Production phase micromanagement: a powerful exploit

What if several of my cities could benefit from that juicy cow tile in the same turn?
What if my totally corrupt city could assign all its citizens to taxmen and still grow?
What if most my cities could maximize commerce and food/shields in the same turn?

Well, with micromanagement and a lot of free time, you can do all these wonderful things. Here’s how:

1. Pick the first city in the production order that will complete something next turn. If there is no such city, just rush-buy something in one of your first cities. Don’t worry, you’ll likely get your cash back (read on). Let’s call this city “A”.
2. Maximize the commerce output of all cities after the above city. That includes using specialists in cities with low commerce tiles or with high corruption. Commerce for all cities gets added up before the shield and food production is calculated.
3. When you get the popup saying that “A” has finished its build, zoom to that city and assign all its citizens to entertainers. Then use the arrow buttons to cycle through all your cities and make everyone entertainers. By removing all citizens from tiles in already processed cities, you free those tiles for reuse by subsequent cities.
4. Use the arrow buttons again, this time going forward from “A”, making sure you maximize food and shields, and ignoring commerce. Stop at a city, say “B”, that is about to complete something this turn, and exit the city view.
5. The production phase continues, and you get the popup for “B”. Zoom and repeat these last three steps, until you have reached the end of the production order.

It might not be worth your time, but for competitive games it might be worth someone else’s time, so you lose ground if you don’t do it. Unless you are a micromanaging freak, you can’t keep doing this for any reasonably-sized empire because otherwise you would go nuts, or get sick of the tedium and never play Civ3 again. At least I know I would. But it can be very powerful at the beginning of the game, after you have founded a few cities, or during your GA.

Let’s hope we get a fix from Firaxis, or at least a ban from the GOTM and HOF. Disabling the arrow buttons in the city view would be a good fix, IMHO.

Unless I'm reading this wrong it already is.

Which part exactly? The "gold mine"? The above exploit is about switching citizens to different tiles, not about switching the item being produced.

Originally posted by alexman
Which part exactly? The "gold mine"? The above exploit is about switching citizens to different tiles, not about switching the item being produced.

Click to expand...

Yes, the gold mine. So this strategy is different. It will be interesting to see how the Gotm community responds to this. Some people feel any micromanagement is at the very least exploitive. Personally I need all the help I can get and will use any strategy that lets me improve my perforamnce. Right now I struggle to get 1/2 the Jason score of top players like you.

Well, this explains why I feel different swapping city screens after production in Civ III, when I would be told to 'close the window before continuing the game' in Civ II.

This micromanagement sounds very clever. I would be quite tempted by this but it sounds like hard work and I would almost certainly mess it up.

I think the "gold mine" exploit, while not the same in detail, covers this in spirit, and it shouldn't be allowed. Indeed I think the gold mine ban should be regarded as covering this. It would also make the game a little dull to play.

All of these scroll ahead tricks are a bit beyond me, but I admire the way people have sussed out how the game works ( eg calculating commerce first) and how to use it to their advantage.

I have only just realized that you get bonus shields on the turn your city grows, so I have lot to learn about city management.

This time I have enough !! I'm just thinking that some parts of the Civ3 code have to be written again, period. Each new week brings a new bug / exploit. I can just thank people who discover those things and share them, because otherwise some clever fellows would use it to their advantage silently. I know I'm a bit harsh here, but Civ is a very complicated game in its writing (at least, that's what I think), and they at Firaxis didn't think of everything. Maybe it is too complicated, or maybe not. In Civ 1 & 2, you would not gain new production and commerce (coming from a new citizen, or coming from a tile improvement) the very turn it comes, I miss that. In PBEMs, it's even 1 whole turn before !! Some formulas are too complicated IMHO, and they should rewrite them, so as to get rid of those stupid strategies (like abandoning cities, put the palace in the North Pole), and get a whole bunch of bugs fixed.

Well, I don't (and won't) use any of those bugs, so I may fall behind in GOTMs and such, but I don't care, as I won't cheat. To be more precise and on-topic, I'd add that I like micromanaging my empire, but no the point of getting mad at it and use this feature. My city was ordered to build this and to eat that ? Let be it.

Originally posted by Svar


Yes, the gold mine. So this strategy is different. It will be interesting to see how the Gotm community responds to this. Some people feel any micromanagement is at the very least exploitive. Personally I need all the help I can get and will use any strategy that lets me improve my perforamnce. Right now I struggle to get 1/2 the Jason score of top players like you.

Click to expand...

I am amazed how people "rationalize" cheating. Struggling to reach your goals is no reason to cheat.

It's akin to a runner taking steroids so he can run faster. Cheating is cheating.

Granting Civ III is a game you play yourself and you can pretend you didn't cheat to reach your goals, and nobody would know any better if you told us you didn't cheat to get this ultra high score. But the only person your fooling is yourself because your skills will remain piss poor at the end of the day.

Using the same tile twice is clearly not within the design of the game - it is breaking the intended game rules and is akin to the old mobilisation 'infinite production' bug in severity.

Disabling the arrow buttons/keys during upkeep and the 'big picture' (tech completion) seems to be the only way to fix this.

Using the "big picture" can't squeeze out any more shields or food, since no cities have done their production phase yet. You could use it to switch workers off sea tiles in a similar way to the wealth gold mine bug.

Disabling arrows won't work either, since the easiest way to exploit this is by using auto governors and re-arraging tiles only in cities that have built something.

I consider this exploit equivalent to "gold mine", and never use it in my games.

This was last mentioned on 'poly in April, and I also sent Cracker a PM about the issue, but never got any response. Anyway, I think everybody should understand that this is cheating. However, I'm pretty sure some players use it, since it almost impossible to spot in a replay or a save.

Here's the link http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1929869&t=8770#post1929869

Boooring! My civ games are long enough already. Why would anyone want to take 10x as long just so they can say look at the score I got by cheating?

Oh yea, I would hardly consider this a strategy or tip. This topic would fit in better in the bugs or Conquest fixes forum.

I have already submitted this as a bug a while ago. I just put it here so the community becomes more aware of it.

Terribly sorry to bore you, Gengis.

I've mentioned it a couple of times as well, but nobody was interested.

where can i find more articles on MM?