Banned Exploits - Discussion II

[Denniz]

So if your luxury trades are broken for any reason, it's game over?

This is fairly clear from this that we will consider each case seperately. It is impossible to, say, stop barbarians pillaging your resources in every game and we can't stop AI declaring on you if deals are in place and we won't be penalising anyone for these. If you have concerns about things that have happened in your game please email us (hof.civfanatics@gmail.com).

Ozbenno stated it well.

There is nothing new here. This is just the same restrictions we have been talking about all along.

 

[Denniz]

Will you decide the "allowing Barbarians" on a case by case basis?

Really, the HoF staff should rethink some of these rules.

We aren't talking planning to change the HOF rules. The topic of this thread is banned exploits Please try to stay on topic. There is already a thread discussing Barbarians.

 

[Denniz]

This new change to the rule is absolute garbage imo. Thanks, you've just thrown close to 100 hours of work on my marathon challenges down the drain. Deals last 90 turns on marathon, breaking them happens, all the time. This is not banning an *exploit*, it's banning normal gameplay for anyone who is a marathon player.

Rules should definitely *not* be changed on the fly like this. Great way to dissuade people from submitting. I will personally not be submitting now or in the future - very very very bad taste in my mouth from this.

I really think the HoF staff should reconsider their entire stance on so-called "Gold Exploits". If you don't like the way Firaxis has handled diplomacy, the staff should make a mod preventing trades for lump sums and make us play that. The game, as it stands, allows trades for lump sumps ... none of what you've banned as exploitative with respect to gold trades is an exploit, except the pillage your resource to retrade. The rest is simply Firaxis' implementation of diplomacy.

@Kevin J, there has not been change to the rules. We are merely clarifying the original intent of the rule.

 

[Denniz]

You're wrong. It's very possible to use 2 units per city for barb defense and stop ALL barbarians. Which seems to be what Denniz is demanding.

Of course, you will never beat the finish date of someone who uses zero units per city.

The bit about accidents and patterns is about the line between things happenning in the course of play vs. someone trying to find a minimum they can get away with. You are taking an extreme example and assuming we will not use common sense. The point is that if you are not trying to systematically exploit lum sum trades you should have nothing to worry about.

Is it a possibility to have set of rules for the HoF and a different set of rules for gauntlets?

We have one set of rules of all HOF submissions. The gauntlets have to operate within that rule set since they are HOF submission as well. As you can imagine, creating a separate submission/vetting process for gauntlets is just not practical.

Just trade your resources for GPT and there is no problem.

There is some widsom in that.

 

[KingMorgan]

The following exploits are not allowed.


Selling a resource (luxury, strategic, etc.) and pillaging or allowing Barbarians or other civs to pillage the resource or trade route to break the deal.

I was refering to this statment - made in your orginal post, not sure how much more on topic I can be.

I can see this is touchy subject, so I'll bow back out now. Goodbye.

 

[iggymnrr]

We have one set of rules of all HOF submissions. The gauntlets have to operate within that rule set since they are HOF submission as well. As you can imagine, creating a separate submission/vetting process for gauntlets is just not practical.

I was thinking gauntlets as a subset of the HoF. With gauntlets beings more stringent but still eligible under a looser set of HoF rules. I play gauntlets because they are interesting not for a slot in the HoF. A level playing field is really only needed for gauntlets. Civ 5 is very much civ on demand. I do not see the current HoF meeting that demand.

 

[Denniz]

I was refering to this statment - made in your orginal post, not sure how much more on topic I can be.

I can see this is touchy subject, so I'll bow back out now. Goodbye.

Your comment seem to be raising the issue of the the "No Barbarians" game option not being allowed. The barbs aren't the problem.

It is about the intent to break a deal and trying to conceal it by allowing the barbs to do the dirty work. I am pretty sure we can tell the difference between accidents and intent. Do they have troops and workers standing by to fix things so they can immediately trade again. Or are they herding the barbs to the right place. That kind of thing is what the rules is about.

 

[Denniz]

I was thinking gauntlets as a subset of the HoF. With gauntlets beings more stringent but still eligible under a looser set of HoF rules. I play gauntlets because they are interesting not for a slot in the HoF. A level playing field is really only needed for gauntlets. Civ 5 is very much civ on demand. I do not see the current HoF meeting that demand.

I am not sure I understand. Why should the regular HOF table not have a level playing field too?

 

[iggymnrr]

I am not sure I understand. Why should the regular HOF table not have a level playing field too?

Civ on demand implies something more personal, individualistic.

 

[Denniz]

Civ on demand implies something more personal, individualistic.

I believe everyone's Civ5 comes with it's own local HOF. That's as individual as it gets.

The HOF on Civfanatics has a certain tradition that we are trying to maintain when it comes to how we run the competition. If there are no limits and no comparability, what's the point?

Anyone that thinks that we pulled the Lump sum gold exploit out of thin air should look at the Civ3 HOF rules. There are a lot of old threads out there somewhere that go through some of the same discussions we are having right now.

You know what would be nice? If someone who knows just what can be accomplished with the Lump sum gold exploit could lay it out for folks. Play a game all out on deity. Start a threa and report on a turn by turn basis the deals and amounts. Heck, let's make a competition out of if. Who can get the most gold out of the AI in one game.

 

[iggymnrr]

I believe everyone's Civ5 comes with it's own local HOF. That's as individual as it gets.

The HOF on Civfanatics has a certain tradition that we are trying to maintain when it comes to how we run the competition. If there are no limits and no comparability, what's the point?

Anyone that thinks that we pulled the Lump sum gold exploit out of thin air should look at the Civ3 HOF rules. There are a lot of old threads out there somewhere that go through some of the same discussions we are having right now.

You know what would be nice? If someone who knows just what can be accomplished with the Lump sum gold exploit could lay it out for folks. Play a game all out on deity. Start a threa and report on a turn by turn basis the deals and amounts. Heck, let's make a competition out of if. Who can get the most gold out of the AI in one game

Tradition is not modern. Looking at civ 3 is looking backwards. Civ 5 is what it is.

 

[Denniz]

Tradition is not modern. Looking at civ 3 is looking backwards. Civ 5 is what it is.

Tradition is about the level playing field and comparability. The reference to Civ3 was about the precedence for dealing with lump sum gold exploits.

 

[iggymnrr]

I don't see the need for comparability. Customizable is the byword these days. I can accept the current rules and play in gauntlets, but I will not submit games purely for HoF purposes. I don't believe the HoF is representative of civ 5.

 

[DaveMcW]

perhaps the rules should be "reselling before the initial agreement would have expired."

i believe the spirit of the rules is to avoid repeated exploitation, but it is difficult to anticipate barbarians, the full course of war, etc.

Thanks vexing, you're the only one who offers a rule specific enough for me to follow.

 

[MadDjinn]

Wouldn't this all just be easier to have a rule:

All trades for resources/etc etc etc must be primarily gpt with a minor amount in gold to cover the real costs. (Ie, the standard 9gpt +10g for a lux)
- exception could be open borders (50g)
No LSG trades allowed with the AI otherwise.

It's simpler, it's cleaner and frankly it's better due to being easier to understand...

After that, everything else is just something to fight over. (Selling a city for gold then fighting over it with the AI gives real loss. The pop is cut in half, the culture/defense buildings are destroyed and there's random chances that all other buildings are destroyed. Not to mention the loss of the resources around the city)

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Tradition is about the level playing field and comparability. The reference to Civ3 was about the precedence for dealing with lump sum gold exploits.

Was the Civ III lump sum gold exploit ever fixed by the game developers/designers/producers via a patch or other means?

The best fix to an exploit is making it impossible to use, either via an official patch to the game or via HOF module.

If voluntary compliance is required, the rules must crystal clear. It must be made easy for players to know when they are complying with exploit prohibitions. Asking the HOF staff whether something is or is not too close to being exploitative is not entirely satisfying.

If an alleged "exploit" is unlikely to be fixed by an official game patch, it probably shouldn't be considered an exploit. Quite frankly the lump sum gold exploit isn't an exploit at all. Civilizations have always suffered economically due to War; banning the "lump sum gold exploit" is nothing special in this regard.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Neuro]

If I recall, in Civ3Conquests, if you broke a per-turn deal with one person, you took a massive hit to your trustworthiness with other civs and no one else would trust you to finish a per-turn deal.

I wish they'd patch in a similar system to Civ5, because legislating it feels cheesy as hell.

 

[Kevin J]

Well, I understand the staff's intentions here - we do want the games to be comparable, as much as possible despite the random variation in the game. (As an aside, that would argue for banning goodie huts as well).

A clear rule now, such as "No Lump Sum" trades is fine, and I can live with it.

A generic "No Gold Exploits" with a very unclear definition of exploits is worse than no rule at all.

We are trying to do the best we can when playing a gauntlet or HoF game - meaning we have to push the envelope within the rules in order to be competitive. By the nature of this being a *competition* rules have to be explicit to be effective.

Now I realize most people aren't in my case, playing marathon huge games trying for time victories. The amount that these "Gold Exploits" amount to a game like that is vanishingly small at endgame, given that the games aren't focused on fast finishes -- rather, quite the opposite . You get thousands and thousands of GPT by the end of the game. And if you don't play at Diety (I typically don't), the AI has very little money anyway - your trades are a mix of small lump sums and GPT in most cases.

Then all of a sudden, this new restatement of the rule (quite a change!) throws all those games out - I repeatedly used these "Gold Exploits". I break many many deals - I go to war whenever it's convenient in terms of happiness. Trades are incidental in the way I play. Do I have free resources? Check. Is there an AI who will buy it? Check. Trade resource. There are always trades active with all AIs I'm not at war with, and I'm always at war with one AI. When that war is done, I declare on another - necessarily breaking trades.

If there had been a *clear* rule such as "NO LUMP SUM TRADES" then this would be fine. But the developers intended lump sum trades, or they wouldn't be in. Fine, we aren't playing the game the developers created, but rather a narrower range of what the game offers -- that is probably a good thing within a competitive context. But just what that range is needs to be clear, especially when dealing with players trying to push the edges of that range.

I think trying to treat the AIs as players we need to be fair to is missing the point. We aren't playing against the AIs - we're playing against the developers, to play as best we can the game they made. If we find weak points in that game, that means we are playing well.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

What it means is you shouldn't engage in a pattern of selling cities and recapturing them for gold. If you sell a sell a city and then 50 turns later recapture it that isn't what we are worried about. Now selling your some of your border cities with a Civ and immediately declaring war would be prohibited.

Why is the HOF staff so concerned about players being fair to the AI Civs? Why can we play the game the way it was designed and implemented? The only sound justification for designating a tactic as an exploit is to prevent its use before an official patch can be issued by the game producers.

If there's no reasonable expectation that an exploit will ever be fixed by the game producers, we would be far better off to permit its use rather than ruin some games for some players (questioning their ethics indirectly) and/or possibly miss the exploit in other games due to manual (error prone) checking.

What bothers me the most is players have to deal with the AI Civs in an ethical fashion (avoiding exploits), but when the AI Civs exploit the player they are permitted to do so (for technical reasons).

Monetary deals of this sort have been broken many times in the real History of Civilizations past. Civ V may be modeling history quite well in this regard, but the HOF staff considers gaining gold via Warfare as an exploit. I don't see it this way at all. "All is fair in XXXX and War."

The HOF staff should be considering what is fair to the player rather than the AI Civs.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why is the HOF staff so concerned about players being fair to the AI Civs? Why can we play the game the way it was designed and implemented? The only sound justification for designating a tactic as an exploit is to prevent its use before an official patch can be issued by the game producers.

I would argue that tactics that rely extensively on repeat attempts for lucky outcomes can be bad for HoF competition also.

If there's no reasonable expectation that an exploit will ever be fixed by the game producers, we would be far better off to permit its use rather than ruin some games for some players (questioning their ethics indirectly) and/or possibly miss the exploit in other games due to manual (error prone) checking.

Agreed, for the most part. I especially have problems with bans on things that have legit opportunity costs that, in many cases, make it so that they're not even a consistently good idea to execute! Selling/recapturing cities is a good example of what I mean; you don't see madjinn doing this at every opportunity in his deity LPs...nor do you see many other players making a habit of it because its costs are very real. I definitely don't agree with the basis for that rule; and none has been given in its support other than false claims.

What bothers me the most is players have to deal with the AI Civs in an ethic fashion (avoiding exploits), but when the AI Civs exploit the player they are permitted to do so (for technical reasons).

I've pointed this out also, largely to deaf ears (blind eyes ? Deaf ears is an odd expression for a forum). Hopefully others noting it will help too; things the AI can and occasionally does do are really questionable to ban.

The HOF staff should be considering what is fair to the player rather than the AI Civs.

IMO the focus needs to be the competition. What rule set, on average, allows the players who play the game most skillfully to win with the most consistency? In other words, what is the best approach to filter out the noise of random chance, game spam, etc such that the best play has the maximum chance to win? This should be a fundamental question in ALL rules (ahem, no barbs/no ruins/balanced resources!!!!!), but is certainly relevant to banning of exploit practices as well.