No matter how good a game's AI is (and I think this one is very good) it will have serious blind spots. It has some advantages to compensate for this.
I disagree, SirPleb. The advantages are there to compensate for its limited intelligence, not for breakdowns in the rules of the game. I mark a distinction between the AI, which is the automation by which the program makes decisions for the players it controls, and the rules of the game.
You are placing the onus on the AI to figure out your intent, or to suffer for not being able to, with the justification that it has advantages in other areas, so it's OK to cheat it.
I place the onus on the rules. Your action was an act of war, and the rules fail to deal with that. When you settle on AI land, pillage their improvements, or attack their units, the game automatically declares war. You don't get to perform acts of war without a state of war. That's clearly the intent of the game. Blocking resources like this is an act of war, and I don't think you'd argue that since you knowingly did so as part of your war strategy. On neutral ground, you would have the right to do what you please, but once within their borders, that's a hostile act. Once you were kicked out, you should not have been able to return without the game automatically declaring war in the process. IMHO.
You agree it's a loophole. What's borderline about it?
The problem with laying the responsibility on Firaxis is the limitation of resources. Even today's PC's struggle with the true pathfinding in the game. Firaxis has limited processing power on hand. Even if they wanted to, and knew how to, resolve every flaw and loophole in their design, it wouldn't be practical for them to do so. They have only so many man-hours to work on it, as it is a business venture to them above all else. They have to turn a profit, and that places limits on them. They also have to deal with the limits of the computers, in that they COULD make the AI much smarter than it is now but that would mean expanding the time it takes to process, and their is an economy to that they must work within. Trying to separate intentional resource blocking from incidental resource blocking is a nightmare unto itself. They might well break five other things trying to fix this one point.
Yet you, the player, could fix it easily, permanently, and effectively, by forming and adhering to a principle of adding your rule to the game, effectively. Where the game fails, and cannot hope to succeed, you could. Choose not to exploit the loophole.
If you won't do so for its own sake, but only if that's a rule agreed upon for the formal contest, you have that right, but it is also an instance of placing your own results ahead of the value and integrity of the contest. I propose to you that that diminishes the result. Why? How? Two ways.
First, it does show contempt for your opponent. You raise a chess handicap analogy, but the one you painted doesn't fully match. This is not a situation of a weak opponent, but of an unfair rule. It's not a case of you accepting a queen handicap and playing from there. Rather, it's more like playing with different rules for both sides. You take a queen handicap because you're a stronger player. That doesn't then entitle you to move your pawns like bishops in a certain situation. Nor does it allow you to arbitrarily forbid the opponent from moving certain pieces, which you then capture because they were prevented from advancing their position fairly.
Second, there's a blur factor involved. It's not the same kind of blur as adding luck factors, but it has a similar result. Just because the same options are open to all may make it FAIR, but that doesn't make it healthy for the contest. Take a cheat code, for example. Say there was a cheat code that allowed you to make a one-time generation of 1,000,000 gold. You activate the cheat, which is not forbidden by the rules of the contest, and you then have cash to buy all tech instantly, rush whatever you want, etc etc. And others can do it too? And the results are still valid because there's skill displayed in how and when to best put all those unlimited resources to use? Yeah, sure, but it's not the same game any more, and I'd argue it's not as worthy a game.
So with loopholes in the rules. This one doesn't have the scope or range of a million gold cheat (or call it a bug, maybe some flaw in the code where you can pull 100 gold for free out of some broken game element, and do it ten thousand times if you have the patience, and get a million gold free -- doesn't matter, same results), but just because it's not of the same DEGREE does not mean it's not of the same NATURE. The more of these loopholes in a game, the less real value to the contest. The results are blurred, diminished. The nature of the game shifts into being about something else: in my million cash example, about managing the expenditures; in the current scoring system, about adding population and managing territory up to but not past the domination limit, etc etc. That was not the intent of the game, and everyone knows it; likewise with the blocking of resources. The resources are clearly a huge part of the game, and so is denying them to the enemy, but this particular kind of denial is not functional. The cost that should be attached to doing it is for war to be declared. That you can get away with the benefit without paying the cost is in no waya gray area. It's definitely unsporting.
You are perfectly within your rights with everything you are doing, but I am observing that your priorities are on the ends, not the means, and I do believe you are passing up opportunities in this regard. The means are where all (ALL) of the value of any game will be found. The ends provide form, direction, context, but never content. The stuff of the game comes in the playing, and when that is minimized and the ends exalted, everything has been turned on its head.
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I do still have some fun milking.
Fair enough.
It may well stop being fun at some point. If it does I might continue anyway.
That part I wouldn't understand. Or rather, I do understand, but don't agree with, and this is what I'm getting at.
At the moment we don't have a better way to compare results than by comparing scores.
Use your imagination. I can say right off, there are elements to this GOTM7 that render ANY comparison diminished in meaning, if not bereft of it entirely. Those who pull a settler out of that first hut are greatly advantaged, and this is made worse by lack of seed preservation (at least if seed were preserved, identical moves would yield identical results).
Of what value, then, is comparing the results of games that do not compare? Apples do not compare to oranges. Those who draw a settler are playing a DIFFERENT game than those of us who do not.
We do, in fact, have a better way to compare results, a much better way. We can look at more variables than are measured or accounted for in the scoring system. The scoring system only measures what it measures. It doesn't factor any of the luck.
This map didn't have many variables for which directions in which to explore, but I've seen many that do, and whole games turning on decisions about which direction to send explorers.
I just see it as foolish to force comparisons that are irrelevant, or to place more stock into measurements than they warrant.
The score for a milked game will generally be higher than an early win. But between two milked games, the score for the one which was "better played" will generally be higher.
That's my point. Between two milked games? The only way to meaningfully compare results with this scoring system is for players to bend their games to it, to play with the express intent of maximizing score UNDER this system. That can be done, but is it worth doing? Such hard numbers are required for GOTM style "awards" and "medals", but I suggest that you have lost the spirit of the game here, and wandered off into a tiny area of the game called "milking" where submitting your gameplay to the requirements of score maximization have taken over.
The rules of the game are flawed, but rather than addressing the flaws, you're adapting your gameplay to them.
So it isn't an invalid measurement.
I believe it is. What is being measured? You're right, it's valid, in the sense of being "fair" and also being objective and (somewhat) enforceable. But what is being measured? If someone puts in the "good performance" but then does not follow through on assembling the jigsaw puzzle (or is less skilled or less dilligent in doing so) they could still come up short.
Valid measurement yes, but only of milking, not of Civ III play. It measures only what it measures. I, for one, will ignore that and focus in on more vital matters.
I can glance at your game, see that you got no major luck boosts from huts, follow your moves through settling the start area, building barracks and massing troops, and through your campaign. I can measure that in my own mind far better than any scoring system, and certainly way beyond THIS scoring system. What do I need the scoring system for?
I can also then extrapolate from there, in comparison to my game or anyone else's. Your moves get you to place X, with so much tech, cities, resources, military, wonders, etc. Your game from there no longer compares to someone else's in direct fashion, in terms of your moves. Your moves in 10AD-1000AD will not compare to mine, because we're facing different problems. At the end of the day, though, we can look and see where your choices led you and where mine led me, give nods in our own minds to moves the other made that were impressive, or see what was achieved within a certain subsection of the game based on the situation as it stood at that time.
We both understand that the scoring system is not up to its task, but we differ on how to deal with it. You settle for it as the best available, and use it to compare what little it can measure, while I reject it as unworthy, and make my own subjective comparisons.
My question to you is, regardless of the fairness or validity of a measurement, if the scope of the measurement does not extend far enough, what's the point of measuring? We do not have here a Civ 3 contest. We have a hybrid Civ3-Jigsaw contest with a side dish now and then of Bug Exploit. You're having fun with it, so that's cool. I plan to play the games that interest me, without a lick of energy spent in the direction of the scoring system.
"At the expense of game play" seems debatable, it assumes a definition of game play.
It does indeed! The game has victory conditions, and it has a scoring system. You are postponing victory to run up the score, and I don't see that as gameplay. Even you describe it as jigsaw puzzle assembly. I don't expect you to stop, but I do lament you pressing on with it, since it to the degree that you angle toward maximizing score, you stop playing the same game. Past that point, no further comparison can be meaningful.
And to declare the contest flawed because the winner is best able to get a high score (or because the scoring system is flawed) seems a jump to me.
Not to me. I'm not declaring it invalid, I'm suggesting that it's irrelevant to the core of the game, which is NOT the score or the scoring system. What's being measured is fine, but I see it as off the track, being led around on a leash by the limits of the available objective measurements.
Some things are too complex to be measured with a few stats and numbers, and Civ III is one of them. When we try to force it anyway, we end up losing sight of what we set out to do.
When you bought Civ III, did you envision yourself sitting around assembling a jigsaw puzzle? Is that what you came for?
If it weren't for CivFanatics, GOTM, and now the tourney, I'd probably have stopped playing CivIII by now. Because of these things I'm enjoying the game immensely.
I enjoyed GOTM7 immensely too, and some of that is the idea of competing or at least comparing, and sharing. I didn't have the chance to milk, as my peaceful expansionism was not sufficient ever to put me in control of the game, but if had taken control, I would not have used it to halt my domination/conquest and sit around running up the score on meaningless points vs defeated opponents. I don't see fulfillment for me in following the path of having to add milking to my gameplay as the price of admission to the "comparison", though, and I would expect a majority of other players feel the same way too, if they stop to consider it.
They want to be part of the competition, and some may be willing to venture into distinctly UNFUN territory in pursuit of the accolades, but it doesn't have to be that way. We might be able to shape a better contest, or we might forsake the scoring system and rely on subjective analysis. Is a trophy, ANY trophy no matter how off-the-path the contest it measures becomes, worth more than the inherent value of the game?
Since the GOTM is focused on objective measurements, instead of judging, I do expect it to continue right along the same track it's always been. Might get better, might not. I'll jump in when a game looks interesting, pass on the elements of no interest to me, and be generally quiet in future.
The RBD players are organizing our own tournament, essentially to cover the ground NOT covered by events like this, forsaking the prize elements for the subjective comparisons. I don't expect this to be at all in competition with GOTM, rather to be a different sort of group activity. Those wholly satisfied with this format and the gaming it inspires may not be interested, since there won't be any awards or standings, but it may appeal as an alternative to those who are somewhat restless with the unresolved problems of existing competitions, including this one.
- Sirian
But you cannot - CANNOT - get away with refusing the demands of the AI on Deity. They WILL declare war, they WILL ally with every other civ against you, and they WILL hunt you down and get you. Or at least you cannot do so unless you have a commanding lead in the game, which is quite unlikely to come up. Keep in mind that their demands are normally on the order of 1 or 2 turn's income, which hardly hurts to lose. 
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