Strategies I never will do in civ V...

Does anyone else have an aversion to certain strategies to the point that they never do them as a point of honor?

I don't know if I'm just weird or what but I have a small list of "cheaty" things (my opinion) that I'll never do as they just seem too cheap given the AI's stupidity. Here's a few, anyone else like me or have more to add?

1. Trade away a city that I know I'm about to lose in a war
2. Build a terrible city to trade away to the AI who then burn it and get no benefit. You get loads of goodies for the cost of 2 turns building a settler.
3. Trade away luxes for lump gold or other immediate thing then pillage the resource to break the deal. Rinse/repeat
4. Nuke people that are about to win science victory or destroy spaceship parts in transit. I guess I'm ok with a classical invasion or bribing someone to attack them if someone is doing well in science or culture but a sudden nuking and sniping of parts seems like sore losing to me. Oh and apparently you can buy all their aluminum too and the AI will agree. With these strats there is almost no challenge to winning the science race in my opinion though.

I usually play on immortal difficulty. Emperor if I'm trying out a creative experiment or new approach and I've beaten Deity but I still can't bring myself to do these things even on Deity. They almost seem like loopholes in the code and I feel bad doing them. I feel bad nuking regardless but I could see myself using it in a full conquest game. A surprise nuke attack is not my style though, I guess I empathize too much with the issue irl.

5. Bribe civ A with all your luxes and GPT to DoW civ B, then DoW civ A (which you were going to do anyway) on the same turn, putting them in a two front war at no cost.

wow, I never even thought of that one! That is realy sneaky! Probably wouldn't do it either. However, there is a downside to doing that unlike most of the other things I listed and that is a diplo hit for every deal you broke by declaring war. Other AI will trust you less I believe. (of course nuking has a penalty but with the game ending in a few turns it hardly matters doing the end-game nuke gambit)

Points 1-3 the AI hardly seems to recognize what you are doing so they are essentially free.

All of those except #4. I suppose you must see me as a dishonorable scoundrel, but I've won a Deity game using #4 and I was quite proud of it. I didn't do it so much for the purpose of destroying the spaceship part, but when my spy revealed that Theodora was 3 turns from completing her last part, and I was 6 turns, I nuked that city just to affect her production capabilities. (It went from 3 turns to 7. ) I do somewhat agree that taking spaceship parts in transit or buying their aluminum is cheesy. But I can't see how you would think nuking was a sort of coding "loophole"... that sounds like exactly what nukes were made for.

I may have done #5 before too, but not necessarily on purpose. (I might've paid a runaway civ to DoW someone to distract them, but when I realized they were winning that war and running away even faster, I had to jump in to stop them.)

Regarding #3, I've intentionally let a barbarian pillage my resource. Or, I've traded away a resource for a lump sum that I knew a barb was about to pillage. Does that count? (I've never pillaged it myself... didn't even know you could do that.)

Because of the cheesiness of #1 and #2, and my general belief that the AI doesn't understand how to value cities at all, I just generally do not include cities as part of a trade deal, with the only exception when the AI is offering it to me as a peace deal for a war I've won.

I guess you can be excused on Deity, especially if it was your first win. My reasoning for #4 is it makes the science race far too easy.

In recent patches they tried to address #3. For instance you can now only trade lump gold from friends so abusing lump gold --> DOW can only be done on friends which you typically don't want to do. That's why I didn't list it. However, I'm pretty sure you can still disconnect your own luxuries/resources and abuse this peacefully with no diplo hit with friends. It does require a turn to take effect though. The only way to fix would be to disallow lump gold for these things. As losing resources and luxes happens in war they can't make it any more stringent without punishing people who are losing at war so it's the only fix I can think of.

I'm not above anything. If it can be done, I'll do it. Although I've never thought about #2. I might have to try that in my current game

BenitoChavez said:

I'm not above anything. If it can be done, I'll do it. Although I've never thought about #2. I might have to try that in my current game

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To each his own. This is just my weird moral system. If you do this the best location is a pure-snow area with no resources. Pick an AI you know has happiness problems and he'll probably accept it for some nice stuff like gpt. Then burn it. If you do it right I hear you can repeat the process several times. Usually AI don't accept cities till later in the game, not sure of the actual timings as I don't do it but it can be lucrative I hear.

I don't really have problems with any of these since they all have consequences. For example, selling a city means increased SP costs for no benefit. All of them are less of an exploit than stealing a worker from a CS. That is where I draw the line for cheese.

danaphanous said:

My reasoning for #4 is it makes the science race far too easy.

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Second half of 4, yes? I am not convinced that would really work.

Starting a war to secure an SV win sounds like nail-biting fun to me!

However, I'm pretty sure you can still disconnect your own luxuries/resources and abuse this peacefully with no diplo hit with friends. It does require a turn to take effect though.

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Several turns. You cannot pillage your own resources, but you could start to build a citadel fort on it (1 turn), then rebuild the improvement (3+ turns).

ah interesting. So building that city even after you sell it permanently increases your SP costs? Question: wouldn't it be true only once though? I thought it just stuck with your highest city number so if you sold one, built another sold it, it should only keep your SP costs 1 above your current city number? I don't really see any downside to #1 though, it keeps the city from your enemy and probably will start a war between 2 civs. Sure you gave up a city but this is usually only done by players when you were gonna lose it anyway.

As for 4 I just never really nuke. Whoever starts the war gets a massive benefit with those weapons unlike in real life when early detection systems can make both parties respond. "Mutually assured destruction". In civ due to it being turn-based I see nukes as massively OP though granted they are very nerfed compared to real nukes. Given enough though one surprise attack can basically take you from a loss to a victory just because you attacked first and that's what I don't like about them. It feels less skilled of a win I guess. I usually ban nukes in my games. I really liked the civ III solution where I could install missile batteries to at least have a decent chance of interception.

I don't mind starting a war to assure a science victory. More surprise nuking or sniping spaceship parts in transit as I cited. I just feel those two give the AI no time to respond before they've lost the race. This is of course only valid if there is a race. If we're talking the AI is 30+ turns ahead of you then it may not make a difference.

danaphanous said:

Question: wouldn't it be true only once though? I thought it just stuck with your highest city number so if you sold one, built another sold it, it should only keep your SP costs 1 above your current city number?

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Correct, so long as you sell cities in series, you would only be taking the hit once. So maybe not a big deal.

I don't really see any downside to #1 though, it keeps the city from your enemy and probably will start a war between 2 civs. Sure you gave up a city but this is usually only done by players when you were gonna lose it anyway.

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Emphasis added. You are not exactly playing from a position of strength at that point! It comes up rarely enough that I don't feel bad when I do it...

As for 4 I just never really nuke.

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I have used a DOW to distract an AI from SV, but not nukes I do not think. For SV, I don't have the spare capacity! I don't like bombs, but love the nuke missiles. But missiles and boosters unlock with the same tech, so it would be rare for me to have turns and cities enough for both.

danaphanous said:

However, there is a downside to doing that unlike most of the other things I listed and that is a diplo hit for every deal you broke by declaring war.

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Nope, no penalty for that one at all.

yeah, tbh I can't see myself ever losing a city permanently these days. Might happen on deity if I returned to playing it but I usually play immortal and war isn't that hard. I might be tempted to pull the stunt on Deity, not sure, I'll let you know if it ever comes up.

You comment about nukes gave me a thought though. What if they both required aluminum? (realistic). Then you probably couldn't invest in both without a LOT of excess. I frequently find myself being able to invest in both right now as I run wide empires and they are easy enough to acquire buy cash-buying at the end if you didn't choose the tenet that has you cash-buying the spaceship parts. There's not much else to do with the gold other than military at that point. I agree with you though you only really get the chance to use them right as the spaceship race is starting so it is an interesting balance of priorities regardless.

Never did any of the above, but if I ever noticed case #4, I think I would

And what about this strategy of hoarding an army of GSs for the final part of the game and then making the great leap forward through the Info era in a blink of an eye for a SV?

For me it just ruins to some extent the fun of the endgame. I would suggest that great scientists should be given a limited 'shelf life' - a certain amount of turns or the era in which they were born, and bulbed automatically if not planted by that time. Or at least their science output should be calculated along the lines of the tourism output of the great musicians. It is far too powerful as it is now. Or at least you must have a new academy in place if you want to bulb another GS.

I don't know a lot about the beaker overflow exploit but I read an article about it a couple years ago. Is it still a thing then or are you talking about the fact that GS's scale their output dynamically? I think their bulb output should be locked to the previous 8 turns before they were generated, personally to encourage you to use them quickly rather than waiting for a peak output.

MrRadar said:

Never did any of the above, but if I ever noticed case #4, I think I would

And what about this strategy of hoarding an army of GSs for the final part of the game and then making the great leap forward through the Info era in a blink of an eye for a SV?

For me it just ruins to some extent the fun of the endgame. I would suggest that great scientists should be given a limited 'shelf life' - a certain amount of turns or the era in which they were born, and bulbed automatically if not planted by that time. Or at least their science output should be calculated along the lines of the tourism output of the great musicians. It is far too powerful as it is now. Or at least you must have a new academy in place if you want to bulb another GS.

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Great Scientists do calculate the same way as Great Musicians and Great Writers, they take your last 8 turns of total science/tourism/culture created and add it on in one turn. That is why its best to use Great Writers 8 turns after winning Worlds Fair and Great Musicians 8 turns after winning International Games, since they both double the output. Great Scientists you have to wait 8 turns after you have Research Labs in every city and are at maximum Science output, then bulb 1 per turn until their all gone. If you do it right, you have all of your techs/social policies/tourism immediately. If you don't, at least you get the most out of your great people that you can get.

danaphanous said:

I don't know a lot about the beaker overflow exploit but I read an article about it a couple years ago. Is it still a thing then or are you talking about the fact that GS's scale their output dynamically? I think their bulb output should be locked to the previous 30 turns before they were generated, personally to encourage you to use them quickly rather than waiting for a peak output.

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They patched that hole years ago, but it was different than this. From what I read, it was caused by literal overflow from a tech being researched by everyone else, and then getting scholars in residence. Somehow, overflow techs caused the game to save up the science and then you could use it all at once and get tech after tech just by leaving one branch of the tech tree untouched into the Modern era. That's a really bad explanation, but I have no other way to explain it. It's all done now though I think, but the Great Scientist usage is still a thing used frequently.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Great Scientists do calculate the same way as Great Musicians and Great Writers, they take your last 8 turns of total science/tourism/culture created and add it on in one turn.

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Is that really so? I thought GMs were a bit different in that they provided 8x tourism output you had on the turn they were born, not used.

danaphanous said:

.. are you talking about the fact that GS's scale their output dynamically?

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yes, about this

danaphanous said:

I think their bulb output should be locked to the previous 8 turns before they were generated, personally to encourage you to use them quickly rather than waiting for a peak output.

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I quite agree with this.

Unless there was a recent patch, I believe MrRadar is right that the tourism impact of great musicians is set when they are spawned, not when they are used. I agree that great scientists and great artists should have been done the same way.

@fyar, I think you mean Great Writers, who provide 8 turns of culture when bulbed. Great Artists just start a Golden Age when bulbed.

fyar said:

Unless there was a recent patch, I believe MrRadar is right that the tourism impact of great musicians is set when they are spawned, not when they are used. I agree that great scientists and great artists should have been done the same way.

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I may be wrong about great musicians, I can't remember the details. Hopefully someone can, but I know the other aspects of a culture victory are more important.

danaphanous said:

I guess you can be excused on Deity, especially if it was your first win. My reasoning for #4 is it makes the science race far too easy.

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It wasn't my first Deity win, but it was my first win on quick speed on Deity. (Quick speed makes warfare significantly more difficult, and warfare is the human's primary advantage over the AI.) But I confess, another reason I didn't have qualms about doing it is because when you've gone that far in the game, losing at that point makes all that effort almost a waste.

I disagree that it becomes too easy... a nuke is no insta-win by any means. It only buys you a little time.