Change in dogpile rule?

[Matrix]

In the Civ3 tournament they introduced the rule that workers may only be added to a city that does not have a food shortage. This takes away both the dogpile cheat and the pop rushing cheat effectively (you can only rush-build units which need only 1 population).

Good idea?

Other threads about this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32619
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32965

 

[ainwood]

Matrix,

That's sort-of the defacto rule I was playing to anyway. I would quite happily rush settlers from a large city in a poor position, to disband it and rebuild it later in a better one.

Depending on the degree of ICS, this may put the odd city into "starvation", but for my purposes, I would limit it to only starving enough for one person - certainly not dogpiling. And this starvation may be lifted by improving the terrain (or even cleaning pollution )

I would therefore advocate making the rule that you can only add workers to result in a food shortage of one.

 

[col]

Beam and I had a long discussion on this one.

It has the great virtue of being simple. You can see if you're city is red. If it is then you cant add workers or settlers. A simple rule everyone can understand and follow.

Still a shame not to have those mountain powerhouses though.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

If a city was used for pop rushing to a point of just having a single entertainer for a worker, it is still not starving. So that rule does not defeat the pop rushing loophole, so that rule should stay as is.

The not adding workers to starving cities would be easier for most to understand but does leave the loop hole of manually moving cities workers around so that it would be legal to add the worker and then rearrange the workers again after the worker was added and leaving the with mega starving. Maybe just amend the current rule and also include this new stipulation.

 

[Matrix]

CB, your remarks are undoubtly brilliant, but I don't understand them. :undecided:

What I do understand is that about pop rushing, but as far as I can see it, a city which has pop rushed a lot always has a food shortage at the size of 2 and higher, since it always has only two grain (the centre square).

The other thing you need to elaborate.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Pop rushing:
You have a city that has been pop rushing like crazy and the size is down to 1, it is not starving it still gets two food from the city center, even though the worker is an entertainer. So you can add a worker. So every 10 turns you could produce a swordsman from the city.

Dogpiling:

You have a city size 1 with that has 20 squares of grassland that it can work so you add 19 workers. All the squares are now being worked and no food shortage. Now go in and change all the workers to taxmen or scientists. Now the city is starving 38 food a turn. Any other city in range can now use those grassland for their own workers. Would be legal under your proposed rule.

 

[Matrix]

Pop rushing: point taken.

Dogpiling: Do you think that's cheating? I mean, what's wrong with the example you give here?

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Well you add 19 workers to the city and end up being 38 food short.

 

[civ_steve]

Using workers to pop-rush - I can see cases where limited use should be acceptable. It is possible to massively abuse worker pop-rushing, but there are also penalties from employing this tactic: your cities are not fully productive, and the government is not the best. However, I am quite comfortable with banning worker pop-rushing, outright.

I support adding workers to a city up to its food support capability, even if specialists are being generated. I'd amend the rule to allow the adding workers for this purpose, as long as afterwards that city never loses a single population point due to starvation. This would allow the cyclical low-level starvation due to switching between irrigation and mining.

 

[MSGT John Drew]

Originally posted by Matrix
Dogpiling: Do you think that's cheating? I mean, what's wrong with the example you(CB) give here? [/B]

It's only a workaround to actually dogpiling 19 workers into a zero-extra food city. It still results in the same exploit but goes the lawyerly approach to making it legal in accordance to the "no dogpile on starving cities" rule.

 

[Matrix]

But will it really boost up your score? I mean, 19 extra people in a city won't be very lucrative.

 

[MSGT John Drew]

It may not be for the score but I can think of a few ways to use this fully as an exploit.

You could use this workaround for pop-rushing units (that is if you remove the original pop-rushing rule and replace it with the "no dogpile on starving cities" rule).

Maybe you could add the rule to the present ones. It might be a little repetitive but if it works then it's for the best.

 

[Matrix]

Ok, I'll do that.

 

[Jove]

Arrr, that's pretty hard on communistic systems. What if the whole point is to convert citizens into materiel?

 

[Beard Rinker]

What about having the rule state you can only add workers to cities that have a food surplus. This is almost the same, but would cover the pop rushing loophole.

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by Beard Rinker
What about having the rule state you can only add workers to cities that have a food surplus. This is almost the same, but would cover the pop rushing loophole.

I don't know. I think it's ok. Anyone else got objections against that?

Originally posted by Jove
Arrr, that's pretty hard on communistic systems. What if the whole point is to convert citizens into materiel?

You mean disband the workers? That's never a problem.

 

[col]

The advntage of beam's rule is that a deficit stands out as being RED. You cansee the cities on the map and when you go into the city management screen you can see SHORTAGE in red .

Seeing a surplus needs closer inspection. I prefer the rule as phrased by Beam.

I dont have a problem with CB's loophole. I dont see it as giving any great advantage.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Originally posted by col
The advntage of beam's rule is that a deficit stands out as being RED. You cansee the cities on the map and when you go into the city management screen you can see SHORTAGE in red .

Seeing a surplus needs closer inspection. I prefer the rule as phrased by Beam.

I dont have a problem with CB's loophole. I dont see it as giving any great advantage.

A city with no surplus has the population number in yellow. This would mean you could not add a worker to a city that has a red or yellow population number.

When I used the pop-rushing exploit, I had a couple of garbage cities set aside for this explicit purpose. These cities were always at size 1 with an entertainer and I could squeeze a unit out of them every 2nd turn. The loophole pointed out by CB is the pop-rushing exploit.

 

[Beard Rinker]

I occured to me that part of the pop-rushing exploit was the fact that the first citizen was worth 40 shields. This allowed you pop-rush any unit up to a longbowman every 2nd turn.

The current version negates this to some degree by valuing the first citizen at 20 shields. You can pop rush a spearman or archer every 2nd turn but as CB pointed out a swordsman would take 10 turns.

I'm not sure the exploit even exists any more. By the time you set up the garbage cities and start feeding them with workers, an army of spearmen and archers would not be that effective.

 

[Greg Loader]

Note that there might be other reasons to add workers to a starving city. If a size 6 city on your border is under attack, this is a quick way to push it to 7 to get the benifit of walls.

Greg