At last! My very own exploit! (example from COTM30)

[PaperBeetle]

How long have I dreamt of this moment? I can't believe that older and wiser players out there haven't spotted this bug before, yet I can't find any mention of it... so you heard it from me first right

The bug is specific to the functioning of engineers in C3C. I think that when you rush a build, all the shields showing in the box get converted to 'real' shields, regardless of whether they were originally produced by a citizen working the land (i.e real), or by an engineer (i.e. engineered). For example you could build a settler in a 1 shield town by having a temple in the build queue, running three engineers for 4 turns, then rushing the last 2 shields (I'll be using the religious Japs in my example btw) and switching the temple back to settler for the last turn.

Worth banning? I don't know, but that's not all there is to the bug. The game seems to keep a record of how many engineered shields you have contributed to the current build, and whenever you switch to a building, it checks to see if all the shields in the box are real. If so, it adds the engineered shields into the box. I guess that is to allow you to switch between units and buildings without losing engineered shields, but coupled with the observation in my first paragraph, we have a full-on exploit, and I think it deserves prohibition.

Haha, if even PaperBeetle wants it banned it must be a shocker, right? Well, it's only really useful in a limited set of circumstances, but it doesn't have any down side, and it is clearly a bug, as opposed to merely an unforseen result of a kosher game mechanic, so that's why I'm speaking against it. Anyway, here is my example, using a town after the end of my recent Japanese milk run...

Here's how my city starts off.

Let's say I decide to put a hospital in it. I switch those specialists to engineers, and a turn later I have 13 shields: 1 real and 12 engineered. Now before I get to the bug, let's have a look at what happens when I switch to a unit.

Domestic Advisor doesn't really mean that, becasue remember that engineered shields don't count towards units. Just the real shield shows now, but the engineered shields still exist on some building site somewhere. It's time to start buying shields.

And now I switch back to hospital, and I find that the engineered shields are returned to me; I have the 1 real shield, 9 purchased and 12 engineered, for a total of 22.

No bug so far, but now I switch to temple and buy another 8 shields to finish it.

Try switching the 30 shield temple to a 40 shield SAM site, and something strange happens.

Well okay then, I switch to a 60 shield granary, and see why Mrs F1 thought shields would be wasted. There are now 42 shields in the box, not 30.

The 12 engineered shields have been added back for the second time, and are now double-counting. I buy another 18 shields and switch the granary up to a library.

The 12 engineered shields cashed in for the third time, so I now have 72 shields. I buy the next 8 shields and switch on to market, getting another 12 shields.

I buy 8 shields and switch to colosseum, and then 8 shields again and finally switch to the hospital.

132 shields in the box. I buy the last 28 shields and set the specialists back to how they were last turn.

My six engineers each paid out six times, saving 240g on what should have been a 588g rush. If I had used 9 engineers (with a food deficit) and hadn't played around rushing that worker, I could have got the hospital buying only 33 shields, for a 432g saving.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Well, it's only really useful in a limited set of circumstances

Mind you, I hadn't really thought through the implication of using it to spam out a lot of units as soon as Replaceables is reached. That would be a real life-saver in a military game that went off the tracks a bit. I guess this is more powerful than I had originally thought...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

wow - that is a huge list and has enormous implications. yes, I think that is an exploit and could be huge.

 

[denyd]

First off, it looks like there are at least 2 Cow contestants for this game. So one will get the cow and one the shield.

On the other hand this exploit is powerful, though in most games there usually isn't that much resistance from the AI to need it. Maybe in a Diety or Sid level, but not the Monarch or Emperor that have been the games of late.

 

[bluebox]

I'm not sure I understood it completely. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The Paper Bug does two things:
1. You can use it to build units with engineer shields;
2. you can get x-tuples of engineered shields (much worse to me that 1.)

Correct?

 

[civ_steve]

@BlueBox - It doesn't appear to apply engineer-based shields to units (so 1. is out), but it does appear to give you multiples of the engineer based shields through some combination of switching to more expensive buildings.

I passed this around the staff, and they did think it was discussed a long time ago by DaveMcW (so you might not get credit for this, PaperBeetle ). And needless to say this is an exploitive bug, so don't do what PaperBeetle has demonstrated.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Aw, even credit for #1 would be good enough for me; I'll have another look to see if I can find the original discussion...

So yes it can get engineered shields into unit builds. For example, set your corrupt town to run 4 engineers on a temple build. 3 turns later, you have 27 shields in the box. Rush the remaining 3 shields, and all 30 shields get 'realised'. Switch to a settler after the rush and next turn you have him.

There's a problem with avoiding the exploit, and that is that using engineers and short-rushing are both entirely sensible things to do. Indeed I guess the bug happens in many a long game, but only to a small degree, and is thus not noticed. The work-around that I started using, once I had figured out the mechanics of this bug, was to only short rush things via units. That way engineered shields are never in the box at the moment of 'realisation', so don't get duplicated.

 

[King Of America]

If I understand correctly, the exploit occurs because of doing multiple short-rushes in the same city with at least two of the short-rushes occuring when one or more citizens is an Engineer.

If that is correct, then the rule can be formulated simply: It is forbdden to perform multple-short rushes in the same city with at least two of the short-rushes occuring when one or more citizens is an Engineer.

A little long but not too hard (anyone who would try the exploit can surely understand the prohibition).

Of course, if I did not summarize the problem correctly, then all bets are off