Beating Deity exploit-free. Restriction gameplay

[lissenber]

Now alot of people here seem to suggest that the game forces you to use exploits. I disagree.

So I plan to show them wrong by playing a full game without exploits and maybe posting it somewhere here.

But first we have to agree on what is considered exploiting. What do you consider as an exploit? And why? Post it here and i will later add it to my list.

 

[Slowpoke]

Obviously exploits in the current state:

-ignore happiness (allows capture + sell luxuries for massive military gold economy)
-playing anything other than large/huge pangea (too easy to rush your territory)
-epic/marathon speeds (too easy to rush)
-stealing a worker from a CS (free worker at a point in the game where it costs a lot)


Somewhat exploitative due to imbalances

-selling luxuries period (300 gold for a luxury is rediculous)
-playing as france,greece, or china
-accepting massive peace offers and then razing
-selling cities (1000 gold for a one size city?)
-beelining with great scientists to get artillery before you know how to make an arrow

Personally, though, I challenge people to try a huge pangea with ANY strategy. It is hard. People crying about how deity/standard/continents is too easy simply haven't had the guts to try a real challenge.

 

[milk steak]

I'd say just Deity, Pangea, Standard is fine.

Edit- Oh, maybe without the research agreement war-declaration instant tech exploit.

 

[filorux]

Either it's been moved, I'm mistaken, or it's buried deeper than I care to dig, but there was a Poll on this forum asking which of the following you considered an exploit. I'm not saying you'll get all the best ideas there, but it could be a good start nonetheless.

 

[lissenber]

-epic/marathon speeds (too easy to rush)

What if i`d play Marathon but don`t do any early rushes?

-ignore happiness (allows capture + sell luxuries for massive military gold economy)
-playing anything other than large/huge pangea (too easy to rush your territory)
-stealing a worker from a CS (free worker at a point in the game where it costs a lot)
-selling luxuries period (300 gold for a luxury is rediculous)
-playing as france,greece, or china
-accepting massive peace offers and then razing
-selling cities (1000 gold for a one size city?)
-beelining with great scientists to get artillery before you know how to make an arrow,

Added those to The list, altough i don`t agree with selling luxuries being an exploit. The AI gets his share (+5 happiness) for it, too. But it`s manageable to play without selling your resources .

 

[Slowpoke]

Yeah marathon without a rush doesn't sound very exploity. Speed really only affects wars. It actually might be harder if you don't rush, because runaway A.I.s will probably take over the world faster.

 

[UknowsI]

Yeah marathon without a rush doesn't sound very exploity. Speed really only affects wars. It actually might be harder if you don't rush, because runaway A.I.s will probably take over the world faster.

Marathon would have to be without war. If you wage war on Epic/Marathon, you can just defend in your own territory (which is easy) until the enemy is out of units and then conquer every city they have before they have time to rebuild anything.

 

[Fluxx]

I really start getting annoyed by the elitistist attitude and ignorance people have towards Epic speed.
To give an example, in BotS I always played on Immortal/Deity epic speed. For everyone that has not played BotS, the Ai starts off with a worker on immortal, and an extra settler on deity.
This means that the AI will have more turns to convert this advantage, then he would have on normal speed. Saying this is not a huge deal, is saying the Indian UU in BotS is weak, or ignoring the fact that the fastest Spacerace (BC) ever has been done on settler/marathon.

I actually participated in alot of forum games, where everyone got the same map, the only difference was that I played on epic instead of standard. If you compared tech rates of the AI, and for example liberty dates to other players, the AI in my games always would be ahead compared to the AI in other games.
Hell, when I play normal speed I actually find the game easier if I go for a "techy" kind of game.

The only moment epic is easier then normal on these diffulties, is when you play inca or persians and max abuse their UU. Even then, it is debatable imho, because the AI just has more time to prepare for the rush due to his early advantage.

 

[mzprox]

It's not just about exploits..
Ai sucks in war, yet fighting with the ai can not be considered an exploit. Allying with city states? can break the game, but not exploit etc.
I have played a deity game: no war, max 1 city state ally from each type, and not using anything that can be considered an exploit. (I did not sell cities, strategy resources, open borders, did not declared war ever, not even on a city state., played on epic but since I haven't declared war it doesn't matter)
I still won because I overused the research agreements.. but that is not exploit, the AI use them too, but not as much as I did. If I disallow research agreements for myself, them most likely I would had lost.. but with all these restrictions what's the point of playing the game?

 

[LDiCesare]

I disagree on large/huge pangaea. If you don't rush, that's not an issue. Large maps are so long to play for me anyway that I'm not sure I'll even finish my current game (which happens to look like a pangaea as far as civs placement is concerned, although the map is more random and has some islands).

Using more than one maritime city state to feed your population is an exploit imo. It's just totally overpowered.
Using research agreements is also plain broken.
Avoid selling more than 5 resources of any kind. I did that once and now have a number of horses continually growing, they breed like crazy and come from nowhere, it's obviously a bug so shouldn't be used at all.

 

[pat4]

What if i`d play Marathon but don`t do any early rushes?



Added those to The list, altough i don`t agree with selling luxuries being an exploit. The AI gets his share (+5 happiness) for it, too. But it`s manageable to play without selling your resources .

But the AI doesn't need +5 happiness because on diety he already has a huge surplus of happiness the only thing he is getting for his 300 gold is a golden age a little bit quicker.

 

[Slowpoke]

I really start getting annoyed by the elitistist attitude and ignorance people have towards Epic speed.
To give an example, in BotS I always played on Immortal/Deity epic speed. For everyone that has not played BotS, the Ai starts off with a worker on immortal, and an extra settler on deity.
This means that the AI will have more turns to convert this advantage, then he would have on normal speed. Saying this is not a huge deal, is saying the Indian UU in BotS is weak, or ignoring the fact that the fastest Spacerace (BC) ever has been done on settler/marathon.

I actually participated in alot of forum games, where everyone got the same map, the only difference was that I played on epic instead of standard. If you compared tech rates of the AI, and for example liberty dates to other players, the AI in my games always would be ahead compared to the AI in other games.
Hell, when I play normal speed I actually find the game easier if I go for a "techy" kind of game.

The only moment epic is easier then normal on these diffulties, is when you play inca or persians and max abuse their UU. Even then, it is debatable imho, because the AI just has more time to prepare for the rush due to his early advantage.

In civ 4 I actually played marathon But this isn't civ 4. This is freakishly rush sensitive civ 5, and really epic is abusively easy. In civ 4 city walls stopped you like a rock till you had catapults. Now city walls are like a piece of cardboard.

 

[Fluxx]

In civ 4 I actually played marathon But this isn't civ 4. This is freakishly rush sensitive civ 5, and really epic is abusively easy. In civ 4 city walls stopped you like a rock till you had catapults. Now city walls are like a piece of cardboard.

True. The problem lies with the AI being so horribly bad at managing wars. Moving units, building the right units , building them on time.
So the problem is not really epic, but more waging war in general. Something that has been discussed alot already on these forums.

If you really want to play with "no abuse", then I recommend not attacking any civilization until you are around musket/riflemen.

 

[Makaz]

I like your posts Lissenber, as you always provide something constructive. I am looking forward to see you showing how you can win this and prove that the game can be both challenging and interesting when played without exploits.

I refuse to consider standard size map as an exploit (because my cpu doesn't allow me to handle larger map sizes ) but it would surely add to the difficulty to make it larger.

Agree with the need to go with Pangea; but continent can be challenging too IF one of the AI eats away all his neighbours before you meet him (which is still random).

Finally, for me exploits = abuse of everything that use broken game mechanics.

Ex: duplicate your ammount of strategic ressources by trading abuse; research agreements before going to war; bad spot city selling; Companion cavalries.

I don't see worker stealing as an abuse as you can only do it once and doing it might compromise you later in the game (e.g. you need to attack a neutral CS later in game and get permanent wars from all of them because it's your second agression).



Also why not do it in the form of an immortal / deity cookbook, respecting those rules; as to compare our strategies at this level ?

 

[edcrane]

Using research agreements is also plain broken.

Why? Aside from the bug where you get a tech if you make a RA and then declare war, it seems like a fairly even system: both you and the AI get a tech, and if you haven't balanced out your research, you might end up with the short end of the stick. On deity, most of the AIs have tons of money to burn and frequently setup RA's between each other.

 

[mzprox]

Why? Aside from the bug where you get a tech if you make a RA and then declare war, it seems like a fairly even system: both you and the AI get a tech, and if you haven't balanced out your research, you might end up with the short end of the stick. On deity, most of the AIs have tons of money to burn and frequently setup RA's between each other.

I played a deity game with even more restrictions and won simply because I made RAs with most of the AIs while they did not (they made some, but not as many as I did)
Here is a summary of my game btw:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392386

 

[edcrane]

I played a deity game with even more restrictions and won simply because I made RAs with most of the AIs while they did not (they made some, but not as many as I did)
Here is a summary of my game btw:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392386

The space race in 1850 is not especially crazy. In the game I played last night, the AI finished the apollo project in the mid-1700's and, if it actually played to win, could have won the space race before 1900. That said, perhaps you're right that RA's are too cheap in the late portion of the game.

In any event, diplomatic victories strike me as being substantially easier (and therefore less satisfying).

 

[mzprox]

I turn off diplo-victory. It just too stupid right now. Yes I could by up all the city states 1 turn before the vote, not very satisfying

 

[LDiCesare]

Why? Aside from the bug where you get a tech if you make a RA and then declare war, it seems like a fairly even system: both you and the AI get a tech, and if you haven't balanced out your research, you might end up with the short end of the stick. On deity, most of the AIs have tons of money to burn and frequently setup RA's between each other.

Because the ai's could use it but they don't.
On deity, with about 10 survivng ai's, I have 10 research agreements at any time, giving me a new tech every 3 turns on average. Each ai has either 1 or 2, at most 3 agreements at any time, meaning they get far less techs than I do.
I basically get around 12 or 13 techs per 30 turns, which means I get at least 4 times as many techs from trading as from researching. That's a bit exaggerated and the ai's can't compete with that except with their huge bonuses.
The mechanism in itself is abused because the ai's can't understand its value.
Furthermore, it's broken because it doesn't scale with the number of players, so if you cram many civs on a small map, you can tech extremely fast (and no, money is usually not a limiting factor).

 

[stii]

Well surely you have to exploit something to get the money to run 10 research agreeements?