The Mechanics of Overflow Inflation

I've got from the Renaissance era to the Internet before I ran out of steam by bulbing only one GS. I was waiting until I reached the Industrial era but Monty DOWed me leaving me with one city. I finished having to complete combustion in 177 turns......

You don't need to start the exploit but use the mechanic legitimately. You can purposefully research techs to 1 turn then research another, creating your own overflow(although not very large). Any overflow got from RA's or GS bulbs can be spent in techs that wouldn't result in a 1 turn completion, thus breaking the exploit.

this ruins the game as doing it is almost equivalent cheating. and it is very tempting. no more thrill anymore as soon as the overflow starts to snowball. all i can do is calculate carefully not hit the limit.

phillipwyllie said:

You can purposefully research techs to 1 turn then research another, creating your own overflow(although not very large)

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It's only not an exploit if you are the last civ to research that tech when you leave it at 1 turn. In my trial run of this as Korea (in a game I started to get the taekwon-DOH! achievement funnily enough), I achieved 300 overflow by teching combustion first then leaving it for the other 11 AI's to complete - that isn't much for the era, but if scholars has been enacted & sailing is still un-researched.....

They should just scrap the multiplier on overflow, you already get a reduced tech beaker cost if it has already been researched. Just carry forward the beakers remaining once the last deduction for the tech has been made.

Exploit as it is,I don't think using overflow should be called "cheating".It makes the game "easier" indeed,but to win a game is one thing-to win your first deity play you may have tried anything-to improve your skill is another.How easy it is to win in a map depends on the map itself and the civilization you choose,overflow makes things easier;But how fast you can achieve victory in this map depends on your skills,and overflow is not the optimal solution.It pushes you towards it.Overflow has its own limitation,as mentioned above,and this limitation is within-not beyond-the reach of normal play.If you want to make a new record you can't just use overflow,it's not that powerful.To break through the limitation you have to combine overflow with normal play.And that makes the game even more challenging.

well overflow being multiplied by modifiers is clearly unintentional by devs, so overusing this is just exploiting and further dumbing down the game.

And its not like the game isnt easy enough allready ...

One more thing to add on this: I've been saying for a long time that GS are bugged in general, and that all science victories should be considered an exploit.

A GS spawned when you have 150bpt should not bulb 8k beakers later. GS saving like this is stupid and unbalanced. It should work more like musicians: Same logic as current GS except the amount is fixed after spawn. That way, the decision would be "bulb now or plant academy?" as it SHOULD BE. Same with Great Writers.

Of course, we don't know for a fact that using GS this way is an exploit, because Firaxis may have intended it. But in my mind, this has always been broken and stupid, even if not technically an exploit.

How is saving all GS until you have super high tech rate and then bulbing them to finish the tree quickly all *that* different from the Overflow Exploit? It's basically the same "finish the tree in 30 turns" garbage. Just my two cents.

Fallen_Kings said:

Exploit as it is,I don't think using overflow should be called "cheating".It makes the game "easier" indeed,but to win a game is one thing-to win your first deity play you may have tried anything-to improve your skill is another.How easy it is to win in a map depends on the map itself and the civilization you choose,overflow makes things easier;But how fast you can achieve victory in this map depends on your skills,and overflow is not the optimal solution.It pushes you towards it.Overflow has its own limitation,as mentioned above,and this limitation is within-not beyond-the reach of normal play.If you want to make a new record you can't just use overflow,it's not that powerful.To break through the limitation you have to combine overflow with normal play.And that makes the game even more challenging.

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You're half right, IMHO. Players who struggle to survive the early turns on Deity will still struggle to survive the early turns. However, this exploit is almost a guaranteed victory if you can just make it to the mid-game. A lot of people can "hang on" in Civ on Deity until t200+ without being eliminated, but very few can actually win. This changes that.

However, optimizing use of it to win record finishes is INDEED very challenging. It does you no good to finish the tech tree on t170 if you don't have a solid empire, and most people aren't good enough at the first 100 turns. As a result, they'll be looking at spaceship part build times of 40 turns, and they'll still have to build Apollo first... another 30 turns. Like I said, you're half right.

I think the exploit IS fun to play with, but it has made playing normally less fun for me. And I think most Deity players would agree.

EDIT: Not to sound ungrateful to you, Fallen_Kings, for making us all aware of this. Thank you for that! And it's hardly the only unbalanced/broken thing about Deity play. I have a long laundry list of concerns I wish the devs would address. But this is definitely #1 now, by a mile.

Cromagnus said:

One more thing to add on this: I've been saying for a long time that GS are bugged in general, and that all science victories should be considered an exploit.

A GS spawned when you have 150bpt should not bulb 8k beakers later. GS saving like this is stupid and unbalanced. It should work more like musicians: Same logic as current GS except the amount is fixed after spawn. That way, the decision would be "bulb now or plant academy?" as it SHOULD BE. Same with Great Writers.

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Would change the game a lot, make it harder. But I like it.

Though -- unlike Tourism, science output fluctuates a decent amount, and culture even more (e.g., Golden Age or no?). It'd be annoying to have to try to time GS/GW production to maximize how many beakers they're worth. Though it would seem pretty easy to fix this -- have the GS kick out 8*90% of your max bpt, have the GW kick out 8*120% of your max culture per turn, something like that.

Science output doesn't really fluctuate.. it just goes up. Your point about GW is true, but it's no different IMHO than the current situation, it just allows you to exploit it less. You could probably only get 2 GW during World's Fair vs 3-4. Timing your first GW to finish when World's Fair comes out is trivial IMHO since you can control the points/turn.

Right now, with faith-purchasing and Wonders, you can easily bulb 6 GW during World's Fair, which again, to me, seems broken. Making it so that you had to build/buy them during World's Fair would feel more balanced to me. Matter of opinion though.

On a totally unrelated note, I wish Great Musicians weren't *completely* useless early. At least GW and GS give *some* value with early bulbing. Early GM tours are a tiny drop in the bucket. Unlike GW/GS which could give you an early policy or tech, GM don't do ANYTHING early.

Cromagnus said:

Science output doesn't really fluctuate.. it just goes up. Your point about GW is true, but it's no different IMHO than the current situation, it just allows you to exploit it less. You could probably only get 2 GW during World's Fair vs 3-4. Timing your first GW to finish when World's Fair comes out is trivial IMHO since you can control the points/turn.

Right now, with faith-purchasing and Wonders, you can easily bulb 6 GW during World's Fair, which again, to me, seems broken. Making it so that you had to build/buy them during World's Fair would feel more balanced to me. Matter of opinion though.

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Re your 2nd point, I agree completely.
Re your 1st point, I would say that science does fluctuate a bit -- if you go unhappy, you lose 10% if you're in Rationalism, and there can be quite a difference between maxing out specialists vs not -- at least another 10-15%.

Also, yeah, you can control points/turn, but I find city micromanagement to be really dull. Part of the reason I tend to play Immortal, I think, instead of Deity.

Civ without Micromanagement is like... a totally different game. I can't even imagine playing that way anymore. No point in worrying about optimal victory times or exploits if you're not even doing that. Just play!

Cromagnus said:

Civ without Micromanagement is like... a totally different game. I can't even imagine playing that way anymore. No point in worrying about optimal victory times or exploits if you're not even doing that. Just play!

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Well, I micromanage a little -- I manually control specialists, for instance, and sometimes even remember to redo the setup after building science buildings . And I'll lock down specific tiles sometimes. But the mega-micromanagement where you lock down every single tile you want, revisit every city after it grows, etc., I rarely do that. Tooooo lazy.

That's what I don't like about this exploit -- its effect is huge. Just because I'm not trying to get the most optimal victory time doesn't mean I don't have vague goals like a SV by turn 270 or whatnot. This exploit can easily swing things by 20 turns without you even noticing.

Cromagnus said:

One more thing to add on this: I've been saying for a long time that GS are bugged in general, and that all science victories should be considered an exploit.

A GS spawned when you have 150bpt should not bulb 8k beakers later. GS saving like this is stupid and unbalanced. It should work more like musicians: Same logic as current GS except the amount is fixed after spawn. That way, the decision would be "bulb now or plant academy?" as it SHOULD BE. Same with Great Writers.

Of course, we don't know for a fact that using GS this way is an exploit, because Firaxis may have intended it. But in my mind, this has always been broken and stupid, even if not technically an exploit.

How is saving all GS until you have super high tech rate and then bulbing them to finish the tree quickly all *that* different from the Overflow Exploit? It's basically the same "finish the tree in 30 turns" garbage. Just my two cents.

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If you trace it the source it's like this: AI was poorly coded. (Due to technical limitations, time, and/or unwillingness of dev's) Hence, AI's were given bonuses. The player can't compete with such bonuses, so, he receives bulbs (and few other perks, like selling luxes), to be able to slingshot and become equal/gain the upper hand. Balancing act, based on flaws in AI. Of course, savvy player will take one end of this "balancing stick" and bash the other end of it against the head of an unsuspecting AI player. Or, yet another player can decide to restrain himself from doing certain things - to make his game more challenging. Freedom for all, but as long as AI is incompetent, exploits won't cease to exist, in one form or the other.

So, my point is: while this exploit is particularly astonishing, solving it (should be pretty easy, right?) won't make the game "complete". Not even close. Maybe after starting fresh with civ 6 the crew will make the whole thing work.

The question for experienced veterans of I, II, III and/or IV: in your opinion, was 1upt a step in the right direction, in terms of achieving AI competence?

Having said that, exploits aside, multiplayer experience isn't flawed in the way single player is, so, from this angle, civ 5 is definitely a great work!

AI competence, hmm.

I love 1UPT because I love Panzer General and I think its a great way yo do combat in an abstract game like civ.

The problem is the human expects the 7 AI teams to act like each an independent team and try to win. But the programmer cannot make that happen, too complex. So the programmer writes a brute force algorithm that they blindly follow to until a victory condition happens to be fulfilled. Bonuses are added at each level of difficulty to increase resistance. The effect aggregates the 7 AI and they end up functioning as one giant speed bump to the player. But even in Panzer General, the AI was no good, just a speed bump to keep you from reaching your objective.

Once you understand this, you can accept the flaws in AI behavior. Its me against a lump of seven, not seven individuals.

Moriarte said:

The question for experienced veterans of I, II, III and/or IV: in your opinion, was 1upt a step in the right direction, in terms of achieving AI competence?

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Ah, brings back memories of playing Civ on my 286, and being thrilled later I could use my advisor's office to play it on her much faster 386!

I think it was *absolutely* a step in the right direction.

Having played a ton of Civ 1, 2, and 4, (Skipped 3 for some reason) I feel like 1upt is both better and worse.

I much prefer this to the unit stack insanity of Civ 4. The game devolved once you could stack units high enough. And it became a management nightmare getting everything stacked...

That being said, I hate the unit carpet of Civ 5. I think *tactically* it's better to have individual frigates, but it's just *so much easier* to move one/turn. Plus, I think it's easier on the AI decision-making as well. I think moving all those units independently instead of stacking them makes it harder on the AI.

I dunno. I'm on the fence actually. I think it would be cool if, instead of upgrading units, you had the option of combining two warriors into one swordsman once you got access to swordsmen. It would be a zero-cash way of upgrading and it would reduce redundant old units, and sort of function like stacking except in a less broken way.

Not suggesting that you couldn't upgrade with cash too... just a zero-cash alternative. two useless warriors -> one swordsmen. /shrug

Cromagnus said:

Having played a ton of Civ 1, 2, and 4, (Skipped 3 for some reason) I feel like 1upt is both better and worse.

I much prefer this to the unit stack insanity of Civ 4. The game devolved once you could stack units high enough. And it became a management nightmare getting everything stacked...

That being said, I hate the unit carpet of Civ 5. I think *tactically* it's better to have individual frigates, but it's just *so much easier* to move one/turn. Plus, I think it's easier on the AI decision-making as well. I think moving all those units independently instead of stacking them makes it harder on the AI.

I dunno. I'm on the fence actually. I think it would be cool if, instead of upgrading units, you had the option of combining two warriors into one swordsman once you got access to swordsmen. It would be a zero-cash way of upgrading and it would reduce redundant old units, and sort of function like stacking except in a less broken way.

Not suggesting that you couldn't upgrade with cash too... just a zero-cash alternative. two useless warriors -> one swordsmen. /shrug

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But that makes no sense, having twice the amount of warriors in the same spot won't magically manufacture new swords and armour for them. The logic is simple as it is. You're paying maintenance costs to keep their current gear working and to pay their wages, you pay upgrade costs to buy them new things.

Nothing in this game "makes sense".

Cromagnus said:

I think moving all those units independently instead of stacking them makes it harder on the AI.

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It's true that the AI does have a hard time with controlling lots of units. It tends to manipulate each unit based on its individual situation without real regard for what's happening around it. You can see this in several cases - sometimes the AI will have a city completely surrounded with weaker melee guys who are all too afraid to attack when they could bum rush it down together, and sometimes the AI will go bonkers on a city with just one unit.

edit: It is also hilarious watching Dido march a unit onto a mountain, having it take 50 damage, and then fortify up on the mountain because oh crap damage gotta heal.

ravenmagus said:

It's true that the AI does have a hard time with controlling lots of units. It tends to manipulate each unit based on its individual situation without real regard for what's happening around it. You can see this in several cases - sometimes the AI will have a city completely surrounded with weaker melee guys who are all too afraid to attack when they could bum rush it down together, and sometimes the AI will go bonkers on a city with just one unit.

edit: It is also hilarious watching Dido march a unit onto a mountain, having it take 50 damage, and then fortify up on the mountain because oh crap damage gotta heal.

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Haven't seen that, but that's priceless, haha