Gold Miner's Exploit/Bug in V1.21 and prior

I first reported this as something I thought was a bug back in April by using the Firaxis website and then I kept quiet about it hoping they would fix the bug before too many people exploited it into a game altering feature.

Now T-Hawk has posted a recent post about this "Gold Miner's Exploit" on poly so I think the cat may be out of the bag and therefore it is important make sure everyone knows about the bug so that everything will be equal between players.

You can mine gold from your cities in every turn plus build a unit at the same time. The exploit lets you basically count almost every shield twice if you can manage the exploit carefully.

The exploit works best when a city is producing exactly enough shields to complete a specific unit in one turn because then you can do the exploit again on the next turn (rinse-repeat-"go to the bank"-repeat).

Try to determine which of your cities occure early in the build queue because you need one of these cities to build something to generate th confirmation pop up early in the build cycle. When this pop up appears at the beginning of the build cycle you can then use the zoom to city option in the pop up to bring up the city display page. Once on the city display page, you can use the right and left arrows beside the city name in the upper center of the page to page through all of your cities and change the production assignment for all the cities just before they officially produce anything.

When you access this "page through the cities" feature, all of the wealth for the turn has already been tabulated and put in the bank. Any cities that have been set to wealth have already had their gold counted up.

You just page through all the wealth cities and set their production to be a unit or improvement that can be completed in one turn and TADA you have counted the shields once for gold and then used the shields a second time to produce a unit in the same turn.

Just make sure you have all the cities (other than one of the first cities in the sequence) set to produce wealth before you push the button to end your turn.

With 20 cities each producing an average of 40 or more shields per turn, you can generate an extra 200+ gold units per turn without changing any of the units or improvement that you build.

Note that I considered this a cheat/exploit so have not used it any games beyond a couple of test games where I figured this could allow a player to win the game many turns early than normally possible. There is also no real way that this can be detected in prior turns of a saved game so if someone is using this to jack up scores, we could never tell it after the fact.

Great job cracker! It's definitely an exploit, and hopefully, Firaxis will fix it before MP. I had noticed that there are several odd things you could do when flipping through the city screens, but I was never interested in testing it further.

I guess that's why you're called "cracker."

I suspect there is a related exploit; I have not tested it, as I don't have any interest in going there:

At the beginning of the game, micromanagement of tiles is crucial. There may be cases where the best tiles are shared between two cities.

Suppose this is the case. The first city in the build queue, on the turn that is due to finish something, gets all the "best" tiles that are shared between cities. When that first city is popped open to "city view" to allow selection of a new improvement/unit to build, free up all the best tiles. Arrow over to the city view of the second city. Put those tiles to work by the second city, arrow back to the first city.

I suspect that the second city would then get to re-use the tiles for that turn. So the best tiles could get used twice in one turn.

Like I said, I've never tested this. I want to have fun playing the game, and that does not seem like fun to me.

Yup, I've confirmed that one too. Two cities can share tiles like that. That's just hideous levels of micromanagement -- but if you have a floodplains wheat shared between two cities in despotism, it's probably worth it...

Son, you could elevate this micromanagement to a whole new level. And just imagine what could be done with Aeson's dense build now.

Edited to add that I would only recommend doing this if one has a reliable and steady supply of Valium and a good painkiller.

Both of these exploits seem like more trouble then they are worth. But that is my opinion.

There seem to be easier ways to 'cheat' then this. Good work guys. I hope Firaxis does fix these little money makers.

Mike B, if you read this thread, the simple solution is to deactivate the arrows on the city screen during this phase. You should only be allowed to zoom into the current city in this phase.

Originally posted by warpstorm
Mike B, if you read this thread, the simple solution is to deactivate the arrows on the city screen during this phase. You should only be allowed to zoom into the current city in this phase.

Click to expand...

That won't completely plug this exploit/cheat.

I've been using this exploit for some time without realizing it. This is how...

I play really long games on Huge/Pangea maps, and partway through the game my core cities have become 'complete'... they have all the currently available city improvements built.

My 'complete' cities spend their time before the next city improvement becomes available producing units or wealth.

Now, here is where the exploit comes in... every time I get the popup informing me I've completed researching a new technology, I hit the "Show me the larger picture" option. First I'll set my next research project, but then I'll flip over to the city management screen and change the production for all of my 'complete' cities to whatever new unit/improvement has just become available. I've actually had my top producing cities complete newly available units on the same turn I completed the research!

I did this for the longest time before I realized something odd was going on... and even then I wasn't too concerned.

I think Firaxis will have to modify the turn order before this exploit will be closed, and that is likely to be a major change.

warpstorm you are correct on that one, that is how it was in Civ2.

I never considered the ability to micro manage city in during the computers turn a cheat or exploit. It's just part of the game.

They cannot fix everything. It remain me of the Daggerfall stealing good from the shop with it not being consider stealing if
you stay in the shop by loddery past it closeing time and then save the game and then reload it. It was than bug an the company was aware of it but to fix it could have cause more ploblem so their left it alone.