, tons of rivers and hills and bonus squares, having one's own small continent, etc.). I'll ask about this in a new thread.

Blinking Joy said:

I have played "experimental" games, too: seeing how many cities and how large a population I could manage (using the Earth map), for instance. In these scenarios I save before every battle, because I'm not playing for the challenge, but in order to shape the world according to some preconceived plan. But after a couple of such games, I found that I rather preferred the good old-fashioned King level "just try to win" games.

As far as the manipulating of saved files, that goes a bit too far for my tastes. I can imagine having explored one's whole continent (or even world) before 3980 BC, and while it would clearly be useful for knowing where to build all one's cities, and where to send one's first caravan-and-diplomat-laden triremes, it just seems to take a little fun out of play (for me): I actually enjoy the "surprise" of seeing an irrigated square on some distant shore, and the wonderment that occurs when I see the first enemy unit, and first enemy city, and first enemy capital, from a ship or with a tentatively advancing diplomat.

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Thanks for writing in such an intelligent and poignant way! These are also my feelings about the game. I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty to turn some parts of the text (my favourites) to bold. Besides the first contact with other civs, I also enjoy when I'm finally 100% sure that I'm all alone in a continent.

Blinking Joy said:

I actually enjoy the "surprise" of seeing an irrigated square on some distant shore, and the wonderment that occurs when I see the first enemy unit, and first enemy city, and first enemy capital, from a ship or with a tentatively advancing diplomat.

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I love this too. I particularly savor the irrigated (or otherwise developed) square.

I remember once feeling scared/startled for a brief moment with the shock of seeing an advancing ememy cannon, even though the left side of my brain knew my empire was not really threatened. And this was recently, even after all these years.

At the same time, kudos to Whelkman and others that enjoy squeezing every drop they can get out of the game... I enjoy reading about it.