Banned Exploits - BNW

[sanabas]

Vanilla/G&K exploits removed for BNW:

Liberty/Autocracy Policy Switch
- This is no longer possible.

Exploit involving trading for Lump Sums of Gold:
- You may now declare war to break deals whenever you want.

Still exploits in BNW:

Exploit involving trading for Lump Sums of Gold:

-Repeatedly selling a resource (luxury, strategic, etc.) and pillaging or allowing Barbarians or other civs to pillage the resource or trade route to break the deal.

Building Oxford multiple times
- Building Oxford University National Wonder and then gifting or selling the city containing it and building it again for another free tech is not allowed.

Selling Cities
- You may sell cities to the AI.
- However, any city sold to the AI may not be reacquired, either by capturing it, or receiving it in a peace deal.
- Cities gifted to the AI, or lost in a peace deal, may be reacquired.

Research overflow bug
Deliberately taking advantage of this bug to improve your finish date/Score is not allowed.

NOTE: New exploits will occur or be discovered over time. Use of a potential exploit should be verified the HOF Staff before use.

 

[Jinbe]

Are we still required to take half of the AI's cities or their capitol before we can make peace with them?

 

[sanabas]

Nope. That only applied before to wars you started which involved breaking a deal where you'd received lump sum cash.

Since breaking deals like that is now going to happen much less often, and with a significantly bigger penalty, you can have all the fake wars you want.

 

[Peets]

They finally fixed it

 

[Tabarnak]

I'm happy that the HoF can now be played without assumptions about exploits. I will be tempted to play again for the (new brave)future!

 

[Peets]

The New Brave future awaits you Tabarnak

 

[Salomo]

In case I fid the time to play: What is the research overflow bug?

Is there any risk I could accidentally take advantage of it in a way that seems deliberate?

 

[Browd]

The bug described in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=517970

 

[Jayhawks]

Exploit involving trading for Lump Sums of Gold:
- You may now declare war to break deals whenever you want.

I'm surprised that selling gpt for gold is not a banned exploit, and I'm wondering why it's even a mechanic in the game.... I'm playing a deity portugal game right now. It's mid industrial, and I'm playing a standard speed standard size fractal which ended up being a pangea. Did a very standard 4 city setup, nothing special other than it's coastal and I'm portugal so the gpt from trade routes is quite high. Anyway, I max my gpt and sell it to england for 9999 gold then declare war. Buy 6 great war bombers in the capital which has brandenburg gate, pop 2 scientists and upgrade them to air repair bombers the next turn. I don't even want to finish the game this is so disgusting. I'm also only about 10 turns from rocket artillery, and I still have 3k gold to upgrade asap, and plenty of aluminum. Hell, I could do the same thing to Russia right now for 6k gold if I wanted to, and sulemein for 9999 if i can manage to friend him again before killing him. Don't even mention the diplo penalty from a backstab as a deterrent, if you're going domination who cares. Especially if you backstab the whole world on the same turn for 25k gold... 25k gold, hell it could be more if you really tried to exploit it.

This should not be allowed for HoF games imo, so broken. Simply removing the ability to trade gpt for gold would solve it. Hey if you wanna sell resources, or votes in congress and you can get 9999 gold from that be my guest, but selling gpt for gold is just plain wrong.

 

[pvtjava]

This should not be allowed for HoF games imo, so broken. Simply removing the ability to trade gpt for gold would solve it. Hey if you wanna sell resources, or votes in congress and you can get 9999 gold from that be my guest, but selling gpt for gold is just plain wrong.

Umm...this is called a loan. You use it to buy stuff you can't afford right now. It can be used for legit reasons. I have. The part that is wrong to me is the declaring war before paying it back.

 

[Peets]

I'm surprised that selling gpt for gold is not a banned exploit, and I'm wondering why it's even a mechanic in the game.... I'm playing a deity portugal game right now. It's mid industrial, and I'm playing a standard speed standard size fractal which ended up being a pangea. Did a very standard 4 city setup, nothing special other than it's coastal and I'm portugal so the gpt from trade routes is quite high. Anyway, I max my gpt and sell it to england for 9999 gold then declare war. Buy 6 great war bombers in the capital which has brandenburg gate, pop 2 scientists and upgrade them to air repair bombers the next turn. I don't even want to finish the game this is so disgusting. I'm also only about 10 turns from rocket artillery, and I still have 3k gold to upgrade asap, and plenty of aluminum. Hell, I could do the same thing to Russia right now for 6k gold if I wanted to, and sulemein for 9999 if i can manage to friend him again before killing him. Don't even mention the diplo penalty from a backstab as a deterrent, if you're going domination who cares. Especially if you backstab the whole world on the same turn for 25k gold... 25k gold, hell it could be more if you really tried to exploit it.

This should not be allowed for HoF games imo, so broken. Simply removing the ability to trade gpt for gold would solve it. Hey if you wanna sell resources, or votes in congress and you can get 9999 gold from that be my guest, but selling gpt for gold is just plain wrong.

It's only on the higher levels that you can do this and is not that big in the beginning of your game.
Most people have already won by then (when you reach aluminum) so it not a game breaker. It is good for the weaker players so they can also win deity. (like me )
Also you have to be friends which is not possible early in the game to do it at many opponents.

 

[TractorBoy]

This should not be allowed for HoF games imo, so broken. Simply removing the ability to trade gpt for gold would solve it. Hey if you wanna sell resources, or votes in congress and you can get 9999 gold from that be my guest, but selling gpt for gold is just plain wrong.

By not allowing the use of this terrible exploit for the VANILLA game, the HOF devs inadvertently turned the competitive area of this site into a "Mickey Mouse" area. The very best players stayed away because of the so called "ambiguity" of the rulings.

It looks to me as if the devs are trying to attract better players for the BNW, and they have succeeded up to a point. Now that the science bug revelation has come to light, there has been another exodus of players away from the game, never mind the HOF!

The game designers are at fault, certainly not the guys who run the HOF.

 

[pvtjava]

By not allowing the use of this terrible exploit for the VANILLA game, the HOF devs inadvertently turned the competitive area of this site into a "Mickey Mouse" area. The very best players stayed away because of the so called "ambiguity" of the rulings.

It looks to me as if the devs are trying to attract better players for the BNW, and they have succeeded up to a point. Now that the science bug revelation has come to light, there has been another exodus of players away from the game, never mind the HOF!

The game designers are at fault, certainly not the guys who run the HOF.

There are many "tricks" and "exploits" that can be used to quicken turn to victory. It does seem kind of random which are allowed and which are not. No offense to those who run HOF. I know you have an impossible job trying to provide level playing field for everyone. However, it seems most rules help warmongery types and few benefit builders. Like the city selling one. I can understand why abuse of this tactic would be disallowed, but this can be a natural progression during a game where an early friend could become an enemy you are required to take down. So I'm supposed to avoid taking the city just because I sold it to them? How does that make sense?

This is just about the only game I play so the only thing I will leave for is Civ 6. Maybe. I did not play Civ 4 all that much. Loved final version of Civ 3 too much. As I have stated before, even with all its bugs and faults, Civ 5 BNW is my favorite game of all time, although I still have a soft spot for Lords of the Realm 2. I loved those cows and that Europe Map. Can't find a way to play that anymore on the new Operating Systems, though.

 

[sanabas]

Like the city selling one. I can understand why abuse of this tactic would be disallowed, but this can be a natural progression during a game where an early friend could become an enemy you are required to take down. So I'm supposed to avoid taking the city just because I sold it to them? How does that make sense?

I'm about as far away from a warmonger as it's possible to get. I've never had a situation where I've sold a city and then later in the game found I needed to take it. This is mostly because I think selling cities is a stupid/exploitative mechanic, though, so I don't use it.

 

[pvtjava]

I'm about as far away from a warmonger as it's possible to get. I've never had a situation where I've sold a city and then later in the game found I needed to take it. This is mostly because I think selling cities is a stupid/exploitative mechanic, though, so I don't use it.

I know it's rare, but once I settled a city and sold it to my friend Arabia for the express purpose of using it as a land bridge for my inland sea Capitol to have cargo ship to outside world. I thought it was a neat trick until later Arabia doesn't like me as much and open borders are harder to get. I can't remember if I actually took it back or not but I remember giving it serious thought. This was a few months backs, before I started doing HOF games.

 

[sanabas]

If I founded a city like that, I'd keep it. But again, my personal opinion is that trying to get yourself the benefit of path for cargo routes + the benefit of gold from Arabia without paying the costs of having a city is exploitative/bad game design.

 

[pvtjava]

If I founded a city like that, I'd keep it. But again, my personal opinion is that trying to get yourself the benefit of path for cargo routes + the benefit of gold from Arabia without paying the costs of having a city is exploitative/bad game design.

I want to make sure that you understand that I am not lobbying for any changes to any HOF rules before I respond. I also want you to know that I am not trying to be argumentative or disagreeable. I only want to provide an alternate perspective on this one rule, mainly because there are so many ways around all the other rules, many of which are discussed right here on these forums. So please take this as friendly discourse and to me, a very interesting conversation.

Other than happiness, I was paying the cost (the science and culture penalty stayed with me.) In 2000+ hours of playing, it was the first and only time I have ever sold a city. I was trying to help me and him. It would have been ages before he got around to founding a city at least in that area but he would have eventually. It was fairly decent spot near his Capitol. It provided him the opportunity to gain science and gold by trading with my Capitol (not to mention the religion that came with it.) I did not even charge him that much. This was Prince, the money does not flow freely from the AI. I'm the one who felt exploited when all was done.

I tend to role play a good guy mentality and when I make a friend, I intend to stay friends. Most of my longer games end up with two distinct ideological blocs, where hopefully my friends have followed me to Freedom.

Maybe it is bad game design as you say. I do not play to exploit the game. I certainly don't look for exploits and I consciously avoid the ones I know about. I'm still not real sure what min-maxing even is. I was still taking 400 turns on Prince when this happened, most of the time with one city, only going to war when attacked, and just trying to learn about the game, seeing what was possible. As I have read here before, the exploits are really only truly effective in the hands of the better players, of which I'm definitely not.

Thanks for everything you folks do to provide us with this format to play under.

 

[sanabas]

I want to make sure that you understand that I am not lobbying for any changes to any HOF rules before I respond. I also want you to know that I am not trying to be argumentative or disagreeable. I only want to provide an alternate perspective on this one rule, mainly because there are so many ways around all the other rules, many of which are discussed right here on these forums. So please take this as friendly discourse and to me, a very interesting conversation.

Yep, no worries. This is just my personal opinion, too, not an attempt to change the rules. The simple way in your example to avoid it breaking the current rules is simply to gift that city, rather than sell it. Then if you feel the urge to capture it later, you can.

And the practical answer is that we probably won't notice if you accidentally do it, because even though it's technically against the rules, you're not really exploiting much. The exploit rule is primarily about being at war on higher levels, and getting cash for a city you wouldn't be able to hold, having your opponent weaken their military further to take it from whoever you sold it to, and then taking it again yourself. And/or (I think) keeping whatever warscore calculation that determines peace deals looking better.

As I have read here before, the exploits are really only truly effective in the hands of the better players, of which I'm definitely not.

Depends what you mean by effective. Consciously using exploits will likely give a quicker/easier finish than not using them, regardless of ability. But if you struggle to beat deity normally, using exploits won't mean you're suddenly challenging record times.

I tend to role play a good guy mentality and when I make a friend, I intend to stay friends. Most of my longer games end up with two distinct ideological blocs, where hopefully my friends have followed me to Freedom.

Ever played any paradox games? Like CK2?

 

[pvtjava]

Yep, no worries. This is just my personal opinion, too, not an attempt to change the rules.

Whew, thanks. I was afraid I might get in trouble for arguing with HOF staff. At the time of this game, I wasn't really thinking of and only vaguely aware of HOF rules.

The simple way in your example to avoid it breaking the current rules is simply to gift that city, rather than sell it. Then if you feel the urge to capture it later, you can.

I will certainly keep that in mind for the future, but the ramifications of the relationship souring is what has dissuaded me from doing it again.

And the practical answer is that we probably won't notice if you accidentally do it, because even though it's technically against the rules, you're not really exploiting much. The exploit rule is primarily about being at war on higher levels, and getting cash for a city you wouldn't be able to hold, having your opponent weaken their military further to take it from whoever you sold it to, and then taking it again yourself. And/or (I think) keeping whatever warscore calculation that determines peace deals looking better.

That is beyond anything I could ever conceive.

Depends what you mean by effective. Consciously using exploits will likely give a quicker/easier finish than not using them, regardless of ability. But if you struggle to beat deity normally, using exploits won't mean you're suddenly challenging record times.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

Ever played any paradox games? Like CK2?

If that's Crusader Kings 2 then, no, I haven't. I think I have played some of their games but I can't remember who made what. Are they the EU people? I've played that, EUIII I think. My son really likes those, EU III and IV. I know I've played others by them too. I remember seeing their name quite often. Some of my favorite non Civ games were, in a similar vein Empire Earth, Age of Empires, Rise of Nations. Some from other genres included Caesar III and spin-offs, including CivCity:Rome. Roller Coaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon II and even though I'm not really a shooter guy, I thought that Half-Life and Call of Duty were very compelling story-based games. Going even further back to consoles there was Mario and Final Fantasies galore. Final Fantasy Tactics! That was AWESOME! More recently, I have played Rome, Medieval II, and Empire from the Total War series, and AoEIII. One of my all-time favorites was Lords of the Realm II, especially the Europe Map. To me that was one of the best hybrid turn-based/real-time games ever. I played that over and over. I have never really been a fan of the 3-D battles of today for some reason. Probably because I grew up, so to speak, with 2-D. Civ V BNW is pretty much all I play these days. It provides just the right level of complexity after a busy work day. I can just sit and stare at the screen if I want.
I'm sorry, this post turned out to be much longer than I thought, but I have a question, if you don't mind. In your 300AD/turn 127/Prince/China/Pangaea/Standard/Standard win, did you use Sacred Sites, and, if so, could you tell me exactly what the bonus is for this belief? I have never tried it, so I am not sure what it does. You said you were not warmonger, so I'm guessing it was not a domination hybrid.

 

[Salomo]

Whew, thanks. I was afraid I might get in trouble for arguing with HOF staff.

F***. Argue with the HoF staff, they love it!

Seriously, this is not some autocratic teenie girl dictatorship. It will be difficult to convince staff if you argue wth them, but you also don't need to worry about getting in trouble.