Ribannah said:
Eggman, the reason these things should be banned is that anyone who wants to compete with you, is forced to copy what you do, or fall behind. That kills the idea of making comparisons. Two identical games need not be compared.
I've heard this argument from other players of other games, and it disproves itself. I'm not sure what to call it that doesn't give offense or imply that anybody using it is a weak player, but I'll call it the 'I want to be in a competition where I don't have to compete' school of thought.
Let's say we agree to play on the same map, but for whatever reason it is a fact that I am a better player than you are because of 'X'. Maybe it's micromanagement skills, or stategic planning, or tactics. 'X' means that the odds are I am going to outperform you in average circumstances. We'll assume to keep things simple that every game we play is under such circumstances. You're concerned that my use of certain techniques (I'll elaborate more on what it might be proper to call these later*) is going to force you to apply the same techniques and make our games the same. However, our games will not be the same since I still have 'X' in my corner. If you ban my techniques, the games are not the same because I still have 'X'. Changing the ruleset does not affect the skillsets of the player, the outcomes of the games are still going to be different. You gained no benefits aside from keeping weaker players weak because they are prevented from learning the techniques experts use. There's also no guarantee that a particular technique won't benefit the weaker player more than the expert. An expert might decide that under a set of circumstances, a technique provides marginal benefit and not employ it at all. The rookie might go for that marginal benefit and have a better performance than he would otherwise with not getting the benefit.
I don't know how to interpret '
forced (my emphasis) to copy what you do, or fall behind' as other than implying that people in a competitive setting have no responsibility to compete. Even if I'm just 'comparing' games, this is still a competition or I wouldn't be bothering to make a comparision. If you are seriously competing, then you are not 'forced' as you will do these things naturally because you are actively working to improve your play. If you are honestly trying to play 'for fun' then the results are supposed to be irrelevant (you only wanted to 'have fun', remember?) and you have no businsess telling other players what techniques need to come out of their toolboxes. It's amusing that this argument never goes away and is probably as old as time. It comes up in almost EVERY GAME EVER MADE. They wanted to ban the forward pass
100 years ago when it popped up in football and they didn't like the curveball when it first came up in baseball
130 years ago either. I may not like being 'forced' to give preferential selection to the taller players (assuming fairly equal skill, obviously) when I pick my basketball team, but if that is what I need to do to compete, then that is what I do. Players who are competing use their skills to make the most of all the tools they have available, players who aren't competing, don't, and are likely to lose. That is how games work. It's true that somebody coming to these boards for the first time and jumping into the GoTM might be at a disadvantage. If they only wanted to 'have fun', then it won't matter. If they are serious about improving their game, then they will learn all the things we did by using these boards and other tools that are readily available.
For a minor, related point, go back to our game where I nearly always outperform you due to 'X'. 'X' is most likely an abstract technique, that no matter how well I explain it, it does not follow that you are going to be able to implement it as well as I do (Worker Stealing is a good example). Techniques like trade subsidies are easily explained and can be done by anybody, the inherenet skill level to pull it off successfully is far less. If the goal is to shrink the field between expert and non-expert out of some sense of fair play (which to me means you no longer have a real competition, see below), then I don't see the logic of banning moves that can be equally employed by all players and leaving both sides with techniques that only the expert is likely to use correctly.
Whether you agree or disagree is mainly going to depend on how you spin the whole idea of competitive play rather than my actual words. If you're one of those that feels a 'real ' competition means that both players have close to a 50% chance of winning, you're bound to find fault since no matter what I say, you're going to insist that we handicap experts (instead of the other option, help improve the play of the non-experts) by making it so they can't use all of their knowledge of the game. I'm in the camp that a real competition has the players making maximum use of all their abilities at all times. If this gives lopsided odds because I know 'X' and you don't, then fine. There's no reason to fault me for it. I find games will be more exciting if an underdog wins, and you'll have more opportunity to improve your play by seeing what I did that you didn't, than you will in a game cooked to be nearly identical. When I watched
The Incredibles in the theatre, some people booed in the scene at the end where Daschle uses his super speed to come in 2nd place in the track race. I wholeheartily agree with this booing. If I take tools out of the expert's box to play with him, any victory I earn is diminished since I did not beat the expert at their best. If I have no real chance to beat the expert, then we should not be wasting our time in competition. GoTM already addresses this issue by having the different categories of the saved game for people to play and encouraging people to talk about their games even if they lose.
It is relevant because the designers intended for a game that is balanced and offers many different strategies.
You may be thinking that if you're 'forced' to follow what the expert does, there is less strategy. I don't have a hard and fast answer to this. But this is not a game like Street Fighter where the technique might be 'Always use player [blank] and use move [blank]', where you get predictable outcomes. In the case of Civ IV, the ultimate outcome of the game is not a foregone conclusion from using this particular technique. So I have to 'agree to disagree' on the idea that I have less strategy. I can say from personal experience that in this particular case only, I personally (individual results may vary) end up with
more strategy since I'm now using a feature of the game I had no reason to use before (AI trades). As for balance, I see no personal imbalance whatsoever. I've written at length in the other thread why it's fruitless to argue over how the AI should or should not be managing its trades, and how I don't see how the programmers could have reasonably been expected to come up with anything better (meaning this system is not an 'error'). In the response to my thread I've seen exactly 1 post by Malekithe hinting that an AI might have been genuniely 'harmed'. As of this writing I'm aware of no credible research into the long or short term consequences of burdening an AI with suddenly unsubsidized trades. Frankly, since this isn't something you can just fire up the WorldBuilder and check in a few minutes, I'm not sure how such research could be done. But as I point out in the other thread, I don't see why we care what happens to the AI in the first place. The main point of the game is to crush it. The counter-argument seems to go that since the AI doesn't 'counter' this strategy that it is unfair. To me this puts it in the same league as Worker Stealing- as evidenced in Nares'
own article, the AI does not know how to protect itself from this technique, but I don't hear anybody sticking up for the AI in this case. In fact, I'd even go out on a limb and say that Worker Stealing is more harmful than subsidies. Subsidies provide the most results later in the game when the AI players have more money and are well established; at this point, fiddling with their budgets will have less (but not
no, obviously) impact on the game since it's most likely already half over or later. Stealing a Worker is an early game move designed to interfere with the AI's development and boost your own, it is by its nature a long-term benefit and therefore has more impact. The game is weighted towards giving the AI advantages, I don't see why we are shackled to treat it with some sense of fair play.
...you are playing a different game than the rest of us wishes to play and for which we like to compare our experiences with each other.
I understand this sentiment completely. It is the quintessential philosophy of the scrub as explained in
Sirlin's article (not written by me, if anybody wondered) that I reference in my previous post. But I don't think that 'we' includes everybody who might want to play GoTM. A simple solution is to keep adding brackets or making 'expert' and 'non-expert' versions, but I don't like solutions that divide people into camps. I see it as better not to ban techniques like this and allow everyone to play together. If you read my game write-up and decide that I do something you don't approve of under whatever imaginary ruleset you like to play under, all you have to do is disregard what I write and tell yourself I didn't really outperform you (if I did) since I didn't follow your rules. No muss no fuss. Meanwhile the serious, know every nut-and-bolt of the game experts still get a fair trial (or 'comparison', however you want to color it) amongst themselves since they didn't have to play handicapped.
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* There's a lot of wasted space in the other thread because of the use of the word 'exploit'. I find use of the term unfortunate because it means different things to different people. I might live in a region rich in natural resources, in which case I might exploit them. Or I could exploit my natural singing talent and make millions. Neither of these neccessarily has any negative connotation. However, if I'm a sweatshop owner then I could exploit my workers and this is bad. However you bother to literally define 'exploit' (and more than one person did), as you apply it in the context of a computer game, more often than not the negative connotation of wrongdoing sticks to it. We usually think of the guy who uses 'exploits' as a 'cheater', i.e., somebody doing things they 'shouldn't'. I spent time there arguing that I don't see this technique as an 'exploit' because I don't see it as something I should inherently not be doing. I prefer the term 'technique' for what amounts to an essay here since I find it has less imagery that immediately comes to mind than the word 'exploit'. I can discuss a set of techniques without baggage regarding their origin or if they are 'cheats'. A bad technique can be declared so later on its own merits. I see no relevance in how a technique comes to be, the only worthy topic for discussion is the practical effect of the technique. If the technique is shown to remove most of the point of playing the game, then ban it based on that fact and not simply on its origins. The other thread has a lot of noise with people going over the nature and meaning of exploits and nobody talking about demonstrable effects in the game. It is really these effects we need to be discretely analyzing before we get around to talking about a ban.
Unfortunately, I think it does work pretty well, and it may be hard to fix.
