Am I inadvertantly exploiting?

[Sailorstick]

When playing GOTM 20:
In the middle of my territory is an ex-french city of size 1. I decided it wasn't worth putting troops in it.
Just recently I read that the AI KNOWS where empty cities are and will go out of it's way to take them. This explains why so many french tanks keep moving into my territory when I have armies massed at their capital! Of course an unescorted tank is very easy pickings and they don't survive for a single turn.
I didn't realise why they were doing this until now. Is this considered an exploit? I really don't want to waste troops on this city, even my size 26 cities only have 2 infantry.

 

[hotrod0823]

To some this is on the verge of an exploit or "puppet strings" If you move your "empty city" around using rails you can force the AI to Move toward one city put some guys in it Leaving another city empty and they will shift to take the new empty city.

This can effectively immobilize the troups and makes for easy pickens or just keeping them stuck like a deer in headlights. There is no rule against it in GOTM but RBCiv has rules against it. You be the judge .

From RBCiv Tactics and Exploits list

"Puppet Strings": During a war, when enemy units (yours or those of another AI) move into attack range of an AI city, that AI's whole offensive army will move toward the endangered city. This is not something you can avoid, even, if you send out raiders to pillage or an assault force to attack. However, it can be exploited in such a way as to paralyze an enemy force, pulling their puppet strings to make them dance back and forth. Moving a diversionary unit or attack near an enemy city, then moving in and out and in and out of attack range, to pull the puppet strings, is an exploit. This exploit was discovered by Cyrene and confirmed by Sirian in RBD9 SG. This also explains why AI's who come under attack by an alliance of civs usually crumble so quickly: their units get locked into unintended puppet string manipulations by frequent enemy attacks, and their armies are paralyzed with indecision over being yanked around, and the civ gets torn apart. To some degree, the AI is so dumb in this regard it can't be helped, so don't make special effort to work around this flaw, but likewise don't go out of your way to exploit this during any RBCiv Epics games.

 

[Txurce]

I would say that this is not an exploit, since you aren't doing it on purpose. Otherwise, you would have to keep at least one unit in every city - something which top players in particular tend not to do.

 

[ltcoljt]

I think it depends on your purpose of playing. If you are looking at Civ3 as a puzzle that you want work in as efficient a manner as possible then there aren't really any exploits to speak of. If you are playing with a particular group then you follow their rules. Otherwise, please yourself.

 

[alamo]

Similar things have been done with workers in the past.

You can passively do something similar if you own a landbridge to an unsettled territory - the AI will march settlers across your territory untill you block the path. You can open/close the gate and make them march units back and forth.

I guess it's an exploit, in that you have found a pathetic blind spot in the AI.

The AI tactics are usually total offensive war, even though there are obvious threats that should be dealt with before they go on the offensive.

Move a SOD into their territory and they will go assault your frontiers while you pillage town after town.

It would be nice if the next expansion would correct some of this, but don't count on it.

 

[RufRydyr]

How can it be an exploit if it happens in RL? I heard that part of the reason Bagdad fell so quickly was that units were moving back and forth from one position to another and hadn't gotten set up yet.