[FIXED] infinity city population - starving + growing again

[MrGameTheory]

Hello all, It is I, your friend and hero. The one.... The only... MrGameTheory....

Since I am ranked #1 in the world at Civilization V and I am undefeated in the Civ V league at (civplayers.com) .... I have decided to teach the entire Civilization V world about the biggest bug in Civ V.

*Fine Print*

I discovered this bug yesterday while testing out a strategy. This is without question the biggest bug in Civ V. I am only releasing this bug to the general public because I do not need it to win. I have already proven myself as the best and don't ever want to be considered a cheater or someone who needs to break the rules to get ahead. I hate bugs and even though I talk a lot of , there is a fine line between talking / being an and using bugs to win. People who use bugs are despicable. I am releasing this bug because noone deserves an unfair advantage and if 1 person uses this bug than everyone should be able to use this bug. Once again I never, even once, for even a second, used this bug in a ladder match or counted match of any kind.

*The Bug*

This is an infinity city population bug. With this bug you can have a 1 population city on the outside, but on the inside it can have 35 population and be bringing in 50 hammers and gold etc.

First you need to raise a cities population to a given number, lets say 4. Once you get to 4 population you need to starve the city. Take all of your population off food and only work lets say mountains. Now its vital to the bug to set 1 citizen as a citizen. So the citizen is bringing in only 1 hammer. Now the next step is to manually lock each mountain in place. After the population starves down to 1 population, click the city and you will see that you are still working 4 places as if you are a 4 population city. Now... You can than regrow your city by unlocking 1 or 2 of the mountains and repeat the process, thus making a population 1 city on the outside, a 35 population city on the inside.....

You can do this to every city. This is very important because of the happiness issue. Now instead of having 37 unhappiness from a 35 population city.... You now have only 3 unhappiness for a 1 population city on the outside that is really a 35 population city on the inside.... This can artificially make a 35 population city.... 100x faster.... than it would take for the city to naturally get to 35 population.

I AM PROMETHEUS... I BRING FIRE TO THE PEOPLE....

 

[afa2000]

*The Bug*

This is an infinity city population bug. With this bug you can have a 1 population city on the outside, but on the inside it can have 35 population and be bringing in 50 hammers and gold etc.

First you need to raise a cities population to a given number, lets say 4. Once you get to 4 population you need to starve the city. Take all of your population off food and only work lets say mountains. Now its vital to the bug to set 1 citizen as a citizen. So the citizen is bringing in only 1 hammer. Now the next step is to manually lock each mountain in place. After the population starves down to 1 population, click the city and you will see that you are still working 4 places as if you are a 4 population city. Now... You can than regrow your city by unlocking 1 or 2 of the mountains and repeat the process, thus making a population 1 city on the outside, a 35 population city on the inside.....

You can do this to every city. This is very important because of the happiness issue. Now instead of having 37 unhappiness from a 35 population city.... You now have only 3 unhappiness for a 1 population city on the outside that is really a 35 population city on the inside....

I AM PROMETHEUS... I BRING FIRE TO THE PEOPLE....

Why not just change the xml and get all the good stuff ? Or playing at chieftain ? Once it's completely avoidable and you dont need any cheat, why dont we all just ignore it ?

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks for that Mr. Game Theory. I hope that bug is fixed ASAP.

 

[lynxxyarly]

interesting how this would have been discovered.

just like any other bug. crazy that it happens by chance.

 

[Elliot]

Wow this sounds like a terrible bug. I need to double check if this works.

-edit-

Yeah, this works. Just keep one of your pop points as a citizen while your city starves and you'll keep the pop even though you're starving. If you exit the city screen without one of your pop points as a citizen, the game corrects the bug.

Your science suffers with this short term( the 1 science/citizen is not affected by the bug so once you starve down to 1 pop your city produces almost no science. However, your production/gold and science skyrocket since you get such a high pop.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

I want to see MrGameTheory keep that "I am the best" attitude when Rusten, Dirk, ABigCivFan, Duckweed, etc. decide to play multiplayer.

 

[Thormodr]

I want to see MrGameTheory keep that "I am the best" attitude when Rusten, Dirk, ABigCivFan, Duckweed, etc. decide to play multiplayer.

Meh. He backs up what he says. I respect him for that.

I'd be willing to bet that he'd honestly admit if someone beat him.

 

[SevenSpirits]

This should be moved to bug reports.

 

[snoochems]

Surely this isn't THE BIGGEST bug in Civ V.

I think the whole of the AI takes the cake there.

Also, the culture bug is - you can save up your culture points sell off all your cities and then smack the policy tree with your extremely cheap policies, build the utopia project in your remaining city and win.

 

[ori]

Moderator Action: moved to Bug Reports

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Meh. He backs up what he says. I respect him for that.

I'd be willing to bet that he'd honestly admit if someone beat him.

He has been beaten already, just not on the ladder.

He took on one of the beta-testers when he was just starting out. MGT was confident of victory, but from the sounds of it got hit in the rear as he wasn't clear on where his opponent was.

I'm impressed this bug was discovered at all.

 

[MrGameTheory]

He has been beaten already, just not on the ladder.

He took on one of the beta-testers when he was just starting out. MGT was confident of victory, but from the sounds of it got hit in the rear as he wasn't clear on where his opponent was.

I'm impressed this bug was discovered at all.

Lets remember that this was on the day after Civ was released lol. It was also my first mp game. It was also the #1 beta tester who had been playing the game for 6 months in beta....

Lets also remember that I beat the same beta tester 2 days later. Then again i played him and I slaughtered him. After losing twice he conceded that there was no way to beat my strategy and he would have to change his strategy....

Lets also remember that I have won more 1v2 and 1v3s than anyone in Civ V.

 

[Songkok]

I remember reading about this bug before last week.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=385570

There is a bug which lets you make as many hammers as you have popluation in your city while still maintaining food and being able to occupy tiles.

Here`s how it goes...

1. Farm your nearby tiles (preferrably ones that make your city grow the fastest)

2. Wait for a few growths for a minor bonus. Wait for 15 or more growths for a big bonus.

3. Once you have as many citizen as you want, simply unemploy them all.

4. Wait untill your city depletes to 1 population.

5. You will now notice that you have 1 person left in that city. However you still get the production from all of the unemployed workers. You now gain no unhappiness/research from them. They also don`t eat food. Go to your city screen. Do not touch the worker tile placement. Simply click on one of your unemployed icons which will automatically assign that citizen onto a tile depending on your preference (default, gold, food, hammers, etc...).

6. Now that you have assigned this one worker on a tile, your city will begin growing from population 1. Food requirement is according to the ammount of citizen what the game is now fooled into thinking that there are. However once you reach the same population as you were before, it somewhy realises it`s flaw and corrects the error, making all of the unemployed/specialists dissapear.

So lets say you have 24 people in a farm-specialized town. Unemploy them all, you get 24 hammers per turn. In 23 turns you can assign one citizen to work on a tile, making it 23 hammers. Now you`re once again starting to get the worked tile benefits. Grow your population up to 23 BUT stop there! Go to 24 and the game will reset, undoing the bug.

I haven`t fully tested this. If anyone has time to do so, i can quote their findings on the first post. I have reason to believe you can achieve infinite hammers by doing this in a certain way.

 

[Lexad]

This thread definitely deserves to be sticky until fixed.

 

[r_rolo1]

Pretty sad to see such a glaring bug passing QA ...

 

[Captain_Crunch]

QA happens after the beta is over man

 

[Zelig]

Why not just change the xml and get all the good stuff ? Or playing at chieftain ? Once it's completely avoidable and you dont need any cheat, why dont we all just ignore it ?

Because this is an exploit which can be used in multiplayer.

 

[DalekDavros]

Why not just change the xml and get all the good stuff ? Or playing at chieftain ? Once it's completely avoidable and you dont need any cheat, why dont we all just ignore it ?

I can imagine this coming up legitimately. There are some situations in which intentionally starving your population is desirable (e.g., the only tiles left are lousy ones like tundra or coastal) and you could inadvertently end up with population locked on tiles by doing this.

 

[afa2000]

Because this is an exploit which can be used in multiplayer.

I can imagine this coming up legitimately. There are some situations in which intentionally starving your population is desirable (e.g., the only tiles left are lousy ones like tundra or coastal) and you could inadvertently end up with population locked on tiles by doing this.

Good points here, you're right.

 

[Petek]

I confirm this bug, with save files, and will move it to the Confirmed Bugs forum. I had trouble reproducing the bug and my description of the mechanics differs from some of the above comments. BTW, the save files are from a game I specially created to reproduce this bug - No barbs or City-States and just one other civ.

The first save, PopBug - Begin Test, shows Athens at size 4. One citizen works a mine, the other three are unemployed. Athens is starving.

The second save, PoPBug - Athens size 1, shows Athens has shrunk size to 1, but still works the mine and has three unemployed citizens.

Here's where I had trouble getting Athens to grow. The instructions in the above posts say (I thought) to click on one of the unemployed citizens to put him back working a tile. Whenever I did so, I lost all the unemployed and the number of worked tiles went back to the city size. I found that I had to click on one of the grayed-out icons for an unworked tile to get the desired result.

The third save, Pop Bug - Ath Size 1 Works 2, shows Athens size 1, working 2 tiles, has 2 unemployed citizens and is growing.

The fourth save, Pop Bug - Ath Size 5, is from many turns later. Now Athens has grown to size 5, is working 7 tiles and has 3 unemployed citizens. BTW, in one of the posts above it's stated that you shouldn't let the city grow back to its original size. This save file shows that that's not necessarily the case (although it might be true in other circumstances).

ETA: Civ 5 version is 1.0.0.20.

Moderator Action: Moved to Confirmed Bugs thread.