Hall of Fame Rules/FAQ

You're The Boss, 'slug. :worship:

For the record, IMO, if the date and score are tied, the Ranking should be tied......Submission date (viz. Achievement Date) would NOT be a consideration in Most sports! (viz. When the important statistics are tied, the Record is tied!) :)

P.s. You'd better plan on flying to the U.S., boogaboo, else I'm gonna buy Civ 4 and get my 8-turn Aztec victory in before you!...and you'll be Number 2!.....Ha Ha Ha... :lol:
 
EMan said:
You're The Boss, 'slug. :worship:
It's good that you posted this. You have my divine blessing to continue breathing. :borg: :scan:

EMan said:
For the record, IMO, if the date and score are tied, the Ranking should be tied......Submission date (viz. Achievement Date) would NOT be a consideration in Most sports! (viz. When the important statistics are tied, the Record is tied!) :)
I perfectly understand what you're saying, but I really don't like ties on our tables. In some of the cases, it's unlikely the results can be improved upon, and so recognition goes to the player that did it first, even if others did duplicate the achievment later.
 
EMan said:
You're The Boss, 'slug. :worship:

For the record, IMO, if the date and score are tied, the Ranking should be tied......Submission date (viz. Achievement Date) would NOT be a consideration in Most sports! (viz. When the important statistics are tied, the Record is tied!) :)

P.s. You'd better plan on flying to the U.S., boogaboo, else I'm gonna buy Civ 4 and get my 8-turn Aztec victory in before you!...and you'll be Number 2!.....Ha Ha Ha... :lol:

This is not totally true...
There are tons of settings in sports where they cannot accept ties.
Say in the qualification part for the world cup in soccer or baseball or whatever.
They usually have very complicated rules or long rules to make sure ties, and yes there is often the coin toss at the end of the line (if I remember correctly, they had to use it in the last world cup qualif or was it the euro?)
 
'Slug, could you please make yet another ruling re Negative GPT?

At Chieftain level there's no penalty for running a deficit.

An obvious small use of that is to run 100% science throughout a game. And anytime some cash on hand is available (e.g. from trade or from low science rate on last turn of researching a tech) spend it immediately.

I'm wondering about a greater use of a deficit: Set the sliders to zero, gift all of one's income to an AI, then set science back to 100%. The AI might accumulate the gold or might use it. Either way can be turned to advantage. One can trade tech to get accumulated gold back. If an AI spends the gift that might make it a useful research partner.

I think there's a limit to the amount one can gain this way. Only 100% of income can be given away in GPT deals or gifts, after that there's no more available. Still this can theoretically double one's income in a Chieftain game, using 100% of one's funds once to give to AIs and then using it again for science.

It could also be bad at other levels. I'm not sure what the disbanding rule is in the game. If one can predict what will be disbanded when running negative GPT it might prove viable to rush a replacement every turn and still have a considerable net gain.

To ban this, what could the rule be? I don't see where a clear line can be drawn. E.g. suppose I buy a tech from an AI for some amount of GPT and a few turns later I start running at a deficit as explicitly allowed by the current Negative GPT rule. Seems innocent enough. But suppose that the GPT amount I paid for the tech was my entire income, and suppose that the deficit I start running is with 100% science. Now I've reached the same result as if I'd simply given the AI my entire income. (Except I got a tech for it too ;) )

The existing rule seems to allow this exploit because there's no clear line between intended uses of the existing rule and the extreme case of simply gifting 100% of income. It may be that the only way to block this exploit would be to ban any case of Negative GPT. I don't think that would be great solution though. It would be hard to enforce, there are probably cases where it makes sense to run Negative GPT and it isn't exploitive, and it could also put new games at a disadvantage vs. some existing HOF games to change the past ruling. So if there's no way to distinguish different cases of negative GPT then my vote would be to allow this exploit.
 
@ Sir Pleb ~ I am constantly amazed at how your mind works. I don't think I would have though of that possibility....ever. If a rule change is made we will end up being like the the baseball HoF. Certain records will end up with an Asterisk next to them, and the time period will be known as "the Negative GPT Era, similar to the Baseball's "Steroid Era"
 
@SirPleb: You're right, of course!.....you can make money at Chieftain level by, say, running a deficit for 3 turns while researching a tech and then set the Science slider to zero (plus 1 beaker) on the 4th turn to get the tech + cash. (Subject to building/unit "disbandment Rules", it might be a good tactic at ALL levels!? ;) .....Anybody know what those Rules are?)

And, as you point out, you could give the cash or gpt to an AI.

This case of giving cash to the AI though may not do you a whole lot of good. At Chieftain level, because the AI are so backward, the only time I can think of when you may need to give them cash/gpt would be at the end of an era when they get a free tech as a Scientific Civ. But, here again, if it's gpt......you can get around this on ALL levels by giving the gpt and then Declaring War and immediately getting the gpt back!

Being friends, I KNOW you've given this some considerable thought!!......Can you give me an (other) example of a situation, excluding my opening paragraph, where in PRACTICE at Chieftain Level, there is a "Major Exploit" in addition to the plain old negative cash/gpt situation? :)

Bottom Line: Based upon my understanding of the "exploit" so far, I would NOT favor a Rule change. :)
 
SirPleb said:
'Slug, could you please make yet another ruling re Negative GPT?
One of the tactics you mentioned in your post was asked by Dave several pages back, which got termed double-negative gpt and was banned:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2507023&postcount=17

At the time, I didn't really elaborate on my thoughts or reasons. As I should have then, I'll do so now.

Negative GPT is for me a real shady area in regards to an exploit. Even though it's always been "understood" to be an exploit, it wasn't technically banned in the rules. And that's where the problem was. Given that the Hall if at 3 years+ of operation, multiple games had been submitted over the years where use of this tactic is known fact (to me at least).

While I strive for my rulings to be focused on fair gameplay, in this case, the fairness was extremely hazy, and so the decision came down to whether or not to remove games. The ones that I know used this tactic don't have scores or results that don't fit with similar games. As a matter of fact, it many cases negative gpt was used as a crutch, a substitute for more effective research means.

So, the simplest solution seemed to be continuing to allow it, as it was already an unofficial precedent. I did so with extreme reservation, however, given that it might become a "gateway tactic" to other exploits, which is why I was quick to nix double-negative gpt.

Long story short, if you're using negative-gpt as a game strategy, not a single coin of your gold should be going to the AI. It is possible for me to distinguish between negative-gpt and double-negative-gpt. Finally, since I consider negative-gpt to be my most precarious ruling yet, if it starts becoming a gateway to further exploitation, I will immediately reverse my decision and jet the known games.
 
Mistfit said:
If a rule change is made we will end up being like the the baseball HoF. Certain records will end up with an Asterisk next to them, and the time period will be known as "the Negative GPT Era, similar to the Baseball's "Steroid Era"
Never. Games are either in the database or they aren't. The tables are complicated enough as they are.
 
superslug said:
Long story short, if you're using negative-gpt as a game strategy, not a single coin of your gold should be going to the AI. It is possible for me to distinguish between negative-gpt and double-negative-gpt. Finally, since I consider negative-gpt to be my most precarious ruling yet, if it starts becoming a gateway to further exploitation, I will immediately reverse my decision and jet the known games.
Thanks superslug! Your rule gives a nice way to distinguish the allowed from the not allowed. I missed that possibility as a place to draw the line, i.e.:
If running negative gpt (as a game strategy, not an isolated turn) then there must be no gpt going to AIs.

EMan said:
This case of giving cash to the AI though may not do you a whole lot of good.
I've done a test now to see whether the Chieftain AIs are predictable in what they do with excess cash. They don't know what to make of it and bank most of it. I found a way to be even more dastardly and created a "perpetual motion gold machine" as follows:

1) Set sliders to zero. Gift AI#1 all available gpt, let's call this amount X. Set sliders back to 100%.

2) Wait 10 turns. (You can change this amount of time or even skip this step. Waiting less time for this slightly increases long term gain but requires more AIs in the game as will be seen when you've read the entire process.) Repeat step 1 with AI#2. Usually growth over a 10 turn period means one's income has grown a bit and there's additional gpt available even after the payments to AI#1.

3) 19 turns after step 1, sell a tech to AI#1 for all their gold and all their gpt. I was usually able to get 80 to 90% of the gpt I paid them in step 1 at this point. [edit]Spend the harvested cash immediately of course, otherwise our ongoing deficit spending will waste it.[/edit]

4) In the same turn as step 3, repeat step 1 with AI#3, i.e. set sliders to zero and gift them all available gpt. This gpt amount will now include the part of X coming back from AI#1 as well as any increased income from the last 9 turns.

Now two exploitive things have happened:

1. In step 3 we got back most of the gold we'd have had if running with the sliders at zero for those 19 turns. AI#1 has banked it for us. We had our cake and ate it too :) In practice I was getting techs more rapidly than 19 turns and I "withdrew" the accumulated gold from the AI every 5 or 6 turns or so. I'm not sure they'd actually bank it for the full 19 turns, might as well make regular withdrawals.

2. This part is really wicked. After step 4 above, for the next 20 turns X gpt will flow from AI#1 through us to AI#3. And after one turn it comes from AI#1 running at a deficit - we've created an additional X gpt from thin air! Above and beyond our own income.

As time goes on, repeat step 4 with every AI as it approaches the end of a gpt deal we are paying. You need to cycle through the AIs, not gifting any AI anything until they finish their most recent 20 turns of deficit payments to you. Each time step 4 is repeated the amount of gold being created from thin air increases. It never goes down - each newly created X stays in play as long as we like.

I'm glad superslug has found a clear rule to disallow the exploit :)
 
SirPleb said:
I'm glad superslug has found a clear rule to disallow the exploit :)
Eh, I'm just doing my job. Thank DaveMcW's imagination for coming up with the idea first.
 
I checked back in saves for my current chieftain 100k game, and it seems like I paid an AI 19gpt for one of their free techs when entering IA, while still running deficit research after this.
I never sold anything else to any AI after this to get the money back (no point when running deficit and in communism), and I could have gotten out of the payment by simply declaring war on them the same turn.

Should I just abandon the game now, or should I keep playing? (looks like I will get a win in 900Ad-930AD range)
 
GULP! Before throwing away my gold machine tests I just did one more test and found an outrageous loophole which makes all that unnecessary. It seems that as long as you have any positive gpt capacity, you can gift the AI any amount of gold. If you are making 1gpt, give them 900gpt! Then run at a deficit and harvest the gold the AI banks. Very ugly but much simpler than my prior approach where I assumed one could not spend over one's income. Fortunately this variant is also covered by superslug's ruling.
 
Gyathaar said:
Should I just abandon the game now, or should I keep playing? (looks like I will get a win in 900Ad-930AD range)
Yes, I'm afraid you should. Even if you didn't get your money back, since you're running negative gpt, it seems you got a free tech, which really doesn't exist. Even "free" techs cost something, the exploratory unit that pops the hut, the tech you trade for the tech, the building/conquest of the Glib, etc.
 
SirPleb said:
Before throwing away my gold machine tests I just did one more test and found an outrageous loophole which makes all that unnecessary. It seems that as long as you have any positive gpt capacity, you can gift the AI any amount of gold.
You're right, very outrageous, and right again in pointing out my ruling makes this very illegal.
 
First, on this Valentine's Day, congratulations to superslug ("The Chief") on the fine job he has been doing since taking over the Hall Of Fame. Your enthusiasm, Player help, Rules discussion and decision-making are to be commended! :goodjob:

Now, down to business!
Some suggestions/comments/questions/opinions:

1. KEEPING RULES CURRENT.
Players, Rookies and Veterans alike, look to the Green/Orange/Red Rules at the #3 Post of this thread. As time passes, Rules are added or modified here in the bowels of the Thread. It would be useful to know that the Rules are CURRENT....that it's not necessary to read the whole thread to find out the latest Rule Set.

2. BANNED RULES IN RED SECTION.
A Player might ask herself: "Is that DISALLOWED in the HOF?"......"I know, I'll look under the Red Rules section in the HOF Rules thread"...."It's not there, therefore it must be okay!"
However in Rule 17G (for Green) it says in part: "....You may not add workers and/or settlers to rioting cities." If this were also stated in the Red Rules, a Player would be sure to see it as a Banned Tactic.

3. EFFICIENCY.
It would be good to have the "changeable" (viz. Red/Orange/Green) "HOF Rules", stand-alone, in the FIRST thread (Sticky) of the sub-forum.....for Fast Access to the latest Rule Set.
Also, when discussing a Rule such as the "Double Negative gpt", perhaps we could refer to it as, for example, "Rule 10R" in repeated references, for convenience and clarity.
So......number the Rules.

4. DOUBLE NEGATIVE GPT.
Suggested wording in Red Rules:
"Whereas Single Negative GPT is permitted (See Rule 16G), Double Negative gpt differs in that an AI is involved in a Trade deal AND the Player gains gpt PLUS science/happiness BETWEEN turns. (Effectively earning TWICE.)

What is allowed is trading with an AI in ANY way, provided a "Gpt Deal" does not continue "between turns" while ALSO maintaining a Negative Gpt".

For example, Rule 11G: Upfront gpt followed by Declaration Of War to get the gpt back...this would be okay as ALL activity could take place THIS turn.

5. RULE 12G: POP-RUSHING.
This Rule states that you can Pop-Rush citizens to finish Buildings/Units.

The issue that isn't addressed, and MAY be a Red Rule, is whether it is allowable to add a Worker or Settler to a City in order to Pop-Rush?
So, as it stands at the moment is it okay to do that?

In later Civ 3 patches, FIRAXIS increased the penalty for Pop-Rushing. (viz. Something along the lines of: "For each citizen sacrificed, 1 Happy Citizen becomes Unhappy for 20 turns.")

*********

So that's my V-Day "Gift" to the HOF! :lol:

The above thoughts are not intended to be a "Valentine's Day Massacre"...........just some ideas and ways of improving the HOF........it's already, IMO, a "World-Class Institution" and integral part of the CivFanatics' site. :)
 
EMan said:
The above thoughts are not intended to be a "Valentine's Day Massacre"...........just some ideas and ways of improving the HOF........
The Rules posts at the beginning of this thread do need updating. The reason this hasn't happened so much the last week has been my time travelling, as well as some pending updating on issues that aren't currently publicly known. (Relax, the unknown issue is more a preventive measure than anything else.)

I will get the thread revised with the next update, which is slated for this week. It might even be today if I have time.

In regards to splitting the Rules off from the FAQ, that won't happen. The Rules are accessible in the first seven posts. Since I'm not a moderator, I wouldn't have access to a locked Rules-only thread without bugging a mod everytime I needed a change, and if it were unlocked, we'd have two stickied threads getting posts in it.
 
punkbass2000 said:
"The reason this hasn't happened so much the last week has been my time travelling"

So we can expect it yesterday? ;)
Yes, you can probably expect it yesterday the day after tomorrow. :scan: :borg:
 
SirPleb said:
GULP! Before throwing away my gold machine tests I just did one more test and found an outrageous loophole which makes all that unnecessary. It seems that as long as you have any positive gpt capacity, you can gift the AI any amount of gold. If you are making 1gpt, give them 900gpt! Then run at a deficit and harvest the gold the AI banks. Very ugly but much simpler than my prior approach where I assumed one could not spend over one's income. Fortunately this variant is also covered by superslug's ruling.

For the record, I believe that this exploit/loophole is ONLY for C3C game! PTW and vanilla Civ3 won't allow this exploit! Of course, in vanilla Civ3 and PTW, the palace ranking exploit would provide the mean for 4 turns per research while maintaining a positive gold income in every turn.
 
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