3.19 Infinite free tech with liberalism

P

Plastics

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
Messages
7
When the screen to select a free tech appears, click both mouse buttons in the same time, in a tech you want. The civipedia will open for that tech, click exit and the screen to select a free tech will appear again. Keep doing and you get all techs.

Now the multiplayer games will be more fun after liberalism.
 
I was able to duplicate this bug for both Liberalism and The Oracle.

This bug can/will create a terrible experience in multiplayer games and HoF games until it is patched.
 
I'd have to imagine HoF would ban such games, as they remove any true competitive aspect. Although to be fair if one doesn't break the rules...........

Anyway, I'm not in a position where I can test it, but if Kesshi is confirming it then it's probably a true base 3.19 bug...and a serious one.
 
My question is, what possesses someone to click both mouse buttons at the same time in order to discover this? :confused: :crazyeye:

Presumably some accident led to the discovery? Or was it a more deliberate bug searching effort ... ? :mischief:

dV
 
It was an accident. I am a computer science student but wasn't searching for bugs. I found this while playing Charlemagne scenario. And then tested it on a normal game.

I believe this bug is on all versions of civilization 4 and expansions.

English is not my main language so there will be some grammar problems here.
 
Hmm, quite a bad bug... good that it's out in the open I guess, although I wish it'd been earlier (we're probably unlikely to see an official patch for it now).
 
It shouldn't be that serious though. You can just look in the game log to see the discovered technologies. If more than on technology is discovered on the same turn after lib it will look suspicious.
 
civverguy said:
It shouldn't be that serious though. You can just look in the game log to see the discovered technologies. If more than on technology is discovered on the same turn after lib it will look suspicious.
Click to expand...

But trades can happen in that time period also. If someone is flagrant, then it's less an issue as it's obvious. But if they just take 2-3 techs instead of one it's much harder to trace, because those could have been trades (especially on higher levels, where this offers the greatest boost).
 
TheMeInTeam said:
But trades can happen in that time period also. If someone is flagrant, then it's less an issue as it's obvious. But if they just take 2-3 techs instead of one it's much harder to trace, because those could have been trades (especially on higher levels, where this offers the greatest boost).
Click to expand...
At least for pitboss games, this shouldn't be too much of a problem because of Civstats, which provides a log of every time your score goes up/down in a turn - thus making the acquisition of extra techs obvious. However, that doesn't negate the fact that in other types of multiplayer gameplay (for instance PBEM and Gamespy), this bug could be a serious issue.
 
TheMeInTeam said:
HoF and XOTM ban reloads regardless.
Click to expand...

I have never tried any of these mods (nor do I intend to) but how do they differ reloads from regular "I have to go to bed so I'll continue tomorrow" loads? :crazyeye:

(Except checking the replay manually for multiple session starts in a very short timespan, obviously)
 
PibbZ said:
I have never tried any of these mods (nor do I intend to) but how do they differ reloads from regular "I have to go to bed so I'll continue tomorrow" loads? :crazyeye:

(Except checking the replay manually for multiple session starts in a very short timespan, obviously)
Click to expand...

without compromising the security they offer, I can't go into details on them, but suffice it to say from someone who has used them from the administrative side, it is very easy to tell the difference between reloading and saving and loading again later.
 
I'm guessing this isn't a moddable fix, and will require an EXE change to repair?
 
Elkad said:
I'm guessing this isn't a moddable fix, and will require an EXE change to repair?
Click to expand...

Well, maybe not. It does sound like a mouse event bug, probably combined with the state restoration after returning from the Civilopedia to the game. But maybe that can be overridden from the SDK? If not, a mod could completely disable the free techs for liberalism and Oracle.

Also, since the score goes up from tech trades, that means a free tech will show up only as a score increase for the cheating player, while a trade would show increases for both traders. There are still some fine points to that detection since scores change for multiple reasons, but in general a cheaters score would go up disproportionately.
 
Having difficulty replicating. Can replicate, it's just difficult(can't seem to push both buttons right consistently).
Testing on BUFFY.
Too bad there isn't a way to be sure 100% of if someone is cheating.
 
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