Sabotaging your own launched spaceship

I have read somewhere that if you launch a spaceship, then the game will advance by only one game year per turn (even if it were only AD 1000!) so that the other Civs can stop the launch.

1) If my spaceship is "stopped" by any means and no other civ launches their own spaceship, then will the game continue to advance at one year per turn, or will the game start counting the years at the "normal rate" per turn -- suppose that I launch my spaceship in AD 1000 on the easiest level of play. Then the next turn will be AD 1001. Let's suppose that the enemy captures my capital city in AD 1017 to kill my spaceship. Assuming that no one else tries to launch a spaceship in the very next turn, will the next turn take place in AD 1018 or AD 1027?

2) If I lose my spaceship, then will I be able to start building another Spaceship after building a new Palace? (I know for a fact that if this happened to an AI Civ, then that AI Civ could try again, but the AI cheats at this game so I best be sure that the same applies to my Civ too.)

3) Once I launch my spaceship, would there be a way to sabotage it myself? For example, could I build a new city of size 1, move my Palace to that city, then disband it, or even nuke it to make sure my spaceship crashes? (If you're curious, then yes, I am trying to "hack it" so that I get MANY more turns of gameplay than intended )

1) Game continues to advance at 1 year per turn after ANY civ first launches spaceship.

2) Any civ that loses spaceship can start building another after rebuilding Palace.

3) After launch the capital can be disbanded to prevent capture/destruction. You cannot nuke or otherwise attack one of your own cities.

If you want more turns of play you can always chose "play on" after the victory screen, or make a scenario with one-year or one-month turns, or just keep a single "pet civ" AI city and skip the spaceship.

Very interesting and imaginative questions.

ElephantU, are you saying that if you disband your capital after launch then your space ship is safe?

I've seen some people at Apolyton advocate that, though I've never tried it myself...

It's been used in MP games before.

If you want more turns of play you can always chose "play on" after the victory screen, or make a scenario with one-year or one-month turns, or just keep a single "pet civ" AI city and skip the spaceship.

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Well, I knew that already, but somehow playing turns loses its appeal when I know they won't be scored. And if I made my own scenario, I would get bored too easily because I would know what the map is already and have too much of a good idea of where to find special terrain and goody huts. But thanks anyway for trying to help me...

Well, here's what happened:

In AD 1280, I got the Japanese down to one town, launched my spaceship, then I created a city called Dragsville two squares away from their town, fortified it with a legion (from one of the towns I subverted), then rush-built a palace there, and in 1281, I evacuated the legion from Dragsville while a Japanese chariot stood right next to the city. The Japanese captured the dummy capital and recalled my spaceship, and now the game is stuck in 1 year per turn mode!

Doing the math, I have thus far completed 285 turns through year AD 1287. At super easy level, there are 570 turns until AD 2020. Now I'm just curious if I really succeeded in giving myself more turns before the game automatically ends and the scoring stops. I am wondering if the game checks for the number of turns played rather than the game year being 2020 when deciding when it's time to end the game. That is, will my game end in AD 1572 (which would be turn #570 in my current game) or will it still end in AD 2020 (which means 733 turns 'til the end, woohoo!! ) ?

Interesting experiment... play on, dude.

experiments like this fascinate me because of the implications for high-score games. i will be waiting for the answer with much interest.

also, when a game has been discussed for so many years like this one has, you would expect that every exploit would have been discovered long ago. so congrats on finding this one

rysingsun said:

also, when a game has been discussed for so many years like this one has, you would expect that every exploit would have been discovered long ago. so congrats on finding this one

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I'm pretty sure this strategy has already been explored. IIRC, the game measures turns not years. So you don't get any extra time; you just get to package it in something with an earlier date.

However, those results may have been wrong, and there's no harm in testing the hypothesis. (I, too, like this sort of game: launching an early, unsuccessful spaceship, for the sole purpose of getting the game onto 1-year turns much earlier than usual.)

Rock on, IMBC2. Let us know what happens.

Theoretically, the earliest you can launch a spaceship is AD1...

Results of the Time-Warp Experiment
-----------------------------------

In AD 1280, Kirk of the Americans launched a spaceship and intentionally created a town called Dragsville next to the enemy. He moved the capital palace to Dragsville and let the enemy capture it, thus making sure that the one-year-per-turn "time-warp" would be in effect for the rest of the game.


Version of Civilization II used:
--------------------------------
Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition v5.4.0f with Patch version 1.3


Hypothesis:
----------
AD 1280 corresponds to having played 278 turns in Chieftain level.

In a standard Chieftain level game, there are 570 turns until AD 2020.

Thus, if "forced retirement" were checked against turn number, then the game would end no later than AD 1572 (or 1280 + (570 - 278)).

However, if "forced retirement" solely depended on game year, then the game would be over by AD 2020, meaning 278 + (2020 - 1280) or 1018 total turns in this game.


Experimental Procedure:
-----------------------
Cheat mode was activated as trying to play 285 more turns to test the first hypothesis would take too long in standard play, plus there always is the possibility of other civilizations developing Space Flight and building their own spaceship to win the game before then.

All other civilizations other than the Sioux were "killed" using the Cheat Menu. All Sioux cities were reduced to size 1 using the Cheat Menu and assorted American battalions of spies, armor and bombers were used to capture or raze all but one of the Sioux towns. The last Sioux town was consistently bombarded by spies to prevent population growth or to sabotage city improvements while other former Sioux towns captured by the Americans were used as a base for building Armor to occupy all squares around the Sioux town so that they "choke" city production.

After this fortification against Sioux possibility to learn Space technologies all towns were switched to producing Armor or Mech Infantry to fend against Barbarians.

Then, Ctrl-N was pressed to end all turns as soon as all city messages were cycled through (no action taken in any turn). This was repeated until the year AD 1572.


Results:
--------
1. The game did NOT end in AD 1572. The Ctrl-N procedure was repeated until AD 1597. Still no "forced retirement" message. The "Set game year" option from the Cheat Menu was invoked. At AD 1597, the turn number 596 (in a Chieftain level game!) was highlighted in blue. When "800" was entered, the game year was set at AD 1801. When "40" was entered, the game year was 3220 BC. "278" set the game year at AD 1270, "279" at AD 1280, but "280" at AD 1281. This means that the game engine now "remembers" that the spaceship was launched in AD 1280 and had updated the game year formula based on the number of turns played once the spaceship was launched!

2. The game was loaded back to an AD 1287 save. However, the cheat menu was activated by default! (Perhaps a bug?) "Set game year" was once again invoked.

3. When "1016" was entered, the game year was set to AD 2017. After Ctrl-N for a couple more turns to finish AD 2019 (1018th turn!), the message "Kirk dynasty ends after glorious 6000 year reign!" finally appeared to force retirement.

4. A surprising result is that the score did NOT even acknowledge that CHEAT MODE had been used!

Very interesting experiment. Thanks for the detailed results.

well done!

the biggest thing that would trouble me in this sort of game is the possibility of civil war when my palace is captured. the other is that my palace would be moved automatically. to prevent these occurances i would have to 1) make sure there are still 7 ai's left when i pull this exploit and 2) make sure i have less than 1000 gold in my treasury at the time my palace is sacrificed.

after the ss is destroyed i then found the remainder of my 254 city limit and push their populations up to 127 each with food caravans. this should get me a score that comes close to the theoretical maximum, somewhere around 40000. any comments?

Puzzling. Next thing to test is whether Cheat Mode may have skewed the results...

ElephantU said:

Puzzling. Next thing to test is whether Cheat Mode may have skewed the results...

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Maybe IMBC could post a save from after he lost his palace but before he turned Cheat Mode on? Then someone here could try to play out the game normally and see what happens.

rysingsun said:

well done!

the biggest thing that would trouble me in this sort of game is the possibility of civil war when my palace is captured. the other is that my palace would be moved automatically. to prevent these occurances i would have to 1) make sure there are still 7 ai's left when i pull this exploit and 2) make sure i have less than 1000 gold in my treasury at the time my palace is sacrificed.

after the ss is destroyed i then found the remainder of my 254 city limit and push their populations up to 127 each with food caravans. this should get me a score that comes close to the theoretical maximum, somewhere around 40000. any comments?

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In MGE v5.4.0f, when another Civ captures your palace, you get the option to spend 1000 to move your capital to save your spaceship. You can always choose the option "Alas, we cannot afford it" regardless of how much cash you have in your treasury at the time. To prevent civil disorder in your cities just before your capital is taken over, make sure there are zero unhappy citizens in all towns by creating Elvii. Then create another Elvii in every town, especially the city in which you want to relocate your capital. Now spend your next turn rushbuying the palace in that city. Voila! Many many turns until forced retirement!

i hate to ask a dumb question, but what does civil disorder have to do with all this? i never have civil disorder so late in the game, but i'm still curious why you bring it up ... does it have something to do with the likelihood of civil wars or something? it would be a shame to have to abandon a game like this just because way into it i get the message "zulu destroyed by barbarians" and, being left with only 6 ai civs i no longer know how to prevent my 100 cities from going into civil war when my palace is taken.

as for mge, well that is one of those tradeoffs. i've always liked 2.42 patched with the fantastic worlds .exe file. it gives me a less aggressive ai, yet has fixed the original bug with exceeding 127 (or something) cities. as for relocating my palace ... honestly i don't recall whether i have that option ... i mean .. it isn't just every day that my capital is taken

a more peculiar problem to my version is that i could leave a small palace city in the midst of an ai empire, declare war on them, and STILL not have my city walked into for many turns. they are just so ... unaggressive sometimes.

I've tried the trick while playing an old GOTM game (nr.56). To give the enemy a lot of turns to capture my capital/palace I build a 15-1-1-1-1-1 spaceship. This ship will land after 36 years instead of 15 years when building a 15-3-3-1-1-1 spaceship. Next turn made the orange civ (capital was located near their town) angry by bribing city. It took about 10 turns before they tried to capture my empty capital. In the meanwhile I was building a new palace and rush-build that in the next turn. My spaceship was launched in 650 AD and I'm trying to play the game till 2020 without turning the cheatmode on.

Playing this way a GOTM I wondered how the score would be calculated. If I launched my ship in the year 800 and my next ship 50 turns later (850 AD). Normally a turn is 10 years (if I didn't launched my ship). Is it turn x+50 or x+5 ???

rysingsun said:

i hate to ask a dumb question, but what does civil disorder have to do with all this? i never have civil disorder so late in the game, but i'm still curious why you bring it up ... does it have something to do with the likelihood of civil wars or something? it would be a shame to have to abandon a game like this just because way into it i get the message "zulu destroyed by barbarians" and, being left with only 6 ai civs i no longer know how to prevent my 100 cities from going into civil war when my palace is taken.

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When you said "civil war", I assumed that you meant "civil disorder". Civil disorder is bad because you get zero production, zero research, and zero revenue from the town in disorder. However, I had 50 cities when my dummy capital got taken over, but once it did get taken over, I chose NOT to immediately build a new one for 1000g. On the next turn, I get the message that my spaceship is recalled, then I rush-build my palace in my former capital city immediately that turn, and I get no mention of any civil war threat or occurrence. For those who do not know, please explain what happens during a civil war (including messages).

rysingsun said:

as for mge, well that is one of those tradeoffs. i've always liked 2.42 patched with the fantastic worlds .exe file. it gives me a less aggressive ai, yet has fixed the original bug with exceeding 127 (or something) cities. as for relocating my palace ... honestly i don't recall whether i have that option ... i mean .. it isn't just every day that my capital is taken

a more peculiar problem to my version is that i could leave a small palace city in the midst of an ai empire, declare war on them, and STILL not have my city walked into for many turns. they are just so ... unaggressive sometimes.

Click to expand...

Uh oh! Has "Fantastic Worlds" figured out our diabolical scheme to get more game turns???

Magic_gorter said:

I've tried the trick while playing an old GOTM game (nr.56). To give the enemy a lot of turns to capture my capital/palace I build a 15-1-1-1-1-1 spaceship. This ship will land after 36 years instead of 15 years when building a 15-3-3-1-1-1 spaceship. Next turn made the orange civ (capital was located near their town) angry by bribing city. It took about 10 turns before they tried to capture my empty capital. In the meanwhile I was building a new palace and rush-build that in the next turn. My spaceship was launched in 650 AD and I'm trying to play the game till 2020 without turning the cheatmode on.

Playing this way a GOTM I wondered how the score would be calculated. If I launched my ship in the year 800 and my next ship 50 turns later (850 AD). Normally a turn is 10 years (if I didn't launched my ship). Is it turn x+50 or x+5 ???

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Well, here is the scoring formula straight from the GOTM site:

Scoring
Because getting a high score takes so much time, we take the date you finish your game into account much more than the game itself does. We have developed the following way of scoring the games for the GOTM:

G = sqrt(N) * 50 ^ ((M - T) / M)

G = GOTM score
N = normal score
M = maximum number of turns
T = turn finished

Note that we look at the turns, not the date.

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Thus, in your case, you're looking at turn x+50.