Banned Exploits - Discussion

[The Pilgrim]

never!

My question was addressed to Sun Tzu Wu. By his definition they qualify.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

My question was addressed to Sun Tzu Wu. By his definition they qualify.

Reloading is quite simply cheating and should never be permitted in a competitive venue.

Reloading is fine in non-competitive venues when completely disclosed.

Reloading is an artifact of the useful function of saving and loading the game when not done in a monotonically increasing game save order. It refers to loading a game save that is older than the most recent action in the game and replaying the overlapping turns and/or moves.

The load and save functions work as designed. Reloading is not a bug in either of these and thus it is not an exploit. An exploit is a bug in the design or implementation of the game.

Reloading is a personal or social choice. If you choose to reload you may not compete with other players in the HoF or GOTM.

Again Reloading = Cheating. I don't see how it could be anything else.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Mesix]

Stealing gold from the AI is quite simply cheating and should never be permitted in a competitive venue.

Stealing gold from the AI is fine in non-competitive venues when completely disclosed.

Stealing gold from the AI is an artifact of the useful function of trading with the AI when not done in an abusive way. It refers to trading to get a lump sum of gold from the AI and then DOW to keep the lump sum but also get back what was traded for it.

The trading function works as designed. Getting a lump sum of gold in a trade is not a bug in either of these and thus it is not an exploit. An exploit is a bug in the design or implementation of the game.

Trading for lump sums of gold and then DOW to effectively steal that gold from the AI is a personal or social choice. If you choose to steal gold from the AI you may not compete with other players in the HoF (but apparently it is encouraged in GOTM).

Again stealing gold from the AI = Cheating. I don't see how it could be anything else.

Mesix

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I like your sense humor, Mesix. However, reloading is not an exploit = a bug in the player's favor. Both Lump-sum wealth deals and DoWs work as designed; they are meant to be used in combination at the discretion of the player. Of course they are exploitative; all good tactics exploit weaknesses; whether the exploit justifies a ban is an entirely different question. In my opinion, a ban is not even close to being justifiable.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Mesix]

I really don't see the distinction. Coding the game to only allows the most recent save would not be very difficult. The game intentionally allows players to load the initial save and any save in between the beginning and the most recent save. The staff who make the rules on competitive play choose to disallow reloading any but the most recent save, and the replaying of any turns. They also choose to disallow the abuse of combining of two game mechanics which are working properly (trading and declaring war) to cheat the system by systematically stealing gold from the AI.

It is the player's discretion to use or abuse one, the other, or both of these. It is the staff who make rules for competitive play and enforce the rules by either accepting or rejecting a submission to decide what is fair play and what is not.

 

[Mesix]

I would contend that abusing the stealing of gold to get extra cities early in the game will result in faster finish times than reloading a previous save. I think that both are abusive and should be disallowed.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

If the developer of Civ V made a version for competitive play, they would ensure that reloading was impossible. However, they made it for the general game playing public, who would demand to replay their own private games.

Competitive play that allows reloading is nonsense. There would be no limit on the number of replays and the benefit gained.

There is a finite limit on the number of Lump-sum Wealth deals and subsequent DoWs. It benefits the player, but not to unlimited extent and thus it does not justify a ban.

There should be a minimum number of competition rules, so the game played for fun (no extra rules) is virtually the same as the competitive game. The only rule that absolutely must be imposed for competitive play is the rule against reloading older saves than the most current save (or progress into the game without a save).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[The Pilgrim]

If the developer of Civ V made a version for competitive play, they would ensure that reloading was impossible.

Where exactly did you get your crystal ball from? I want some too.

Competitive play that allows reloading is nonsense.

Such bold statements are nonsense. I believe those were Russian folks who organized reloads based tournaments on one of their big sites (or maybe that was a Polish site and Russians took part in it, don't remember the details, but the tournaments were real and very popular). Same group of players who dominated Civ3/Civ4 GotMs and kicked CFC's butt in inter-site games couple of years ago.

 

[chukownu]

"No Ancient Ruins" setting should be mandatory.

Reloading/Replaying

Reloading for the purpose of replaying any part of the game is not allowed. This includes moves, battles, city screen changes, etc. It is not a HOF effort if you can undo your mistakes.

in combination with displayed approved saves that show things like a standard speed turn 70 capital settled in a perfect petra spot with 6 pop, 3 contested wonders + national college, granary, non-free monument, 2nd city at 3 pop, religion founded, units being 2 workers, a spearman, ignore-terrain archer, and scout, and the log showing first pantheon and Great Library built at a time that requires finding pottery or writing from a ruin, and a late Petra (near turn 100) that miraculously didn't get claimed on top of all the other instances of "excessive luck" when the map settings are something like 3billion/hot/low sea,

makes the acknowledgement section of the submission form read like "I did not replay any portion of the game for any reason. Wink wink, nudge."

If HoF is to acknowledge the luckiest, it might as well be replaced with a browser based slot machine.

Maybe anybody with enough time could keep rerolling, generating maps and one of those times of getting adequate terrain will get a perfect sequence of ancient ruins. It's really no different from quicksaving before collecting a ruin ; It's luck manipulation, whether replaying one turn or starting completely over on a similar start.

It's completely absurd to first have to invest bulk amounts of time out of our lives dedicated to a repetitive pointless task before getting to see where we really stand when it comes to actually playing the game. Either luck manipulation should explicitly be allowed, or should be diminished by disallowing ruins. I'd prefer the latter, but at least the former would be tolerable since it would at least be honest and non-reloading players wouldn't be left wondering how they "screwed up" to wind up with such a large discrepancy and can more accurately evaluate if the environment is one they're willing to play in. As it stands, the set up is sadistic towards participants that respect the rules and were promised a level playing field. Sure there are other ways for reloading to come up with an edge, but ruins are magnitudes more gamechanging than even the El Dorado. An indeterminate time investment for legitimately encountering optimal ruin bonuses is unnecessary when the ruins could just not be there.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree that ruins should be banned for any competitive play, including Hall of Fame.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Moriarte]

That's why GOTM is in place. Given the nature of HOF, it will always be luck - driven, since we're talking about randomly generated maps. I don't think luck can be driven out, given the format, and if diminished, well, there are so many sources of luck in the game, it's irrelevant which ones do we choose to put aside, since other sources will stay where they are. Switch off ruins, people will be rolling for Eldorado, switch off Eldorado, people will be rolling for 4x Salt starts, switch off Salt, people will start rolling for lucky barb quests. Switch off barbs, people will roll for Petra start. And so on.

If HoF is to acknowledge the luckiest, it might as well be replaced with a browser based slot machine.

That's an exaggeration. To do well in HOF you need both luck and skill.

The only way to truly compare strategy is for all to play the same map with ruins off. All other ways will favour those willing to roll indefinitely, which requires two things: patience (200 rolls) and skill. That's why GOTM has wider audience, i think. Rarely someone has time/patience to roll so much without freaking out in the process.

 

[jeespoks]

chukownu and Moriarte made some good points and pretty much summed up why at least I'm not interested in participating on HoF as it is. I like the rules, they are a good guideline and I've been playing by them. But to waste a lot of time to reroll for an awesome start when I barely find time to play the game and when after a few years of playing the game, the regular start rarely even gives a challenge to beat the map all that rerolling seems like a waste of time.

 

[chukownu]

Switch off ruins, people will be rolling for Eldorado, switch off Eldorado, people will be rolling for 4x Salt starts, switch off Salt, people will start rolling for lucky barb quests. Switch off barbs, people will roll for Petra start. And so on.

As I said, there are ways to get the edge other than the "patience" with rolling ruins "every time obtaining the desired settle start" (lets say 1 in every 20 map rerolls to get the right immediate starting spot for one's game plan as a generous estimate.) Not only are the ruins the most pronounced snowball effect many times stronger than anything you listed, the odds are far more stacked and demanding on one's "patience."

If we assume the clearly false that there's an equal distribution of likelihood of any ruin bonus we get 1/8 for anything in particular (gold, culture, faith, population, map, barb camps, tech, unit upgrade)

Let's say we're aiming for faith in the first 3 ruins; 3/8 x 1/20 = 3/160, or 1 out of 54 map+3 ruin rerolls.

But that's not enough for any serious HoFer right? How about pottery within first 3 as well?
1/20 x 3/8 x 2/11 = 1/294

Maybe that's not fair, we can lax it a bit and have writing within 4th to 6th ruins instead (assuming pottery and archery is researched to keep tech choices at a minimum.)

1/20 x 3/8 x 3/12 = 1/213

It's still in excess of your 200 reroll+collecting ruins figure and also requires refraining from picking up more ruins after hitting faith until pottery and archery, else the odds are worse, and again, calculated with the assumption that faith and free tech are just as likely as culture. Another generous number to throw in, lets say generating 20 maps and collecting 6 ruins takes 5 minutes. It would take 18 hours just to get the game set up if that scenario is all one is shooting for.


It only gets worse if there's other needs from ruins in order to snowball to the "impressive" time (in whatever way loaded dice can be considered impressive.) Maybe a bit of extra gold to buy a settler earlier, extra pop for faster wonder building, free archer to defend from barbs. In whatever order they are within the finite amount of collectable ruins, I'm sure you get the idea by now of the astronomical odds and the personal time management logistics that would indicate a severe mental illness if indeed there is no cheating.

Your examples, CS quests, salt, petra, even the el dorado, are all accessible by comparison.

 

[Peets]

That's why GOTM has wider audience, i think. Rarely someone has time/patience to roll so much without freaking out in the process.

I think GOTM has wider audience cause everything is allowed although there is no real competition.
Even reloading is allowed, look at GOTM 58, 10:32 game play and 60 sessions...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I think GOTM has wider audience cause everything is allowed although there is no real competition.
Even reloading is allowed, look at GOTM 58, 10:32 game play and 60 sessions...

Reloading is definitely not allowed in GOTM. Certainly 60 sessions in a 10:32 game is suspicious though. That would be a little more than 10 minutes per session. Could simply be someone playing on a computer that crashes often; a marginal connection in the computer can cause instant crashes.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Moriarte]

I think GOTM has wider audience cause everything is allowed although there is no real competition.
Even reloading is allowed, look at GOTM 58, 10:32 game play and 60 sessions...

Lol. Yeah. Good point.

Some top players weren't reloading though, as seen from their GOTM videos (dave, tommy).

It only gets worse if there's other needs from ruins in order to snowball to the "impressive" time (in whatever way loaded dice can be considered impressive.) Maybe a bit of extra gold to buy a settler earlier, extra pop for faster wonder building, free archer to defend from barbs. In whatever order they are within the finite amount of collectable ruins, I'm sure you get the idea by now of the astronomical odds and the personal time management logistics that would indicate a severe mental illness if indeed there is no cheating.

Your examples, CS quests, salt, petra, even the el dorado, are all accessible by comparison.

Personally, i think Salt is the strongest early element, outpacing ruins, el Dorado and other stuff by miles. It gets even stronger when there is available worker or two (to steal) between turns 5-20. Improving these 3 Salts before turn 30 - is a definition of snowball in my book .

 

[Peets]

Reloading is definitely not allowed in GOTM. Certainly 60 sessions in a 10:32 game is suspicious though. That would be a little more than 10 minutes per session. Could simply be someone playing on a computer that crashes often; a marginal connection in the computer can cause instant crashes.

Sun Tzu Wu

He or she must be a very die hard player, crashing around 30 times if you count each play session over 30 minutes.

 

[Moriarte]

Reloading is definitely not allowed in GOTM. Certainly 60 sessions in a 10:32 game is suspicious though. That would be a little more than 10 minutes per session. Could simply be someone playing on a computer that crashes often; a marginal connection in the computer can cause instant crashes.

Sun Tzu Wu

Or he could be at work, with supervisor visiting him every ten minutes to check if he's gaming or not.

 

[chukownu]

Personally, i think Salt is the strongest early element, outpacing ruins, el Dorado and other stuff by miles. It gets even stronger when there is available worker or two (to steal) between turns 5-20. Improving these 3 Salts before turn 30 - is a definition of snowball in my book .

I don't see how it is defending the usage of ruins to indicate that a much more accessible and consistent resource is stronger. If that's the case, it shouldn't matter whether ruins are on or off for you. You do seem to care, so perhaps you should rephrase your argument?

For elucidation however, can you explain why salt is stronger than first pick claiming a pantheon like desert folklore without needing a shrine or CS ally, or getting writing 10 turns early? As just to compare salt to one instance of a strong ruin rather than a combination of at least 4 optimized ruin grabs?

In the context of a science game, what terrain should they be on? Do grassland salts outvalue getting Swords to Plowshares follower belief <60 or Temple of Artemis <60 (somehow after first building GL and NC) both strong empire food modifiers that can enable more hammers if need be? Again I'm allowing you the benefit in pretending that its one or the other and not both but if you can show that it's better than having both in one game in snowballing the finish time that'd be great.

 

[Moriarte]

I don't see how it is defending the usage of ruins to indicate that a much more accessible and consistent resource is stronger. If that's the case, it shouldn't matter whether ruins are on or off for you. You do seem to care, so perhaps you should rephrase your argument?

Well, i am not in strong opposition nor in favour of ruins, just trying to be objective. I noticed that in my games it doesn't mater which ruins i grab and which ones i miss. I like playing deity dom., so basically, the best possible start for me is few salts OR settle on top of gold/silver, so i can expand to 3 cities (total) VERY quickly (sub t.30) and start building army/infrastructure. I even skip building a monument most of the time and open tradition on turn 25 every now and then. I prioritise culture around turn 100, when it's time to blast through rationalism, not earlier (unless some CS quests pop up), so you can see why (for example) culture ruins are irrelevant to me, yet they're always nice, if they come.

I have been experimenting with fast diplo victories a while ago, during first G&K gauntlet (babylon, warlord, small). After about 8 attempts i managed to finish at t.171. That game didn't have folklore or crazy amount of ruins. I managed to ally 5 CS before turn 50 and the rest of the CS on the map were mine shortly. CS were key. With that kind of a start it's possible to unlock universities around turn 85, public schools around turn 125 and research labs before turn 150, basically. Or faster. Hence, my argument: ruins are hardly game breaking.

I think the build order, general strategy/tactics, ability to puppet/annexe 6+ cities before turn 100, abundance of CS is what makes some games shine. For example, on immortal/deity if i were to choose if i start on a lonely island with lots of ruins or in a middle of Pangaea (with 0 ruins), but jammed between two civs, i would definitely pick the latter, if my goal was science/diplo/domination.

I think, in a same map environment (GOTM), switching ruins off is a actually a brilliant idea, as you can trace which strategic decisions are superior. In HOF environment, again, uber random map wins the gauntlet.

In the context of a science game, what terrain should they be on?

Plains. (riverside plains even beter)