Robbed of Cultural Victory - What Should I Do?

[Ruin]

I set a World Record for Large Monarch 100K, achieving 130,000 culture in 1240 AD, surpassing the previous record of 1270 AD by Svar, which has stood since 2005. I played as Celts, had ~350 cities infinitely sprawled. Or I thought I did. I fortified everyone and hit enter for the last few turns since CivAssist calculations showed that increasing culture further wouldn't speed my win date. However I didn't get the victory message. It turns out that culture win date was set to 169,000 as revealed by F8. I have never messed with conquests.ini, and when I opened it up, the applicable line said 130,000. Yes I'm dumb for not noticing this earlier, but I didn't really check F8 much, relying on CivAssist instead, which also said 130,000. (I have 11x culture of next highest civ and yes cultural win is enabled, in fact I used almost identical settings to my last cultural game which was also a Large Map, which is why this is so puzzling).

Can I submit this to the HOF and get on the board or am I just screwed?

 

[Spoonwood]

It turns out that culture win date was set to 169,000 as revealed by F8.

I will hypothesize that you didn't change that number.

Instead, I will guess that some interaction between the Flintlock mod and the rest of the code changed that number.

1.22F plus any version of the Flintlock mod is not on the list of acceptable versions. If the version of Flintlock's mods you used with whatever settings it had set changed the victory condition, that seems like a good reason to stick to 1.22F (or one of the other listed versions) for any future hall of fame attempts.

 

[Ruin]

Okay, I figured out what happened. It doesn't have anything to do with the Flintlock mod, which doesn't have any settings affecting cultural victory:

1. During my last 100K game, I read somewhere there was a bug where the game would falsly give cultural victory on Large and Huge maps @ 100,000 culture.
2. F8 said 130,000, but I was worried that this would happen to me and I would be flagged as a cheater, I decided to check conquests.ini.
3. found all cities culture to win=100000. Oh no! I quickly changed this to 130000, as I was playing on a large map.
4. Got 130000 culture, win game, make HOF, everything is fine.

The issues:

• the bug (which I now can't find reference to) is imaginary or applied to Vanilla/PtW or an older version of Conquests.
• conquests.ini is only checked at the start of a new game. After that, changing it does nothing
• conquests.ini should have all cities culture to win=100000 no matter what size map you are playing.
• The game multiplies the above number by 1.3 for large and 1.6 for huge, etc.
• Therefore when I started a new game with 130,000 in my conquests.ini, the game multiplied by 1.3 for large map = 169,000 culture to win.

Resolution:

• don't change conquests.ini cultural victory settings out of paranoia/ignorance
• will submit to HOF and hope for mercy but if not, I have learned my lesson and improved my playing skills at the cost of a mere 94 hours of my life

 

[Spoonwood]

will submit to HOF and hope for mercy but if not, I have learned my lesson and improved my playing skills at the cost of a mere 94 hours of my life

Use of the C3X (Flintlock) mod isn't listed as acceptable in the HoF rulebook. It's not a utility program, and not just a bunch of bug fixes or quality of life improvements. Though, it happily has some of those! Using it may make winning by a certain date easier.

I've tried to advocate for some sort of official version of the Flintlock mod which we could agree as acceptable for use in HoF games, and thus have at least a consensus or official Flintlock patch. But that may not come to pass. Though one could hope otherwise.

Having a #1 spot under threat with an unofficial version doesn't sit right with me for anyone who cares about their number 1 spot as being number 1. The AIs building more artillery units ends up less expensive for them, and may consequently make them researching less of a challenge to overcome, or they can't trade technology as easily (or for the human player, there's not as much gold that can get obtained). More captured artillery units also likely implies culture built sooner via disbanding as one possibility. That may not change finish date, or only by a turn or three, but if it does or did, it could be enough.

Perhaps you had artillery type units set to '0' when you started this game Ruin, but can anyone on staff check that? Or any of the other possible settings that the C3X mod allows for?

It also doesn't sit right with me to have any table with 10 entries with any of their entries ending up off of the table due to the use of an unofficial version. Though maybe it wouldn't matter, since the 10 people who made those entries wouldn't mind at all at losing their spots.

It also wouldn't sit right with me if use of an unofficial version demotivates anyone using an official version. Though, I believe it implausible that such would happen these days.

Personally, I don't see why I would feel upset at losing any of my spots if someone got a better finish date or higher score with use of the C3X mod, but I could understand why someone else would feel like such was unfair. Someone gets a better finish date on one of my spaceship launches? Well, the lack of a scientific golden age in 1.22F is not a feature, but rather a bug!

@superslug I'm pinging you just in case you haven't seen this thread.

 

[superslug]

As a reminder to all players, run your starting .sav files through the 4000bc check page:

CivFanatics Civilization III Hall of Fame

That doesn't guarantee final game acceptance, but it will make sure you don't get rejected for improper settings.

Also, as @Spoonwood mentioned, the Flintlock mod is not acceptable via HOF standards at this time.

 

[Ruin]

The game was rejected.

Superslug wrote: "In regards to public HOF reputation, I have never once commented on a player's declined submissions.

In regards to internal HOF reputation, I judge games one at a time. I don't think of them in terms of potential cheating, because it's often hard to distinguish between malicious behavior, accidents, or just simple errors. In the end, all that matters is whether a submission meets Hall of Fame standards, and a game can fall outside that scope for many different reasons.

All I care about is protecting the integrity of the tables. Whatever happened, there's no wiggle room on victory conditions being altered.

Submission declined.

In the future, run your first-turn .sav file through the 4000bc checker. It doesn't guarantee game acceptance, but it would have prevented this one from happening."

 

[Ruin]

I have also used Flintlock mod in my other HOF submissions. I turned off the artillery and all other modifications leaving just the bug fixes and convenience options like worker stack controls.

However these two games should thus probably be removed from the HOF.

 

[superslug]

I'll look more into it tomorrow. Altering victory condition settings is always a no-no, but bug fixes and convenience options are a different story.

 

[Spoonwood]

However these two games should thus probably be removed from the HOF.

I'll propose something else. Instead of deleting your Warlord or Chieftain entry, maybe send the version number of C3X, along with the file where you could change artillery and other settings (I know I opened this in Notepad when I was playing with that mod, but not for the HoF entries since I was using that mod... I'm not sure it was a .txt file though it might be) to superslug. Perhaps then we might get an official version at least for Flintlock's bug fixes and convenience options now, even if it doesn't apply to future bug fixes or conveniences. And there wouldn't exist a need to delete entries already on the table.

If you think you used more than one version, just use the Warlord one, since AI changes seem less likely to have had an effect on a Chieftain version.

 

[Spoonwood]

I should have added to the above, that I have no idea if such can work with how superslug manages things.

 

[Ruin]

send the version number of C3X, along with the file where you could change artillery and other settings

mod version is C3X 1.6
file is default.c3x_config.ini

convenience fixes and bug fixes are set to true (default).
All other modifications are off (default)

AI enhancements:
use_offensive_artillery_ai = false (default: true)
ai_build_artillery_ratio = false (default: 16)
ai_artillery_value_damage_percent = 50 (Default: 50)
ai_build_bomber_ratio = 70 (Default: 70)

(no AI got flight in any HOF game I played)

replace_leader_unit_ai = true (default: true)
fix_ai_army_composition = true (default: true)
enable_pop_unit_ai = true (default: true)
max_ai_naval_escorts = 3 (default: 3)

 

[Spoonwood]

So that is release 16 with those settings?

 

[Ruin]

So that is release 16 with those settings?

Yes it is.

 

[superslug]

I have to make a decision about Flintlock before I can make a decision about those games. This isn't going to get resolved quickly.

 

[Ruin]

I have to make a decision about Flintlock before I can make a decision about those games. This isn't going to get resolved quickly.

I understand.

I like the mod for fixing the bugs and the convenience features. (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/warlord-100k-large-4th-place-babylon.687871/post-16564933 showing that I was not trying to hide my use of it for said purposes). I hope to get its future use permitted with settings amenable to the HOF as not altering gameplay, even if those settings aren't exactly the above and thus cause my prior games to be invalidated.

However I support any decision you render and thank you for your time as well as your stewardship of the HOF. Also I thank @Spoonwood for his balanced and reasoned viewpoint on the situation.

 

[Spoonwood]

You're welcome, Ruin.

However I support any decision you [superslug] render and thank you for your time as well as your stewardship of the HOF

I second this!

 

[Spoonwood]

Also, with respect to the standard of mass cultural victory needing to work exactly according to the default numbers, I think we do best to think about why all those victory conditions need enabled in the first place. Those aren't just victory conditions for us. They also are victory conditions for AIs. With more culture needed for the mass cultural victory, it could become more difficult for an A. I. to win. And though I haven't seen it in any game that I played, and perhaps you haven't seen such either, here's a Conquest of the Month from a while back where Stalintag loses to some AI by a 100k victory. I don't think we would want preventing AI victories to become easier by changing the victory condition settings. So, in order to work consistently those settings need to work out the same for all entries.

Or at least that's my reasoning here.

Edit: Oh... I see you played in that one Ruin and did well!

 

[superslug]

@Ruin @Spoonwood I've created a Flintlock-specific discussion in another thread:

Should the Flintlock Mod Be HOF III Legal?

I rarely stick my head outside the HOF III forum, so the Flintlock mod has caught me off guard. However, it appears to have brought some new life to a game that I'm shocked didn't die years ago. I'm slowly trying to understand it and read the primary thread about it, but I'm starting to see why...

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