"Boudica of the Romans" an exploit or not

[blitzkrieg1980]

@bardolph

1. It is not possible for the same leader to appear twice in one game. This probably means you cannot have the same combo twice in one MP game.

2. Yes

 

[hoopsnerd]

^^ I play MP all the time with my girl, and it's great. We usually try to play as if we weren't in the same room (hopefully on opposite sides of the world)because otherwise the game is too easy with excessive collusion. I'll tell you one thing, there's a lot more competition for wonders... She's a builder so it's hard for me to do my normal "warmonger a bit without sacraficing building too much" and also get the wonders I want... Corporations are the same way... there's a lot more competition for everything

 

[Thyrwyn]

If you calculate that way, Boudica's Praets get another upgrade, too (free Combat 1 and an additional upgrade of your choice) which sets them on par again.

The point is that Toku of NA gets two useful defenders:

1) CG III/Drill I Archers: that is +85% to resist those Combat I/CR I Praetorians for roughly half the cost.
2) Combat I/Shock Dog Soldiers for 3/4 the cost.

For every 3 Praetorians Boudica can produce, Toku can produce 2 of each.

 

[PieceOfMind]

@blitkrieg1980 and LegionSteve,

... since this is off-topic I will put this in a spoiler...

Spoiler :

With regard to your thoughts on MP games...
In theory you are right. You'd expect that no one would ever win because there would be ganging up on any player nearing a victory. However in reality games don't play out like that and I suspect it is because human players are far more irrational and unpredictable than AIs. We don't necessarily always make the most logical choices that give us the greatest chance of winning.

I've played a fair few multiplayer games now (I wouldn't say a lot though) and I've seen that games are usually very war-like. It's not necessarily a bad thing though. It is inevitable that when the players get more competitive the game becomes more aggressive. I was playing a 7 player ffa last night on a pangaea. After a few players had left, I was right between 2 other human civs... both at war with me. It's these sorts of situations I really enjoy - a struggle for survival against intelligent players. I had jaguars coming from one side and war elephants and axemen etc. from the other side, and with only 4 cities - at one stage losing my iron city and having to rebuild it. And with a blazing turn timer it makes for a very tense game!

If you've never tried MP at all you should give it a try at some stage. If you have the patience to pick up a few essential basics, you'll find it can be quite rewarding.

Be warned though that many players stick to the same old strategy every game and use, for example, keshik rushes and do very little to create a balanced army. But I find wiping out entire SoDs using catapults and spearmen etc. really fun.

 

[Fjordson]

Boudica/Rome would have a terrible economy and would be hard to keep any of the cities you could take outside of a MP teamer game - in which it is a good choice.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The point is that Toku of NA gets two useful defenders:

1) CG III/Drill I Archers: that is +85% to resist those Combat I/CR I Praetorians for roughly half the cost.
2) Combat I/Shock Dog Soldiers for 3/4 the cost.

For every 3 Praetorians Boudica can produce, Toku can produce 2 of each.

This whole theory only thrives on the idea of a very unlikely Toku of Native Americans

 

[IglooDame]

@Igloodude: Yes, Tokugawa of the Native Americans would indeed stop Boudica of Rome. However, it is quite a far cry that the AI will happen upon this combination. You suggest MP game. I will never play MP. And the following is why:

How can you possibly play any kind of game other than massive worldwide war? Only 1 can win (2 with PA) so this gives rise to my thought that MP games are either a bunch of 2 player teams warring for the win or a lot of single players trying to war with each other. After all, are you going to vote someone else in (diplo vic)? Are you really going to sit by while someone builds a spaceship (space vic)? Would you not vie to nuke any civ that is getting even remotely close to a cultural vic? What about domination? Would all other players not try to gang up and steamroll a player that is marching around taking over others? Come to think of it, wouldn't all other players gang up on any one player that is close to achieving ANY type of victory?

There's several different types of multiplayer games, some are teamers, many are not. In the 'not' case, frequently alliances will form (or at least non-aggression pacts) and if an alliance (or a single player) appears to be getting too strong, everyone else will attack them. Anyway, via pitboss I've played in over a half-dozen epic games, and the results have been roughly evenly split between diplo, space, and domination (and in domination I include the "we all agree that one player is way beyond anyone else catching him" pseudo-diplo) wins. And yeah, they tend to be warlike - if one is concentrating on a cultural win, one generally doesn't have much in the way of defenses. There's a few cases of "well I'm not going to win, so I'll just help my ally" which explains the actual diplo UN wins too.

All that aside, your numbers are correct, however, quite irrelevant given single player games and the nearly impossible chance of the AI getting Toku of NativeAmer (barring the fact that you can manually put this combo in the game). Tokugawa is never on top in any of my games. Not even in vanilla civ4 pre-patches. He's always been at the very most a middle-of-the-road leader. Dog soldiers and totem poles aren't gonna help him that much.

In singleplayer, I just don't see the 'exploit' tag anyway in bona fide singleplayer. You have to check the box that says "allow unrestricted leaders" so either check it or don't. The CFC Hall of Fame doesn't allow unrestricted leaders, and (aside from GOTM type competitions) is a level playing field, so if you're worried about something being an exploit, only play HoF-legal games (which now constitute 100% of my singleplayer games).

If you calculate that way, Boudica's Praets get another upgrade, too (free Combat 1 and an additional upgrade of your choice) which sets them on par again. And they'll most likely have more since some always survive a city assault - in contrast to your defenders which usually die.

I calculated the Combat1 in the calculations, though I forgot about the sword/praet inherent +10% against cities. The additional upgrade would presumably be Raider1 - and the whole point is that while Tokugawa archers would be tough enough for even praets to cut down, active defenses by dog soldiers (i.e. not sitting in a city) would be a death knell for a Roman offensive.

Thats what I imagine MP would be like too. I would be interested to hear from anyone who's played a lot of MP if it si or not?

I'd encourage everyone to at least try out MP - human opponents bring a whole new element to the game. It isn't necessarily going to be all-war-all-the-time, either, but on the other hand if you only go for cultural victories in SP maybe it won't be quite as much fun for you.

 

[Bhruic]

I calculated the Combat1 in the calculations, though I forgot about the sword/praet inherent +10% against cities.

The Praetorian doesn't get the Swordsman's +10% against cities.

Bh

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

In singleplayer, I just don't see the 'exploit' tag anyway in bona fide singleplayer. You have to check the box that says "allow unrestricted leaders" so either check it or don't. The CFC Hall of Fame doesn't allow unrestricted leaders, and (aside from GOTM type competitions) is a level playing field, so if you're worried about something being an exploit, only play HoF-legal games (which now constitute 100% of my singleplayer games).

Oh, i agree completely. I voted that it isn't an exploit. I believe it's perfectly acceptable considering exactly what you mention. It is an option with a checkbox and the default is unchecked. No exploit. Just another way of playing .

 

[Arlborn]

It isn't necessarily going to be all-war-all-the-time, either, but on the other hand if you only go for cultural victories in SP maybe it won't be quite as much fun for you.

I can say it is true!

And if it is exploit to choose this, then you must mark any and every option in the custom game as exploit, kk?

 

[Thyrwyn]

This whole theory only thrives on the idea of a very unlikely Toku of Native Americans

For single-player games, this whole conversation is moot, so my reference was to multi-player. And in MP, the one is no more unlikely than the other: both require deliberate choice.

Admittedly, I don't play MP games. That said, I am pretty familiar with MP strategies and game-play (which is why I don't play MP games. . .).

Praetorians are not all that and a bag of chips. Several startegies will counter them quite well. Toku of NA is an excellent choice for those who prefer to choke or turtle - even if Boudica of Rome has already swallowed up several neighbors who got eaten because they let her build Praetorians in the first place.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

<deleted => Duplicate>

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Fair enough, but due to a poll taken about a year ago, I was under the impression that the majority of posters on the forums were mostly Single Player gamers. I may not be remembering correctly, though.

In the MP game with "unrestricted leaders" option, the UU's of just about any nation can be easily countered with certain combinations of Leader/Civ. However, take away "unrestricted leaders" and Praetorians are definitely all that and a bag of chips

 

[onedreamer]

By definition alpaca is not inaccurate to describe it as an exploit. Though of course by definition you are free to disagree. With exploits in games it just needs to be enough people to consider it as such[or rather the people in power need to be convinced as such; which large numbers of players can sometimes influence].

I will be waiting for a cited source stating that it ALWAYS has to be a bug in order to be an exploit.

Here you go. Since everyone on this forum uses Wikipedia to take infos, let's be consistent:
"In the realm of online games, an exploit is usually a software bug, hack or bot that contributes to the user's prosperity in a manner not intended by the developers"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(online_gaming)

Exploits do not have to be bugs or cheats.

The word Exploit comes from French and it has a completely different meaning. In fact it has a positive acception, not negative. An exploit is most commonly an heroic deed, but it literally means to take out the best (from you or from something). In this case it is a slang word used in online gaming, and actually it's just the abbreviation of "Exploiting a bug", the word "exploit" alone in the meaning we intend would be silly because it would have a negative meaning for no apparent reason. You can of course refuse to acknowledge that for the vast majority of gamers (see also the poll result) exploiting equals cheating, probably they understood the literal meaning of the word better than you did ? Because in case you think that exploit for this poll means "exploiting a game option to your advantage" and that this is negative you're wrong, because a game option is a game feature, hence using it at its best possibility cannot have a negative acception, as you would guess by the fact that exploiting has a positive meaning in general, unless what is being exploited is bad, but how can an option be bad if it works as intended, it's not the default, and you can simply not turn it on ?

The ongoing conversation in page 4-5 got me thinking:
Many people argue that since the option is available, it is not cheating nor an exploit.
The idea behind this argument is that: since the option is available, it's not theoretically against the rules.

I'm just wondering: in the prior version of Civ. When the option was not available. Would it have been cheating or an exploit to create a Agg/cha leader of Rome?

One can say that in these versions of Civ4 (even of Civ3, one could also say), it was technically against the rules provided by the game-maker to make such modifications...

Based on this legalist definition of cheating, it would have been cheating then, but it's not cheating anymore.
Still the effect on the game and the intention of the players doing this are the same...

Nope, the effect on the game is not the same because the game is not the same. Before there was no option, now there is, different game.
The intention of the players would also be different, before they would be going against the game rules in order to take an advantage, now they would use at best one possible game rule to take an advantage.

That is why I don't agree with this very legalist definition of cheating (solely based on breaking the official rules or not).

The definition of cheating IS breaking rules, it's not "based" on it.

 

[bardolph]

I'm having a really hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that I could be "cheating" on a single-player game where I can choose my own settings... It's like accusing someone of "cheating" on a backpacking trip because they brought freeze-dried food instead of a hunting rifle. I just don't get it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

@onedreamer: there are multiple definitions of the word exploit. also, definitions will change based on the overall usage of a word within the vernacular. If three hundred million people in a society of three hundred-two million begin referring to oranges as apples, eventually, it will change.

Also, who cares? how about the question: "Is Boudica of the Romans Unfair?" Now we don't have to squabble about precise definitions.

 

[Arlborn]

I'm having a really hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that I could be "cheating" on a single-player game where I can choose my own settings... It's like accusing someone of "cheating" on a backpacking trip because they brought freeze-dried food instead of a hunting rifle. I just don't get it.

Relax, that is just not true. Some people are insane. I don't even know what we should argue about.

Exploits, if not from a bug, are generated by other functions of the game, mostly without the programmers knowing or without a way around it.

A good example I know of is a online game I play(ed) a lot. There is a function that if you log on the same spot as a online player you get teleported(is it the word?) to a adjacent tile. But if there is other players on that adjacent tile, you will get teleported farther, but if there is yet more players, you then get teleported for the temple(which is the place where you log the first time you enter the game, or when you die) of the city you are currently living on.
Doing that on purpose, to escape of a hunting place, or to log off safely, or to save time/money of travel, is illegal by the game rules and you may get banished(almost impossible by the way, gamemaster must be around or you must be dumb enough to yell "teleport plx" for everybody hear ). But the game programmers just can't find a way around it because they need this function for other parts of the game, and so it is an "exploit".

Now, Civilization comes with the option in-game to use unrestricted leaders, why the heck would that be an exploit?? Hahaha, give me a break.

YOU, YOU PLAYED A GAME WITHOUT BARBARIANS, YOU CHEATER!!!!!!123!!!1shift+1!!!!!!!111111

Heh.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

@Arlborn: Ah ah ahhh... you haven't clearly, concisely, and precisely defined exploit. lol

 

[ShunNakamura]

Onedreamer even if we use wiki it still doesn't say an exploit has to be a bug.

As for taking your word that exploit in gaming is just short for "exploiting a bug", I think I will take the Video Game theorist Jesper Juul's word that exploit is Mostly used about multi-player games, an exploit can be defined as a case where a player knowingly uses a flaw in a game to gain an unfair advantage. Once again thanks to hoopsnerd for the site.

 

[nightbringerggz]

I would define a "bug" as an event that occurs within a program that was not intended my the developer(s). With a program as complex as a modern computer game there will be bugs, no getting around it. I consider an "exploit" to be a manner in which a "bug" can be used to get positive results which would not be possible if the "bug" did not exist.

The infinite unit creation through colony creation that was fixed in the latest patch was an exploit. The game developers did not intend for users to get the results that they did. "Boudica of Rome" is not an exploit, the game developers clearly intended this option to be possible by giving us unrestricted leaders as an option.

Now, is Boudica of Rome unbalanced? Under certain settings, yes. On small maps with just a few AI opponants, you should always win with just your Praets. On a Huge map with 18 human opponants? You're going to be hit hard by every single intelligent player, and will probably never even get to the Medieval Era. And even if you manage to amass a large empire, just how are you going to maintain it?