Abandon your Palace to win?

[3vic]

A few days ago I stumbled upon this method, but I am not sure whether any one knows about. Please advise.

After barely beating "the three sisters" once on emperor level, I had this thought: If the objective of the scenario is to bring the princess unit to the volcanoes as many times and as fast as possible from the capital city, then why don't I just move the capital city to the volcanoes?

So I started the game again and on sid level. After waiting for a few turns to produce a settler, I left only one unit to defend the capital and moved every other units (with the princess) toward the volcanoes. When the group was approaching the volcanoes, I built a city a few squares from a volcano and abandon the capital city. The palace then jumped to this new city, and it just took a couple of more turns for me to repeatedly send subsequent princesses to their deaths. The game was won in 22+ minutes.

Apparently, this method can also be used in other similar scenarios. For example, I used it when I played France in "Age of Discovery" on emperor level. It took a while to research mining. But after it is done, and after building about half a dozen mines in South America, I abandoned Paris to move the Palace to somewhere near modern-day Venezuela! The mines were producing treasure units at about 2 per 3 turns, and these units were quickly returned to the new capital by knights. The game was won very quickly (35000 victory points) with a score of 49006. It may take many more turns if not impossible to move so many treasure units across the Atlantic before time runs out.

 

[Dreadnought]

I call this cheating but I may try it soon if I am loosing...

 

[Bluemofia]

It's cheating in my book. I only abandon cities if they would fall in enemy hands guaranteed, and it is a small city. I would just declare war, get a MGL, and rush a capital there.

 

[3vic]

I don't think it is cheating, but I don't like the method either. If the play testers found out about it, then maybe something would have been done before the game came out.

I previously won the two scenerios without applying this "abandoning" method, but just happened to come up with the idea and decided to give it a try. But I think if one wants to try it, then (s)he needs to plan ahead since it may be too late to do so once on the losing side. (In "Three sisters", it may be hard for the new city to survive near the volcanoes since there will very likely be too many enemy units and barbarians around; in "Age of Discovery", the mines may not be in place or there may not be enough of them to produce enough treasures for victory before the last turn).

 

[sabo]

I don't think it is cheating, but I don't like the method either. If the play testers found out about it, then maybe something would have been done before the game came out.

No it's cheating and the programmers and beta testers wouldn't do anything about it anyway since you always have to have a capitol city

 

[Dreadnought]

I agree. I believe it is cheating. Fully.

 

[3vic]

No it's cheating and the programmers and beta testers wouldn't do anything about it anyway since you always have to have a capitol city

If they found it then can they make the original capital city square the return/starting point of the treasure/princess, and not where the palace is? In this way, the palace can be built or move to any other cities, but if the square is occupied/capture by an AI player, then the game is lost.

In any case, in my original post, I did not ask whether this is cheating (I don't really care; since it is not cool to win that way and I only tried to see if it works). I only asked if anyone knew about this trick. I am new to this forum and I thought it encourages putting up new ideas about the game, and I only tried to do that.

 

[killercane]

I do not think it is cheating either, just an exploit. Cheating is a harsh word that should be reserved for reloading and things like that. Havent ever thought of it in the scenario context; unit teleportation through a palace jump is banned usually in competition games. My 2 cents. Welcome to CFC, 3vic!

 

[josephstalin]

It is cheating! And personally, I think that it just ruins all the fun from scenario, like Age of Discovery. Interesting method though, I never thought about it.

 

[Nyvin]

Yeah, I thought of this too, they should've made it in those scenarios so that the capital (or palace) just flat out 'can't' be moved. It would've avoided this bug.

 

[Smash]

This is exactly how Xin Yu would tackle a scenario in Civ2.He would look for easy ways to win.

This ability to think "outside of the box" made him an excellent playtester.If you could Xinproof a scenario,you really had something.

I say get 3vic to playtest for you!

 

[MeteorPunch]

nice find, 3vic! This is not cheating at all. It is a creative way to achieve victory. It's obviously not the way the scenario designers intended, though.

 

[Pacifist]

@3vic
I've never thought about that. I tried the 3 sisters scenario only once and I won the long way
Have a
BTW, 3vic <insert mirror> civ3 very creative

Just out of curiosity, to those who think it's cheating. If the capital was left undefended (on purpose) and destroyed by barbarians/other civs and that resulted in your capital being moved to the volcano city, would that qualify (in your eyes) as cheating too?

-Pacifist-
"Don't shoot the messenger"

 

[Tee Kay]

Cheating?! This is called "clever streategy".

 

[3vic]

I do not think it is cheating either, just an exploit. Cheating is a harsh word that should be reserved for reloading and things like that. Havent ever thought of it in the scenario context; unit teleportation through a palace jump is banned usually in competition games. My 2 cents. Welcome to CFC, 3vic!

Thanks!

For the "Age of Discovery", I think one can try to get a leader while researching (towards) mining so the palace can be built instead of teleported.

But it will be extremely difficult to do so in the "three sisters". The trick enabled me to win the game very quickly without even seeing an opponent unit (except barbarians). But I watched the replay of the events at the end and found that by the time I built the city near the volcanoes, the other three civs had almosts completely covered their quarters with cities! (Not a big surprise since it was sid level). This means that I could never have survived any war with any of the large civs, let alone get a leader.

 

[colontos]

interesting, although in age of discovery, you have plenty of time to win the regular way: on emperor, i can usually pull it off about halfway through.

 

[3vic]

interesting, although in age of discovery, you have plenty of time to win the regular way: on emperor, i can usually pull it off about halfway through.

I know. It was only a test of the method.

I find it easiest and most fun to play any one of the tribes in N/S America and aim for a one-city cultural victory, than to play the Europeans.

 

[I am the Future]

3vic is aEVIL GENIUS
I LOVE IT

 

[Charles 22]

It's a nice experiment, but apart from that, it's only a good strategy if editing your swordsmen to have 99 attack points is.



I am a giant swordsman and I eat punks like tanks for breakfast.

 

[3vic]

It's a nice experiment, but apart from that, it's only a good strategy if editing your swordsmen to have 99 attack points is.



I am a giant swordsman and I eat punks like tanks for breakfast.

I am sure the giant swordsman can eliminate all the AI civs in the "three sisters" on sid level.