A Rank Corruption Discovery and Exploit to negate rank corruption

[Aeson]

I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme... or the first time in MP that someone loses out on a spacerace because their capitol was all alone on the other side of the world from their empire.

For the purposes of the HOF, it's a big problem as earlier games were definitely profitting by this (unwittingly) in many cases. Either it continues to be allowed, and all new games will necessarily have to exploit this to remain competitive, or the FP is removed entirely, and new games won't be able to compete with older ones. Taking the FP out altogether would drastically alter the 'difficulty' of any game, as FP placement is one of the more definite areas of advantage that the player has over the AI. The comparison of 'old' and 'new' games would be shot by the removal of the FP entirely.

I'd have to say the only fair ways to deal with it would be to allow players to make use of this new information to score as highly as possible, or to have an official HOF mod where perhaps a balance could be struck by changing the optimum number of cities or allowing more corruption reducing single city improvements. I'd much prefer not to go with the mod route.

The GOTM is in a better position to deal with this as each month the games only need to worry about how they compare against other games that month.

 

[Dominae]

Looking at another possible fix (until officially addressed in a patch):

1. You are not allowed to build the Palace.
2. You are not allowed to disband your capital.

I think this addresses many of the problems brought up in this thread, without actually affecting the Forbidden Palace (which is, let's face it, a very fun Wonder to have in the game).


Dominae

 

[anarres]

Well, the problem is almost as bad if you use OCP around your palace and a very tight spacing model for the FP. Moving your palace isn't necessarily an effective way of stopping this being exploited.

 

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by Svar
It will be real interesting to see how this affects game play. Do you take advantage of the bug or not? If not, what will you do if you already use the FP in the first core and do a palace jump to the second core? The concept of 2 core production centers has been the mainstay of the Gotm since I started (Gotm 20).

Well, I have never done a palace jump, and don't plan on doing any. So for me the only difference will be that I won't try to build a ring around the FP.
OCP is hardly an option in my games since I play for speed so (1) I almost never get to learn Sanitation and (2) the time lost to set the empire up that way is a bigger factor than the efficiency gained. I will get to 1 tech / 4 turns anyway.
My score will be lower, but I really don't care about that.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by Ribannah

Well, I have never done a palace jump, and don't plan on doing any. So for me the only difference will be that I won't try to build a ring around the FP.
OCP is hardly an option in my games since I play for speed so (1) I almost never get to learn Sanitation and (2) the time lost to set the empire up that way is a bigger factor than the efficiency gained. I will get to 1 tech / 4 turns anyway.
My score will be lower, but I really don't care about that.

I think that your city rank around your FP is dictated by the city placement around your palace so it doesn't matter what you do around the FP only distance really counts. In other words if you have 6 cities in a 5 ring around your palace and you next palace ring is a 9 ring all your cities around your FP from 6 to 9 would be treated as rank 8 cities. Plus all you cities around your FP at a distance of 5 or less would be ranked as 2 cities.

 

[Qitai]

Originally posted by Aeson
I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme... or the first time in MP that someone loses out on a spacerace because their capitol was all alone on the other side of the world from their empire.

Aeson, are you saying you will allow this in HOF. I don't want to try this in GOTM, unless cracker allows it. But I am curious enough to want to try it at least once. I publish this the moment I discover it and have yet to actually see it in action. Would love to see a corruption free empire. Would be kind of cool to see that. And maybe just have my name in that list - But you may want to attached a title which says "game exploiter"

 

[kryszcztov]

FP, ICS, RCP, OCP... I just hate acronyms BTW ! As a scientific-like student and a somewhat perfectionist player when I play, I never find myself doing such deep maths in my Civ games (otherwise I'd spend weeks on each of them, making all kinds of calculations). I don't care those bugs / exploits / tactics, I just don't think of them. I just look at the local geography, try to get my FP (which is a good new idea in Civ3) if I find a pleasant place for it, rush a palace with a leader if there really is a need for it. Period. Enough to win a game. Not to beat other players, though. I hope this can be disabled in whatever way in competition solo games and in multi games (my biggest fear now eeeeek !).

I have a very simple but straightforward question : do programmers continue to play their games once they are shipped and thought to be patched ? We all hear about these teams playing hundreds of hours and working on their projects, but once the game is released, we almost don't hear of anything but an uncomplete patch or a work that has started on a future project. Am I wrong here ? Is this for Civ3 only ? No offense there, just want to know, really. Really, really crazy that the best players have to spend their time trying to figure out by themselves all kinds of formulas and bugs / exploits / tactics. That should be the programmers' job.

 

[Catt]

Just chiming in to say a big to Qitai. Well done!

I hope Firaxis fixes this in the next patch.

 

[Aeson]

It will be allowable in the HOF, because gradiants of this are certainly represented in the HOF already. I don't see a distinct cutoff point where it would go from acceptable to unacceptable to have the FP provide 'free' corruption reduction, and certainly don't want to have to define and then enforce such arbitrary cutoffs. (ie. up to Y cities allowed to share OCN X)

The alternatives would be an official HOF mod, or regulations on how many cities could inhabit each OCN number. I don't see either option as feasible.

Mods add their own difficulties. They change how the game is played, introduce possibilities of new exploits or bugs arising, and increase the difficulty in just getting things set for playing the game. Regulations of the required types to negate this would make playing by the rules and then verification of games nearly impossible.

 

[Qitai]

Allright then, I may want to start a HOF game trying to take this to the extreme and see how well it will work. Not likely to be anytime soon though since work is picking up again.

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by kryszcztov
I have a very simple but straightforward question : do programmers continue to play their games once they are shipped and thought to be patched ? We all hear about these teams playing hundreds of hours and working on their projects, but once the game is released, we almost don't hear of anything but an uncomplete patch or a work that has started on a future project. Am I wrong here ? Is this for Civ3 only ? No offense there, just want to know, really. Really, really crazy that the best players have to spend their time trying to figure out by themselves all kinds of formulas and bugs / exploits / tactics. That should be the programmers' job. [/B]

No kryszcztov, after the game is shipped, they fire most of the guys who wrote the code and ussually keep one guy to write code for patches. Since they don't get any money for the patches, they can't afford to keep the programmers idle.

I'm also seriously considering using this knowledge but probably not to the extreme (Palace in Tahiti). OCP - Palace, ICS - FP seem just right.

 

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by Yndy
OCP - Palace, ICS - FP seem just right.

You forgot the Palace jump :
1) ICS around Palace
2) FP in 1st core
3) Jump Palace to 2nd core
4) OCP around 2nd core

ICS is especially good at the start of the game, share those good tiles and MM away!

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by Qitai

The Exploit
To exploit the above, basically, all you need to do is to put your palace as far away as possible without any of your own cities near it. This way, all your cities near the FP will be considered as Rank 1! Try this on a recent game you finish by abandoning all the cities near the palace and see how your corruptions near the FP reduces like magic(You may need to remove and put back the population to see the changes). So if the nearest city to the capital is distance 20. Then all cities less than 20 distance from the FP is considered to have a rank of 1. Imaging that!! Even those cities that are considerable distance from the FP now become very useful. I tested it on a recently finish game and I see my previously fully corrupted cities in the outer ring of my FP turning into low corruption power cities.
[/I]

I have a test map (huge) that I generated to test the power of RCP that gives me very accurate calculations on productivity of any ring city. I have taken a 2 ring configuration (inner ring distance 5 and outer ring distance 9) and am testing the concept discribed in this article.

I already have productivity numbers for the ring cities with populations at 12 and the civ in GA (460AD). There was a city placed on the other side of this huge world to build a new palace that I wanted to check to see if the FP gave the same numbers as the palace. I never made this check as I was convinced that numbers would be the same. The city (New Palace) will be my only city in that hemisphere.

I am almost ready to intiate a war near New Palace to generate the GL needed to move the palace. The only other thing I need is a tech that will allow me to prebuild the FP with a wonder. I'll get the tech before I can generate the GL and move him to New Palace so with luck I will have the test completed in the next couple of days.

When I get the test completed I will report the results here with various conditions of the FP and palace at the center of the 5/9 city rings. There are also 4 cities at distances greater than 12 from the ring center so will report the effect on those cities as well.

 

[rabies]

I just discovered this thread..and all this talk makes my head hurt. I am still not 100% sure how the exploit works..and what is/isn't using this exploit. I don't think i want to know either.

However...my last couple GOTM games, I usually use RCP around my palace (which I think I will dump in GOTM23 because I end up spending more time planning out where my cities go instead of just playing the darn game), go out and conquest until I get a GL, and build my FP somewhere in newly conquered lands. I typically don't build any new cities around the FP..I just leave it the way the computer lays it out...I may squeeze a city or two in there if they had especially bad city layouts....

my question to those who understand this well...am I at all benefiting from the exploit above? Can I continue playing in this fashion confident that I am not abusing a bug?

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by rabies

My question to those who understand this well...am I at all benefiting from the exploit above? Can I continue playing in this fashion confident that I am not abusing a bug?

Your play style probably doesn't benefit from this bug. The key here is having higher city placement density around your FP than around your palace. Placing more cities in the holes around your FP will give you city rank based on the number of cities closer to the palace than your new city is to the FP. In other words the number of cities closer to the FP is irrelevant for any city getting corruption calculations based on its distance from the FP.

Thats really clear isn't it.

 

[rabies]

Gack! My brain hurts more!

 

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by rabies
Gack! My brain hurts more!

I know what you mean. Here's an example of what I think this means.

Say your closest city to your palace is 5 tiles away, that means any cities 5 tiles or less from your forbidden palace have distance rank of 1.

Say your 2nd closest city to your palace is 10 tiles away, that means any cities between 5 and 10 tiles from your forbidden palace have a distance rank of 2.

And so on. Note the bolding, that's the crucial bit.

Therefore, to minimize the rank corruption around the forbidden palace you want to have a low number of cities around your palace at a long distance, the extreme of which means no cities, or a low number at a very long distance. A less extreme case is to very sparsely populate (I.e. OCP) the area around the palace and to densely populate the area around the forbidden palace (I.e. ICS).

 

[Qitai]

Rabies> If this is confusing then the rule is this.

You benefit when you have few cities near the palace and alot of cities near the FP.

You lose out when you have many cities near the palace and few cities near the FP.

The less cities you have near the palace, the more you gain. And the extreme is when you have no city near the palace with all your cities nearer to the FP. And you will get low corruption even when the city is say 30 distance from the FP, if you go to the extreme.

As explained earlier, best way to understand this is make a test. Use a recently completed domination/conquest to test.

 

[civ_steve]

It appears that the Civ3 designers are accounting for all the bureaucracy, red-tape and waste that goes on at the center of a large government! I am impressed ... and boggled

 

[lz14]

The good thing is it balanced the Expansionist trait. They can have a settler/city far far away. Normally it's useless, but now very useful.