What is the earliest WHEEORN you have seen?

It does tell you nothing, you could not see in the normal diplomatic interface. It simply makes it so that you don't have to talk to everyone every turn. No cheating at all, unaltered gameplay.

Call whatever you want, i call it cheating, you have to discover on YOUR OWN what is going on, not some funky mod tells you cause you're too lazy to make a bunch of spyes and manage the espionage sphere.
 
Call whatever you want, i call it cheating, you have to discover on YOUR OWN what is going on, not some funky mod tells you cause you're too lazy to make a bunch of spyes and manage the espionage sphere.

You can call a mouse the same thing as the ocean also, but that wouldn't be true either.

You can readily tell when an AI is plotting war in the base game by mousing over a target to declare war and seeing why the AI refuses (if it does). "we have enough on our hands right now" means they're at war or plotting war. You don't need espionage, you just need to bring up the trade screen. (Edit: I see this was explained BEFORE you claimed it's cheating. Making your argument after seeing that is seriously sour.)

Bringing up the trade screen every single turn for multiple AI is a serious chore, however, so UI changes that DON'T force the player to spend 5x the time (but 0 extra in game resources) to do the same thing are welcome.

Possibly before asserting the mod is cheating it would be nice to understand the mechanics of the base game ;). BUG/BUFFY doesn't give players any information that you can't get through menus available in the base game. Any claim of cheating isn't a matter of opinion, but rather just false.

Thank You, King
And yes, I agree. Its cheating.

D-d-d-d-double failure! It is by definition *not* cheating, unless you consider using the UI provided by firaxis to play the game cheating.

What's next, pressing "I" to farm instead of clicking on the farm button is cheating? Opening f4 to check an AI's favorite civic is cheating? Playing single player is cheating? Might as well be at that point :rolleyes:.
 
While I won't go as far as calling it cheating, (since it's obvious that the information is available already) we don't use it in MP if any AIs are included to fill the map. MP is more than just about strat. It's also about speed and sacrifice. Sometimes you don't have time to micro manage your cities every turn and a new citizen becomes a spy specialist for a few turns till you get a chance to notice it. Modified stack attacks are necessary so you get all the combat in leads to more losses than picking unit by unit. Everything is a trade off. (heck there are parts of the game where I automate workers or put them to sleep since I don't have time to optimize them) There's a time cost to checking to see the status of an AI. We prefer that those limitations are in the game. It does make it considerable more intense.

Having said all that, I'm looking for a mod for SP games to test my skills further on Deity, and I see how tools like this could speed up the game and let me play more. And I just love to see the results of some of the effort put forth from the user community that I wish the game company would have considered. But definitely not a cheat.
 
While I won't go as far as calling it cheating, (since it's obvious that the information is available already) we don't use it in MP if any AIs are included to fill the map. MP is more than just about strat. It's also about speed and sacrifice. Sometimes you don't have time to micro manage your cities every turn and a new citizen becomes a spy specialist for a few turns till you get a chance to notice it.

That depends on how fast you play.

To me, a blazing timer doesn't feel very fast at all, and I only have to cut micro during close wars. There's really no way to enforce people not using this trick on the AI in MP.

Also, AI in MP are *targets*, and anybody who spawns near one is at a large advantage.

While tedious, each AI check is less than 2 seconds once you're practiced (control click to pull up trade screen directly, mouse wheel down, read message, slam escape). Generally you won't have more than 1-2 AI that are actual threats in a MP game (IE close enough to declare on you and dislikes you), so you lose <4 seconds/turn and likely <2 checking it. Some turns that matters, but not most.
 
Also, AI in MP are *targets*, and anybody who spawns near one is at a large advantage.

Correct, with the only exception of multiple dog piling while you're at war with another human.
While you're fighting another human is when time is most critical.

And how often do you really check during an MP game? If I did it every turn, I would go insane.
 
I've seen so many people in forums making long-arse replies trying to defend their meaningless opinions (like someone pretending to say North Korea is communist so he could blame the evil-communist-ideology). Iit's not easy to understand if someone is going to war me, as i don't know the game mechanics since i never bothered reading the XML or some other programmer's stuff. Regular player has chance to understand or pretend to forecast an enemy attack before only throught spying, seeing where other civs are placing their stacks-of-doom, or just giving a look to other civs forces, and come to conclusions after seeing that leader is annoyed or furious at you. Now i'll tell you why this is cheating. I was playing Egypt and had friendly relations with Catherine, then he DoW on me. Now, if i had that weirdo mod installed, i could've had chance to understand that she could be going for me, perhaps. However enough said, i'll never be using this lame feature anyways.
 
The point they're trying to make is that you don't need the mod to know that. It just takes an extra click. Which is why I agree that it's not a cheat. It's just a lazy man's tool. And considering how much time it might save over the course of the year, I can see it's value even though I don't use it.

And even then. A bribe triggered instant war means neither method would warn you or just because they're in that state, doesn't necessarily tell you the target.
 
I've seen so many people in forums making long-arse replies trying to defend their meaningless opinions (like someone pretending to say North Korea is communist so he could blame the evil-communist-ideology). Iit's not easy to understand if someone is going to war me, as i don't know the game mechanics since i never bothered reading the XML or some other programmer's stuff. Regular player has chance to understand or pretend to forecast an enemy attack before only throught spying, seeing where other civs are placing their stacks-of-doom, or just giving a look to other civs forces, and come to conclusions after seeing that leader is annoyed or furious at you. Now i'll tell you why this is cheating. I was playing Egypt and had friendly relations with Catherine, then he DoW on me. Now, if i had that weirdo mod installed, i could've had chance to understand that she could be going for me, perhaps. However enough said, i'll never be using this lame feature anyways.

I don't use the BUG mod because I play on a Mac. I think it's obvious that the "red fist" feature gives an advantage in terms of gameplay because with it one doesn't need to spend time checking out the diplo screens of all the AIs.

However, I think you're mistaken that the only way to predict an AI DOW is through espionage, etc. I usually keep a couple units wandering around on my borders to spot loitering AI stacks.

I also check the tech trade screen almost every turn, and one can see if an AI has gone into WHEOOHRN mode there. On higher levels one would be checking for tech trades almost every turn *anyway* and trying to find possible ways to bribe AIs to war against each other, etc.

So the "red fist" is a slight advantage, and I envy players who can use it, but it's not cheating.
 
However, I think you're mistaken that the only way to predict an AI DOW is through espionage, etc. I usually keep a couple units wandering around on my borders to spot loitering AI stacks.

Yeah when an AI city on your border is hosting a SOD and that SOD moves out of that city, you can safely guess that war with someone is coming and the direction the stack moves gives you a pretty good hint.
 
I've seen so many people in forums making long-arse replies trying to defend their meaningless opinions (like someone pretending to say North Korea is communist so he could blame the evil-communist-ideology). Iit's not easy to understand if someone is going to war me, as i don't know the game mechanics since i never bothered reading the XML or some other programmer's stuff. Regular player has chance to understand or pretend to forecast an enemy attack before only throught spying, seeing where other civs are placing their stacks-of-doom, or just giving a look to other civs forces, and come to conclusions after seeing that leader is annoyed or furious at you. Now i'll tell you why this is cheating. I was playing Egypt and had friendly relations with Catherine, then he DoW on me. Now, if i had that weirdo mod installed, i could've had chance to understand that she could be going for me, perhaps. However enough said, i'll never be using this lame feature anyways.

LOLOLOL. Man you gotta be one of the most stubborn people I have ever seen on here. I really like how you thought good relations with an AI who was probably just cautious was good relations. What makes someone a regular player? Being completely blind about how the game works? If so they are pretty rare and far between! You are taking information gathering in Civ way to literally, hell even in the real world you don't need spies to see what other nations feel about each other. Besides the mod doesn't tell you who they are going to attack, just that they have entered WHEOOH mode. Oh one last thing, why does then HoF allow cheating in your opinion then?
 
Well, that is a quite ... interesting position to have, the one that BUG red fist usage is cheating because it cuts time. It is like saying that Alt+ click in the leader name for a DoW is cheating, because there is the more lenghty option of opening the diplo window and make some more clicks :p
 
I've always used the Alt+ click and didn't know there was another way except for moving into someone's land with OB and getting prompted. :lol: I must be a big cheater.
 
When your time playing the game is precious and limited, something that can save maybe 2-3 minutes a game over the course of 300-400 turns is pretty meaningful, I'd say...especially if it's just giving the same information that would be available in the base game anyway, just saving you some clicks. Makes no sense to call that cheating - simply a time saver. It's not like it tells you who they're plotting war against - that would perhaps be more akin to cheating.

It's really no different than the bar that tells you where & when the next great person is coming from. A time saver that avoids me having to go into every city to find that info out.
 
I've seen so many people in forums making long-arse replies trying to defend their meaningless opinions (like someone pretending to say North Korea is communist so he could blame the evil-communist-ideology). Iit's not easy to understand if someone is going to war me, as i don't know the game mechanics since i never bothered reading the XML or some other programmer's stuff. Regular player has chance to understand or pretend to forecast an enemy attack before only throught spying, seeing where other civs are placing their stacks-of-doom, or just giving a look to other civs forces, and come to conclusions after seeing that leader is annoyed or furious at you. Now i'll tell you why this is cheating. I was playing Egypt and had friendly relations with Catherine, then he DoW on me. Now, if i had that weirdo mod installed, i could've had chance to understand that she could be going for me, perhaps. However enough said, i'll never be using this lame feature anyways.

Congrats on missing that you could know that she was plotting war using 0 espionage in the base game. A second time.

There's no room for opinion here. You are factually wrong to assert this is cheating. That argument fails by definition. Just because you don't know enough about playing the game to realize that you could tell doesn't mean that you couldn't.

Implying that the vast majority of the community (and especially people who play at a decent level) cheat because they do something the game provides that you don't understand is really sour...especially since more than one person has already pointed out how you can find these kinds of things out in the base game.

Knowing the AI is plotting war never had anything to do with spying, mods or not.
 
It does tell you nothing, you could not see in the normal diplomatic interface. It simply makes it so that you don't have to talk to everyone every turn. No cheating at all, unaltered gameplay.

Exactly.

Not cheating at all; you see this in the diplo window when you contact other civs... BUG only makes it visible in the main window, which is a plus.

You should really go BUG... nothing is ever the same after using BUG. I wish the "civ5" designers (wannabees?) would have learned something about UI from the BUG team...
 
I don't use the BUG mod because I play on a Mac. &#8230;&#8230;..

So the "red fist" is a slight advantage, and I envy players who can use it, but it's not cheating.

You can use BUG Mod. I also use a Mac and I use BUG Mod. You have to delete one line to use it. Go to the Mac forum and check out one of the threads there that discuss this in detail. (Or search my posts, since I have reposted the explanation several times.)

EDIT: I took a quick look in the Mac forum. Here is a brief thread that will tell you what to do:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=446948
 
Doesn't HOF mod have BUG included in it?

Oh nos, disqualify them all for cheating!!!111 -_-

Wait til people find out that the mod tells you what they'll trade. :o

Also, there is no such thing as cheating in a single player game. The only time you are cheating is in a situation involving more than one person and you do something beyond what was agreed upon.

Now of course if you use worldbuilder and brag about it, it's not actually cheating, it's just that nobody will take you seriously. Now if you used worldbuilder and fail to bring that up or just deny it, then you are being dishonest if you were bringing something up for comparison and thus cheating. BUG mod is much less severe than such, and honestly if one wants to judge down people's skills because of it, then that's pretty laughable.
 
Call whatever you want, i call it cheating, you have to discover on YOUR OWN what is going on, not some funky mod tells you cause you're too lazy to make a bunch of spyes and manage the espionage sphere.

LOLOLOL :D

I'm a Deity player, you're a boon, do you think I would succeed if I wouldn't "manage the espionage sphere" and check border-cities every turn? :D

Again, read: The mod tells you nothing you couldn't know from checking the unaltered Diplo-Screen, it doesn't tell you whom the AI will go to war with, just that it is planning for one, and you get to know that in a Vanilla-Version of Civ 4 too! It's just that you don't know it, and because you don't know it, you suppose others to not know it, and because you wanna rationalize your laziness of not reading and not knowing by saying it's cheating, but it isn't :D

You saved my day today :D
 
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